SS2 list of broken and lowpoly objects that need fixing

[674089abc3359voodoo47]

the fan looks nice, but it needs to be a bit further away from the shutter, as right now, it collides with it slightly when rotating. also, the texturing of the fan is slightly odd (an uniform gray would be better), but I'm guessing fixing that would mean remaking the model from a scratch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI24xCXgYVQ


shield looking good (to go).

[674089abc36faOlfred]

This ones better?

And almost forgot it.
I added a MONITOF7.png to the conduit pack since there is also some strange invisibility on some pixels on that texture.
Usually it is not included in the model but I used it this time but I can't imagine for it to make sense for its original use.

[674089abc3836voodoo47]

the latest fan is just about right. good stuff.

[674089abc39abZylonBane]

Hey voodoo, you're not running the current command1, eh?

(upgraded shield looks great though; no more silly facets!)

[674089abc3a96voodoo47]

nope. let me fix that.

//proper shield collision boxes (among other things), nice.

[674089abc3b88ZylonBane]

Checked out the vent fan in-game. There's something messed up with the third vent slat from the top-- it's almost always lit lighter or darker than the other slats.

[674089abc3c85Olfred]

Seems to be the same issue I already had with the hackcrate. But haven't found a way to fix it back then. This really is a bugger
Maybe nemyax can help out on this one as well(?)

[674089abc3d8eZylonBane]

Just as an experiment, could you generate a model with the fan blade moved way back, and one with the blade entirely deleted?

Also, what's your toolchain from modeling program to final bin?

EDIT: Geeze, I just tried running ventfan.bin through BINTOE and it generated a file with over 30 thousand polygons. Something wrong there.

[674089abc3efenemyax]

Olfred
I don't know the cause, but I'd try to work around this by giving the slats a prism-like topology instead of them being flat faces. See what I did in the attached files.

[674089abc44eaOlfred]

Couldn't figure out a way to make it work with the ventfan model, even when I modified the broken part.
So finally I just deleted it and copy pasted another one there. Now there should be a bug free one.
I included the broken (ventfan.blend) and the working one (ventfan_test2.blend) inside the ventfan.zip along with a (hopefully) working model.
What I could imagine is that some vertices don't get proper shading/lighting because of something screwy inside the bin and this kind of spreads to the whole face.

nemyax, your workaround didn't worked properly either

Just as an experiment, could you generate a model with the fan blade moved way back, and one with the blade entirely deleted?

Was this for personal use or connected with the problem?
Anyway I made both versions for you out of the working model inside ventfan_zy.bin

Also, what's your toolchain from modeling program to final bin?

For modeling I use Blender.
On most models I used to export it to 3ds, then used the 3ds to bin tool which is pretty much just a frontend which uses N3ds2e.exe followed by BSP.exe.
Sometimes I edited the .E file or did all the commands through the console. But mostly used these tools.
Except for meshes, there I use MeshBld.exe, but still through 3ds export.

On problematic models like the crack issue with the fusion cannon or when jointed models are needed I used the exporter by nemyax.
Although creating jointed models isn't that hard to set up BSP.exe tends to be a bitch even when you did everything right.
With the script from nemyax it's fairly easy and it's not bitching around, only bugging

[674089abc48a2ZylonBane]

Was this for personal use or connected with the problem?

Something for personal use wouldn't be requested "as an experiment". I'm trying to determine if the presence or proximity of the submodel is causing the lighting anomaly.

I'm also beginning to suspect Blender. I've been messing around with models in SS2 for a long time, and I've never seen these lighting issues before. Perhaps it's something to do with how it does Gouraud shading.

[674089abc49a6Olfred]

Maybe you wanted to experiment on something else, not regarding the problem. That's what I meant with personal.

[674089abc4e3fnemyax]

nemyax, your workaround didn't worked properly either

Does the model have the same shading issue? Could you show a screenshot or video?

Perhaps it's something to do with how it does Gouraud shading.

It's regular Gouraud. The script writes the per-face vertex normals that Blender provides for free, no calculations here.

[674089abc5033Olfred]

I made a screenshot with all three versions in them.
Disregarding the texture anomalies you still can see that it doesn't reveice proper lighting (ventfan.jpg).
It's not simply that it doesn't receive any lighting at all, somehow it is just brighter than everything else (ventfan2.jpg).

I experimented around with the model and what I did was to poke the face (Alt P).
Which still didn't helped. So I started to delete the face piece by piece and checking in ShockEd. At one point the remaining piece was rendered correctly.
So I really think it is somehow linked to a problem with a vertex (or maybe even more).

Maybe you receive false information from Blender?

[ventfan.jpg expired]

[ventfan2.jpg expired]

[674089abc514fZylonBane]

Puzzling. It's as if the lighting engine thinks that third slat is facing a different direction.

Just grasping at straws here, but what if you take Gouraud shading off everything except the blade cap? Flat surfaces shouldn't be Gouraud-shaded anyway.

[674089abc53a4Olfred]

Puzzling. It's as if the lighting engine thinks that third slat is facing a different direction.

Just grasping at straws here, but what if you take Gouraud shading off everything except the blade cap? Flat surfaces shouldn't be Gouraud-shaded anyway.

Well, with the exporter I don't have the option to take another shading, for sharp edges you simply make an edge split.
So it's up to nemyax to try this out.

[674089abc547dZylonBane]

Hmm. Could you post the 3DS file?

[674089abc5643Olfred]

Hmm. Could you post the 3DS file?

Sure

[ventfan3ds.zip expired]

[674089abc5767nemyax]

ZylonBane
There's no notion of shading method in .bin. Vertex normals (which are the results of a shading algorithm) are recorded directly for every face corner. But it turns out I'm writing them wrong; the compressed format that they use is weird. I'm looking into it now.

[674089abc585dZylonBane]

There's certainly a notion of something, because bin files become much smaller when converted from Gouraud shading to flat shading.

[674089abc5960nemyax]

That's because there are no duplicate normal vectors per subobject in .bin, and shared normals are referenced by multiple corners. So the sets of normals are different in flat and Gouraud.

[674089abc5a34nemyax]

Addon updated; the lighting quirks should be gone now. Please test.

[674089abc5b37voodoo47]

maybe I'll say something dumb now, but I didn't observe any lighting anomalies with this fan. am I (finally) going blind?

[674089abc5c29ZylonBane]

The lighting anomalies are only obvious if the model is strongly lit from the side. Olfred's screenshots above show the problem.