Filling the Skies

[Legacy_Falchion-GPX]

               Charlie here, after eons and a few planar shifts.

Looks good, though I hope you work on flocks of birds.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_cyberglum]

               Hi all,

OTR - The blimp is doing a Circle 10 of the large squares across, running at 2400 frames to complete the circut. Its a nice, slow, lumbersome crawl '>

Spent the last 2 days working on the 3rd model - a combat vessel I've dubbed the Skyraider. I think I've pretty much reached the limit on how big an object you can put in the sky and keep it mnagable with this 3rd model. I'm pretty pleased with it. Very steampunky but still with plenty of fantasy and a little anime chucked in for good measure. You can watch it slide past below:

www.youtube.com/watch

As a word of warning, both the Blimp and Skyraider are quiet large models and pretty demanding. If you loose sight of them in an area they do foce a momentary lag spike, but its nothing terrible. any tips on reducing whatever causes this is appreciated. I assume its the polygon counts...?

The next step should be for me to really get my head around animating placeables, but it still eluding me. For now, except for a few tweaks I need to do the 3 models are finished as placeables. Once I've done those I want to get a flying tile done for each of them. I really *cannot* wait to get on board one in-game.

In this respect, anyone know of a good tile set editing tutorial, or want to hold my hand through it - I'm a quick learner. I'd be happy just getting 1 tile group done of the models in the air with nothing below them for one of the basic sets.

Cheers,

Glum
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Guest_Chrysoli_*]

               Hey that's nice looking! Hope you found some answers to your tile set question. I've fiddled with a lot of copies of existing tile groups and such before, but have never put together a group from scratch. Hope you found someone who can help you out there.

For myself, it's been difficult moving forward, mainly due to not having the time for this. This last week though, I did manage to complete the basic ships I wanted to get in game as moving placeables, including one docking Carrack.

I've started playing with docking some_ux's airship (bringing it down from the sky in a nice spiral/arc combo, landing ... then taking off again, using the same technique I used for the docking ship. I thought the airship would be easy, after all the time spend fussing over ship wakes and sea spray on water ... and the gradual ending and starting of same at the docking point. (and oh yeah, that did take forever - the emitter-work on the ships - getting it looking acceptable on water).

At any rate, the airship is giving me some grief too - some wobbles at the matching point - between arriving at dock - the departing. So that's not ready for prime-time yet. I do *almost* have all the matching tile groups done for the ships I have as placeables. In my case, this is easier though, as there are already the *floating* ship tile groups for the ships (or almost all anyway) I am using. I am just adding spray and wake emitters to the groups bow animation loop1.

What I have finished though, like I mentioned earlier, is the basic group of placeables. Here's what's been done with this version, which I hope to upload to the vault when the tile groups are done:

NOTE: I left the 3 placeables (Airship, Carrack and Caravel) that were in the original hak as is - in case folks were using them and had them set a certain way. Nothing has changed at all with those original three placeables.

The New Stuff:
Added 18 new ship placeables:Airship - Slower Speed Version
Carrack - Slower Speed Version
Caravel - Slower Speed Version
Merchant Vessel from HoU
Merchant Vessel from HoU - Alt Textures
TNO's *Big* Ship
TNO's Cog
Oriental Ship
Rural Ship from NWN Basic
TNO Big Ship - with aurora base offset 20 and 40 meters, with a 20 and 40 offset model for both left and right sides. This works great for distance ships sailing by. This allows for base placement close to shore (so animation is visible to player), yet the ships themselves can be quite distant.
Carrack - Same offset features as above.
Carrack - Very Slow Speed - Dockable Version

All new placeables have:
A placement node added to each model.
Lower travel speeds in general, with different speeds on different vessels.
Ship pilots
Refined emitters and wakes
They use the *on* animation for ease in scripting for movement. There's no animation if placeable is set to static, default or deactivated

Videos I finally figured out how to do, of the models in action, and the docking Carrack:

NWN Placeables: Slower speed airship and two new animated moving ship placeables
www.youtube.com/watch

NWN Placeables: Three new animated moving ship placeables
www.youtube.com/watch

NWN Placeables: Three new animated moving ship placeables - One Docking
www.youtube.com/watch

Credits:
Airship Model: Some_ux - http://nwvault.ign.c...s.Detail&id=167
Carrack Model: Some_ux & batinthehat - http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=4208
Caravel Model: Some_ux - http://nwvault.ign.c...s.Detail&id=527
Oriental Model: coulisfu - http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=2225
Flowing River Demo: gaoneng - http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=6658
How-to Tutorial: OTR - http://nwvault.ign.c...s.Detail&id=621
Inspiration: cyberglum - http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=8027
I'll keep you posted on my progress.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Chrysoli, 10 avril 2011 - 05:24 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy__six]

               

Chrysoli wrote...

NWN Placeables: Three new animated moving ship placeables - One Docking
www.youtube.com/watch

That. Is awesome.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Fantabulous!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 10 avril 2011 - 09:02 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Karvon]

               Wow, amazing work!

Any chance you could add the rowboat and fishing boat to that pack as animated placeables?

Karvon
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

cyberglum wrote...
OTR - The blimp is doing a Circle 10 of the large squares across, running at 2400 frames to complete the circut. Its a nice, slow, lumbersome crawl '>

Thanks!

You can watch it slide past below:
www.youtube.com/watch

Looks good, I really like the emitter for the big engine.

If you loose sight of them in an area they do foce a momentary lag spike, but its nothing terrible. any tips on reducing whatever causes this is appreciated. I assume its the polygon counts...?

If your model is in ascii, maybe it's because the model is being compiled and recompiled on the fly as it enters and reenters your view?  From the description, that sounds like it could be it.  For things without skinmesh, give this model compiler a try.  It seem to work the same as the BioWare DDS converter and it has allowed me to stuff insanely complex models into NWN without much problem.  That compiler is a monster.  By using it to compile a 16x16 tile group I was able to get all 256 tiles to load just about instantly in the toolset.  If for some reason that doesn't like the model and you think you're doing everything correctly, try this one.  Between the two of those, one of them should have you covered.

Also, if my geometry is fairly large I like to do a vertex weld to 1.0cm on all the verts and then, IIRC, do a Vert Snap before saving out and compiling.  If you have VelsTools, there's a nice interface for doing those two functions under the "Toolbox" rollout.  On bigger things you usually won't notice any loss but you'll probably have to re-do your smoothing groups.

The next step should be for me to really get my head around animating placeables, but it still eluding me.

The animations are set up on the model base just like they are in the mesh-along-the-spline-path tutorial, just there are more animations with different names.  I think they're off,off2on,on and on2off.  In my Land n Takeoff demo you can probably export to ASCII one of the landing craft and look at how I did the animations on the model base- but really, any placeable that can be activated should have those animations on them.  If you take some time to play with simple animations on a cube, for instance, you can start to get the hang of animations for non-organics pretty quickly.

In this respect, anyone know of a good tile set editing tutorial, or want to hold my hand through it - I'm a quick learner. I'd be happy just getting 1 tile group done of the models in the air with nothing below them for one of the basic sets.

I don't think it works under anything but a full version of 3DS Max, but Velmar's TileSet Creator (upgraded from v2.04 to v2.07) was the first thing I actually kicked out a tileset completely from scratch with.  Even comes with a 5-part demo video set.  Using just that and JLen's set editor (only to create the ITP from the .SET) was all I needed.  That's if you have access to a full version of Max.  Hopefully someone can either do the group for you or give you some detailed help doing it under GMax.  If I had the time, I'd do it for you but RL is not that kind at the moment. 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 10 avril 2011 - 02:17 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Chrysoli wrote...
...(and oh yeah, that did take forever - the emitter-work on the ships - getting it looking acceptable on water).

Time very well spent, though.  Those emitters, especially in the 2nd of those three demo videos you posted, are really pro!  I did a double-take when I saw how you'd taken the concept behind gaoneng's flowing water and merged it with the last part of the wake of the ship.  Wow.

Your third video with the ship pulling up to the dock is just awesome, right down to the captain steering the thing!   The great work in this thread is a perfect example of why I still love modding and playing NWN.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 10 avril 2011 - 02:36 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_AndarianTD]

               Those look fantastic! By all means, post them! '>

cyberglum wrote...

Just something I wanted to share, if people are interested then I can package them up and post them on the vault.

I needed to get the skies populated in the module I have been developing for far too long now and after watching OTR's very easy to follow tutorial on placeable animations I got to work!

www.youtube.com/watch

               
               

               

                     Modifié par AndarianTD, 10 avril 2011 - 02:52 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Guest_Chrysoli_*]

               Thanks folks - the feedback is encouraging - helps keep a body fueled! '>

Karvon, a rowboat gives me pause. Mainly for the same reason that some_ux's Longships are not in. And that reason is... oars. I just can't see doing them as moving ships with stationary oars. I wish I had the skill set to animate them, but I just don't know how I would even start such a task. And really, I'm feeling like I'm close to having spent too much time on these already '> Things can always change though - ya never know. Thanks for your feedback!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kalbaern]

               First off ... Holy Cow ... I never thought I'd see the day something like this would appear. My only real critique would be the ships speeds. It'd be much more realistic to reduce the wake effects some and cut the movement to half or even a third of their present settings. I only mention this as harbor and near shore ship traffic tends to be slow and deliberate to avoid collisions. Still, all in all ... I'd likely use it as is. Great work.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_TSMDude]

               

_six wrote...

Chrysoli wrote...

NWN Placeables: Three new animated moving ship placeables - One Docking
www.youtube.com/watch

That. Is awesome.

What he said...nothing short of awesome...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_lordofworms]

               Thats the coolest thing.All this time we were destroying/creating placeables for movement...I even tried the make my placeable into a monster ship..which doesn't work well when it decides its gonna pathfind oddly instead of a straight line..
this is awesome to the 10x
when (not if mind you hehe) you post this please do so with that lovely little area you did up for the video of the docking boat. I am sure many many PW/mod builders would use that right out of box as is.

great work. I already credited your work on my PW as I am that convinced it will be part of my PW (it is now, but its not the live version) but I am holding off for what seems to be an updated version I see...so I will wait a little longer.

did I say that was awesome yet?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Frith5]

               LoW, someone needs to take your coach route tiles in Arbor Falls, and make a spline that conforms to the ground, so the coaches can follow a nice, 3d path over hills, around curves..... muwhahahaha. Need a new 'coach' placeable to spawn in at each area 'transition' the coach makes.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kalbaern]

               

TSMDude wrote...

_six wrote...

Chrysoli wrote...

NWN Placeables: Three new animated moving ship placeables - One Docking
www.youtube.com/watch

That. Is awesome.

What he said...nothing short of awesome...

OK .. missed this video recently. Watched it and had a "gamegasm" today that leaves me speechless.