Filling the Skies

[Legacy_Guest_Chrysoli_*]

               That did it - knowing there is a Time Configuration icon to click - who would have thought ... ! hah!

By playing with the correct length of the travel path and adjusting the ending number ( ended up using 1800) - I came up with a nice speed that both the airship in the sky and the carrack in the water can use.

In GMAX, I could lower that ending frame number and set the actual speed to 1/4 or 1/2 time - and that worked well too - however, it seems when setting the animation on the Aurora base, it's sets time-scale to 1 - regardless.

At any rate - it all worked out very nice! If I had a way to record a video of it - I'd show you how it looks in game, but alas, that's not something I have access to and  a screen shot will do no good.

Thanks again you guys - really! And if anyone else could use these placeable models with the travel animation, I'd be happy to upload them somewhere for them.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Karvon]

               I'd love to see these, and any others folks dream up, added to the Vault.

Karvon
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TSMDude]

               Flying carpets and actual Spelljammers...or the flying city of the Shadovar....so many possibilties....
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Chrysoli wrote...
That did it - knowing there is a Time Configuration icon to click - who would have thought ... ! hah!

Glad that worked for you!  Even in GMax there are a million little switches and dials and it's not clear what they do.  Some of them, I think, don't even have an icon to click on.  Like Align.  If you hit Alt-A after having selected a mesh and then click on another mesh it will bring up the Align dialog, which will let you exactly align one mesh with another using their pivot points.  By selecting X, Y & Z alignment, you can exactly replace one piece with another.

At any rate - it all worked out very nice! If I had a way to record a video of it - I'd show you how it looks in game, but alas, that's not something I have access to and  a screen shot will do no good.

XFire makes it really easy to take in-game videos.  It'll take care of the recording, compression and uploading to the XFire site for viewing, more or less automatically.  Very handy.

Thanks again you guys - really! And if anyone else could use these placeable models with the travel animation, I'd be happy to upload them somewhere for them.

If you get some spare time, upload it to the Vault.  I love looking at stuff like this.  Great way to get ideas.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 24 mars 2011 - 03:02 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_cyberglum]

               Hi all,

Sorry its been a while since last post, been busy with work etc.

Thanks for the Dummy Node tips OTR, I have the processes down pat now. Makes it a whole lot easier.

I currently have 10 speeders and 20 starships with flight animations. Its interesting how complex it can get with different sized models. A lot of the starship custom NWN models which are available are surprisingly large once you have them flying about. I've taken to scaling down the larger models to around 60%, which I've dubbed the Dougal Effect ( "No Dougal, these cows are small, those cows are far away..."). As long as you layer the scaled down, larger ships above the full scale ones you have flying about the re-scaling works quite well.

I'm still working on the landing and taking off models. Although I've fiddled about with OTR's demo hakpak I'm still not getting my head around setting up the multiple animations on a single model, but I'm sure I'll get there. I have got a couple of landing ships, but due to not quite grasping how to stop/start animations during their run, I've scripted replacing placeables for the final, landed model and am removing the animated model once its landing animation has finished. While it does work its looks a little clunky in game and its not something I'm yet happy with.

Having real fun with Gmax tho', I've downloaded several free 3d models from the net, managed to get one of them processed through Gmax and into a format NWN recognises and am working on a second. I'm quite amazed really, never would have thought I'd be doing that 3 weeks ago.  

If you're interested in working on custom content models but have always felt a little daunted by the idea you should try it, I wish I had years back. Its less complex than you'd expect and while I'm only a padawan, I've learned enough (basically by watching OTR's Animation Tutorial) to be able to import models, alter geometry, animate on splines, remove bad shadows, alter bitmaps etc etc.


'Glum

P.S. - I'd also like to get some fantasy based Airships up and running. I've a few ideas for re-texturing at least one of the models I have, adding sails and other aeronautical elements. It would be the equivalent of a fantasy flying speedboat. After seeing the other content mentioned on this thread, oOKyeOo's beautiful theatre ships as well Chrysoli's work, perhaps we could get together and publish a joint Airship Hakpak...? Just a thought.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Guest_Chrysoli_*]

               Hi folks - I've been busy with other things and finally got back here. I have the airships and carracks ready to upload to the vault. But I decided to add the Caravel, Galleon and Longships also. I should get this hak uploaded today/tonight and as soon as it's approved, it will be available on the vault.

For some crazy, unremembered reason now, I have one name here and one there at the vault. Over there my name is Oseryn.

Cyberglum - re: a joint airship hak - since I'm already at the point of publishing the work I have, I'll go ahead and do that. However, feel free to use any of the stuff I post as you see fit. The models are the work of Some_ux, batinthehat and Schazzwozzer, the idea was sparked by you, and the knowledge-base came from OTR - I'm but a bit player here '>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Chrysoli, 26 mars 2011 - 05:53 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_cyberglum]

               Chrysoli - No problem.

I've been working on a new skyship. I'll do it as both a landed and flying placeable. Just working on the textures right now. Once they are done I'll head into uncharted lands with trying to put together a walkable tile mesh of it.

social.bioware.com/uploads_user/757000/756604/104779.jpg

Glum
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Guest_Chrysoli_*]

               I've posted them to the vault - they are waiting approval. One thing that puzzles me though, and it's something I just discovered this weekend, is that occasionally, as the ship or airship sails by, the model just fades out (disappears) - then if I turn my camera around - or move my character to a different location - I can often (but not always) see the model again. When it does this, it may or may not skip a loop, then all of a sudden appear just fine. I've spent hours this weekend trying to find a cause for this - and have been unsuccessful. It's only now and then - but it's annoying none-the-less.

This never happens in the toolset - they are perfect 100% all the time there - only on occasion in game. Overall though, in spite of that - I love seeing them sail along the coast as I travel down a road. And as I always spawn them in as a random % chance to appear, so they are not always the same place - every time someone goes to a certain spot, and I always delete them after one *loop*, so I don't have a train of ships or airships '> ... well, the occasional no-show is the same (usually) as a simple random no-spawn.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Chrysoli,

The NWN engine will only bother displaying a placeable in-game if you are within a certain number of meters from it's model base.  If you have a chest on the ground on a big flat open plane and then start walking away from it, it will eventually disappear from your view- even if your view distance is set to maximum and there's no fog or anything like that.  If you start walking towards it, it will appear again.  I can't remember what the distance is, and it's not quite as cut and dried as "take one more step away and it disappears, take one step closer and it reappears", but I think it's somewhere around 35-45 meters, maybe?  Anyway, the chest sits right above its invisible model base.

When you have a flying model which is still a placeable, although the model appears to zip and fly around, the model base is still only in one spot, unmoving, just like the chest's.  And so, as you go farther away from that (invisible) model base, the higher the chance that the flying model will disappear from your view, even though it might be right over your head and even though another player who's closer to the model base might see it still over your head even though you can't!

If you happen to be moving just into and just outside of the range of the placeable you may see the moving object at some unexpected point in its animation- or not, depending (probably) on how long you've been "too far" from the model base before re-entering the area of perception.

This effect is not seen in the toolset because all sorts of distance-culling is turned off so you can see everything you've placed in the area.

Unless there's something else at play, this is almost certainly the effect you're seeing.  If you're using a script to randomly create the placeables, you could have it poll the location of a random player in the area and place the placeable (and it's invisible base) near the player who would be guaranteed to see the placeable as it zips by.  Or you could simply create a greater number of them, knowing that at any given time only x percent of the players will be seeing them which is the only real hit since they don't consume more resources on the server to keep track of- more than any other placeable, anyway.

I documented the effect in this video.  When the video starts I'm standing right above/on the model's invisible model base.  Hope that helps.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 28 mars 2011 - 05:21 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_cyberglum]

               Please Delete.
file:///C:/Users/Matt/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.pngfile:///C:/Users/Matt/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.pngfile:///C:/Users/Matt/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-2.pngfile:///C:/Users/Matt/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-3.pngfile:///C:/Users/Matt/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-4.pngfile:///C:/Users/Matt/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-5.pngfile:///C:/Users/Matt/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-6.png
               
               

               

                     Modifié par cyberglum, 28 mars 2011 - 10:57 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Guest_Chrysoli_*]

               Thanks OTR. That looks like that is exactly what is happening, and it's a fair bit of peace of mind actually. Mysteries in these models drive me crazy!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_cyberglum]

               I have been working on my 2nd airship model, this time I ended up with a fantasy/steampunk tramp freighter blimp. I downloaded the original model from a free site and mostly gutted it until I was left with the frame, rigging, balloon itself and the engine braces. I then re-textured the whole thing and added the various details.
I stumbled across the Emitter wizard so this is my first play with them. I've gone with the concept of harnessed, fire elementals as propulsion. I think the visual works okay for now.

social.bioware.com/uploads_user/757000/756604/107509.jpg

I want to get a 3rd model done, then I'll release them on the vault, For each model I want to do a couple of landed placeables, at least 2 flying animations (with pilots hopefully!).  Once they're done I'll try doing some tileset versions, then release the whole pack.

Again, having great fun with GMax '>.

Glum

P.S. Other shots here social.bioware.com/756604/albums/1130135
               
               

               

                     Modifié par cyberglum, 01 avril 2011 - 10:55 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Karvon]

               Very nice work; looking forward to seeing this pack released.

karvon
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_cyberglum]

               Movie of the blimp in action.

www.youtube.com/watch

Glum
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Love the model(s) and the animation!  Do you recall how many frames that is and what the radius of the spline was?  That moves at just about the right speed and I'd like to copy those settings.