Check out an existing ships entity file to see what angles if any the firing arcs are for what weapons. You may be right in that the hardpoint emmiter just determines its facing on the model.

LOL now thats funny, keep up the great work you modders

There are no angles at all.

As Therax has said. There is only left, right, front and back with each a half sphere firing arc.

Sadly.

So Code Herder, how's the progress coming? I've got a couple of 3ds's I'd love to see in-engine, even if they aren't textured.

Getting there, I've been sick this whole week so I haven't touched it much

Take your time. There is plenty of it, and there is no rush

Just like with the original Homeworld, I am going to marvel at the community's ingenuity in creating 3rd party mod tools.

I'm pretty near a first release.

I'm a bit unsure how I should handle textures thought. I can accept format others than DDS for your model as it probably won't be what you've used but then I need to convert them to the DDS format for the sins engine. That's easy to do relatively speaking but what about the info encoded into the DDS alpha channel in the color texture. You'll have to bake that in afterward. I could always look for transparency info in png and tga I suppose. It just might not be very intuitive. I know there was a post before about how textures work, reading it gives a bit more insight into the problem.

Also, version 1.0 won't support bump maps I'm afraid and probably not the data texture for team color etc. I thought I had everything worked out for it but it seems something is still missing to have the bump maps work. There's also the fact that I just realized there's also a possibility of using a normal map that make things even more complex. On the bright side, I found where the normals were set and the models still look pretty good with just that.

I'm going to release it even with only the color texture support if I don't stumble upon the solution on my path to release because I want you guys to get a feel for how your models are going to look in game, how the pipeline works etc.

Here's a HW ship inside sins with normals and stuff. I think bump mapping might be working but I have to run more tests. Cheers!

That is awesome! (don't let relic see this ) I am looking forward to seeing this tool.

I take it then that the DA, and normal files wont load if you just use the color texture reference. Nah, that would be too easy, and wishful thinking on my part. Hope you find your solutions. Maybe the dev's can help you out if they aren't knee deep in NDA.

EDIT: look back on my post about how to work with the DA textures. The specular map is the alpha in the color dds. Again this may be just wishful thinking, and too easy, but its worth a try to create placeholder DA's, and normal maps

Actually, back in reply #43, you'll note that Code and I found that some meshes don't use the data and/or normal map textures. They just leave the fields for those textures blank (empty string).

Yeah that's the thing when I fill those fields for each material, I exptected the engine to use them but I'm not so sure anymore. It even makes sense, if you're just using color+data how would it know it's data and not a bump map. Plus discovering that there's normal maps makes it a certainty. Now I just have to find the material parameter that's responsible for setting that.

Looking forward to the release of this tool. Got some ships I wanna try adding

Wouldn't this just be positional? I.e. the first field is always the color texture, the second one the data, and the third the bump map?

I suppose that every model will probably need a data texture, if for nothing else but team color, although the data texture could just be blank if team color is not being used.

Well, I am tentatively forecasting a release this week end . It might be missing a few things but it should be functional enough.

The Data texture is mainly used for Illumination, Reflection (mirror), and Bloom effects. Along with the Team Color.

The Specular highlights is in the alpha of the color texture itself.

AFAIK all models need a DA file even if it is just a small 32x32 blank (black texture). To prevent the "glowwy" problem in some video cards.

All the sins models use some form of normal map, but it is optional AFAIK.

These shader flags may not be in sequence in the models file. I have no clue how they are called up in the model. I am just speculating here, because i know very little about coding. There is a certain way shaders are done in a model, and thats why the forge tools will only import from Softimage XSI format. With this i am having Homeworld 2 Maya flashbacks. Maya was the reason i didnt bother modding HW2. I hope XSI is a little more forgiving.

I am definetly looking foward to your release Code Herder

any progress?

Kenetor