Custom .X files disapearing in ship constructor

after adding a few modules core ship disapears

from GalCiv2 Forums
I sucessfully was able to import a new .X file hull with hardpoints (still have texture issues but I'm working on those) the ship works fine in the editor as long as you have less than 10 total components or 3 or less weapons or engines, when you exceed this number the model disapears and leaves one floating hardpoint and module on the screen, no amount of zooming will restore it, removing the module doesn't work either. However the ship shows up correctly in game if saved, albeit with only the modules previously placed (so large hulls don't work well at all since you can't fill up enough hardpoitns before the error occurs) since upgrading strips the hull currently it also makes it so you can not put more modules on the vessel.

the ship was exported with panda Xporter (latest version) from max 7

I have been having issues with textures showing up as well, I have tried .dds .png and various combinations of settings

does the base texture have to have transparency to work or is that just to have stripe colors and trim colors?

there seems to be specific naming of the materials in the .x files that are not in the max files, does this matter?

I will try exporting the example ship later and see if that works completely maybe I can debug the error from there


additional modding questions

max model size seems to be around 5km, both the clipping distance and the combat make larger impractical, any settings to override these values?

looks like the engine can handle 10K poly models pretty well, is there any lodding going on (dynamic or otherwise ) to help performance ?

what is the maximum texture dimensions 2048x2048 can non square textures be used (1024x512) ?

how are multiple objects per model supported? through material ids or seperate objects (seperate objects causes issues on ship death)

I know it's low priority, but it will hurt the modding scene if at least a temporary work around isn't found
6,707 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I am curently working on a totorials, but let me see if I con help.

I am asumeing you have downloaded the sample ship from the library. here http://library.galciv2.com/index.aspx?m=23

First about the Textures, All they have to be is PNG's they do not have to be transparent, but you will not get the custom coloring if they are not. The Light map has to be transparent or it will just look stupid. Probobly like there is no ligting at all. There is the bigest texture I have used in the game is 4080x4080 but i dont recoment it for memory and performance isuues. They do however need to be powers of 2, I recomend sticking with 512 untill you know you need bigger. You can do alot with 512 if you work it corectly.

One last thing, the Normal Map need to be jenerated properly. Nvida has a free tool for ding this out of Photoshop. Make sure it is flatened before you run the normal filter.

There is no "Limit" on polys, other then your computers memory, and video card. However that you may make a hull with 10000 polys and a Structure with 10000 polys, then someone will place 100 of them together. So once again. Just watch it it could slow down the game.

You are probobly getting the disapering parts becuse you are exporting wrong. I dont have all the settings for the exporter with me, but I will included them in the totorail.

At the moment to be safe, when making stuf for the game you are better off making sure all the objects are "Attached" That way you can set up the matiral ID's corectly. This will also be in the totorial. The ID's deturmin were the custome colorrs for the ships go. You can see this clearly if you turn textures off in the game.

As for the unit size, we just design a ship to fit in the default perspective grid. No mater what size you design it the game will force it to the size of the hull class.

Sorry I cant help more. But I hope to have a real totorial out next week some time. In the meen time you should play with the sample ship. Pay attention the the Matiral ID's and the Dummy nameing conventions.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Dubble post sorry.
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
anyway to work with 3ds instead of x file?
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
No, you need to export from Max (or whatever). I believe the DirectX SDK comes with a plugin as well as a program called TextureConv that might be able to convert them. This tool might also help.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
thanks for the quick responce, most of the engine limit questions were to test the waters, though I do have models from another mod that I did for homeworld2 that I plan on using, it looks like the disapearing ships error was fixed by only having one frame in the .X file, I had it exporting frames for each dummy object


still having issues with the textures though, I attached all of the objects and panda exports the textures, copy them over to the directory, the hull is named 'Hull' and the textures are named 'Base' and 'engen' like the demo ship, the demo ship exports textures properly



is there any specific reason for the hardpoint naming scheme? most of them are dummy, but others are e0, e1, e0 etc, is that just to aide making the prebuilt ships?