2252 replies to this topic

[Sparks Murphey]

Aiden Whitefield, on 27 October 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

Well, now, the only problem I'm having with applying the textures is with the cockpit window textures. I extract the mech_scale.cgf model from the game files, convert it to an .obj file using Noesis (remembering to add the "-flipuv" command) and import that into Blender. The UV flip does what it's supposed to for the 'Mech's body textures, but the cockpit window textures come out wrong: they're out of place or upside-down, I can't quite tell which. I've tried flipping the textures around in Photoshop and re-applying them, but that doesn't solve the problem. It seems like the 'Mech body needs its UVs flipped, but the cockpit window doesn't, and in Noesis, there's no way to convert the two separately with different parameters.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like when I try to apply the textures to the cockpit window.

Are you using the preassembled scale.cgf file? The cockpit windows on that one are no longer used - the new separate cockpit file has windows with the correct UVs.

[Heffay]

Updated version of Mech Importer (v1.1).

https://dl.dropboxus...ch-importer.ps1

Args: <mech>.cdf file, found in the objects\mech\<mech type> directory. Mandatory arg.

Input is the directory to the <mech>\body directory. Output is to the session and output.txt, which you can copy and paste into the Blender python console.

Future versions:
- Copy the texture files to a specified location
- Assign the texture files properly to each of the objects during the import
- Additional (i.e. more than none) error checking

Let me know if you run into bugs. And you will. This is just quick and dirty. It assumes you've run the mech files through Noesis into .obj files. And it assumes a lot of the format of the .cdf file, so if it's off at all, you're going to have a bad day.

[Aiden Whitefield]

Sparks Murphey, on 27 October 2013 - 01:40 PM, said:

Are you using the preassembled scale.cgf file? The cockpit windows on that one are no longer used - the new separate cockpit file has windows with the correct UVs.

That would be my problem, then. What's the name of the separate cockpit file with the right UVs? Is it in the cockpit_standard folder of each 'Mech?

[Sparks Murphey]

Aiden Whitefield, on 27 October 2013 - 10:37 PM, said:

That would be my problem, then. What's the name of the separate cockpit file with the right UVs? Is it in the cockpit_standard folder of each 'Mech?

It's in the body folder. The trick is that it'll have a .cga extension instead of a .cgf, so it won't show up by default to Noesis; if you rename the file to a .cgf, it'll work fine. The file for the Cicada is cda_head_cockpit.cga, the variant weapons that attach to the head are cda_head_cockpit_[variant_name_weapon].cga. The variant weapons use the cicada_variant textures.

[Aiden Whitefield]

Sparks Murphey, on 28 October 2013 - 01:21 AM, said:

It's in the body folder. The trick is that it'll have a .cga extension instead of a .cgf, so it won't show up by default to Noesis; if you rename the file to a .cgf, it'll work fine. The file for the Cicada is cda_head_cockpit.cga, the variant weapons that attach to the head are cda_head_cockpit_[variant_name_weapon].cga. The variant weapons use the cicada_variant textures.

Thanks for the info, but now I've run into a little problem where I can't change the file name extensions simply by renaming them to include a different extension. None of the files have their extension type in their names, so I can't use that to change the file type. I was able to do it once before, but now I can't.

[Sparks Murphey]

Aiden Whitefield, on 28 October 2013 - 07:50 PM, said:

Thanks for the info, but now I've run into a little problem where I can't change the file name extensions simply by renaming them to include a different extension. None of the files have their extension type in their names, so I can't use that to change the file type. I was able to do it once before, but now I can't.

Sounds like the file extensions are being hidden. Open a Windows Explorer window, click the "Tools" menu, then "Folder Options...". You should get a dialog box like this:

Untick "Hide extension for known file types" and they should become visible again. This is for Windows 7, though previous versions behaved very similar. Not sure about Windows 8, though.

It's also worth noting that if the extensions remain hidden, or the option reticks itself later, you almost certainly have a virus, as it's a common way for them to hide their movements.

[Aiden Whitefield]

Sparks Murphey, on 28 October 2013 - 08:25 PM, said:

Sounds like the file extensions are being hidden. [...] Untick "Hide extension for known file types" and they should become visible again. This is for Windows 7, though previous versions behaved very similar. Not sure about Windows 8, though.

That solved it. I forgot that I'd assigned Noesis to be the default .cga handling program, which made them 'known' and thus hid their extension.

On a related note, anyone have any idea why extracting the MWO assets into the CE3 SDK directory would slow the loading times for the SDK way, way down? It practically freezes up when I start it up now, it takes so long.

[Sparks Murphey]

That, I can't help you with.

[Alik Kerensky]

Excellent

[Rina Fujimoto]

Adridos, on 23 October 2013 - 07:04 AM, said:

Yes, CryEngine X runs in DX11 natively.

And as far as level design is concerned, yes, it should really look more like that instead of what we have in-game. Their official explanation is that, for some reason, they are 'scared' of high draw call count (i.e. put too many objects on screen and it's not going to be pretty on the HW). Why is that? I have no idea... I mean, seriously, they have problems running DX11 due to glitches and bugs, they run sub-par textures, their code doesn't handle many objects very well, yet these are all features that are achieved by a push of a button in even the public version of CryEngine.

Whatever's happening, it's not really helping them. The only thin CryEngine has going for it are those visuals and they are missing. Outside of them, you have engine that doesn't work with complex simulations over the net, can't handle high speeds, doesn't get a decent net-code, is heavily taxing on any sort of machine, etc.

The CryEngine is perfectly capable of all those things, it's a great engine.

The issue is that PGI is using a severely outdated version of the engine (I have no idea why), which is why we haven't gotten DX11 and why they're afraid to add any meaningful features. They did mention that they were finally going to update the engine soon (which will lead to DX11 since the version MWO is built on now doesn't support it), but imho the whole thing is a disaster, since the game is built on the older version of the engine and already has a bunch of issues I can't even imagine the amount of issues that will pop up with a newer version of the cryengine.

And we only go backwards in terms of graphics because remember, MWO is a f2p game, they want the f2p audience, and most f2p players don't have good computers, hence why they probably play f2p games in the first place, this is also where a lot of issues stem from because the CryEngine isn't meant to be dumbed down so horribly as PGI has done, hell, if you go to the official Crytek website you'll see that they don't even list MWO on their big list of games that use CryEngine, why? Because they sure as hell don't want to showcase MWO as a representative of the engine.

But anyway, enough of my ranting, I just wanted to ask you guys, how are you importing MWO assets into the CrySDK? I tried it myself but the official CryBlend add on absolutely refuses to work, it just gives me an error telling me that some of the add on files have similar names to existing ones or something, and even after deleting everything it still refuses to work at all.

I have the entire Maya suite too but I can't really be bothered to figure out how to use it to export into CrySDK, I just want to export mechs in static poses for sweet sweet DX11 city scenes.

[Adridos]

haruko, on 29 October 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

But anyway, enough of my ranting, I just wanted to ask you guys, how are you importing MWO assets into the CrySDK? I tried it myself but the official CryBlend add on absolutely refuses to work, it just gives me an error telling me that some of the add on files have similar names to existing ones or something, and even after deleting everything it still refuses to work at all.

Just like any original assets I'd import in it.

I went to Game folder inside the CryEngine root folder, created an "Objects" folder and extracted all the stuff from MW:O's Objects.PAK inside of it. Then all you have to do is run the CE SDK and you'll have the assets available under "Brush" and "Geom Entity".

As far as importing of original content goes, you're much better off using either Maya or 3DsMax than Blender, which (unlike in UE 3) doesn't have any sort of official support.

Edited by Adridos, 29 October 2013 - 01:12 PM.

[Rina Fujimoto]

Ok so my entire set is ****** and I have no idea what's wrong.

It's fine in everything except render more where every single texture (and there's a LOT) appears purple, reassigning the textures doesn't do anything either. I am so mad right now, I've been working on this for the past week, it refuses to even save the image output from the render for some reason so I had to take a crappy screenshot.

Any clue what could be wrong?

[Gnatter]

Could it be the alpha settings?

[Heffay]

Pink is a sign that the render engine can't find the image texture files.

My guess is you have some sort of relative or absolute path snafu. Are you sure it's not saving the image file, or that you just can't find it? You choosing "save as" when you save? Be sure things are going (and searching for) where you want them to. I'm not sure if the render tab has an option for selecting relative or absolute paths without being in front of my computer.

Can you pack everything into a .blend file and upload it to dropbox? I may be able to take a look at this tonight.

[Rina Fujimoto]

Heffay, on 30 October 2013 - 08:54 AM, said:

Pink is a sign that the render engine can't find the image texture files.

My guess is you have some sort of relative or absolute path snafu. Are you sure it's not saving the image file, or that you just can't find it? You choosing "save as" when you save? Be sure things are going (and searching for) where you want them to. I'm not sure if the render tab has an option for selecting relative or absolute paths without being in front of my computer.

Can you pack everything into a .blend file and upload it to dropbox? I may be able to take a look at this tonight.

That's the thing, I've had that error before so I know what it's about but re-assigning textures doesn't fix it, nor does messing with absolute or relative paths, I have no clue what caused this, one second it was fine and then suddenly BAM pink textures in render.

I'll mess around with it and upload it later when I get home.

[Bhael Fire]

kuangmk11, on 22 October 2013 - 03:25 PM, said:

Decided to install the SDK and do some messing around today (bye bye day). Thanks for all the tips in this thread!

Why can't PGI's levels look as good as the demo level?

Its fun running around at human size with all the mechs around. MWO doesn't give you a good idea of how big the mechs really are. I even added in some of the ai guys so I would have something to shoot at. Unfortunately the way I added the mechs in there are no collisions for some reason so the ai shot me through the mechs.... cheaters.

full album here

and a video (first 2/3 came out pretty dark, I turned the sun on at the end:

That's awesome. REALLY wished the lighting could be this good in MWO's levels.

[Rina Fujimoto]

Nevermind, looks like I fixed my issues by packing in the files.

[Rina Fujimoto]

Ok so how the heck do I get camo patterns to work? Someone in my corp managed to do it using nodes and I really have no clue what to do with the RGB texture, I tried the mask thing in gimp but it doesn't work for me (the mask process in gimp I mean), I'm gonna need more than just black mechs in the scenes I want to pump out.

[Sparks Murphey]

The RGB texture encodes the camos as opacities for three channels of colours. Rendering it as RGB is purely for convenience. While I can't give you a direct guide on how to set up the nodes for Blender, I can guide you in the right direction. You want to be loading the texture, then generating a greyscale based off the red channel, and using that greyscale as an opacity value to composite a chosen colour (such as one picked in the camo spec room of MWO) on top of the diffuse map. Repeat this twice more for the blue and green channels with other colours, then plug the result of that into the diffuse input of your material.

How to do that exactly in Blender, I can't say, but that's the algorithm you want to be following.

[Level1Firebolt]

Tekadept, on 17 October 2013 - 03:25 AM, said:

I did a quick vid of part of me importing the shadowhawk files in, at the end I do the skeleton hopefully that helps you.


I havent got the animations in directly, but in cryengine SDK i export the animations to HTR file, then i do a script to do the animation in blender manually. it works pretty decent, I cant find a way to import the HTR file directly into blender though.

Could you expand on that Excel part? I've gotten the position/rotational data out into a text file like you do in the video. Could you link the contents of what's in each cell (I'm assuming Blender operators, but I have no clue on how to use them correctly).

From what I understand, Heffay's quick code also eliminates the misc stuff included in the .cdf file. But what to do once I get those coordinates?

Thanks!

Edited by THATONE, 02 November 2013 - 04:12 PM.