Scenery Editor update

[JCat]

I'm answering you publicly (since the PM dilemma sent, you already got past) :-)

OVL Name: pianowall.common.ovl < ok
Group Icon: O_Icon <ok
Scenery Icon: O_Icon <ok
Location within theme: WallSets <ok
Cost: 12
Refund: 8

Group Name String: ola_PianoWall <ok, but you should give it a group name for future reference - that way, all of your future objects show up in that same group (more organized in RCT3)

Scenery Name String: ola_PianoWall <ok

Position: 0,0,0 <I've been using 1, 1, 1 here - could this be the prob?

Scenery Type: Wall Straight <I've been using misc. wall
Size: 1,1,1 <ok
Supports Type: Non <ok
Size in squares: 1,1
Size Flag: Wall < I put full
Extra Parameters: None <ok
Set all unknowns to 1 <ol

Don't know if I helped - but everything looks pretty much ok, excpet for the slight diffeences of what I inputed.

[WalkingSnake]

Originally posted by Pumper
Scenery Type: Wall Straight <I've been using misc. wall
Size Flag: Wall < I put full

If you're making a wall, those two are right.

[CK the Fat]

I'll take a stab at this when someone releases a tutorial.

Who will it be? Klinn? Skipper? Bitter Jeweler?

[Bitter Jeweler]

Originally posted by CK the Fat
I'll take a stab at this when someone releases a tutorial.

Who will it be? Klinn? Skipper? Bitter Jeweler?

Ha ha...count me out!...I'm waiting till somebody else figures it out...I have had no time nor luck with it so far.

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by Miss O
6. To the icon manager, I made a sacrificial graphic in 8 bit bmp called O_Icon. Didn't do any texture here, just black and white. Set top/left/bottom/right to 1 and saved.

So ladies and gentlemen, what in the heck am I missing? I don't see my files anywhere in the game, and I expanded walls for both spooky themes. Help? :sulk:

What size was the icon file you made Miss O? I tried using a 128x128 with the same settings & it didn't show up, but after using a 512x512 it worked fine.

[Miss O]

Pumper, WalkingSnake, I used your suggestions, rewrote the entire file sequence (because it seems you get the "not true 512x512 graphic" error when there's similarly named things already saved) with the numbers and names you recommended. I'll be darned if it just didn't show up! I unfurled every single type of wall there was, looking for anything that had the name I gave and was theoretically in the Spooky theming items.

I'm beyond frustrated, as I believe I am so very close to having the answer to this. :cry: If I can figure out what's wrong, I can put together the tutorial, check the size of my item against the in-game grid, and see what changes need to be made before stamping out an entire theme set I've got built in my mind.

Sadly, the 3D part is easy for me, it's the other half that is causing a problem.

Thank you all again for your suggestions, I really do appreciate how forgiving everyone is here.

[WalkingSnake]

Originally posted by Miss O
Pumper, WalkingSnake, I used your suggestions, rewrote the entire file sequence (because it seems you get the "not true 512x512 graphic" error when there's similarly named things already saved) with the numbers and names you recommended. I'll be darned if it just didn't show up! I unfurled every single type of wall there was, looking for anything that had the name I gave and was theoretically in the Spooky theming items.

I'm beyond frustrated, as I believe I am so very close to having the answer to this. :cry: If I can figure out what's wrong, I can put together the tutorial, check the size of my item against the in-game grid, and see what changes need to be made before stamping out an entire theme set I've got built in my mind.

Sadly, the 3D part is easy for me, it's the other half that is causing a problem.

Thank you all again for your suggestions, I really do appreciate how forgiving everyone is here.

PM me your .thm file, and your .ovl files. I'll take a look at it.

[JCat]

Miss O - -you're going through the exact same stages a few of us did just last week, now a week later, I fee I have a good grasp of things. You too will break through the unknown! Walking Snake had Jonwil's program longer than I, so definitely send him the file and see if he can figure out what's wrong...

[Klinn]

I've just made a quick list of the particular steps I followed to get things into the game, I'll write it out and post it here in about an hour - takes longer to write down that to do... :)

[Miss O]

Klinn, I would love to see that list, if only to know what might be missing from my own.

marnetmar, I'm sorry I did not respond to your question sooner. It is a 512x512, I confirmed that just to be sure. The texture for the wall is 128x128, but that took okay, so I'm thinking that may not be the problem.

I've sent the file to WalkingSnake, hopefully he will be able to discern the problem. I have so many things I want to do, that getting over this hurdle just means I'm that much closer to being able to do them.

[Klinn]

Here are the steps I followed to put an object into the game using JonWil’s Importer Version 5. These are by no means definitive, and not necessarily even good practice :) , but it should at least get you started and then you can refine the information to suit your needs. I’ll number the steps in a detailed fashion just so we can refer to them from other parts of the process. Yes, the formatting is horrible, but I’ll clean it up later - brain dump first! :D

I’m not going to address how to create the 3D mesh itself, convert it to ASE, etc. Look elsewhere in this thread for suggestions and solutions to common problems. These steps are only just about using JonWil’s utility.

I’m going to be creating a theme called ‘KLN-ElectroBits’, with a scenery item called ‘KLN-EBitOne’. Here we go:

Step 1 - Preparation
------------------------
Before even using JonWil’s importer, you need to set up the files required.
1.1 - Create a working directory to hold the files you’re working with, e.g. ‘My Documents\RCT3-CustomObjects\’. Below are the basic ones you’ll need.
1.2 - Create a texture bitmap for your object, must be a 256-colour (indexed) bitmap with square power-of-two dimensions, e.g. 128x128, 256x256, etc.
1.3 - Create the object mesh in your 3D Editor of choice, convert to ASE format, e.g. I have one called ‘KLN-EBitOne.ase’.
1.4 - Create an icon texture bitmap, 24-bit colour, size 512x512 pixels. I suggest drawing a series of 64x64 pixel boxes across it in a variety of colours. Each box will eventually become an icon in the game, but just use distinctive colours for now. You should have a checkboard of 8 coloured boxes across by 8 down if each one is 64x64 pixels.
1.5 - Decide on a name for your theme, the whole group of objects, e.g. ‘KLN-ElectroBits’.
1.6 - Decide on a name for the specific object(s), e.g. ‘KLN-EBitOne’. I strongly recommend that you use your initials as a prefix. If you choose something simple like ‘Wall’, it will likely be over-written by somebody else’s custom wall later.

Step 2 - Create Parts of Theme in JonWil’s Editor
------------------------------------------------------------
Before assembling a theme, you need to create the parts it needs.
2.1 - Start RCT3Imp, ignore the main window for now until you build up the parts.

2.2 - From the Edit menu, select ‘Create New Scenery OVL’.
2.2.1 - Click ‘Open ASE File’ button, select your object’s ASE file (from step 1.3 above).
2.2.2 - Click ‘Open Texture’ button, select the texture bitmap for object (step 1.2 above).
2.2.3 - Type in the Texture Style Name, e.g. ‘SIOpaque’. Others are listed in an earlier post.
2.2.4 - Click ‘Save OVL File’ button, make sure you’re in your working directory (step 1.1), give OVL file a name, I usually use the same one as the object’s ASE filename (step 1.3) for simplicity. You should now see the *.common.ovl and *.unique.ovl files appear in your working directory.

2.3 - From the Edit menu, select ‘Manage Icon Textures’.
2.3.1 - Click the ‘Add’ button.
2.3.2 - Click ‘Load Texture’, select the icon texture bitmap (step 1.4).
2.3.3 - Give it a ‘Texture Name’, e.g. ‘KLN-IconTexture’, click 'OK'.
2.3.4 - Click the ‘Close’ button to get rid of the Icon Textures Manager window.

2.4 - From the Edit menu, select ‘Manage Icon References’. We’ll be creating two icons, one for the theme group as a whole, one for the specific scenery item. The ‘icons’ will just be those boring solid-coloured boxes described in step 1.4, but that will show you how to get started.
2.4.1 - Click the ‘Add’ button.
2.4.2 - Create an icon for the group as a whole. I’ll use the name ‘KLN-ElectroBits’ and set Top=0, Left=0, Bottom=63, Right=63. This is the first coloured square of the icon texture bitmap, the one in the upper-left corner (step 1.4). Click the ‘OK’ button.
2.4.3 - Create an icon for the scenery item. I’ll use the name ‘KLN-EBitOne’ and set Top=0, Left=64, Bottom=63, Right=127. This corresponds to the second coloured square of the first row of the icon texture bitmap. Click the ‘OK’ button.
2.4.4 - You should see the two icon references in the list. Click the ‘Close’ button to get rid of the Icon References Manager window.

2.5 - From the Edit menu, select ‘Manage Text Strings’. This is where we’ll be creating some names used later on in the program.
2.5.1 - Click the ‘Add’ button, enter a name for the theme or group of objects as a whole, e.g. ‘KLN-ElectroBits’, use the same as the actual text string, click the ‘OK’ button.
2.5.2 - Click the ‘Add’ button again, enter a name for the scenery object, e.g. ‘KLN-EBitOne’, use the same thing for the name of the string and for the actual text, click the ‘OK’ button.
2.5.3 - Click the ‘Close’ button to get rid of the Text Strings Manager window.

Step 3 - Combine Info Into Scenery Item and Theme File
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Now we can finally pull the pieces together. I’m going to using specific values and settings that have worked for me, but no doubt you’ll want to change them to suit the objects you’re making.
3.1 - From the Edit menu, select ‘Manage Scenery’.
3.1.1 - Click the ‘Add’ button.
3.1.2 - Click the ‘Select OVL’ button, choose the object’s OVL file (from step 2.2).
3.1.3 - From the ‘Group Icon’ list, select the one we made in step 2.4.2.
3.1.4 - From the ‘Scenery Icon’ list, select the one we made in step 2.4.3.
3.1.5 - For ‘Location Within Theme’, specify a subfolder within the theme’s overall folder, e.g. ‘KLN-ElectroBitsSet’.
3.1.6 - Set Cost=1, Refund=1.
3.1.7 - The Group Name String is the one from step 2.5.1.
3.1.8 - The Scenery Name String is the one from step 2.5.2.
3.1.9 - Set Position X=0, Y=0, Z=0.
3.1.10 - Set Size X=0, Y=0, Z=0.
3.1.11 - Set Size In Squares X=1, Y=1.
3.1.12 - Set Size Flag=Full Tile.
3.1.13 - Set Scenery Type=Small Scenery.
3.1.14 - Set Supports Type=None.
3.1.15 - Set Extra Parameter=None.
3.1.16 - Set Unknown1=Unknown1, Unknown2=Unknown2.
3.1.17 - Set Unknown3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 all equal to zero.
3.1.18 - Don’t check any of the Flags.
3.1.19 - Click the ‘OK’ button.
3.1.20 - Click the ‘Close’ button to get rid of the Scenery Manager window.

3.2 - Time to save our theme file with all this info we’ve been entering.
3.2.1 - On the main ‘RCT3 Scenery Editor’ window, enter your Theme Name from step 1.5.
3.2.2 - Select the theme type it is most similar to, e.g. ‘Sci-fi’. This affects if it will appear when the user is filtering the scenery list by RCT3 theme.
3.2.3 - Select ‘Save Theme’ from the File menu.

Step 4 - Install Theme in Game
--------------------------------------
4.1 - From the File menu, select ‘Install Theme’. If all goes well, check in the game’s installation folder, e.g. ‘C:\Program Files\Atari\RollerCoaster Tycoon\Style\Themed\’ and you should find a folder with your theme’s name, inside it is a subfolder (from step 3.1.5), and inside that are your object’s OVL files.

Step 5 - Test In-Game, Revise
------------------------------------
5.1 - Start up the game with a new scenario or sandbox park, whatever.
5.2 - Go to the Scenery -> Scenery Items list, you should see a group named as per step 3.1.7, using an icon as per step 3.1.3.
5.3 - Open the group, should see an icon for the object (step 3.1.4) using name from step 3.1.8. When you move your cursor over it, the rotating preview should appear in the bottom left. If you get any crashes, probably a bad ASE file, check previous posts for help.
5.4 - Place your custom object, get annoyed at how it isn’t what you expected, re-do 3D mesh and re-import it, make some real icons in the Icon Texture bitmap, etc, etc. Any time you make some changes, don’t forget to ‘re-compile’ the scenery item info (step 3) and re-install the theme (step 4).

<Whew> (Edited for minor typos)

[CoasterExpert]

^That is a lot!

[JCat]

Well done Klinn! I'm sure that's going to help a lot of people! My only remaining problem was the icon... I designed something within the requirements, and it came out as a solid white box instead of an actual icon. :haha:

[jonwil]

The 4 boxes in the icon dialog (top, left, bottom, right) represent a rectangle within the icon texture that is where the icon will come from.
So, if you make it 0,0,63,63 then you get a 64x64 square (which is the actual size of the icon so the texture wont be resized)

[JCat]

ah!! Fantastic - thanks Jonwil....

[Miss O]

Okay then. Wow. Here I was all set to write a tutorial, turns out you've already done it! I'm off to do this step by step. I'll reply with how it goes. *prints out the instructions, giddily gets to work, dreaming of her themed world*

[Klinn]

Ah yes, thanks for the correction JonWil, I was pounding out the text too quickly.

My fingers hurt.

[marnetmar]

Great work on the Tut Klinn ;) There's plenty of stuff in there I wasn't aware of.
Thanks again to Jonwil for making this program for us to use & to all who have been working to figure it out.

:up: :up: :up: :up: :up:

[WalkingSnake]

Originally posted by Miss O
Okay then. Wow. Here I was all set to write a tutorial, turns out you've already done it! I'm off to do this step by step. I'll reply with how it goes. *prints out the instructions, giddily gets to work, dreaming of her themed world*

I haven't got a chance to test your files yet, but let us know how it turns out for you. :)

[Klinn]

Miss O - I don't really consider that a tutorial, it's far too dense, not to mention too focused on just one specific object I made. When more is known about how the OVLs work (flags & unknown parameters) then it will be time for a true tutorial.

JonWil - what's in the 'style.unique.ovl' file that appears in my custom theme's folder, e.g. '...\Style\Themed\KLN-ElectroBits\style.unique.ovl'? I noticed it's a 1MB file, which seems much larger than the ones that appear in the game's standard scenery categories. Is it the icon texture bitmap that bulks it up? (mine is 768KB) Just curious...

[jonwil]

Yes, the icon texture bitmap is the problem.
I havent yet implemented DXT compression to make those textuers smaller.

[Twister2489]

Thank you Klinn, this will help me ALOT.

[Miss O]

Klinn:

You are officially the man. Your tutorial worked like a charm, and my very first item went in without problem. I've been experimenting with some of the settings to make my wall snap differently to parts of the tile, but it's working well.

I've also managed to change some settings and learn a bit, too, namely that the cost and refund are in cents. I assume for the UK that would be pence, but without changing my currency I couldn't say. I put in 1200 and it appears as $12. Similar for the sell price, mine is set to 800 right now ($8).

Now it's all about textures and making them look right. I created my own texture for my wall, but it doesn't show well. What program did you use to make the texture appear fairly normal on your walls (the brick ones)? I need to experiment with that some more.

I can't say exactly which settings were incorrect in my creation of the files, but I'll revisit those later.

jonwil, this program rules, and any improvements you make are icing. There is suddenly a flood of stuff to do with it.

I'll keep working on the tutorial when I'm not knee-deep in getting new pieces designed!

Thank you to everyone today for such fabulous help and encouragement, and as soon as I have something to show for the work, I'll post it!

[Twister2489]

Nothing happens when I try to install the theme...:(
So far the tutorial seems pretty good, just can't get passed for this for some reason.

EDIT: Nevermind...

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by Twister2489
Nothing happens when I try to install the theme...:(
So far the tutorial seems pretty good, just can't get passed for this for some reason.

Did you make sure to click on one of the theme types on the left before trying to install it Twister? I found that out the hard way lol

[Twister2489]

Nah, I found out it was already installed...lol I was waiting for like a notification thing.

Anyways. I opened up the game, and It worked!!
I feel so proud of myself. Thanks klinn, that tutorial really did help me out.

[Twister2489]

Alright, This is getting pretty easy now.
All I need to know is which setting in the manage scenery menu sets the size of the object. I made an object (roof) and set the size values to x=1 and y=1. Also I set to a full tile.

I install it into the game and...

http://www.rctd.ft6.com/uploads/OBject1error.JPG
The object turns out to be aroun 10x20 tiles.

Notice I'm having trouble making the textures look good...
Any suggestion on that?

[Guybrush_47]

What size is the object in the 3d editor?

The exporter tool doesn't define the scale of the object. Just the object properties within RCT3 from what i can deduce.

As for the texture, i would mess about with the texture settings. If RCT uses Y as the Z axis, you may need to fumble around with switching the Y and Z axis in the texturing part. Sheer guess work, but that could help. As to me that texture looks like the coords are wrong.

Another thing, it could be because your using metres, maybe RCT3 uses Centremeters?

[harikrish]

Originally posted by jonwil
for reference, a standard base block is (in 3DS max units), -2 to 2 in the x, 0 to 1 in the y and -2 to 2 in the z.

Twister2489,

It seems that the units you give in Y axis in twice that of the x and z axis. So, try giving 0.5 to get a 10X10 roof

[Klinn]

As Guybrush says, the 'Size' in the Importer does not affect the size of the model, so setting it to .5 won't make any difference. You have to create the object the correct size in the 3D modelling program you use. There are no centimeters or meters per se, just 'units', don't try to think of it in real-world terms. The figures in JonWil's quote give you a reference to visualize the size - try creating a block in your 3D program with those dimensions. If you were to import that block, it would come in the same as one RCT3's base blocks, e.g the slate or brick base in the generic set. That can give you a frame of reference for imagining how big you'll want to make your roof or other objects.

I think the 'Position' and 'Size' parameters in the Importer have an influence on the object's collision detection, but I have to test that to be sure.

Miss O: I am experimenting with textures in Milkshape. It involves adjusting the UV Mapping, which is done through the Texture Cooordinate Editor window. I haven't done much work with it yet, too many other things on the go, I'm hoping to package up my walls & roofs for distribution but there are some tweaks I need to do first. I need several 'snow days' ;)

[speile]

i FINALY FIGURED THE EDITOR.... ( if you have the problem, that you cant find the files after hitting install, they are located in C:\Style\Themed )

Just one problem, my objects are 500x500 land tiles big and thus crash the game if i try and place them.... once i get them to the right size and looking good ill post a screen of them:eek: damn 3ds max for onlyhaving a grid per every 10 units...

[Guybrush_47]

Have we got any emitters?

i.e. lighting, animations?

I haven't been able to mess around with the editor yet, i'm reinstalling all my art software on my new harddrive, whilst collecting together some reference piccies for my work :)

I'm espically interested in lighting, as for Jurrassic park stuff, alot of lighting effects would come in handy. I'm also thinking about adding some new fountains, i want to create a 'tiered' fountain/pond. But i'm not 100% sure whether or not thats possible yet.

Texturing, i presume is bitmap. 512x512 the maxium size, probably 256x256 would be best, is there an option to allow us to change colour of some of the objects, ala fencing.

Can we extract objects from the game? Or is it simply an importer, appolgies for the large amount of questions, i'd like to know as much as possible before i start cracking :)

[JCat]

Wish I can answer, still learning some of it. I haven't seen any provisions for animation, though the animation theme is listed as an option to save your work in to (animatronics directory) which brings up questions. There are built in texture styles to take advantage of - like glass, specular, etc. As for lighting, unknown, but boy would that be a big welcome.
I haven't seen a way to extract the stock objects, nor do I wish to (don't want to mess around with Frontier's own copyrighted work).

[Guybrush_47]

Aye, if we could add in lighting, it would really help us create some terrific objects. Still, for an early version, from what i can see it's great, i've got alot of experience with modding games, and this tool is very, VERY professional, so congrats Jon.

[Klinn]

I believe I used an object texture of 1024x1024 for these walls (http://www.designamatic.com/Graphics/RCT3-CustomWall02.jpg) way back when. Obviously something that size bulks up the resulting OVL files, but it's possible.

You may wish to hold off the ponds & fountains until you see what's in the Soaked expansion.

No extracting of existing objects - that would make Frontier/Atari very nervous. If it became easy to pull out their models, that would make it more likely that somebody would re-use their copyrighted work elsewhere. Atari might respond by encrypting their files, which it turn could make it much more difficult to program an Importer like JonWil's. Let's count our blessings and not push it. Besides - it's more fun to create one's own stuff than modify somebody else's!

I'm hoping we will eventually be able to create custom lights and ride events - not with animations, just something that would trigger a specified *.frw effect. You could then use the *.frw to produce all sorts of... ummm, effects. But what we've got now is good enough to produce all sorts of cool toys. :)

[Twister2489]

Is it possible to make an object with mutliple textures?
I'm trying but I'm having a few troubles. Just want to know if you can first.

[JCat]

Twister - I believe it only supports a single texture at this time (no multiple)

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by Twister2489
Is it possible to make an object with mutliple textures?
I'm trying but I'm having a few troubles. Just want to know if you can first.

If we can get the texture mapping problem figured out/fixed then multiple textures would be easy to do. This is something I have been trying, but no luck yet. If we were able to map the textures any way we wanted to & have them come out correctly in the game then we could use (for example) 4 different texture files that were 256x256 combined into a 512x512 single image & just map from the single texture file. We've done that for the Ultimate Ride game with a lot of models.

[2005]

but 512 isn't enough for larger models still is it?

For example a large building even 1024x1024 texture wouldn't be enough.


also, anyone know if milkshape supports boolean subtractions? Anim8or dosn't, so i might just have to learn to use MS.

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by 2005
but 512 isn't enough for larger models still is it?

For example a large building even 1024x1024 texture wouldn't be enough.


also, anyone know if milkshape supports boolean subtractions? Anim8or dosn't, so i might just have to learn to use MS.

512x512 should be plenty, depending on how you map the textures onto the model. If you wanted to just put one texture on an entire big model, it may not look too good, but I was planning on mapping it out in sections, thus preserving the quality of the texture.

I don't know if MS supports that or not, you might check out their site for more information.

http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/

[2005]

well i want mainly to create huge objects. I'm not sure exactly 1024x768 is but its probably not enough for what i want.

Imagine a tower of terror stlye building - i don't think a 1024x1024 tecture would cover the wall. maybe it would.

[WalkingSnake]

Originally posted by 2005
well i want mainly to create huge objects. I'm not sure exactly 1024x768 is but its probably not enough for what i want.

Imagine a tower of terror stlye building - i don't think a 1024x1024 tecture would cover the wall. maybe it would.

1024x1024 should be plenty.. Try it and see. You won't learn anything without experimenting. ;)

[CK the Fat]

So, the editor itself can't build the walls and buildings, only converts to RCT3 playable format?

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by 2005
well i want mainly to create huge objects. I'm not sure exactly 1024x768 is but its probably not enough for what i want.

Imagine a tower of terror stlye building - i don't think a 1024x1024 tecture would cover the wall. maybe it would.


If you subdivide the outside faces (walls) of the building model, you can then map smaller sections with a smaller texture & it will look just fine that way. The problem right now is the textures, after conversion look like crap. They're getting messed up somehow in the conversion.



Originally posted by CK the Fat
So, the editor itself can't build the walls and buildings, only converts to RCT3 playable format?

That is correct CK, you need some kind of 3D modeling program to make the models.

[Guybrush_47]

The pools i am thinking about won't be in Soaked i'm sure of it.

Extracting the models wouldn't be too bad for atari though, there are very few games that use theme park models. It's not like they'd be put into every single game.

I want to extract the dinosaur stuff so i can mix and match it a bit more, like stripping that terrible caveman from the trex...

Anyhow, has anyone got any wip pics of their stuff. Be interesting to see what everyone is coming up with.

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
Anyhow, has anyone got any wip pics of their stuff. Be interesting to see what everyone is coming up with.


There's a few pics in this thread & you can look at the post Pumper made in the Exchange forum for some more pics Guybrush ;)

[Guybrush_47]

I would show you guys what i've been working on this evening, but my ftp is broken, seems like all my pictures, files have been deleted.

:( :downcast:

[2005]

use imageshack.us

it uses http and its free hosting. i have my own webspace too but theres no point using it if its free elsewhere.........


I have to use that and my hosts webftp when at uni becasuse of stupid blocks on anything except 8090/80.

[WalkingSnake]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
Extracting the models wouldn't be too bad for atari though, there are very few games that use theme park models. It's not like they'd be put into every single game.

True, but people could pass them off and sell them, claiming them as their own.

[2005]

Probably better not to, in case frontier block making objects. Maybe not now, but for soaked they could (which probably a lot of people will buy).

[Guybrush_47]

I've never heard of a game that blocks exporting though. I've modded alot of games in the last 5 years and not one has blocked exporting. Seems a little strange to me, however lets not get off topic.

I'll post my wip in a few days. See you all till then.

[iseppi]

I agree that exporting existing RCT3 models might lead to some Copyright issues. Especially if people start using them in their own custom scenery.

Johnwill: How hard would it be to extend your RCT3Dumper to display all those OVL flags and unknowns of existing scenery. I guess this would help figuring out all those options and flags if you can compare them with existing scenery.

About the importer: How about parsing the textfile where all those Styles like SIOpaque are stored and offering them in a drop down list rather than a freetext field. Just a minor suggestion for your next update.

I stopped my efforts creating my own scenery because of my total lack of know how with 3D modelling programs. Until now i only managed to create a solid brown block with the old importer. After hours of trying I even got it to sit ON a terrain grid and not next to it or half way into it...

Keep up the great work Johnwill and all the other testers. I am excited to see what all of you already came up with!

[jonwil]

Some feedback.

1.It would be possible to make my dumper dump the existing models as ASE files but for various reasons (including copyright), I wont do that.
2.Making the obj dumper show all the unknown flags for an existing object is harder than it looks because of how/where all the scenery objects are stored and in which files which pieces of data are.
and 3.Parsing the rct3.dgf file would be nice (both for displaying the list of valid Texture Styles and for correctly passing the settings used therein to DirectX when drawing objects) but I know nothing about writing parsers.

[Guybrush_47]

So that means remaking all the dinosaurs... great fun lol.

It's going to be a bit of a pain if people want to add foilage to their objects, but nvm, we'll just have to make our own. Which means i'm going to have to make alot of large trees, bushes and plants. Can't wait for that one :D

Whatever happens this is a great tool, very professionally done, and i, like everyone else here appreciates the work your putting into this.

I'll send you some piccies of my wip first jon, give me a day and i'll show you some lovely stuff :P

[Twister2489]

Alright, I understand much more about using this thing and I now get now problems, except for the issue with my objects turning out sideways.

I've read that the y-axis in RCT3 is up, I tried that, with the bottom of the object facing the y-axis. Is that right? If so, I still get the sideways problem.

Does anyone know if one of the small boxes you can check allow the objects to be colorable?

[speile]

So how do you fix the lighting then, all my objects when i put them into the game come out dark, and dont illuminate...

[Klinn]

Originally posted by speile So how do you fix the lighting then, all my objects when i put them into the game come out dark, and dont illuminate... I had something like happen when I was fiddling with textures in Milkshape. Sorry, I don't recall exactly what I did to make it go dark, but if you have a texture applied to your objects in your 3D editor, try removing it before exporting and converting it to ASE format. You'll be applying the texture in JonWil's program later on anyway.

Don't know if it'll work, but it's all I can think of at the moment.

To people having problems with making the right size objects in Milkshape: That program seems to have an annoying 'dynamic grid'. That is, set the grid increment to '1' in the little box at the top of any view, now zoom in a lot. You'll see the grid grow and grow until suddenly it subdivides again. Now you're looking at the real 1-unit grid, and you can plan the size of your objects properly.

Another major problem with Milkshape - no auto grip snap! E.g. when creating a cylinder, your cursor should be able to snap to the grid so you've got the origin of the object right where want it, as you stretch it it should snap so it will be exactly the right height. Not as much of a problem if you're just doing free-standing scenery objects, but a killer if you're trying to do wall sets. The 'Ctrl-G' snap command is a very clunky, difficult attempt at working around the problem, which I see has been on MS's Wishlist for a while now. Sigh. </rant>

[2005]

jonwil what will be added next to the editor?

[Klinn]

Originally posted by 2005 jonwil what will be added next to the editor?
Tunnels.

But Katipo won't be able to figure out how to use it, so he'll still be complaining incessantly.

(Sorry, just couldn't help it. :) :) :) )

[Klinn]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
So that means remaking all the dinosaurs... great fun lol. Try going here (http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/animals.asp) for lots of free 3D models - they have a TRex plus some other dinos. There's also another category for plants, you can probably find some trees there.

(If you use these, it's always a nice idea to give the original modeller credit in your theme's ReadMe file/forum announcement.)

[Guybrush_47]

tbh, i tend to just use either the games content or 100% my own content. I don't like using other peoples work for a number of reasons.

I have a question, i'm looking at making some interrior stuff. I was wondering, could we make a curved staircase which would allow people to walk up and down. I'm curious because i know spiral staircases are in soaked, but i'm wanting to create something more like a curved mansion staircase.

I'm going to try and make alot more interrior items, objects to try and make the indoors look far better. Also, can we create new facilities like shops, entrances/exits, toilets etc.

[2005]

should be possible to make, but don't think you can make it into an actual path yet.

[JCat]

Originally posted by Klinn
Try going here (http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/animals.asp) for lots of free 3D models - they have a TRex plus some other dinos. There's also another category for plants, you can probably find some trees there.

(If you use these, it's always a nice idea to give the original modeller credit in your theme's ReadMe file/forum announcement.)

Yep, but be careful, some of those models have a high polygon count. I once borrowed a Brontosaurus for a Jurassic Park ride I made for No Limits, and it became immediately choppy once that sucker was added. :haha:

[Guybrush_47]

Might sound silly, and i have checked already, but how many units is it to make a 1x1 cube for rct3. I.E. a Square.

5x5 units in 3ds?

[XPatrickX]

Hallo,

I haven't follow the whole discussion, but are there any functional objects for downloading and testing in the game?

That will be a great step into the future.

[2005]

don't think so yet, but the objects work for the people that have made them, so they are functional in that way.

I think the next release of the editor there will be the first objects, when we can (hopefully) texture them more easily........

[gdude335]

thanks for the tutoriol. I need a file converter!!! I have a 3ds object and want to convert it to ase but i need a converter. Can anyone link a site to me?:cry:
edit: thanks alot

Another error... I go in edit create new object, type in all the information, try to save it then windows sends me an error telling me that the program has to quit. Can anyone help?

[JCat]

Go to link below - Biturn does the conversion to ASE- it's excellent!

Biturn (http://mirex.mypage.sk/index.php?selected=1)

[2005]

remeber to remove the excess imformation


What we really need for this is to be able to make objects use the colours (or textures) from the rct3 selectable menu - then stuff like ride supports could be made. Well they can be made now, but in only one colour so its too much effort.

[Klinn]

JonWil, one little glitch I've noticed in the "Edit Icon Settings" window. The coordinates seem to be reversed. For example, if I have an Icon Texture file like this... (only upper-left corner shown, yes it's a full 512x512 in reality)

http://www.designamatic.com/Graphics/RCT3-ImporterIconTexture01.jpg

...and I enter the Icon coordinates of Top=0, Left=64, Bottom=63, Right=127 then I get square #9 appearing as the icon, not #2 as I'm expecting.

If I enter coordinates of Top=64, Left=0, Bottom=127, Right=63 then I get square #2 as the icon. So it seems 'Top' and 'Left' are reversed, and 'Bottom' and 'Right' are reversed.

Personally, I wouldn't worry about patching your program for this one little thing, we can just keep it in mind while we specify coordinates. If you did decide to change it, may I suggest using 'Width' and 'Height' parameters instead of Bottom and Right? They will almost always be 64 unless the user is doing something special, so it would be easier for them to specify, Something like:

http://www.designamatic.com/Graphics/RCT3-ImporterUI01.jpg

...unless of course you want to create a graphical interface where the user draws a rubber-band rectangle around the desired area within the Icon Texture bitmap. :) :) :) Actually, after I use the Importer a bit more, I will likely have some other suggestions for revising the UI, and I can build a UI-only prototype for you to play with if you like.

[marnetmar]

Thanks for the info Klinn, I hadn't started making custom icons yet. That would have really had me wondering what I was doing wrong lol

[Miss O]

Well after Klinn's brilliant instructions (I was SO close!), I have made several objects, some with more success than others. One of my objects is a bench, which seems to be perfectly sized, it moves in the space correctly, and it looks to be the right height, but despite checking all available settings to indicate it's a bench, peeps aren't sitting on it. If I place another seating group next to it, they always choose the other.

This isn't a big deal, since it's built and as soon as there's a determination of which flag or setting needs to be on in order to make the bench sit-able, I'll flip that and be golden. Just if anyone has figured it out, please advise.

I'm also looking for a bit of advice on using Milkshape for textures and for getting rid of annoying triangles created with the process. I know that's a faceting thing, but I'd like to know how others have managed to overcome that so that textures are smooth and without strange "jaggies" where two surfaces meet. Otherwise my abilities to create amazing pieces are a bit limited by texture more than by the number of textures involved.

Anyway, I have a few more things to make for the start of my "set" before I put a themed area together and post pictures, and if anyone got chosen for the beta (apparently I wasn't :cry:), please let me know if the objects you've created are working in the new version, because obviously finding out they're not means not continuing to produce the items.

Three items down, about 32 to go... O

[2005]

i didn't apply, so i can't unfortunatly; if they block them they block them theres not a lot anyone can do except complain. They probably won't, too many people would complain.

[Guybrush_47]

Interesting... i've got my wall piece in the game, had to piss about with the sizes and scaling to get it to the correct size.

However, when i place it down, the people seem to be able to walk through it, no collision detection at all. It also seems like i can place it on paths without any problems. Strange. I'll keep experimenting, but jeez Jonwil, great tool.

Also got a new problem, it seems as if my wall is not inline with the squares in rct3. It's halfway between 2 tiles. Also when i select it, it doesn't highlight the tile. Which means placing the walls is pretty tricky.

The Details are:

Position 0,0,0
Size 0,0,0
Size In Squares 1,1
Size Flag: Wall
Scenery Type: Wall Straight
Supports: None
Extra Param: None

I've got it all organised properly, the other strange thing is, that the icons are different sizes. ExtWall01 is double the size of ExtWall02... strange.

I'll keep at it though.

P.S. Miss O Did you alter the Extra Parameters to Bench?

If you want a bench it should be...

Position 0,0,0
Size 0,0,0
Size In Squares 1,1
Size Flag: Path Edge (Outer) - I think.
Scenery Type: Bench
Supports: None
Extra Param: Bench

[Guybrush_47]

Originally posted by Klinn
2.5 - From the Edit menu, select ‘Manage Text Strings’. This is where we’ll be creating some names used later on in the program.
2.5.1 - Click the ‘Add’ button, enter a name for the theme or group of objects as a whole, e.g. ‘KLN-ElectroBits’, use the same as the actual text string, click the ‘OK’ button.
2.5.2 - Click the ‘Add’ button again, enter a name for the scenery object, e.g. ‘KLN-EBitOne’, use the same thing for the name of the string and for the actual text, click the ‘OK’ button.
2.5.3 - Click the ‘Close’ button to get rid of the Text Strings Manager window.

For those that don't know...

When it comes to naming your items, the NAME: is like a blueprint name for the engine. The TEXT STRING is what appears in the object menus. For example, If i want to create a theme called Jurassic, i would type in the following:

NAME: JUR-JURASSIC
TEXT: Jurassic

For Objects you can use the Text Bar to put in a description, but be brief, as there is limited space in the text bar in RCT3.

Hope that helps some of you organise your things a little better, and for a quick note in organisation, always name your BluePrints in Captial letters, it makes it alot easier, because missing out a Capital Letter can cause errors. So to be safe either type them all in Capital letters or in lower case.

Things are moving along pretty nicely, i can't figure out why people can walk through my walls, and for some reason, if i use the wall scenery it moves my wall to the middle of two tiles rather than filling up 1 tile. Strange, but i'll get to the bottom of it...

[Klinn]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
i can't figure out why people can walk through my walls, and for some reason, if i use the wall scenery it moves my wall to the middle of two tiles rather than filling up 1 tile.Proper positioning of your walls is dependent on how you've built them in your 3D modelling program - the origin has to be in the right place relative to the object. ('right place' meaning correct for that type of object - there's no single 'right' spot, it will vary depending on what you're trying to build.)

Peeps can walk through because there is no collision box for the wall yet. I don't think anyone knows how to do so yet - my brief experiments have failed. But I didn't mind because I wanted things like that opening in the middle of my wall for the coaster to go through. If the collision box encompassed the whole wall, that would have been impossible.


JonWil, with the older version of your Importer, when we were just replacing existing scenery items, it appeared that the replacement objects still used the original item's collision box. (and got that blue ghost square when placing them) That would tend to infer that the collision box info is not in the object's OVL files but elsewhere - maybe in the style OVL files??? Or did you change what went into the object's OVL files?


Miss O, I can't help you very much with texturing in MS, I only just fiddled with it a bit (see my previous posts) so perhaps one of the Milkshape experts here will have some advice. At the moment I'm re-building my theme from scratch, reducing poly counts and changing dimensions slightly so the curved walls will work properly with some upcoming straight pieces. Such fun!

[JCat]

The only thing left to figure out is the icon backgrounds. I notice in RCT3, a drop down selection of scenery uses alternate background bands of gray and white. For aesthetic purposes, it looks like we have to make one icon with a gray background, the other white, and so on..

I wonder if the original set uses a transparent background or are those bmps as well?

As for Milkshape - I haven't really noticed those jaggies yet, but then again, I've only built a few large structures to house a coaster, which is basically square. Wish I can help Miss O. I've built plenty of objects for some of the other coaster sims, but never noticed this jagginess.

[Guybrush_47]

Ah i see, will for now i've added them all as scenery objects. Later i'll try to have a stab at making them into proper 'custom' buildings.

I haven't been able to put a texture on the models yet either which is a little worrying. Though i haven't really been concentrating on that, been trying to finish off a few more models to create the building i want. I was tempted to make it as a large 10x10 building, but i thought more people would appreciate and use custom buildings, so i'm doing it the hard way...

The only problem i've encountered on the modelling front, is trying to join diagonal walls to straight walls and having no overlap. I've managed to do it, but i've got a silly wall end, which i may have to redesign...

As far as icons go, i think it's got something to do with transparency, it would make sense if the 'background' was transparent, making it blend in with the menus.

[Klinn]

It's most likely that the icon images have transparent backgrounds, so the developers wouldn't have to worry about if it was going on an even- or odd-numbered band. But until transparency is supported, we'll have to do exactly that - plan your icon sequence carefully (alphabetical order) and use the correct colour of background when drawing it. Leave it to the last step of your theme development, when all the pieces are in place.

[JCat]

I'm aslo having problems with positioning. For instance, if you want a small object (the width of a standard wall, but larger in height) to be directly centered with a straight track. Objects are not centering on a grid space, they are off to the left or right by a half-grid. Can someone put up a sample ASE blank wall or something, so we can use it as guide of some sorts? Thanks

[Guybrush_47]

I'm going to pretty much avoid icons and just try to create as much stuff as possible. Once transparency is added in, then go back and work on all of the icons, after all. It's just texturing, it's not like your messing about with all of the documentation.

For my icons i have the Blueprint name written on each one, allowing me to know which is which for future reference :)

Btw, Klinn, how did you texture the brickwork onto the models ingame? What texuring method did you use in 3ds, UVW Mapping?

[Guybrush_47]

http://img147.echo.cx/img147/1012/jurwip015hy.jpg

Okay thats my first attempt, all those are made up of individual tiles bar the curved window frame which is 2x1.

The width is 15tiles wide so far. Got the roof section to make and a few more wall variations. I've got most of the walls ingame without textures.

Oh and you can see what i mean about the pillar joints on the left of the screenshot, it looks pretty ugly imo, but i can't do anything about it :/

Oh crud, my plan has failed. I've just realised you can't edit the terrian textures using this editor can you? I was going to create a carpet/marble floor texture, then use the same texture for pathing. Allowing you to blend the pathing in with the surface, creating far better interriors and allowing you to make the place look alot more realistic. However, i've searched the tool and can't find the option anywhere, are you planning on looking into adding in terrian textures jonwil?

[Klinn]

Wow! That looks excellent, Guybrush! Very nicely done. :up: :up:

If the pillar joint really bugs you, maybe make a separate 'pillar' object you can add in when needed. (another case when the lack of collision detection helps us) In fact, if it's a separate pillar, you could make it a little bigger, so it 'anchors' the corner of the building visually.

The texture example I showed earlier was done in Milkshape. I don't think it will be possible to do in Max because of that issue of texture coords in Max being per-face rather then per-vertex, as JonWil pointed out earlier. Although, I would love to proven wrong! :)

Edit: At the moment, there's no way of editing the terrain textures. People have wanted that so they could do, for example, a large brick wall made out of terrain blocks. Don't forget you would want to add textures, not just replace existing ones, otherwise somebody might mess up their park by inadvertently swapping a pack of textures. That means adding more samples to the flyout panel that shows all the textures.

[Guybrush_47]

Damn.

That could prove to be annoying. Did you try to unwrap the texture? Thats something i learnt when texturing for neverwinter nights, it's complicated and time consuming, but it's 100% accurate... that might work. If it doesn't... looks like i'll be using milkshape :/

[Twister2489]

For those that use Anim8or, Is it possible to save materials?
I added a simple texture to an object but I couldn't save the ASE file in the editor, because I couldn't upload the material I used in Anim8or.

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by Twister2489
For those that use Anim8or, Is it possible to save materials?
I added a simple texture to an object but I couldn't save the ASE file in the editor, because I couldn't upload the material I used in Anim8or.

I don't know anything about Anim8or, but you can add the texture with Jonwil's program. I've had a few issues with it getting mapped correctly on the whole model though.

[Miss O]

As promised, here is a quick view of the four things I've made so far. I've been experimenting with the settings, and the bench needs to be redrawn (no, it's still not working), but I rather like the feel.

http://www.dimensional.com/~ladyrose/torii.jpg

And here is a different angle which shows the quay pieces that extend out into the water, the red bench, and the fence, slightly hidden behind the foliage.

http://www.dimensional.com/~ladyrose/benches.jpg

Many of the other things on my list require some sort of transparency or more than one texture, but I'll be producing about one item a night for my Asian set.

Comments welcome, and suggestions, too!

[WalkingSnake]

Wow, that is looking awesome. Great job! :D

[marnetmar]

That's Very nice work Miss O :up: :up: :up: That really looks great in the game. Have you had any luck with mapping the textures in the modeling program or are you using Jonwil's program for that? I've tried applying them in Milkshape, but I wind up with a blurry mess for some reason.

[JCat]

Yeah, actually, I do have one suggestion for the future...

Keep producing objects! Great stuff Miss O!

[Guybrush_47]

What i would do Miss O Is create a simple rectangle and put that in game, then try through trial and error to get people sitting on it. It could be that it needs to be postioned correctly, or be a right size. The only way to tell this is to place a RCT3 Bench next to it and compare sizes.

looking great though.

I'm not messing about with texturing, trying to get textures working ingame.

/crosses fingers

Wow, this is odd. My texture background is white, with smiley faces and coloured lines. However, when it appears ingame the background has changed to dark blue, but the smiley faces and lines are still there.... but the good news is the texture is perfectly alligned, and thats using 3ds.

I'm using SIOpaque. I wonder if a pure white background is why its going worng. I'll change it to a different colour and see...

EDIT

Yes I was right, the white background manipulates the texture. Now what immediatly strikes me is that light doesn't atm effect our objects. Which makes all of the textures appear very dark... this is going to be a problem... the reason is probably down to the fact that we don't have the collison detection working yet. Thus the engine reads our objects as invisible, however they do create a shadow... I wonder if the problem is using SIOpaque... let me do some experimenting.

[2005]

Originally posted by Twister2489
For those that use Anim8or, Is it possible to save materials?
I added a simple texture to an object but I couldn't save the ASE file in the editor, because I couldn't upload the material I used in Anim8or.


yes, at least until the .3ds stage, but the information might be lost on conversion to .ase It shouldn't be but so many conversions there could be problems. Thats why i'm hoping that jonwil program will still always have textures added at the .ovl conversion stage - less chance of errors.

^guybrush if you read earlier in the thread some people already had that problem. Pure white seems to be a problem for the game. I can't get other siopaue types to work properly though......

[Guybrush_47]

Okay so far the problems i have encountered are:

1. My objects don't reflect the light back.
2. My textures are darker than in photoshop (I might know how to solve that.)
3. UVW Unwrap is not working properly, i've sorted out the entire model so that each coord is lined up in the correct space. People who do bitmap texturing will know what i am referring too.

I have tried to fix these problems by:

1. Checking my textures to make sure they are 256x256, 256colours, indexed and are 24bit.
2. Tried moving the pivot point about, some games use the pivot point to work out shadowing and lights. No effect on model at all.
3. I've tried reseting the transforms on the model and then deleting the UVW Mapping/Unwrap from the Modifier list. No effect

Now i can keep going and making more and more objects, however, if the light isn't working properly and the textures aren't accurate it's going to be a problem.

Update Idea

Could you allow us to move the objects in the lists, allowing us to organise our lists alot better. Atm they are sorted by when they were added in, which can be very messy and confusing if you aren't putting the objects in the correct order. If you could do this it would really help organising the files in the tool.

[Miss O]

The only thing I've textured successfully thus far is the quay pieces to a weathered gray cedar (see the pictures a few posts back). They have a very distinct wood texture. A close look at the second picture shows a dark spot on the quay piece just in front of the bench facing the camera. That's actually where the two quay pieces meet (they're currently meeting across two squares on the grid, but I'll correct that tonight), and I'm pleased to note the texture doesn't falter in making the appearance of one solid board there.

Now, I also made a texture for the fence, but I didn't go into Milkshape and apply it, and it didn't show up on the fence. I think that step is the most important, and it's something I did following Klinn's suggestion. I had to fuss with the application a bit, but with a 512x512 wood texture, I managed to get it successfully mapped, and I think the wood looks really "natural." I've not applied a texture apart from color to anything else in the game, my Torii gate (on the water) and the bench actually use the same texture, though I did find I had to rename it for two different objects, or else I think the alpha was messed up. I would also like those to appear a bit glossy in that lacquer kind of way, but I haven't experimented with any of the other SI settings.

Guybrush, all my textures had to be Indexed 8-bit bmps to work, and Jonwil's program prompted me to remind me that they needed to be in that format, so I've had to change them a couple times. My textures turned out pretty dark, too, so I adjusted the ambient settings in MS to lighten them. Clearly the shape is saved with those ambient settings, because taking the meter up to within the first quarter of the color bar (moving from black to about 15% gray) made the texture much much lighter, and eventually produced what I was looking for. I did notice during the process of editing the ASE that the ambient settings do come across in the file, so I know that's got to have an effect. Hope that helps!

On benches...

I should really post a comparison picture. I realized after building my bench that the seat might be JUST high enough to interfere visually with the interacting parts when someone sits down, but when I placed the western bench (with arms and such) next to my own, they were almost identical, though mine is a bit taller. I need to rework the bench anyway, because in order to get rid of the strange triangular parts that don't light well, I needed to convert the entire model to surfaces, versus keeping it solid, which is an inherent mode in TurboCAD (which I love, btw). I think that will produce a much smoother result.

As for getting the benches to actually sit people, I think it's one of those flags somewhere, and testing each and every one is more than a bit of a daunting task. I really really really wish that someone at Frontier would just fess up about the most-often-needed tags, even if they leave out the ones that would skew the game's dynamics. I need also to create a wastebasket for my theme set, and given my success with benches, I'm not too keen on trying that again until I can be sure of what will work.

[Guybrush_47]

Just to make sure i'm doing the textures correctly, this is what i'm doing in photoshop.

New, 256x256

Image>Mode>Indexed Colour

Pallete>Local Adaptive>Ok

File>Save As>BlahBlah.BMP

Windows,8 Bit>Ok

I'm not that hot on Photoshop and all of it's technical stuff, just creating the artwork. If i'm doing this wrong please tell me :)

and when i do that, the object turns out invisible ingame.

[speile]

Ive managed to texture 1 thing correctly, using simple UVW mapping, but thats only a simple wall, and sint located in the the right place (ie not on tile edges as its supposed to be)

I tried another object using the same technique, but in rct it only sometimes decides to map the object correctly, ie sometimes it looks as though it hasnt got a texture map, and other times it looks realy nice, strange eh?...

oh well, maybe if frontier gives us a nice editor in soaked, we will finaly be able to easily (well relatively easily compared to jonwills editor, no compaints jonwill, just stating its hard to use) create scenery and other...

any way,im in the middle of making some more advanced UVW maps. as... well... i just worked out how it works, have no clue what it will look like in rct3 though...

[WalkingSnake]

It'd be nice if someone would make some correctly-mapped walls or baseblocks and uploaded the ASE so people could add their own textures..

[Guybrush_47]

tbh, it's very easy to use, very easy to get the objects ingame. The thing thats difficult it sorting out the textures and making sure the light reflects off the objecct properly. Both of which i have yet to do :/

Would be good if someone could share me a texture with the right settings, that way all i have to do is delete the texture and redo the artwork. 'hint' plzzzzz 'hint' :)

[speile]

ARG..... That didnt work, only like 1 or 2 of the mapping co-ordinates came out as i expected, oh wait, yer, i forgot, i have to flip the texture file for some reason (worked on a diferent file) ill try that and then report back...


heres what it looks like any way, its on my site at

http://speile-design.i8.com/RCT3

[Guybrush_47]

What 3d editor are you using?

[speile]

3ds max, i know it could me a lot more complex but im keeping it simple untill i get rct3 and custom scenery working well..

now, it wont even load the object, it just comes up with some sort of mapping error...

i might try and make a vellodrome (i think thats what its called) one of those bicycle arenas, see how the buggy works on it, as a note, if you have used the buggy, it does "detect" any custom scenery, i made a simple space mountain (ie no textures) and once i managed to get the buggy into the building, well it was good fun

[Guybrush_47]

Does the light reflect off your objects? I can't really tell, if it does, your a step ahead of me :)

For some reason, the light simply ignores my objects, however a shadow is cast on the other side. It's got me extremely puzzled.

[speile]

well at the moment, it is, well, i think it is... its a fairly dark texture, if your using 3ds max make sure that you have mapping co-ordinates, material, mesh normals and mesh definition set to export. I think the material one is the important part for the lighting.

[Guybrush_47]

Ah, i haven't ticked Mesh Normals.....If this works i'll kiss you and call you a genius.

I love you. :)

Now we have to work out how to map textures accuratly.

New problem... seems like when you put Mesh Normals on, all the models gets smoothed with a high number. I'll have to play around and see if you can take that away, it looks pretty ugly with it like that. Still 1 step forward.

[matty19908]

:D :D :D, im having some problems...

1. lighting (you all kno wat i mean)

2. getting the object to be the right way up (not on side :( )

although i did get the textures to work properly, i made a simple wall and put a metal gear solid 2 poster as the texture and in-game the wall was lying on floor but the texture was perfect, it wasnt stretched, i placed it down and the it had 1 and a half poster on it so i placed another one just infront of it and it fitted up perfectly to make 2 and a half posters :D :D :D


matt

[Guybrush_47]

Lighting: Make sure you have mapping co-ordinates, material, mesh normals and mesh definition set to export.

Position Of Wall: RCT3 is odd, in most games the z axis reflect the height. i.e. ground to sky. RCT3 however, it's the y axis that needs to go from ground to sky. So rotate your object in your 3d program.

Texture: If your texture is darker than it should be, mess about with the texture ambience.

[speile]

YES I got a texture working

shame its very simple and not on my jurasic park gates model, but I GOT A WORKING TEXTURE..... and yes my object does interact with lights

Im making a pagoda theme, hopefully it will complement miss o's pack

[Guybrush_47]

How well textured is it?

I've managed to get textures working, however i can't use a technique like uvw unwrapping... just uvw mapping. Which is pretty messy.

http://img183.echo.cx/img183/3086/jurwip030kv.jpg - thats what i've got ingame, just now need to fill in the textures...

[speile]

UVW mapping works a bit i think, but my main problem now is that when i got back and reinstall the theme after changing it a bit, it comes up with X.common.ovl doesnt match up with no. YYY in the file allocation tables.... is there a way to reset this allocation table

[Guybrush_47]

No idea, how much have you done? You could always redo it.

[speile]

I did just redo it, and the error still comes up

it wasnt exactly the best themeing anyway:rolleyes: just trying to get texturing working.

but now seeing as it crashes theres no point... i think im going to have to reinstall rct3 to remove the error

[Guybrush_47]

I got an error not so long ago that was crashing rct3. I re exported one of the files and redid 'create new scenery ovl'

it solved the error and now works fine.

[SlipperyPenguin]

Hi..

I'm struggling with this.. any help would be most welcome..

1: I've created a 3ds object in zmodeller..
2: Converted it using BiTrun into and ASE.
3: Deleted the correct bit from the ASE.

I then start the editor and that's where it all goes wrong.

1: I select edit.. add new scenery ovl..
2: Then select my ase object, my texture (256x256 x 256 colours), add "SIOpaque", set the filename to "sphere.ovl"
3: Then I click save and the editor just crashes back to windows with the usual windows xp message about sending a report/debug etc..

What is causing this.. is it my object (if so could someone post a working one so I can look at the file) or my texture or my machine.

I'm running winXP Professional on an AMD AthlonXP3000 with 1024mb ram.

Help .. please.. I would really like to get tis working.

Thanks

Slippery

[Guybrush_47]

The reason it's not working is because you've missed a fair bit out. On page 8 on this topic Klinn has done a tutorial, (about half way down the page). Go through that stage by stage and you'll get it ingame :)

[speile]

Did you remember to create the mapping co-ordinates for the mesh, the editor crashes if you dont have them... just so you know

Also reinstalling rct3 doesnt work to get rid of the errors... so well, im just going to restart... from the begining...god, some of this stuff is annoying...

[Klinn]

Originally posted by SlipperyPenguin
3: Then I click save and the editor just crashes back to windows with the usual windows xp message about sending a report/debug etc Sounds like you're doing everything right to create an OVL file. I've had a similar error, but JonWil's program exits too quickly to see it. Mine was a problem generating a message from the libASE.dll that JonWil uses to parse the ASE file. If you send me the ASE file, I'll double-check it in an older command line version of JonWil's Importer - that one lets you see the error message instead of just closing up.

I'll send you a PM with my email address, just to keep it away from the address haverster 'bots. :)

[speile]

OK heres a new problem to try and figure out, why cant i now even load rct3 up, if i have any , yes ANY custom object in the style folder...Even AFTER reinstallation (yes i added the patches) IM NOT HAPPY...

[-[A.S] Fanie-]

jon, klinn, whoever, I was just wondering how you turn the wire frame into a solid (on jonwills scenery creator program) I've drawn it out, now what?:confused:

[JCat]

Anyone happen to figure out this lighting problem. There seems to be an individual shadow cast on each wall, so stacked items have their own personal shadow, instead of treating everything as one multi-titled wall. :sour:

Also, I have the wall thickness very close to the stock sized wall, but when you build a block of four walls, the corners are not smooth with a perfect edge/corner. Is there a way of turning on that inner and outer grid choce before slapping it down like you do with the original RCT3 walls? I'm using [wall] for size flag and [wall straight] for Scenery Type.

http://trackworx.com/walltest.jpg

[Guybrush_47]

Strange that... my works fine. What 3d software are you using?

[JCat]

Using Milkshape - and I'm assuming mapping and any type of lighting in Milkshape will not affect the outcome through the editor?

[Guybrush_47]

Ah. I don't use milkshake so i can't really help.

From what i've found out however, it's got nothing to do with the pivot point, nor reseting the transforms. I've never had this problem so i can't really help :-/

I can't see how it would be a texture problem, you sure all the vertexs are welded properly?

[jonwil]

Lighting is likely controled by some of the unknown stuff that we havent figured out yet. (or it could be something to do with the mesh normals for the mesh, same as the texture issue mentioned below)

With respect to the texture mapping, the issue is that RCT3 wants per-vertex texture mapping but ASE (and 3DS max) use per-face texture mapping so that is why textures sometimes come out looking like crap.

Also, information in the ASE file like materials settings, lighting, texture settings (but not the texture coordinates), animation and bone data is totally ignored by my program.

[JCat]

Jonwil, that actually helps a lot - since we don't have to spend time experimenting with certain things that we know the program won't understand; that eliminates a chunk of trial and error.

[Klinn]

JonWil, any idea why I'm getting that 'flex scanner jammed' error when creating an OVL file? (I sent you an email with more details and a sample earlier)

SlipperyPenguin, I sent you an email after I checked your ASE file with some observations. For anyone else following the story, there were no texture verticies in SlipperyPenguin's ASE file at all. I suspect the 3D Modelling apps he is using did not include them in the *.3DS exported file, so Biturn didn't have anything to convert (for that section of the file) and then the OVL creation didn't work since the info was missing.

[JCat]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
Ah. I don't use milkshake so i can't really help.

From what i've found out however, it's got nothing to do with the pivot point, nor reseting the transforms. I've never had this problem so i can't really help :-/

I can't see how it would be a texture problem, you sure all the vertexs are welded properly?


Tx anyway, GB, yeah, everything seems to be intact. It's funny but certain texture styles (like with black as background) did not result in those strange stacked shadows...but the rock formation did. :( Obvioulsy because the black hides the shadow).

[disneyaniac]

Very nice walls pumper. I think its time we ask for a scenery exchange, we have seen some great stuff already.

[JCat]

Thank you, disneyaniac - yeah the texture is nice, but that angled shadow stacking is driving me frigging nuts. :eek:

[tikitiki]

send it to me in a ase convertable format and I'll fix it for ya...

[jonwil]

no idea why the flex scanner error is comming up.

[2005]

i don't have shadows switched on casue they kill the framerate even on a 6600GT.


Good to see so many people making objects, those objects so far are 100X better than anything i can make (although with 3dmax you got an advantage :) )


Can lighting be made different colours in rct3? like red, green, blue...............

[Guybrush_47]

I have a strange problem:

http://img136.echo.cx/img136/915/jurproblem7ge.jpg

I've put this in, and i can't place it. Notice the blue squares on the grid, normally that should appear as a whole 9x9 block of squares, very strange...

This is my settings:

Size In Squares: x=9 y=9
Size Flag: Fulle Tile
Scenery Type: Large Scenery
Extre Param: None

I'm pretty sure it's not a fault with the model. I hope not :eek:

[JCat]

I had a similar problem with my Phantasm housing - but if I hit Z (rotate) it would THEN turn blue - so of course, I hit Z four times to rotate it back to its original view, and I was able to smack it down.

[JCat]

Also - don't know if this has anything to do with it, but although my structure is immense in size, I saved it as a 1x1 grid space.

[Guybrush_47]

I think the problem is there is a size limit to groups. As soon as i switched it to 1x1 it worked.

I think i may have found a problem as well. I make a new custom scenario, i build a nice building. I save the game, i exit the game... i then go back to the game (after installing some more objects). I go and reload the saved custom scenario. I select object, and the game crashes, no error message but bombs out.

[JCat]

As far as I can tell -- you can't load a saved game when you're introducing new objects to the program, which actually makes sense in why RCT3 is getting confused and dive bombs.


Something even more tragic: Both Marnetmar and I are working on the same project. I have his scenery and my scenery on my computer - - while I'm in the process of building the coaster. After I saved the progress of the coaster, with NO modifications or additions to the scenery, I send the saved coaster over to his side, to which he has carbon copy of the two theme folders I have, yet the ride crashes his system. On my end it works flawlessly.

[Guybrush_47]

That is strange, seems like there are a few bugs that need ironing out. I'm going to experiment and see what size of group is the maximum for rct3. I'll assume it's going to be about 5x5.

[Guybrush_47]

Btw, i'm getting the same problems with the shadows. I think whats happening is that the objects are being smoothed off to a really high value. If you check out my ingame shot, you'll see that i have problems with getting a straight edge, another problem with 3ds i think.

Btw, does anyone know what softerware the Frontier lads used to create RCT3?

[2005]

probably their own plugins for 3dmax but just guessing.

Just make the object 5x5 in size, collision detction dosn't work anyway (which is a good thing) so theres no point in putting in the actual size.

[Guybrush_47]

It would be excellent if they decided to release the pluggins.... but obviousally they don't really want us to add custom scenery in otherwise they would release the proper tools to do the job.

I've asked in the official Discreet forums about the texturing issues, and i'll see what suggestions they make. I've tried a few things and got mixed results. I feel like i'm getting closer, but its taking hours of trial and error to try and get the textures working properly.

[Potter]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
Btw, i'm getting the same problems with the shadows. I think whats happening is that the objects are being smoothed off to a really high value.

Pumper and Guybrush_47,

Lightning is controlled by vertex/face normals. If you had not specified 'smoothing groups' in the 3d modeller you are using, then all the vertex/face normals will be averaged out, which will really suck for objects with sharp edges.:sour:

Try giving different 'smoothing groups' (or whatever they are called) for the different sides of the sharp objects. I know 'smoothing groups' are supported by Max, but no idea about other softwares:downcast:

[Klinn]

Pumper, any luck getting that wall to come out as you hoped, rather than the light-to-dark shading?

[d_h1234]

Originally posted by Potter
Pumper and Guybrush_47,

Lightning is controlled by vertex/face normals. If you had not specified supporting groups in the 3d modeller you are using, then all the vertex/face normals will be averaged out, which will really suck for objects with sharp edges.:sour:

Try giving different supporing groups (or whatever they are called) for the different sides of the sharp objects. I know supporting groups are supported by Max, but no idea about other softwares:downcast:

I'm guessing you mean 'smoothing groups'. :)

And an easy way to fix it is, select the object, go into editable mesh (or poly) mode, select all, in the right column scroll all the way down till you see a big box with lots of little boxes in it (all labeled with numbers), and find the 'auto assign' (I think it's called that), and you can enter the cutoff degree, and it's done...

OR..If you want to do it all by hand, click the 'clear all' button, select each group of polys/faces you want to share the same smoothing group, and select one of the little numbered boxes..That becomes it's assigned smoothing group...Then deselect those polys/faces, select more, and assign a different number..Repeat as needed.

[Potter]

Yes d_h1234,

I meant 'smoothing groups'. :( I have modified my earlier post accordingly

[Klinn]

I started experimenting with those smoothing groups on the weekend. Adjusting those definitely helps, but even if I clear everything, so no faces belong to any smoothing group, once translated to an ASE file, then to the OVL format, I still get some weirdly-shaded polys. They look like they are still being 'smoothed', but maybe it's some other parameter having an effect on the rendering??? Also tried splitting up the polys into various combinations of smoothing groups that would seem to be suitable, so it's not trying to smooth over a sharp edge, but no luck. At the moment, I think the current file translation steps introduces some odd artifacts.

I still can't convince Max to give me a true 'by-vertex' texture coordinates instead of 'by-face'. I thought applying a UV modifier and selecting the 'UVW to XYZ Mapping' would help, but not so far. As I mentioned previously, I've done some 3D modelling before but never for a game, so a lot of this is completely new territory for me.

My current workflow is to model in Max, export as 3DS, use Biturn to create another 3DS file (which at that point seems to have the correct by-vertex texture mapping, but all polys in one big smoothing group), import that into Max and fix up the smoothing groups manually. If I try to use the 'Auto-Assign' button, it doesn't work, I assume since the texture cordinates are by-vertex, not by-face as Max is expecting.

[Guybrush_47]

Ahh..... you see i always use smooth 'auto smooth' and increase or decrease the threshold.

Obviousally that isn't supported, so i'll have to do it the harder way, nm.

As for texturing, well i've used every single combination i can think of, and still no luck. I tried it with just UVW Mapping, and i got the texture on ok, but i couldn't line it up, due to the fact that you need to use UVW Unwrap.

I used both UVW Mapping and UVW Unwrap, but still no luck.

I used just UVW Unwrap, still no luck.

I tried selecting X,Y and Z for the Sub Object Param in unwrap, but still nothing.

Hold on... i've just noticed an option. Give me 5. To test. I've found an option inside the UVW Unwrap, that says 'convert face to vertex'. I'm trying to figure out how to use this... doesn't seem to help. Damn.

[JCat]

Thanks for the tips (on smoothing groups). I'm at work, but I can see it hasn't been successful according to recent replies. For my particular video I'm creating, the shadow problem is actually not a problem (most of the ride is indoors and pretty dark), but we'd like to offer the objects for DL at some point, and those repeated lighting problems would not be acceptable, compared to the stock set.

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by Klinn
My current workflow is to model in Max, export as 3DS, use Biturn to create another 3DS file (which at that point seems to have the correct by-vertex texture mapping, but all polys in one big smoothing group), import that into Max and fix up the smoothing groups manually. If I try to use the 'Auto-Assign' button, it doesn't work, I assume since the texture cordinates are by-vertex, not by-face as Max is expecting.

Thanks for the info Klinn :up: :up: , I tried exporting from MilkShape as a 3ds & then converting to an ASE file with Biturn & that seems to have fixed the mapping issue, however the textures are very dark, so I'll have to see about fixing that issue now lol Figuring this all out has become quite an adventure lol

[Guybrush_47]

Perhaps we have to use Vertex Paint, instead of uvw mapping/uvw unwrap?

I've never used Vertex Paint so i have no idea what it does, i'll experiment about a bit and see. Hmm, no thats got nothing to do with mapping.

It seems to me that it doesn't save the uvw coordinates. Which is why uvw unwrap is useless. I'm not sure if thats the fault of the importer or of 3ds.

[Klinn]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
Perhaps we have to use Vertex Paint, instead of uvw mapping/uvw unwrap? To the best of my (limited) knowledge, vertex painting allows you to 'paint' textures on the mesh, including transparency info, so you can blend from one texture to another on an object instead of hard edges where one map ends and another starts. Interestingly enough, when you export a 3DS from Milkshape it also produces two TGA files, one of which appears to be an alpha channel, and the other looks suspiciously like the default vertex painting texture in Max. Coincidence? Probably. :)

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
It seems to me that it doesn't save the uvw coordinates.Max seems to save the coords OK in either a 3DS or ASE export, it's just that they are on that per-face basis, not per-vertex. Time to fire up Milkshape. :)

[Klinn]

Originally posted by Pumper
Thanks for the tips (on smoothing groups). I'm at work, but I can see it hasn't been successful according to recent replies. For me, it's more that they haven't been completely successful. It's still worth doing to clean up the object.

I'll bet if you took that wall object of yours and either removed all smoothing groups (it's all flat surfaces, so doesn't really need any smoothing) or at least removed the thin edges from the smoothing group that the main faces are in, it would stop trying to 'round the corner' from the main face to the edge. That's the theory anyway - in practice, well... only testing will say for sure.

[Guybrush_47]

Nope that doesn't work either Klinn. My roof tile, which is a flat cube, is rounded at the edges, it doesn't matter on how complex or simple the object is. You just have to make sure that you smooth the object properly.

I'm still stuck with the texturing. I can't use Milkshape at all, any other program that we know of that allows you to use per vertex mapping?

[JCat]

Originally posted by Klinn
For me, it's more that they haven't been completely successful. It's still worth doing to clean up the object.

I'll bet if you took that wall object of yours and either removed all smoothing groups (it's all flat surfaces, so doesn't really need any smoothing) or at least removed the thin edges from the smoothing group that the main faces are in, it would stop trying to 'round the corner' from the main face to the edge. That's the theory anyway - in practice, well... only testing will say for sure.

I'll give it a shot tonight, Klinn - thank you, so there is a bit of hope!
:)

[Klinn]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
Nope that doesn't work either Klinn. I'm hoping that it will work for Pumper since he's modelling that wall in Milkshape, not Max. That seems to be the key for proper texture mapping - whether it's because MS saves different texture coord info (besides the per-vertex difference) or because Biturn understands MS3D files differently than 3DS, dunno.

[Twister2489]

Is it possible for anyone to post a the proper size or something for a base block in anim8or. I've tried many times, and my object is never the right size, and is always not exactly on the tile. Like if I got it to the same size of the tile, my object takes only half of one square and half of the other.

I hope I didnt confuse anyone.

*sigh*

[JCat]

Did a few tests: First off, exporting as a 3DS file (which I haven't been doing as I've only saved as a MS3D up until now), the repeated shadow/light per tile is gone, which is great. The problem is, the texture is much darker then usual, and I tried changing the style to include the specular 50 I believe, and it made no difference. Also, auto-smooth off or on didn't change any characteristics to the end result in RCT3. I haven't tried the mapping yet, but Marnetmar has, and his seemed to map correctly (had did all sides of a cube with different textures), however, his texture also appeared much darker in RCT3.

[JCat]

Another thing....

When exporting to 3DS, I noticed my texture no longer reacts to nearby lamp posts..


So, in a nutshell:

When saving as a Milkshape file, I get the exact texture - nice and bright, but we have the repeated shadow/light problem, and if I'm not mistaking, the texture mapping is a bit screwy. I',m going to give the TM another try later.

When export to 3DS, I no longer have the repeated shadow/light problems, but now the texture is ultra dark, and does not reflect light (to to mention, the coordinates are completely different then when saving with Milkshape). I had to redo the standard wall coordinates all over... ugh.

[Klinn]

I'm still plugging away on the ElectroShock wall set for release in hopefully a few days, but I couldn't resist showing the item I built today. It's a translucent tube that can be used to connect various buildings assembled from my custom set.


http://www.designamatic.com/Graphics/RCT3-CustomWall04.jpg


An interesting point. Note the coaster - the lead car shows up but any trailing cars don't show as they go through the tube.

Pumper: Glad to hear your custom wall shading is working out better. About the overall dark texture on your walls - back a couple of pages, wasn't there a post by somebody who fiddled with one of the overall lighting values, and that affected the lightness of the texture??? I may be confusing it with something else, but it seems to ring the proverbial bell...

[JCat]

Absolutely brilliant work, Klinn..!

Now, you don't seem to be having a shadow problem, at least what I can seee from the curved wall parts.

[marnetmar]

Great work on the new tube tunnels Klinn, those look excellent & are a very cool addition to the game also. :up: :up: :up:
I saw that post about the settings the other day & I've lightened the texture settings for the model as light as they go & still too dark when exporting as 3ds. Somethings getting lost in the conversion someplace I think.

That's odd that the other coaster cars aren't showing up in the tunnel.

[Guybrush_47]

The reason why your textures are coming out darker is this:

When you create a new texture you have 3 settings. Ambience, Defuse and Specular. On default, Ambience and Defuse are set to black, in RCT3 they MUST be set to white. Specular should also be set to a low light gray/white colour. Depending on the brightness of the texture you want to create.

Klinn, i'm interested, how did you get the glass to be transparent? Very nice screenshot btw, the only thing i've noticed is that the tube doesn't connect with the 'sewer' pipe properly. Other than that it's wuvly :)

I'm going to learn how to texture in Milkshape tommorow and hopefully, i'll be able to post up textured version of my Scenery too in a day or two.

[JCat]

Guybrush - thanks..

But I could swear somewhere in this thread, Jonwil stated that any additional settings such as ambient light or specular are completely ignored by the editor.

[Guybrush_47]

Nope, it effects it, i tested it out to fix my problems a day or two ago.

Arg, i hate this program, any way of zooming in on the Texture Cordinate Editor? Or having the coords show up?

Also, can you show the 'selected face' on the perspective viewscreen?

What editor does your partner in crime use Pumper?

[Klinn]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
... the only thing i've noticed is that the tube doesn't connect with the 'sewer' pipe properly. Other than that it's wuvly :)
I deliberately sized the tube so it could be used with a couple of different wall configurations. One way, the foreground tube, there's a slight gap which is similar in size to other gaps I've introduced in the wall set. The rear configuration shows it overlapping the wall entrances, again with the rings spaced so that they sorta made sense. :) It's fun trying to come up with a set of parts that can be combined in different ways, but still have them fit together in a semi-logical manner.

Edit: The glass was made transparent by using the 'SIGlass' rendering style. Gotta try the chrome tomorrow. :)

Pumper: you can see the 'smoothing/shading' problem in a couple of places, e.g. the round entrance sticking out of the walls. There's that dark blob. It looks like the game is still trying to smooth that poly with the vertical face of the entrance pipe. I'm be careful to check the smoothing groups, but it's still there. Arrrgh. There are a few more glitches like that elsewhere.

[Guybrush_47]

Btw, i got a response from someone in the discreet forums. They suggest that we should 'bake to the vertex map channel' any idea what that means lol.

He also suggests using Inventor.

How does the engine tell glass apart from wall though?

p.s. 2:17am here i'm off to bed.

[JCat]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
Nope, it effects it, i tested it out to fix my problems a day or two ago.


What editor does your partner in crime use Pumper?

Maybe for MAX but certainly isn't doing squat in Milkshape. The wall is still dark. You switch to night and it's completely black, add a lamp, still black. Not a pixel of a difference after raising Ambient/Spec levels in MS. Horrendous..

Marn uses Milkshape as well.

[marnetmar]

After getting the texture mapping issue fixed, the new problem I'm having is with the textures being too dark. I've tried changing the ambient, diffuse, specular & emissive settings to as light as they will go in Milkshape. The textures are still too dark, so I tried making the texture file lighter, which helped some, but there's still no reflection of the sunlight on the models.


http://modstothemax.net/mttmcommunity/files/original_texture_file_203.jpg Original Texture File



http://modstothemax.net/mttmcommunity/files/light_texture_file_991.jpg Lightened Texture File

[Miss O]

Klinn, your work is absolutely brill! Tell me, though, is the pipe one piece and the tube another, and are they fitted one inside the other? Otherwise, I'd love to know how you're getting dual textures. Despite what a horrible difficulty it is to follow a set that seems to be advancing so rapidly...

Attached are pictures of my first building attempt. Eventually this will have quite a few more pieces, but for now there's a wall for a door, wall with space for two windows, and a blank wall. Then of course there's all the accompanying trim pieces and the doors/windows to be set in. All in all, I'm fairly happy with it.

http://www.dimensional.com/~ladyrose/home_night.jpg

Gotta love adoring peeps. This one looks really good. I got my bench to be shiny (a bit TOO shiny! and I used SIOpaqueSpecular50), and the doors and windows show well.

http://www.dimensional.com/~ladyrose/home_day.jpg

This one, to the current conversation, shows all the deficiencies with the shading. I've used MS to change the ambient settings, and it seems to bounce light just fine with the SIOpaque setting. The walls show their texture when not overly lit by lights, and it's meant to look like a stucco. That part is mostly okay, though I do have it going the wrong way on the solid walls (which I don't show a lot of here!).

Thanks for the tip about the exporting in 3ds, I never even considered it, even though I bring them in that way from TurboCAD. (A direct save from TC to ase via Biturn misses all texture references, but I haven't tried 3ds to 3ds with a specific texture).

Anyway, I'm working on evening out the colors, too, and in getting the rest of the set more smooth. Also need some flooring blocks for this to look much more "natural".

[marnetmar]

Very nice work Miss O :up: :up: :up: Those walls look great, very original idea for this theme ;)

[Klinn]

Miss O: Your set looks great, I also really liked the fence, quay, and tall gate thing (forgot the proper name :)) you showed in your previous shots too. The Oriental theme is pulling together very nicely. Going to need some paper lanterns.

The peeps standing awe just shows they have good taste. ;)

The daytime shot of the stucco walls seems to show that 'smoothing group' effect we've been discussing. That is, some of the front faces of the wall are trying to be 'smoothed' to the edges the windows are set into. Since those edges would be darker, the front face is blended from its proper light colour to the dark shade.

See if there is some way of controlling smoothing groups separately in Milkshape, so the front faces are in one group, the vertical edges in another, etc. I'm pretty much ignoring textures for my current set - they are so subtle that it doesn't matter when they're messed up! Oh yes - you're right, my tube is two pieces, the glass and the framework, designed so one just places them in the same spot and they overlap properly. I assume you're following a similar route for your windows & doors, or are they part of the texture and have you become the master of UV coordinates?

[Miss O]

Thanks Marn! It's coming along, however slowly.

So anyway, I tried the suggestion of importing 3ds and exporting 3ds. Not only did all my walls suddenly convert from vertical to horizontal (ack!), but they all got really dark. And here's something else very interesting. When I did 3ds to ms3d then ase, there was an alpha map put together. When I did 3ds to 3ds, no alpha, and the settings in the actual ASE were much different with regards to ambient settings, etc.

I'm not about to try to figure out how to make things go a different direction (again), so I'm likely going to work with smoothing groups in MS in order to solve the light and shadows problems. There has to be an answer there somewhere. :)

In other news, I imported my largest-ever item, coming in at 11654 vertices, 24438 polygons and 73314 points! Whee. (Who knew it would take that much!?)

[Klinn]

Originally posted by marnetmar
After getting the texture mapping issue fixed, the new problem I'm having is with the textures being too dark. I've tried changing the ambient, diffuse, specular & emissive settings to as light as they will go in Milkshape. The textures are still too dark, so I tried making the texture file lighter, which helped some, but there's still no reflection of the sunlight on the models. Hmm, very odd. The post I was thinking of was one of Miss O's where she said:

Originally posted by Miss O
My textures turned out pretty dark, too, so I adjusted the ambient settings in MS to lighten them. Clearly the shape is saved with those ambient settings, because taking the meter up to within the first quarter of the color bar (moving from black to about 15% gray) made the texture much much lighter, and eventually produced what I was looking for. I did notice during the process of editing the ASE that the ambient settings do come across in the file, so I know that's got to have an effect. ...but this doesn't seem to be working for you. Guybrush was also having the lighting problems when the mesh normals weren't being saved in his ASE file. Maybe check yours just to be sure they are included. ...grasping at straws here...

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by Klinn
Hmm, very odd. The post I was thinking of was one of Miss O's where she said:

...but this doesn't seem to be working for you. Guybrush was also having the lighting problems when the mesh normals weren't being saved in his ASE file. Maybe check yours just to be sure they are included. ...grasping at straws here...

This is what's in the ase for the settings:

*MATERIAL_AMBIENT 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000
*MATERIAL_DIFFUSE 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000
*MATERIAL_SPECULAR 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000

If I remember right, when converting from MS to ase, the settings are 0.0000 on all of these. I don't know if manually increasing them in the ase file will work or not, but it's worth a try lol

[Miss O]

It doesn't, I tried that. :( Converting to 3ds just doesn't seem to keep the bright.

[jonwil]

I got some bad news guys.
Various things have come up that mean that I just dont have any time to work on the importer anymore (transparent textures, smaller icon textures, multiple textures & objects etc).
If there are any C/C++ programmers out there (the bits of C++ I used are so minor that even if you only know C, you should be able to understand it), I could really use some help on this.
Otherwise, you guys probobly wont be able to get all the stuff you want (multiple objects, multiple textures, transparent textures, recolorable textures etc etc) anytime soon.
Sorry :(

[WalkingSnake]

Originally posted by jonwil
I got some bad news guys.
Various things have come up that mean that I just dont have any time to work on the importer anymore (transparent textures, smaller icon textures, multiple textures & objects etc).
If there are any C/C++ programmers out there (the bits of C++ I used are so minor that even if you only know C, you should be able to understand it), I could really use some help on this.
Otherwise, you guys probobly wont be able to get all the stuff you want (multiple objects, multiple textures, transparent textures, recolorable textures etc etc) anytime soon.
Sorry :(

Ouch. That really sucks. :(

Well, thanks for everything you've done for the community, Jon, and maybe you'll get some free time eventually to help us out again. :)

[marnetmar]

I'm sorry to hear that Jonwil, but I know a lot of us really appreciate all the hard work you've done already on this & I must again say a big Thank You for all your help with this project :up: :up: :up: :up: :up:

[JCat]

That's really sad news, Jonwil. I'm so grateful of what you've allowed a number of us to accomplish, and I wish to thank you again.

Despite the features you won't be able to get to, what we do have to work with is really more then I expected in such short time.

-JCat (Pumper)

[Vodhin]

This is a bit of sad news- but you've done sooooo much for us already! Seeing what all you guys (and gals ;)) are doing here is inspiration in and of itself! Jon, good luck to you on whatever project you'll be tinkering with next!

[jonwil]

The other thing you guys can do to help is to actually play with all the flags and unknown items to find out what they do.
I am highly surprised that people havent already done this...

[JCat]

Originally posted by jonwil
The other thing you guys can do to help is to actually play with all the flags and unknown items to find out what they do.
I am highly surprised that people havent already done this...

This is true - I think because most of us spent the majority of time trying figure out the texture shadow/mapping problem, which I think I just conquered a few seconds ago. :up:

[JCat]

No shadow problems, and mapping I believe is working.

All in Milkshape, saved as an MS3D file. Selected side walls, regrouped and independently textured them in the mapper. The funny thing was, in the end I didn't regroup ALL selections as one group - they were still separated when I saved then biturn-ed to an ase. No repeated shadow, lamps cast light, I think I'm happy.
http://www.trackworx.com/wallupdate.jpg

[disneyaniac]

Pumper. that is awesome, great job. I really like those stone wall sets.. hope to see more, awesome work:up:

[SlipperyPenguin]

Just wondered if anyone is using Lightwave.

I tried creating an object in Lightwave.. exported it as a 3Ds.. converted it to an ASE with Biturn and it crashed the importer (Klinn.. this has the same problems as my other ASE files.. no vertex mappings etc.. but this is probably me not knowing how to do anything in Lightwave and just using the default box as a test with nothing added at all)

Anyway.. I'm asking because I've decided to try and learn Lightwave (I was bought a copy of this a while back but haven't looked at it really) for creating stuff in RCT3 and wanted to know if anyone had any success before I spend hours struggling with it only to find that 3ds files exported from lightwave don't work.

Thanks.

Slippery

[Klinn]

Originally posted by jonwil
I got some bad news guys. Various things have come up that mean that I just dont have any time to work on the importer anymore .... Sorry :( Lordy lordy, you certainly don't have to feel sorry! You've done such wonderful work in decoding the file format and building tools for the rest of us to tinker with. I'm sure you'll bring just as much skill to your future project. Thanks again!

Pumper: Good job - so it seems the 'grouping' in Milkshape is related to the 'smoothing groups' in Max, at least it helps achieve similar shading. The texturing looks great. :up:

SlipperyPenguin: You might want to try exporting the 3DS from Lightwave, import it into Milkshape (which seems to be the only viable program for texturing at the moment), then export it from MS, then use Biturn for the ASE.

[SlipperyPenguin]

Thanks again Klinn..

Looks like this is the only way to go.. (If only we could bypass Milkshape !)

Slippery

[Guybrush_47]

Great work Pumper. I'm going to have to learn milkshape if everything is working for it. I'll try doing the smoothing in 3ds and see if it works, that way all i have to do is the texturing. Could someone point me to a good uvw unwrap tutorial for milkshape?

Ok, i've figured out how to use the texture coordinator, however, can you split the object up into smaller chunks, making it easier to texture? Does that effect the overall outcome of the model ingame?

Ah i see, hold down shift when selecting faces, and you can select the faces alot easier... ok getting the hang of this now, still frustrating that there is no coordinates in the uvw unwrap.

[2005]

is it just me who thinks that we won't see much progress on this now?

I got no C++ skills.........I will learn one day but not this year..........

[Guybrush_47]

Well that depends on what you call progress.

We're gradually learning the do's and don'ts. It's very complicated and time consuming, however we're producing some nice stuff.

Things like transparent textures aren't really that important. I'm more concerned on writing out a step by step guide for the 3d making process. That way others can learn from our experiments.

[Klinn]

Originally posted by 2005
is it just me who thinks that we won't see much progress on this now? As you can see by the wonderful stuff being produced by Pumper, Miss O, Guybrush, and Marnetmar, great progress already has been made by JonWil. No need to wait, jump in and try it, the glass is half-full. ;)

[Guybrush_47]

Okay, where and how do i get/use biturn?

I've textured a model using milkshape. (well i textured it in 3ds, and imported it over and all the coords are saved).

[Coasterbuf]

Originally posted by Klinn
I'm still plugging away on the ElectroShock wall set for release in hopefully a few days, but I couldn't resist showing the item I built today. It's a translucent tube that can be used to connect various buildings assembled from my custom set.


http://www.designamatic.com/Graphics/RCT3-CustomWall04.jpg




Klinn, that is nothing short of AMAZING. Great work!

Frontier, hire Klinn! :)

[2005]

I think the lack of multi-textures and transparent textures will limit the possibilties a lot; its the only reason i had much interest in this. I have no interest in making a new type of wall.

[Guybrush_47]

The only thing i can see it limiting is creating new vegetation. You can just use bitmaps, this is what i'll be doing for all my work, and imo is a better option than multi textures, only downside will be a slight increase in the overall size of the work.

I'll be making dinosaurs, shops, objects etc.

Btw, this is my work order:

Create new wall in 3ds, texture in 3ds. Convert to .3ds and import in Milkshape, tweak the smooth settings, export as .3ds, use Biturn to convert to .ASC

I have a problem however, when i try adding my file, it tells me :Multiple objects, can't convert mesh. However, theres only 1 object in the scene!

Confused :P

[2005]

never mind fences, catwalks, girder type structures, various buildings shapes...........

[Guybrush_47]

You can make fences, just they will be a bit high poly, just use the block tool, and create very fine boxes. You just have to be very strict with the polys your going to use, and keep things simple. Lets the textures do the detail.

Oh and Biturn has just gone bjorked. I can't use it now, half the menus have disappeared, and everytime i reload it keeps happening... I'm using version: 0.86a3, anyone else having problems with it? IF not, what version are you using?

My current workflow is to model in Max, export as 3DS, use Biturn to create another 3DS file (which at that point seems to have the correct by-vertex texture mapping, but all polys in one big smoothing group), import that into Max and fix up the smoothing groups manually. If I try to use the 'Auto-Assign' button, it doesn't work, I assume since the texture cordinates are by-vertex, not by-face as Max is expecting.

Okay so i've tried it this way. My mapping is still bjorked, however, my smoothing has fixed itself... strange? As it had the opposite effect for you lol!

Btw, when i try extracting as a .3ds i get this error:

Non 8.3 bitmap filename [JUR-EXTROOF01.bmp] has been renamed to [JUR-EXTR.bmp] This i think is what is causing the problem with the bitmaps. Do the bitmap titles have to be a certain length?

Okay so if your mapping is right, how are you mapping your models? Can you explain the process to me, i'm just trying to work out what i'm doing wrong.

Just to confirm, my smoothing issues are completely fixed. It's just the mapping issue... still!

[Guybrush_47]

Klinn, you may want to try this out, this is how i get rid of those annoying shadows:

Create object
Smooth - no setting (not sure if this is needed)
Export as .3ds
Load Biturn
Overwrite .3ds
Import .3ds
Smooth - no setting
Export

I think we won't ever be able to map in 3ds. I just looked at the .ASE in Biturn and they come up showing the texture, which makes me belive that RCT3 just ignore the UVW Unwrap process.

This means we'll have to do the unwrapping in Milkshape.

I'm still going to try and fiddle about with .3ds, but the outlook is grim.

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by Pumper
No shadow problems, and mapping I believe is working.

All in Milkshape, saved as an MS3D file. Selected side walls, regrouped and independently textured them in the mapper. The funny thing was, in the end I didn't regroup ALL selections as one group - they were still separated when I saved then biturn-ed to an ase. No repeated shadow, lamps cast light, I think I'm happy.
http://www.trackworx.com/wallupdate.jpg

Those really look Great Pumper, I can't wait to give this a shot & see what happens. I never thought about doing it that way.:up: :up: :up: :up:

[matty19908]

I got some bad news guys. Various things have come up that mean that I just dont have any time to work on the importer anymore .... Sorry :(

ahh well, atleast you made it this far, im still struggling with the program but i god damn LOVE IT! and its all thanks to you.

i'd bow to you if i could

matt

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by 2005
I think the lack of multi-textures and transparent textures will limit the possibilties a lot; its the only reason i had much interest in this. I have no interest in making a new type of wall.

Multi textures can be done already 2005, although the textures came out dark on these blocks I made, you can see each side has a different texture applied to it using 1 texture file & mapping the sides with the different textures.

http://modstothemax.net/mttmcommunity/files/light_texture_file_991.jpg

[WalkingSnake]

Originally posted by 2005
never mind fences, catwalks, girder type structures, various buildings shapes...........

I'm sorry that the editor didn't live up to your expectations, but the rest of us seem to be having fun experimenting with this.

[2005]

Even jonwil says its a beta; its good but its limited. It was always the possibility of having more complex objects that made it interesting.

It seems unlikely anyone is planning to take over the project any time soon, and i've lost interest now. I might d/l stuff other people have made, but making objects myself i probably won't bother becasue i can't make what i want or at least not that it would look very good.



Multi textures can be done already 2005, although the textures came out dark on these blocks I made, you can see each side has a different texture applied to it using 1 texture file & mapping the sides with the different textures.

Not only is that difficult for most people, i would guess that we are limited by the texture size, and that it might work for a cube/bench but larger buildings are almost impossible. And still no transparency.......

it limits creativity and only frontier releaseing official tools now i think will keep interest in the game for any length of time; soaked looks good but it is more of the same. A gmax release would be perfect...........but by ignoring this it dosn't look like they will release tools any time soon.

[WalkingSnake]

Hello!? This is 3D MODELING. Either way, it's gonna be hard to do. And it seems to have enough features for everyone else to like it. If someone "can't" figure out how to do something, obviously they're not interested enough to experiment and learn how to do it.

[2005]

If someone "can't" figure out how to do something, obviously they're not interested enough to experiment and learn how to do it

Well i guess thats me then.

If i'm wrong about the texture size, please tell me.

[JCat]

Wow, see I'm actually of the opposite way of thinking. I feel there's a ton of ideas that can be accomplished with the scenery editor as is, you just need to be creative.

"Soaked" more of the same" ?

I can't wait for Soaked to be released - it introduces items in the game that are way different then what we have now, not to mention tunnels, water shows, laser shows. I couldn't be more excited about this expansion! Although I'll be part of the beta, I'll will surely lock in a pre-order for my retail copy. I feel Frontier has really 'hung' out with us on this one!

[2005]

soaked looks good - but not sure it will add much longtivity (SP i know) to the game.

If they mange to make the FPS much much better thats different, that will make the game more fun. But with all the new stuff i'm not hopeful.

RCT3 is great but everyone has to admit FPS is poor and limits the game.

I can see why you think the BE still has possibilties - but i can't build what i want.

[marnetmar]

Originally posted by 2005
Even jonwil says its a beta; its good but its limited. It was always the possibility of having more complex objects that made it interesting.

You can make things as complex or as simple as you want to. It's all in what someone wants to make.

It seems unlikely anyone is planning to take over the project any time soon, and i've lost interest now. I might d/l stuff other people have made, but making objects myself i probably won't bother becasue i can't make what i want or at least not that it would look very good.

I don't know when/if anyone will ever add to this program, but even if they don't, we'll still be able to make plenty of things for the game & theres still a lot we don't know about a lot of things, like the flag settings.

Not only is that difficult for most people, i would guess that we are limited by the texture size, and that it might work for a cube/bench but larger buildings are almost impossible. And still no transparency.......

Making 3d models isn't easy for anyone, but most of the people making stuff for the game have taken the time to learn. It's just like anything else, you have to keep practicing & learning, nobody will ever know it all. The texture size isn't an issue at all, you can make a good looking building with a texture file that's 256x256 or 512x512 in size. It's all in the quality of the texture & how it's mapped on the model.

it limits creativity and only frontier releaseing official tools now i think will keep interest in the game for any length of time; soaked looks good but it is more of the same. A gmax release would be perfect...........but by ignoring this it dosn't look like they will release tools any time soon.

Being able to use transpariencies would be great, but, if that is never possible, then we'll just have to work around it. I don't see that as limiting creativity at all. If someone wants to build something & can't use transparencies, they'll figure out another way to do it. As for Frontier giving out some mod tools, that would be awesome, but that may never happen & I'm Very happy & thankful to have Jonwil's program.

[WalkingSnake]

Originally posted by 2005
soaked looks good - but not sure it will add much longtivity (SP i know) to the game.

If they mange to make the FPS much much better thats different, that will make the game more fun. But with all the new stuff i'm not hopeful.

RCT3 is great but everyone has to admit FPS is poor and limits the game.

I can see why you think the BE still has possibilties - but i can't build what i want.

Then why are you still in this topic? ;)

Sorry if I'm sounding like a jerk, I'm just in a bad mood today..

[Guybrush_47]

This isn't very productive is it? If you don't like the tool, don't use it.

Let the people who want to use it, talk about it in this thread. It's meant to be about progress and trying to work it out, not about arguing how good or bad it is.

[Klinn]

Originally posted by 2005
If they mange to make the FPS much much better thats different, that will make the game more fun. But with all the new stuff i'm not hopeful. RCT3 is great but everyone has to admit FPS is poor and limits the game. I can see why you think the BE still has possibilties - but i can't build what i want. Suit yourself. While you continue to dream up reasons why not to do something, the rest of us will enjoy ourselves.

So-called 'FPS issue'? I'll build a park that works within the limits of the program.
JonWil's Importer has limitations? I'll work around them or come up a new idea that can be done with it.

Actually doing something is way more fun that sitting on the sidelines complaining, but hey, it's your choice. Anyway, as Guybrush points out, I'm going way off-topic - - now back to our regularly scheduled thread, already in progress...

(Edit: By the way, since you asked, yes, you are wrong about the texture size. Nobody has actually run up against a limit, and I've tried 1024x1024. Have you tried any experiments to see if there is a limit??? Didn't think so.)

[Guybrush_47]

Klinn, how the **** are you texturing your models. I've tried the same method as you, but it still doesn't work. Can you write down a quick step by step guide.

I've got the smoothing issue sorted, but what i've noticed is when you reimport from biturn it moves the object ever so slitely, which leaves small gaps when creating walls. So becareful of that!

[2005]

there might not be an actual texture size limit, but wouldn't 1204x1024 be too much for an average graphics card if lots of custom objects were used?

I know limits can be worked around, but i think there are just too many now..........

[Guybrush_47]

I'm trying to stick to 256x256. The game already is a wee bit .... difficult at times. But tbh, the only reason people find the game 'difficult' is because of often they overdo an area with far too many objects.

If you spread out the whole park and use the space given, the fps is a hella lot better.

Anyhow, time for lunch.

[Klinn]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
Klinn, how the **** are you texturing your models. I've tried the same method as you, but it still doesn't work. Can you write down a quick step by step guide.

I've got the smoothing issue sorted, but what i've noticed is when you reimport from biturn it moves the object ever so slitely, which leaves small gaps when creating walls. So becareful of that! Heh, essentially I am ignoring texturing at this point. The textures I apply in JonWil's importer are so subtle that effectively I am just colouring the object, not texturing it. Subtle textures = subtle errors, of which there are plenty. :) When I try my hand at real texturing, I'll go the Milkshape route.

I haven't noticed any changes to geometry when bringing objects back from Biturn. My walls still seem to fit without gaps. Just lucky maybe???

[Guybrush_47]

Okay, i've found a method for smoothing. I've worked out from trial and error that broken vertices don't produce any smoothed surfaces.

So for something like a roof, or a flat wall. Break the vertices, (normally i wouldn't do this, but it seems to work... so i'm not complaining).

As for curved surfaces, like my roof... well i'm doing some experimenting.

[2005]

how do you make curved surfaces though, well its easy, but not very efficent theres A LOT of vertices compared to a box............instead of maybe 30 you got hundreds..........

don't most games have a way of only displaying this detail close up? But thats probably not going to work with custom objects.

[Guybrush_47]

No, what i'm referring too, is not actually making the roof. But when it's made trying to smooth it effectively.

Now i've done some experiments, and it all seems to work fine. What you can do is split your object into pieces. Say, as an example you split a tennis ball in half, you have the flat surface, and then you have the curved surface. If you detach the flat surface from the curved, the flat surface will now be nice and crisp, while the curved section will be smoothed. Onec the model is ready to be imported into the game, you attach all the pieces back together, but you DON'T weld the vertexs. I've tried all this on most of my walls, and it's all successful.

Btw, if the message seems a bit cranky, it's just because i'm getting frustrated at this texturing issue.

[Klinn]

Thanks for the tips, Guybrush. I guess I assumed that if the verticies were split, it would be two objects instead of one, which won't work with the Importer. Thanks for checking it out - another note for the future tutorial. :)

[Guybrush_47]

It might effect the mapping, i'm not quite sure. But it works ingame fine, i'm getting no problems with shadows anymore. Which is great news. Now last thing to do the mapping!

[2005]

New project been working on. needs lots of work, this was just to get the scaling right (i guessed almost perfect first time).

http://img15.echo.cx/img15/1743/shot00699ii.jpg

http://img23.echo.cx/img23/2526/shot00687xi.jpg

[coasterfreak00]

WOW, I this is really cool.

Can someone make fountains yet or something with moving water?

[JCat]

Cool idea 2005 - I like those!!

[2005]

Anyone know how to tell rct3 to use its own colours?

This is really simple, but as it is i'd have to put every colour for d/l (eventually i mean its not gonna happen tomorrow) which is possible but not ideal.

I'm surprised klinn hasn't made something like this. Wanted to make catwalks but of course without transparency it looks odd or is too high poly count (railings)

This is upside down i know but heres the new verison i made which is slightly less off center and a bit neater. I made it to check clearance, no feet choppers lol (looks about right i think).

Pipes are octagons. I thought of hex but they look a little square.

http://img36.echo.cx/img36/3871/shot00703id.jpg

[JCat]

2005 - I don't think there's any way around the color issue. The color texture you choose for your model is what you're only going to get in RCT3. The editor does't support color changing in RCT3 like you can with the generic walls, etc..

My personal suggestion, make them all (gray or silver) which is common with supports, and would not clash with any color track.

[Guybrush_47]

Well we haven't checked out all the features in the importer. We need to start experimenting on all of the unknown features and work out what each one does.

It may still be possible.

[JCat]

Well yeah, "flag" wise, it may be..but with the current project killing our spare time, that ain't going to happen right now. ;)


That's a whole 'lotta' boxes to check on and off... :haha:

[2005]

yeah thats what i thought.

Make the common colours - white, silver maybe blue and red (from rct3 obviosuly)


heres the object (off to the right) and in use on the inverted (left)

Wait imageshack isn't working i'll post it later.

Placement is really difficult in 2 dimensions, 'll have to work on some sort of marker.


i was trying to send a .bmp thats why lol well here it is.........

http://img51.echo.cx/img51/6231/shot00714qd.jpg


EDIT: none of the flags works, at least not for large scenery. I'll try changing the object to a wall and see what happens. Has someone already tried that though?

[JCat]

Very nice!

The majority of my objects are set to wall -- has zero effect on color changing (without flag testing I mean).

[Guybrush_47]

I've done no experimenting at all. All my walls atm are set to objects.

I just want to make sure the models work, before i go about playing with all the RCT3 functions.

[2005]

most of the flags don't seem to do anything;

I know one of the flags on the 5th row controls whether the item can only be placed on paths or not, i'm just not sure which one yet, i'll find it it about 10 mins.

My guess about how the object affects ride stats would be the unknown 1-18 i don't think its flags.

I think the flags for the colours is the wrong approach.......maybe the colours are conrolled by a flag and by a certain texture type?

Although then you'd expect the game to crash if the flag was wrong............


btw i cheated i ticked every flag box to see what would happen i haven't tried everyone yet lol but i know the 5th row affects placing somewhere/how.

the placement is the first flag 5th row i think..............still no colours.

it could be in the file and just something we can't change. i nothing about the .ovl structure so can't compare the two. only jonwil would know about that probably. Lots of walls DON'T have that option anyway, its only the generic walls................

[WalkingSnake]

Originally posted by 2005
most of the flags don't seem to do anything;

I know one of the flags on the 5th row controls whether the item can only be placed on paths or not, i'm just not sure which one yet, i'll find it it about 10 mins.

The first one in the fifth row. That's been stated in here before. ;)

Keep in mind that some flags may only affect certain TYPES of scenary. Such as, one may control whether people can sit on it or not for a bench. Obviously, this flag wouldn't do anything if you set the scenary type to "Wall"

[Miss O]

Okay, about all the complaining about the program not being able to do certain things, that's rubbish. I had a wonderful opportunity to chat with Marnetmar the other night, and he gave me what I like to call a "secret of the universe," which in this case was to map different colors onto different surfaces by using the grouping and the texture editor. Okay, I even read the tutorial in MS to figure out how to use that thing, and now I'm so all set! I can't wait to spend the weekend perfecting my Asian theming and getting everything textured.

And with regards to the number of polygons and keeping things simple, don't be limited by simplicity. As I said, my largest object is HUGE and doesn't affect the fps any more than most objects as of yet. Obviously a lot of buildings on a small map ups your frame rates, but before we go about complaining about that, you have to realize that having the "middle of the road" system isn't going to get you the performance you'd ultimately want. That's the point of upgrading, and when I do it (hopefully before Soaked is released!) I will expect a lot of the game because I have a system capable and designed to run it. My object was modelled off of the Kasuga shown here: First image, Kasuga (http://www.indobel.com/content/garden/Yi%27s.htm) and I'd be lying if I said I didn't pay such close attention to the details I think mine looks exactly like the picture (I'll post an in-game later, when I have a chance).

The potential for Jonwill's program is immense, and those who can model in 3d likely will. Those who don't will either take what they can get, or learn to do the same. We see it in the evolution of any good game. I was so never good at making clothes for the Sims, I just had to resign myself to knowing that I wasn't going to affect directly what my characters wore. So let's keep up the spirit of creativity and design wonderful things for ourselves and for others.

I'll be working on texturing over the weekend, so get your texturing hints on the board, I'd rather make more stuff and spend less time doing the texture crap when I have to.

And by the way, do a Google for the Wood Workshop. I got some FANTASTIC, seamless wood textures (FREE!) from it, and I'd love to give them some play, cause their product is awesome.

Anyone who has something they have to see in the Asian set can give me a hollar. Once I've got texturing aced, I'll be churning out as many items as I can.

[Potter]

The importer currently doesn't support recolorable items (this is my understanding from the code). So the flags have nothing to do with recolorable colors.

Hopefully the importer would support recolorable values in future versions ;-)

[Potter]

The following are the list of flags as given by Jonwil in his code. Hope it helps to get things started:

Row 1 :
flag 4 - on for vertical ride bases, stalls, flats and some other stuff
flag 6 - is set to 1 for all tracks except vertical rides (i.e. elevator etc)

Row 2 :
flag 1 - set only on the column courtyard
flag 2 - set for some track pieces
flag 3 - set for some track pieces
flag 4 - set for some track pieces
flag 5 - controls whether an object can have walls on the same square as it except when its a 1/2 tile scenery item
flag 7 - set for some support pieces
flag 8 - set for some support pieces

Row 3 :
flag 1 - set for water track (i.e. jetskis etc)
flag 4 - set for helter-skelters

Row 4 :
flag 1 - might have something to do with whether a scenery object has 0 clearence or not

[2005]

Originally posted by Miss O
Okay, about all the complaining about the program not being able to do certain things, that's rubbish. I had a wonderful opportunity to chat with Marnetmar the other night, and he gave me what I like to call a "secret of the universe," which in this case was to map different colors onto different surfaces by using the grouping and the texture editor. Okay, I even read the tutorial in MS to figure out how to use that thing, and now I'm so all set! I can't wait to spend the weekend perfecting my Asian theming and getting everything textured.




would you like to share?

This keeping stuff secret thing is what holds back progress on making objects.

[Guybrush_47]

I've started doing some uvw unwrap experiments... i seem to be getting closer Klinn. I can now move the texture around the object using uvw unwrap. However, the only problem is i can't seem to work out how to make it accurate still. However, it's good news that uvw unwrap does infact work!

I'll keep experimenting.

Ok the left and right on the uvw unwrap screen is fine, it's the top and bottom that causes all the faults... i'm getting close.

YOU BEAUTY!

Ok, i've worked it out. Thank god, for some reason 3ds exports the uvw unwrap incorrectly. When you go into the uvw unwrap screen the left and right hand sides are fine, but the top and bottom are the wrong way up. Don't ask me why, but thats the reason.

This is great news, i can start texturing all my models now, and we can use effective bitmaps rather than single blocks of texture.

This picture shows what i mean:

http://img214.echo.cx/img214/6435/jurwip088vr.jpg

n.b. the coloured lines was a technique for experimenting. Easier to see how the texture was being manipulated.

The finished Product:

http://img214.echo.cx/img214/6232/jurwip092vg.jpg

(bar a small lineup error)

The bonus of this is that the whole model can be created inside 3ds. No pissing about with exporting and importing. I'll create a tutorial for people in a few hours. As this could help lots of people create things for RCT3.

[SlipperyPenguin]

Sounds Great Guybrush..

can't wait for the tutorial.

Personally I've messed with loads of 3D apps to see which one's work and which don't (I tried to avoid Max as I have no experience with it)..

However.. with you tutorial I guess I will start using MAX at last.

Slippery

[Guybrush_47]

Max imo, is the best 3d editor about. It's complicated to begin with, but as long as you experiment with the features then your fine. If i'm honest i know about 50% of the tools in 3ds, but i still manage to build some nice stuff.

I'm just fixing up the texture, and i'm going to texture one of the walls before i start the tutorial. It shouldn't take long to do.

[Klinn]

Originally posted by Guybrush_47
[BThe bonus of this is that the whole model can be created inside 3ds. No pissing about with exporting and importing. I'll create a tutorial for people in a few hours.[/B] Excellent news, Guybrush! Take your time on the tutorial, it's easy to overlook steps or options that you think of as simple or obvious, but which may not be for texturing n00bs like me. :noob:

Am I correct in summarizing your latest discoveries as:
- split vertices along hard edges, don't weld them, to avoid shading/smoothing errors.
- flip the top & bottom textures in the UV unwrap so they will export properly.

BTW, I'm in the midst of writing the 'installation & usage manual' for my custom wall set. It started as a ReadMe file and grew from there. :) Then I have to add another page to my web site and hopefully I'll be able to release the package this weekend. (Despite having a nice shiny new TabletPC arrive on my doorstep yesterday - another toy to distract me from essential modding activities! ;) )

[Guybrush_47]

Thats basically it Klinn.

I'm working my ass off to try and get some nice shots for people tonight.

[JCat]

Looks like progress Guybrush!

Klinn: Do you have more then one PC to do a test? Marnetmar and I had some slight weirdness. We both have the same theme files in our directories, but for some reason, when I save the coaster in progress utilizing the new themes on my end, then send him over the saved sandbox, it crashes his system during a load. We're thinking it may be a particular object that's not agreeing with his system. I also saved the theming alone in the scenery manager (in RCT3) and the coaster separate - and send him both files that way, and the same problem occurred. For a test, he threw a bunch of objects down and the coaster on his side, saved the sandbox, sent it back to me, and it loaded up fine. It's not his system, because I send the save to another friend of ours, and she had the same crash.


If you need a guinea pig to do a quick test run of your objects, I'd be more then happy to test them out.

[JCat]

Potter - thanks for the flag information (good starting point) Do I sense someone taking on continued development? :)

[Klinn]

Originally posted by Pumper
The only thing left to figure out is the icon backgrounds. I notice in RCT3, a drop down selection of scenery uses alternate background bands of gray and white. For aesthetic purposes, it looks like we have to make one icon with a gray background, the other white, and so on.. I wonder if the original set uses a transparent background or are those bmps as well?
The original RCT3 icons definitely use transparency. And my careful planning of alternate coloured backgrounds for the icons didn't work out. The problem is that as the user changes the filtering of the scenery, or opens & closes groups above the custom one, the new group can end up starting on either colour background.

For example, say my custom group is normally the second one in the walls list. That means the the group icon is a light grey background, if the group is opened then the first scenery item icon is on a white background, etc. But if the filtering is changed so my custom group is now at the top, then the backgrounds are reversed.

All this to say that you can't predict what colour background your icon will end up on. (Unless it's always at the top of the list!) So there's no reason to try to match the background colours - I'm just making mine all white. Half of them look perfect, the other half aren't too bad. :)

[JCat]

Klinn - Man thank you for saving me from that extra work of what would have turned out useless. By the week's end, I was going to start the gray/white process - now screw it! See my above comments on compatibly if you get a chance.

[2005]

maybe you could put the usage text file up as a template for all custom objects?

Of course, people will have it when they d/l your objects, but it'd much better if you'd just post it here so its clear you give permission for it to be used. Or each of us is going to have to write a new usage instructions file.



Also, maybe start a new thread with a list of released object names so they don't conflict with each other?

This is the nearest to jonwils idea of a scenery exchange. No disscussion in the thread, just a text reference so everyone making objects uses unique names (and also allows people to find who made which object). And maybe a website link if the author wants to add that, date of object release sdtuff liek that.
objects could just be named first person to release an object with that name gets that name (like brickwall1.coomon.ovl or whatever).

something like: (new post)

Object set decription: metal suppports
author: 2005
date : ??/??/05
.zip or .rar name : supports.zip
Files :
supports1.common.ovl
supports2.common.ovl
supports3.common.ovl

[Guybrush_47]

Well all of my Jurassic items will have JUR- for the nametag.

So don't use that folks :)

I completely agree with you though 2005. We should all work together, make sure that nothing conflicts with one another.

From my experiences in the Neverwinter Nights Community, if you all work together you reach a far better standard than those that work alone.

I'm off for tonight, need an early night.

[JCat]

I already have my initials proceeding the name "JC_object" - like so.

Plus, objects are in their own theme folder - so it's the theme folder itself we really have to be concerned with...talk about conflict. :-)

[Klinn]

That's why I named my folder within the .../Style/Themed/ folder so that it had my initials there too, e.g. "KLN-ElectroSet". All of my pieces not only have 'KLN-' in their names but also have an 'E' for the ElectroSet. Just in case I want to release another girder some day :) it won't conflict with 'KLN-EGirder01'.

The other place to sure to use your initials is in the names of the icon references and strings. Not the text itself, but the name of the string. I don't know for sure if there is a chance of bad things occurring if two different mods both happen to contain strings with the name 'CurvedWall', but why take the risk?

BTW, I always prefer using these identifiers as prefixes, not suffixes, so that one person's work will inherently be grouped together in file listings.

[2005]

i think so too, but still shouldn't there be a reference somewhere?

[marnetmar]

Thanks for the flag info Potter, that's a good start for us :up: :up:


Originally posted by 2005
would you like to share?

This keeping stuff secret thing is what holds back progress on making objects.

People aren't keeping secrets 2005, If you'd care to read back through this thread, or happen to remember my post from last week I already mentioned about using more than 1 texture per model. I even posted a pic of the box I made with different textures on all sides.

You simply have to combine several textures into 1 file, for example using 4 different 256x256 images together to make a 512x512 texture file, which could then be resized into a 256x256 file in order to make the file size smaller.
You then have to apply the texture to the model, it'll probably look like crap, no biggie though. Then you have to map the particular faces with the proper texture. It can be very time consuming & a real pain in the rear, but the results can be excellent.
I've had a little more success with this issue, I managed to get the textures lighter & didn't lose the reflective light from path lights at night, but on more complex models the textures still don't come out right for some reason.


http://modstothemax.net/mttmcommunity/files/working_now_367.jpg