31 replies to this topic

[morgoth946]

Hello all, I've been some months inactive, but some days ago I started with something interesting. I've been looking for a way to make interiors of buildings ( I don't know if someone has done it yet). Also I've been playing with geometry, areas where your units can't pass, walls and ramps. That's what I got:



As you can see, there's a worker on the wall and another one inside the building. I've made stairs inside the building to make your units able to go up the walls and it seems to work perfectly.

Anyway, the geometry codes seems to don't work very good. That was the worst problem, since my units crossed everything. Anyway, I found a way to solve it: If you put a ramp or a walkable wall on the floor your units won't be able to go through it, so I put walkable walls around the mountain but in the main gate and done.

Now, the problem that I have is the transparency. In levels like Moria, some objects fade a bit when you put the camera near them. I copied the codes of those objects but it doesn't work.

Edited by morgoth946, 02 September 2008 - 12:21 AM.

[Rob38]

Cool! I'm actually doing the same thing you are doing. For my Helm's deep map, I'm making the glittering caves part and there are mountain shell pieces that cover it up. Looks like we have the same problem with the transperacy thing. From what I understand, you have to use direct x shaders from 3ds max 7. Unforunately, Renx doesn't have this feature so unless you have 3ds max (I don't ) then you may have to get someone to help you on that part.

[Nazgûl]

Is this... kinda like Sims when you see through the walls and into the interiors?

[Shikari]

I've used the mountain shell pieces on several occasions, they work well, and you can reskin them to look however you want without affecting the transparency. Tried adding the codes from them to other objects to get the same transparency effect, which failed, so looks like they do need a shader adding like Rob said.

[morgoth946]

Yes but you don't need a directx 9 shader to do that, since you can find fading objects in bfme 1.

[Rob38]

Yes but you don't need a directx 9 shader to do that, since you can find fading objects in bfme 1.

BFME1 doesn't use direct x shaders? Well, it's got to be something with the model because the code does not give the transparency effect.

[Fingulfin]

I might be saying the obvious, but has anyone tried using WDump on the Moria Models to see what is different?

[Rob38]

I might be saying the obvious, but has anyone tried using WDump on the Moria Models to see what is different?

Yeah, I did check those things out and matched my model accordingly but it did not work.

[Shikari]

Seems somewhat mysterious... I'd love like to know the answer to this, as I have an object in my Lonely Mountain map which really needs this to look good

[morgoth946]

The bfme 2 SDK's readme says that you have to export the model as alpha test and that the alpha channel must be all white. It doesn't work anyway...

[Rob38]

The bfme 2 SDK's readme says that you have to export the model as alpha test and that the alpha channel must be all white. It doesn't work anyway...

Yeah, I saw that too and tried it out but got the same results you did.

[morgoth946]

Fortress improved:

[Shikari]

Wow, that's looking really nice, great work on the gate skin
Is this for the Four Ages mod?

[Nertea]

Looked into this as best I could, there's nothing that I understand in the ini that refers to this and nothing in the documentation. Only thing I found was the camera tick boxes in the tools rollout which may have some effect of camera bounds - however I don't think that has anything to do with it.

I'm certain it's controlled by LOD, but documentation on that is nonexistent. I will do wdump research when i get home.

[Ed Of The 3rd Kind]

This is far from a solution as such but perhaps by creating two objects, one with an alpha and the other without. The alpha object (A) would act as the base object and the texture fades as it conjoins with capping object (B) to form a solid looking object (AB), then through scripts it (B) could be made to disappear when the camera was in that region. Of course the scroll over and fade option would be alot better but in the absence of a solution that seems like a logical alternative.

That's the ini for the fading pieces in Erebor... it gives the notion that code is responsible for fading it...

AlphaCameraFadeOuterRadius = 500
	AlphaCameraFadeInnerRadius = 200
	AlphaCameraAtInnerRadius = 0%
	End

Well I tried it just now and the code works (the object disappears), I think there are in fact two objects, one object is slightly smaller than the other with an Additive setting. The code works fine when you are within a certain raidus of the object it disappears completely. However I'm guessing you want a ghosted object to remain and in that case I say that the object within an object is the best way to go... btw I used the W3D valpha checkbox when I was exporting - i didn't try any other settings but it is definitely doable.

Edited by Ed Of The 3rd Kind, 11 September 2008 - 11:30 PM.

[morgoth946]

Well I tried it just now and the code works (the object disappears), I think there are in fact two objects, one object is slightly smaller than the other with an Additive setting. The code works fine when you are within a certain raidus of the object it disappears completely. However I'm guessing you want a ghosted object to remain and in that case I say that the object within an object is the best way to go... btw I used the W3D valpha checkbox when I was exporting - i didn't try any other settings but it is definitely doable.

Thanks for your help.

Anyway, did you make it to work with world builder scripts or with the Erebor code you posted above?

[Ed Of The 3rd Kind]

the code worked for me but I can set about scripting it in worldbuilder to see if it can be done, perhaps whenever the camera enters a certain area object Y gets deleted, once camera has completely exited an area then spawn object Y at waypoint X

I'll upload a sample file in while using these settings to demonstrate. This is completely theoretical of course but I can't see a reason why it wouldn't work...

Also has anyone tried looking up to see how they coded objects to fade like when heroes mount/dismount, perhaps if they did then a trigger could be set so that the solid object fades and gets replaced by an OCL object of the mountainside with an additive texture.... Just a suggestion.



- On the matter of code, when I exported the model I used VAlpha as a setting, I'm not sure this makes any difference but I didn't try any others... In a while I'll go ahead and try it using the object within object method which to me seems like the best to get it done if you want that transparent fade to remain (i.e. the building does not disappear completely.

Edited by Ed Of The 3rd Kind, 12 September 2008 - 04:19 PM.

[Ed Of The 3rd Kind]

Ok - so the worldbuilder method, basic telportation, can also be done using delete and spawn unit scripts

attached is the map with the sample scripts... it's easy enough to do, just remember to have the waypoints at the height you wish your object to stand because after using the teleportation settings all the objects info becomes obsolete except for scale etc... I hope this is helpful, I'll run through the coded version as well later.

sample map

and here's a sample mod which makes the elven fortress disappear using the erebor code.... it seems to work... perhaps playing around with the radius might turn some better results.

fade building using code

Edited by Ed Of The 3rd Kind, 12 September 2008 - 06:46 PM.

[Rob38]

So when you use the AlphaCamera code piece, does yor object get any fading affect? For me, when I get close to the object, it will just suddenly disappear. For EA's objects, when you move close to an object, they start to fade away and eventually will disappear if your camera is right on top of it. That's what I'm looking to have.

[Ed Of The 3rd Kind]

I don't see how they did that unless its a texture thing... can it be coded so that when you are within a certain radius the texture changes or something, ya my building just disappears too.