3DMAX MSH Exporter

Timbab

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Joined
Oct 6, 2010
Messages
1,057
Location
Magna Germania
Honestly, I wish I knew more about everything relating to shaders, lack of prior knowledge has been holding me back a bit and I don't have the endless time atm to drop into it.

.VSH/.PSH are pretty straight forward, they can both be newly written and in the case of the pixel shaders, compiled correctly.

What do you want to do with the fog? Kay and I slaved away at view distance fog for a week, I'm pretty certain it's handled internally by the dpvs.dll/exe, because it's linked to the view distance calculations. What you can modify is, is the range and the density (sort of). Visually I haven't been able to touch it, Kay did once, two screenshots exist, but she forgot how she did it *shake fist*, haven't been able to recreate it lol.

I only know the obvious about about eft files, that they're linkers for the .sht to the vsh/psh (some .sht even skip the .eft file), but there might be more to it, it would be awesome if you'd discover more. I know it's possible to do multi pass shading for example, just gotta figure the right node structure, but I haven't done anything with shaders in a few weeks.

Good to hear that you're looking into MGN! :D
 

wefi

Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2011
Messages
47
not sure if it's the same pre-cu but you can play with the Interior Datatables to enable fog.

Yea it's the same. Datatables/Interior/interior.iff
it's all based on %, so this picture is
Density .5
Red 1.00 (255)
Green 0
Blue 0
 

Kayliaah

Relic
Joined
Aug 30, 2010
Messages
322
Just throwing that out there but rosuto, you need the title "BAMF" imo.
Gonna have to try the new version of 3ds Max, been toying with Blender for so long I forget that there are other (better) programs for this.

And that fog gave me nightmares, and I hate it now with all my heart.



We have taken our first step into a larger world. :)
 

Timbab

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Joined
Oct 6, 2010
Messages
1,057
Location
Magna Germania
@Wefi,

Ah yea, interior fog, I was talking about the fog outside (View distance) really, wasn't sure which he meant.
 

rosuto

New Member
Joined
Aug 1, 2011
Messages
69



I ment both. Inside fog is in the interior datatables. Outside fog is in the environment datatables. I think I also found the fog.inc, fog_setup.inc, and lighting_fog_setup.inc you were talking about. But I really have no clue about HLSL, so the datatables were easy to mess with.

BAMF :D LMAO. Nothing wrong with blender, I just have zero clue on how to use it. 3D Max only has a slight edge because I know how to create cubes and turn them into meshes.

So im about to call it quits on the object attachments because I cant figure out what makes a chair something you can sit on, but not a chest, or an end table. The same thing goes for all player to object interactions. When you click on a camp, why do you get the option to disband it? How in the world do you put clothes on? Shoot, something soo simple and I cant figure it out, lol..... maybe these are all server side and thats why Im stuck.
 

wefi

Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2011
Messages
47
I know the Camera for Ships is on the origin XYZ( 0 0 0). So exmaple the pod racer vid of mine
The glowing ORB is the ship's Cam Location, set at 0 0 0. I messed with it on an blender by moving the model where i wanted it at.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ar-1U2rEeM

I notice each sittable item has "HPTSHPNT" node in their MSH data if opened with TreExporeler, it will have some HEX lines, and the word FOOT. which i imagine is the Bone of the .MGN file is interacting with it.

so maybe thats a start?
Weapons would have to have these attachment points in order to display their effects, but i think Uli might know more about that then i?
 

Timbab

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Joined
Oct 6, 2010
Messages
1,057
Location
Magna Germania
rosuto said:
I ment both. Inside fog is in the interior datatables. Outside fog is in the environment datatables. I think I also found the fog.inc, fog_setup.inc, and lighting_fog_setup.inc you were talking about. But I really have no clue about HLSL, so the datatables were easy to mess with.
I could never achieve anything with the fog module files.

There is only 2 locations where you can modify outside fog as far as I know. In the vertex_program functions.inc, the calculateFog formula, and in the datatable planet.iff, like tatooine.iff, you can set the distance.
 

rosuto

New Member
Joined
Aug 1, 2011
Messages
69
So the HPNT tells the model where to attach external objects to it. Usually an effect, but also other objects like players.

xx xz xy xt
zx zz zy zt
yx yz yy yt
whats connected

So it goes something like that, z and y seem to be reversed. XX, YY, ZZ are usually 1, and I believe scale the other numbers. The Ts are the point at which the model is connected to, usually distance from the origin (0,0). And the others deal with rotation/skew.

Now the connection points seem to be object specific. Changing foot to player (used for vehicles) invalidates the ability to connect with that object. Adding an HPNT code to an object that did not have one does nothing. So there has to be another file that gives the object the action that deals with the attaching. Ive gone through all the animations files and the other files connected to it (lat, ash), but they only seem to involve the animation and nothing more. Datatables and object files also seem to be a dead end. UI files have reference numbers for each action, but I can't seem to find what calls that UI action number.
 

Aigik

New Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2010
Messages
27
Well I've noticed something strange with the lighting on models. Here's an example:



This is using c_simple. It fixes the weird lighting on the model, but the model's lighting is static- that is, it doesn't respond to lighting from the environment, such as the ticket terminals and such in that screenshot. Structures have this problem as well, especially noticable at night. For example, during the night time, the structure will still look the same as it does during the day.
[hr]
I'm starting to wonder... is the reason c_simple "fixes" the lighting glitch not because the lighting is fixed, but because the model has no lighting at all?
 

Aigik

New Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2010
Messages
27
I have another UI request... in the first screen where you choose the shader names, is it possible we could have a "master" check mark at the top that unchecks/checks all of the check marks? This would be useful for large interior/exterior models that have many shader files, they all start checked by default, but when I'm making changes that don't involve the shaders, it would be easier to uncheck all of the shaders with one click than to do them one at a time.
 

rosuto

New Member
Joined
Aug 1, 2011
Messages
69
The C coded effects seem to be a mix of lighting and false shadow creation. I believe SOE knew that there was a major issue, hence why they used it for nearly all major objects in game. I believe the lighting engine didnt get updated until NGE. Now if there was a way to take the ground shadows and put them on objects, that would be amazing, and something to look into. I believe the walls and ground in the above picture also use C coded effects, so I might suggest dropping the vertex paint color a few shades. If its too bright, then lighting doesn't really effect it at all. You can also create false shadows by adjusting which areas get what colors, though I wasn't really good at it.

As for the UI request, its already coded and tested for the next version. I'm just working through adding about 100 more effects to it. That will give just about every known effect put in at publish 14.
 

wefi

Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2011
Messages
47
the lighting was updated in patch 23 or 26 one of those too. i think 23 was the NGE, and 26 was the Model upgrade along with the "Improved" lightning for planets.
 

rosuto

New Member
Joined
Aug 1, 2011
Messages
69
Ok, so atleast Im not all that insane when I see those screenshots that Timbab posts and dont remember seeing anything like that in game. Sorry I couldn't get version 1.45 up today, Im running a little behind because I keep trying to figure out the skt file. I've got part of it working, but havent figured out how the rotations translate into 3ds max.



AT-ST doesn't have any modified rotations, so thats why it looks pretty good. If anyone knows something about pre and post bone rotation, Im all eyes.
 

Aigik

New Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2010
Messages
27
wefi said:
the lighting was updated in patch 23 or 26 one of those too. i think 23 was the NGE, and 26 was the Model upgrade along with the "Improved" lightning for planets.
Does anyone know if these changes are possible to port over to the Emu as a clientside mod? I don't know much about that stuff, just curious. The NGE's visual upgrades would be nice.
 

Timbab

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Joined
Oct 6, 2010
Messages
1,057
Location
Magna Germania
Kay and I were working on the NGE lighting it for a while, dot3 and spec lighting gave us issues, otherwise it was protable, I didn't look into it too deep, so I couldn't say anything more than that. There might be some heavier editing in the dll or the .exe though, at least have the exe use the newer dlls for it.

@rosuto, which screenshots do you mean?
 

DavinFelth

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Joined
Aug 29, 2010
Messages
165
rosuto said:
...Im running a little behind because I keep trying to figure out the skt file. I've got part of it working, but havent figured out how the rotations translate into 3ds max.



AT-ST doesn't have any modified rotations, so thats why it looks pretty good. If anyone knows something about pre and post bone rotation, Im all eyes.
Skeletons, awesome :D Any ambitions to figure out animation files too? :D
 

wefi

Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2011
Messages
47
Sytner had some animations viewer.
http://s38.photobucket.com/albums/e122/Sytner/Updates/?action=view&current=swb_animation_finished.mp4
 

Timbab

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Joined
Oct 6, 2010
Messages
1,057
Location
Magna Germania
wefi said:
Sytner had some animations viewer.
http://s38.photobucket.com/albums/e122/Sytner/Updates/?action=view&current=swb_animation_finished.mp4
Sytner has like everything already. :p
 

DavinFelth

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Joined
Aug 29, 2010
Messages
165
Timbab said:
wefi said:
Sytner had some animations viewer.
http://s38.photobucket.com/albums/e122/Sytner/Updates/?action=view&current=swb_animation_finished.mp4
Sytner has like everything already. :p
With the emphasis being on Sytner has :D
 

Timbab

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Joined
Oct 6, 2010
Messages
1,057
Location
Magna Germania
DavinFelth said:
Timbab said:
wefi said:
Sytner had some animations viewer.
http://s38.photobucket.com/albums/e122/Sytner/Updates/?action=view&current=swb_animation_finished.mp4
Sytner has like everything already. :p
With the emphasis being on Sytner has :D
Yes, indeed, haha. :D

/depressed

... :(
 
Top Bottom