Mesh Editor

The data texture ... browse button thing doesn't work. I have a dds and a 3ds file ready to go, have imported the 3ds file, and can't import the dds.

How does it not work? Did you click the checkbox for the data texture?

I did. None of the three browse boxes work - clicking does nothing. The checkboxes work, however.

edit: minor bug as well - the top of the window is offscreen when I boot it up, have to click the side and drag a bit to make a bit of the bar visible to drag it down. running 1440x900 res, so that's probably what's wrong

edit2: also, saving the model as a .mesh doesn't output anything. have tried multiple times in many directories.

Mmm okay, that's strange.

Edit: Wow for some reason save seems to be completly non functional when I use the program that's been installed via the installer.. That's kind of embarassing, oh well, shouldn't be too hard to fix but I'll do to that tommorow night, it's kinda late now.

Oh yeah about the data thing, doesn't checking the data check box enable the browse button? Or do you mean having selected the texture you can't see it on the screen? If so, I haven't really implemented all their shaders yet, so visualization will have to be in game for a while, sorry.

K.



No - it doesn't enable the browse button so I can't browse for a texture. :/

Ok, last thing I can think of: Did you have a material selected in the list? I'll have to add one selected by default I guess. Much more user friendly .

I didn't see anything in the materials box..?

If you dont see any materials in the material box chances are your model is untextured, or the converter you used erased the material data.

So the viewer doesnt read .dds itself, but is does convert say .tga textures to .dds correct?

Is the model supposed to appear bright white when you 1st open it in the viewer? I cant see any material settings to adjust ambient, specular, diffuse, etc. I am hoping the material setting from 3dsmax are saved.

Materials from 3dsmax aren't switched over I believe; instead texture files probably contain the material.

Yea i have to re-assign the textures to my models in the viewer which is not a bad thing, because i can rename them for use in sins. I am just worried that my models will have a permanent glow upon import despite the da's textures, and alpha channels in the cl file :p

I hope the smoothing groups are saved as well. Otherwise my models will look like crap if groups are erased and default groups assigned. I will see for myself soon enough i am prepping 1 model as i type

I see you have emitters for engines, and weapons, but what about nav lights?

EDIT: I didnt realize the editor wont save my model. I re-assign all textures, give it a single emitter for a weapons test, click save..then nothing. My model disappears from the screen, and no .mesh file is created. Doh! forgot about the installer version not saving :/

Yeah sorry about the not saving thing, I'm feeling pretty bad about it, it's pretty unprofessional. Especially since I went to the trouble of creating a nice installer, icons and stuff.

About the smoothing groups settings. If the 3d file format you're saving to keeps them when converting chances are it's going to be kept in the exported file except for non supported features in sins like say specular per vertex or colored vertex. You've gotta bake that into the appropriate texture layer.

As a side note, I'm pretty sure there's vertex coloring in sins, I just haven't gotten around to reverse engineering them.

For the emitters, you're perfectly right, I forgot to add them. I'll do it as I fix the save thing.

Nav lights aren't that important right now. They can be added later. Thats a "nice to have" feature not a "must have" like saving the file :p

I feel your pain. Back in my homeworld modding days i've done many an "oops".

I forgot to say thank you for providing the tool despite it being broken right now

Ok, it's fixed, version 1.1 is up. You can get it at My Website

-Fixed the no save bug.
-Fixed a few minor annoyances like when doing cancel in the dialog to select a new mesh to open would erase your current model.


Next version:
-Automatic conversion of textures to dds with the correct name.
-Remember where you last looked for files to open or where you last saved. It's pretty annoying to always have to go there again and again.

Ok i managed to get a model in game, but the problem is the textures wont show up. I know why they wont. It is because the editor saves the file locations of the textures used in the mesh file. In my case my C: drive. The game is installed on my D: drive

I used my c drive to avoid the endless clicking. I probably should have put my .jpgs in the sins textures folder, and linked them from there (yes i do have .dds copys of the textures).

I tried to manually edit out the file locations in the mesh file with notepad, but that results in the model crashing sins. My models can have up to 30+ different material lines. So manually editing 90 (30 for the cl, 30 for the nm, 30 for the da) entrys. Needless to say that was tedious :p Only for the model to crash the game afterwards.

Ill try relocating my textures to the sins textures folder, and try again, but for future mods there has to be general texture entry's in the mesh file, or else others will encounter the same problems i did when trying to run mods.

It did feel good to see one of my models in game despite it not being textured

EDIT: Ok, i give up. I moved my textures into the sins texture folder, and redid all of the material entrys.. here is the end result :/



I dont know why it is not showing the textures. I am at a loss.

Because I hate you for being able to make models?

You can make them too after spending 3+ years learning a modeling, and an image editing program. Like 3dsmax, and Photoshop. LOL! Your jealous at me? I am just an amateur hobby modeler. BTW my avatar is that very same model

Well, the path to the file inside the .mesh file does not matter. Sins ignores everything but the filename. If you look at their .mesh files, you're able to see where their artists stored their textures. Two things could've gone wrong if you could see the textures inside the mesh editor.

1.You didn't save the .dds version of your textures inside the texture folder of sins.

2.You put them in dds format in the correct folder but you didn't make the filename all lower case. As I mentioned in my first post, all the filenames for your dds textures have to be all lowercase, because sins is case sensitive and because the generic mesh loading library I'm using is converting all the texture file names to lower case. I'm working on correcting this little annoyance, sorry.

DOH! Ok its official im an idiot. Had caps... :/ fixed, textures work, will post shot later.

You need to change the order of the textures to this order: CL is 1st, then DA, then NM. Right now you have it at CL, NM, DA. The way you have it now puts the normal maps where the data texture should be. The blue ghost glow was quite scary lol. I had to rename my NM's to DA, and DA's to NM as a temporary fix.

This is awsome! This tool is now "stress puppy certified". We can import models now folks!

so... Quick question,
I've read through both threads and am interested in playing around w/ this a bit, being a hobbyist modeler (Lightwave 3d btw). I don't see anything on a Luminosity texture layer, though. Looking through the screenshots and at models in game I can definitely see there is one, evidenced by "windows" on the dark side. Is that what the "data" texture refers to?

If I remember correctly, you paint the luminosity in the color texture. There was a thread on how to texture sins model at some point, if someone has a link to it, that would be pretty useful.

the -da or data texture is the luminosity texture. The green color channel is specifically used for self illumination (windows, lights, etc.). The red color channel is the team color. Blue is reflection. Alpha is bloom.

In the -cl texture the alpha channel is where you would use the specular map

Yup there is a tutorial I wrote it
WWW Link

Missed the thread, great. thanks for the reply.

Ill tinker about a bit, and post a screenie or two when I gets some time on my hands.

Between Team Fortress 2 mapping and playing, and now Sins games and modeling, I seem to be creating alot of work for myself...

just crashes when i try and save, cant apply textures in the viewer either

Well, I thought I'd have an update tonight for the dds save thing but the library I'm always using to handle images supports reading most file formats, including dds and writing to file most file formats... except dds. Whoops!

Edit: Nevermind, it does support dds saving. Has much as I love this library, the documentation for it is abysmal and incredibly out of date.

Kenetor:
Mmm I don't know. Maybe something goes wrong with the save path. Have you tried saving to c:\? What's wrong with the textures, does it crash when you try to open one or you just have no materials showing up? Also, are you running vista or xp? I never go to try on vista.

Looking at the thread, it doesn't seem like you answered the inquiries about the problem with the browse buttons. I'm having the same problem, the buttons simply don't respond. Did you figure out what was wrong there?