ARrrrrrgh! Solar object... not showing up... GRRR

Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:16 am by Argh

OK, I am just about totally frustrated here. All I'm trying to do is get a simple cube into the game, with a texture, as a SOLAR object. That's all. Just a simple... !*@*!@!! cube.

Nothing I do seems to work. I make the cube, make sure that it's where I want it, import it into MS3D... put a TGA texture on it... export the cube as a CMP file, the TGA is included in the MAT file... it has a unique name... and then I look at it in HardCMP, and it looks FINE... then I put it in the game, and it doesn't SHOW UP. It's not like it's invisible, and then I can run into it. It's just NOT THERE.

!@**!*!!!! what am I doing wrong here, folks? Please, please, please... somebody help me with this- fix this confounded thing before I go crazy. I am at my wits' end here. A download link containing all of the files is below... please... somebody, for the love of GOD.... help me out. I am so utterly frustrated with having to get past all of these problems just to get my first alpha built...

This contains all of the entries I've made, including the CMP and MAT, an entry in SOLARARCH.INI, and an entry for the object's position in LI01.

Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:15 am by Wasabe

Try exporting the cmp AND the mat file with new material names and new group names. "White" sounds like it could be already be used by another cmp or mat file (which would mess things up in-game). Make it unique like "mycubetexture" for the material, and "mycube" for the group. If you have multiple groups, you only need to change the name of group 1 in Milkshape. Export a new cmp and a new mat file and then try it out in game.

Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:49 am by Argh

I'll try that

I'm also re-reading Kasdian's texture guide... hopefully I can get this silly thing to quit mis-behaving. It's terribly frustrating when I'm good at modeling and skinning, but can't get the game to display things because of its weird format needs

Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:00 pm by pSYCHO

try using the mat exporter for ms3d

Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:09 pm by Argh

OMG omg OMG...

I got it to work, kind of!!! I FINALLY GOT SOMETHING TO RENDER IN THE FL ENGINE!!! WOOT!

Uh, but now I have a different problem...

If I'm not looking at the center of the object, it won't render. Yes, I know that's mentioned somewhere around here... I'll go look now.

Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:12 pm by Wasabe

Yeah, use flradius and that will help a lot. Also give it a sur file and the combination of the two (sur file and flradius fix) will make it perfect. =)

If you are looking for a good sur file for a cube, try the prison, it is almost cube shaped. You can probably resize it with the sur file resizer, though I've never done it on anything but ships before so I'm not sure it works on objects also.

Tue Nov 02, 2004 1:54 pm by Argh

Hmm. Tried FLRadius and the FL Model Tool. No dice. Two things are happening here:

1. It quits drawing the object when I fly more than 5000 units away. The LODs are set at 0, 15000, 1000000, so this shouldn't be happening... at least, that's what I thought. I noticed that PLANETs do not have LODs... is that the only way to make things more than 5K away show up in the game engine, or am I missing something simple here?

2. FLRadius and FL Model tool set the Bounding Box properties... just fine. But it's still not drawing if the center is off the screen! As this thing is BIG (and I'd like to make it even bigger, if the engine will cooperate), this is a problem. For those of you who are going, "yeah, sure it's big"... here's a screenie:

Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:29 pm by Argh

Hmm. Now it'll draw all the way to 11K, but no further. 11K is just about the size of the thing from edge to edge. There must be a lesson here, somewhere...

Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:09 am by LordFjord

wow, that looks fancy

so far i only experianced problems with LODs on ships, not solars.
some stations and the stationary battleships are visible up to 20k or even more.
but for example pilotable battleships become invisible at 5.something k range, regardless of LOD settings.
dont have a real solution for ur object cause its already a solar.. hmm
just wanted to mention a problem that "could" be connected to it.

Fjord

---------------------------------
Infinity TC Mod Leading Developer

Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:53 am by Wasabe

Your OCEAN only has 1 LOD in it's mat file, but you have 2 LOD's defined in the solararch. Chang it to like LODranges = 0, 50000 or whatever you want the minimum distance to be. This means that the object will be visible when you get to within 50K of it, assuming the object is actually big enough to be rendered (it looks like it's gigantic so it should be ok).

Sun Nov 07, 2004 12:16 am by Argh

I eventually fixed this problem, in part by messing with the SUR file I was using and the FLModel Tool, whose developer has been kind enough to help me out with a few of the issues.

The next Alpha release will show how I've implemented an "ocean" that's 200,000 units in every direction... and aside from some pop-under (which is not the object's fault, really- the FL engine draws Planets and Objects in a different order), it works beautifully.

In the final mod, I won't have any planets, so even that issue should go away :-)

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