Engine Questions

[niektb]

When I try to import it in Blender it gives the following errors:

Seems like lambert3 is the faulty one.

Edited February 26, 2015 by niektb

[The Undying Nephalim]

Apparently this validation error is produced by the multiple "polygons" elements inside "mesh":

dae_polygons.png

Ah those are Maya shaders that the model wasn't using, thank you for pointing that out.

Well I deleted those and exported... and the model now shows up in the Map Editor! Only problem is no texture is showing up. There's no error message:

At least I'm one step closer.

[fcxSanya]

Also have a look here http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/ExportingErrors

Nice page I just linked it at the end of Basic3DImplementation

[fcxSanya]

Only problem is no texture is showing up

Did you perform the actions described in "Actor file setup" and "Texture creation" sections of Basic3DImplementation?

[The Undying Nephalim]

I'm starting to think that the model's UV's were somehow lost when I exported it. I tried assigning it one of textures from the game already (a blue flag) and the entire model appears blank blue now. I'll mess around awhile and come back if I can't fix it I guess.

[wraitii]

That sounds like mostly a GUI change, though building without workers would require some script modding (if you do require workers, it's easier, just need to search for some to assign the task). Nothing special needed from the engine though, AFAIK.

It's not even a GUI change, you can already plop buildings form other buildings simply if you add those to the templates. And iirc it's extremely easy to have them self-construct but I can't recall how I did it last time.

Anyway the idea sounds pretty cool so I say go ahead

Exporting 3D models can be slightly tricky, yes. And that does look like you lost the UVs.

By the way, the engine:

-only handles triangles and single-faced polygons (so you have to do double-faced ones yourself)

-only handles "smooth" rendering: to have sharp angles, you need to split polygons (effectively doubling the vertices)

-can handle up to 4 textures (I think it's 4 though that can be modded to be higher, perhaps you'd have to change C++) for whatever you might need - shaders currently use "diffuse, specular, normal, AO" but it could be something else entirely.

-can handle basically any number of polygons per unit that you would require. The biggest slowdown right now is that we don't instance so it's rendering several small units that is really costly.

-cannot handle fancy transparency effect such as distortion through glass or stuffs like that.

-has only one water plane.

[The Undying Nephalim]

It seems like no matter what program I export with (Blender, Maya, 3DS) the UV maps are lost when I load the model in the map editor. Does anyone know of a working dae exporter plugin? Preferably for Maya. I've attached my model just in case the problem isn't the exporter and I'm just doing something else wrong:

vra_owltest2.zip

Edited February 26, 2015 by The Undying Nephalim

[Stan`]

It seems like no matter what program I export with (Blender, Maya, 3DS) the UV maps are lost when I load the model in the map editor. Does anyone know of a working dae exporter plugin? Preferably for Maya. I've attached my model just in case the problem isn't the exporter and I'm just doing something else wrong:

UVs are fine on that model, be warned though, you have duplicated one time too much the rear engine...

Could you provide your XMLs file ? Here if you don't care by PM if you want to keep them private.

Some suggestions on the model.

As wraiti said you should really split polygons

If you need anything tell me

[The Undying Nephalim]

I'll post it here, it's just a crate using my model:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?><actor version="1">  <castshadow/>  <group>    <variant frequency="100" name="Base">      <mesh>props/vra_owltest1.dae</mesh>      <textures><texture file="props/vra_owl1.png" name="baseTex"/></textures>    </variant>  </group></actor>

[niektb]

I see you miss a material tag (which defines if you use normal map, spec map, AO or player color)

Edit: that actually shouldn't make a difference as they would fallback to a default material.

Edited February 27, 2015 by niektb

[Stan`]

Okay, I figured out what's wrong with your model, you overlayed a certain number of times the same parts, so some are textured some aren't. If you look at the uv of some parts you'll see it's only a dot.

So, either you merged all the items and they didn't have the same uv channel (they need to) either you textured only half of the model.

[The Undying Nephalim]

I got it to work:

I guess other engines I've used allowed me to be more sloppy with my models.

Hopefully importing animations will not be too bad.

[Stan`]

I got it to work:

I guess other engines I've used allowed me to be more sloppy with my models.

Hopefully importing animations will not be too bad.

It will be complicated, but don't worry I'm here to help

[The Undying Nephalim]

It will be complicated, but don't worry I'm here to help

Might there be a tutorial on how to get an animation into the engine? I just want to try to import a simple rotating cube to see how it works.

[fcxSanya]

Might there be a tutorial on how to get an animation into the engine? I just want to try to import a simple rotating cube to see how it works.

Did you look at the tutorial I linked before:

<...>

* AnimationExportTutorial

?

[The Undying Nephalim]

Well, the first official model is ready, the Zevestivan Command Church. Here's the high poly model in Maya:

And a screenshot in Atlas:

Just two quick questions
1) Is eclipse used to edit .json files? I attempted to make my own faction using Notepad++, though I get syntax errors when I go to the matches screen. I'm guessing Notepad can't save json files in the right format?
2) Is there a way to import the 0AD models in game into Blender or Maya? They are in the PMD format and I cant seem to find anything that allows me to import them. The reason being is that I'm going in completely blind as far as scale goes, I'd not mind having some Civic Centers as a scale reference for my models on.

Did you look at the tutorial I linked before:
?

Thank you, I'll try that link out tonight if I have some time.

[FeXoR]

The .json files are just text files. Notepad++ works perfectly for me. Maybe you just used a wrong syntax?

Not sure if which text encoding 0 A.D. supports. I'm using ANSI and that works fine (just to mention another potentially reason things break I could think of).

Edited March 2, 2015 by FeXoR

[historic_bruno]

Just two quick questions

1) Is eclipse used to edit .json files? I attempted to make my own faction using Notepad++, though I get syntax errors when I go to the matches screen. I'm guessing Notepad can't save json files in the right format?

Definitely don't use Notepad, it's probably the worst text editor you could choose. I recommend Notepad++ on Windows. I don't think that would cause errors though, please copy/paste the errors from the logs if it continues to be a problem.

2) Is there a way to import the 0AD models in game into Blender or Maya? They are in the PMD format and I cant seem to find anything that allows me to import them. The reason being is that I'm going in completely blind as far as scale goes, I'd not mind having some Civic Centers as a scale reference for my models on.

PMDs are lossy binary formats used only by the engine because they are smaller and quicker to load, but almost all of them correspond to Collada files. For releases, we only package the converted PMD/PSAs, but you can find the originals in SVN. It's recommended to have an SVN checkout if you plan to be modding, so you always have the latest changes. We also have a public art source repository with some Blender source files, but not everything is there yet.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

Is eclipse used to edit .json files?

I would think that a proper IDE (like Eclipse, Netbeans, Visual Studio, etc.) would be easier than Notepad++ because of special features like autocomplete, format, etc. Notepad++ should work fine though and is simple. (Regular Notepad should also work; I think "save" will work with .json, but "save as" might not offer .json. You might have to save as a .txt and rename afterwards.)

One thing you might potentially have to watch out for is text file line ending differences on Wndows and Linux. (I think I had that issue when I used regular notepad for 0AD in the past. That was years ago though.) http://superuser.com/questions/374028/how-are-n-and-r-handled-differently-on-linux-and-windows

[The Undying Nephalim]

I managed to finish some more buildings with working decals, check them out:

you can find the originals in SVN.

Thank you, that helped a lot.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I managed to finish some more buildings with working decals, check them out:

Thank you, that helped a lot.

can be nice share a repository with Coincil of Modders, we use git hub for our mods and all help each other to get support for 0AD mods, I was serve as artist in Millennium, Rise of East and Aristeia, and will contribute in Ponies

Ascendants, and Delendaset Est in the future, I dream with a SC2/Sci fi type of game for 0 AD. I wanna test your mod.

[Stan`]

lion I guess you'll have to buy it before that

[Lion.Kanzen]

lion I guess you'll have to buy it before that

buy what? :/

[feneur]

buy what? :/

His game/mod, he's hoping to make something he can sell

[Lion.Kanzen]

His game/mod, he's hoping to make something he can sell

but we can be beta Testers? Hahaha, if he do something like SC2 I will buy it.( I was buy SC2 the last year)