ShipMod - Star Trek Miranda model for survey ship

The picture is a bit big IMHO. It looks like the ship is almost as big as an avatar... I'd also like another color (brighter / whiter - more in sync with the other Earth ships).

yes it wont fit into the other ship designs.
but i even did put some extra work in getting it more star trek blue.... ;-]]

the screenshot is from an older version, the final version is a little bit smaller.
i thought about making it even smaller then what it is now, but then it would be hard to recognize it.

and this is after all just a test-mod....

thx for the critics!

[Message Edited]

I just have to say congratulations on figuring out how to make good ship images. From what I'd seen in other threads here, ship-modeling is the most byzantine and labyrinthine of any modding possibility.

just to let u know
i made two new models.

1st is the voyager marquis fighter. (scout? minor-race ship?)
2nd is a squadron of federation/marquis figters. (in ds9 both used it, different from the first version.)

here is a preview pic:
http://www.8ung.at/wontellu/mods/tmmodprev2.jpg

@LDICesare i were really right.
the miranda still needs a resize....
[Message Edited]

They all look great!

I have a question, though. I tried renaming your model to 1Ship22.mdl. I had the basic Surveyor set to "Ship21" and wanted to use your model for the Starhawk-class surveyors, which were set to "Ship22". What happened? The basic Surveyor-class ships used your model (1Ship22.mdl) and a number of other ships, including the Starhawk-class surveyors and Battleships, went invisible. When I restored the original model settings, the invisibility bug went away. It also went away if I used your model as you suggested - as a replacement for "Ship21".

So, what I'm wondering is: Does the .MDL format have internal naming conventions? In other words, is there something internal to the .MDL files that uses the model name (i.e. Ship21), such that renaming it externally (i.e. 1Ship22.mdl) screws things up? I wonder if this has a bearing on the ship invisibility bug that still shows up now and then?

Personally, I prefer using new ship models for new ships, rather than as replacements for existing ships.

Anyhoo, thanks again.

End transmission.

~SDC~

yes.
a normal *.mdl file has at least 6 ship models.
0shipXX to 5shipXX and 35shipxx (neutral)

my miranda mod has only one file which is named 0ship21 (like the modfile) but which is INSIDE the modfile itself, and thus renaming the modfile will not change the mentioned shiptype.
u need m_util build 3.3.3 to edit the file.
(and knowledge how to use it....)

i could just add ships, but i think there r already too many of them.
and i do not want to create "new" ships because of game balance.
i could however create exact copies of ships, that use just another model.
so the player could decide if he wants to build the original version or the mod version. and with the neat "obsolete" feature that was added the list would not become to full....
BUT then i could not prevent the AI to build this
mod-ships, and the all races would be able to build this model.

i think about it, maby i find a userfriendly solution.
(i already have an idea, but i dont know how to relize it.... need to find out more about 3.3.3)
but right now i can only give u two alternatives.

1. a model that replaces an old one, but is unique to terrans.
2. a model that has the same stats like an original ship, does not replace any ship, but is buildable by all races.

just tell me what ships should use which of the 3 models seen in the second preview, and i will make an mod esp. for u.
untill i find out how to work around this.... probs

btw:
there is no model "ship22", the starhawk has "ship06".
(renaming the original modfile to it still wont work though...)

I thought you could get away with having just the Minor Race (35Shipxx) file plus the Terran ship?



I only know of the one version of m_util. It doesn't let you edit an MDL file, just create them.



I'm not sure if I'm interpreting you right here, but... If you build a new model, you can then create a new ship definition to match the model. This would work well for those of us who feel there are gaps in the ship-building tree.



You can change the ship model within the ship definition file (.SHIP). For example, I use "Ship21" as the StarHawk model, because I don't like the look of "Ship06". I tried renaming your Miranda MDL to 1Ship22.mdl, then changing the Model field in the ship definition file for StarHawk to "Ship22". As you pointed out, renaming the MDL doesn't work. If your Miranda MDL was re-built as 0ship22.mdl, one should be able to use both the existing "Ship21" and your new model (as "Ship22") without having to replace the existing 0ship21.mdl.

I tried a quick bit of ship design, but I'm stuck on Cari's instructions about alpha channels and when to apply the transparent background. The ship design and ship rotation works fine, and I seem to get an MDL file, but when I try to implement it the game crashes with - *DEBUG ERROR: *** Unable to find ship model named 35Defender3 ***. I'll keep trying, though.

If I can get it working, I don't mind creating a different version for each race. I'm only looking at doing a few ships anyway.

End transmission.



~SDC~

1.
u can create a model with just the terran model(arcean, yor,... etc), but this can only be used to replace an existing ship.
->can be used to replace the model for one ship of one race only.

and u can create a *.mdl with just a 35 model, so all races will use it.(they use it when there is no special model for their race, including terrans, so u dont need a 0ship model to get it working)
->can be used to create a new ship, which is the same for all.

or u create a *.mdl with 6 models, one for every race, and one for the minors.
-> most work, best result.

2. there is an "press and do" version which u know, and the original.
the original is more complicated, and it has no documentation, so it wíll require some work to get into it.
but is has the ability to watch *.mdl files.(and to rename it, and there r export and import buttons although they did not work for me untill now)
go here for it:
http://www.galciv.com/carielf/M_util%20build.zip

3. the problem with creating new ships is that u need models for all races, or all races will use the same model.
i do not have models for the other races, and using the same is IMO pretty supid.

4. u have to rename the files in the *.mdl file, either with m_util3.3.3 or by creating it new under the wanted name.

what program do u use for editing the tga's?
if u use paint shop pro i could explain how to get alpha layers.

maybe i coudl help u creating a ship, if u explain me step by step what u did.
(i could try to write a tutorial...)

1. Got it.
2. Thanks, got it now.
3. Agreed.
4. Got it. It works fine.

I'm using Corel Draw 7. I figured out how to create an alpha layer, but it doesn't seem to survive saving the file. That is, when you re-open the TGA file, the alpha layer is no longer there.

Rather than a tutorial, maybe you could answer some questions regarding the documentation that comes with the ship encoder?

1. "The ship rotator requires an 8-bit color indexed windows bitmap."
Corel gives me the option of creating a "Paletted (8-bit)" file, then gives me further options: Standard VGA, Adaptive, Optimized, Custom. Which should I choose? Standard VGA seems painfully limited.

2. "...you will want to rotate the ship counter-clockwise 11.25 degrees to make the filmstrip come out right."
I can get 11 degrees or 12 degrees. Is it worth worrying about, or should I stick with 8 facings at 45 degree rotations?

3. Once you get the bitmap with the rotated images - "I ended clicking on the background of my image, inverting the selection so that it just selected the ship images, and then copying it to a new file with a transparent background."
The bitmap I get from the Ship Rotator software has no background to select; it's all one image. If I have to try to select 32 images on a 64x2048 canvas, forget it. It would be easier to create them individually and paste them together.

Thanks very much for your help, Therlun!

End transmission.

~SDC~

1. i dont like the ship rotator.
(neither the one that comes with m_util 4, nor the dark rain rotator [which is coded to rotate galciv ships]) both make it pretty bad.(exept perhaps i make something wrong with it.)
so i do my strips by hand, every 11,25 degree picture....

an example here:
(left is SF-rotator, middle is dark rains rotator, right is "made by hand")
http://www.8ung.at/wontellu/alphal/rot.jpg

if however u want to use a rotator i strongly recommend dark rains. get it here:
http://visualta.tauniverse.com/HTML/index.html
it has not the restrictions the sf rotator has. e.g. it accepts 24bit tga pics!

if u make it by hand "gridlines" r very helpfull....


2. u cant rotate an image by 11,25 degrees??
r u sure??
anyhow this is just a problem the sf rotator has.
use the dark rain one and u wont have this prob.

if u make it by hand u could also simply round the degrees (11°,22°,34°,45°, etc.)(it wont make any noticable difference in the game)
however always use the original pic to rotate! if u rotate an already rotated pic the failures will multiply.

u could reduce the number of facings.
u need to create a fitting stip. (so for 8 facings -> a 64x512 stip) just adjust the facings in m_util4 from 32 to 8.
(i never tried it though)
however this will make ship movement ingame VERY choppy.

3.
i dont know how to do it with corel draw.
i searched for a trial version to look at it, but i could only find coreldraw suite 2 (with coreldraw 11), whichs trial is only accesable after a long registration....

i made some pics how to do it in paint shop pro.
perhaps u can find out how to get it in corel.
if not .....

exporting it as pgn is not the right way to get alpha layers! i also made the experience that it is not saved then.

so here:
a)-resize ur image, and fit it into a 64x64 24bit tga. ( from now on u can work with 24 bit tga's.dark rains rotator will work with them , and it will save alpha layers.)the background colour should be very different to the ship colour.(see d) )
http://www.8ung.at/wontellu/alphal/01.jpg

b)-then make a 64x2048 rotated strip out of it.
(dark rain or by hand)

c)-choose a tool that can select part of a pic by rgb value etc. in the german paint shop pro version its called "zauberstab"->"wizard's staff"
http://www.8ung.at/wontellu/alphal/02.jpg

d)- select the BACKGROUND! adjust the wizards staff that way that u get only the background.->needs some fine-tuning. the background colour should be very different to the ship colour. so if the ship is light grey, try a black background, and make the wizards staff select everything that is black...
if it is dark, use a white background, and if it has dark and light areas try pink or something.
http://www.8ung.at/wontellu/alphal/03.jpg

e)- go to "selection" and choose "invert"
=> the background is deselected, and everything that was not selected before (should be the ship pics) is.
http://www.8ung.at/wontellu/alphal/04.jpg

f)- then go to selection again, and choose "save as alpha layer"
http://www.8ung.at/wontellu/alphal/05.jpg

g)- now save the pic.
close it, open it again, and go to
selection-> open alpha layers.
if it works, and ur ships get selected u created an alpha layer.

cant help u if this stuff isnt in corel 7 though.

i guess noone has a link to a trial version of coreldraw 7 ??

[Message Edited]

I looked at your screenshot and tried rotating your ship with my ship rotator. I don't understand why you got these results but I got much, much better results. It's comparable to the one you got by hand, if a wee bit less good.

Maybe there's some problems with jpg compression artifacts that make it look worse. On another note, a well applied gaussian blur, around 0.75 and 0.5 gave me pretty much the same final results as you.
[Message Edited]

hmmm
if i play a bit with blures i really get a much better result, still not as good as perhaps the screenshot on ur site is.... (or as the handmade)
(i tried it with jpgs, pngs, tgas, and bmps.)

so the best possible result i am able to get with ur rotator is quiet better then the first screenshot would indicate...
left is rotated by dark rain rot, 2nd left is with blures, 3rd left is handmade. (next three r the same in 3:1)
http://www.8ung.at/wontellu/alphal/rot2.jpg

Tell me, are you using XP? Because I've just tried running my program at school again instead of home to do some testing and see how you could've gotten those results and I got some pretty bad ones, like yours.

I'm wondering if it's a XP related problem. I'll have to do some more testing.

its not...
im using win98 (curse on it! good old times.... where ur Dos TOLD YOU what caused a problem. am i getting old by thinking this??)

what does make it unsharp anyway (when it works correct?).
a 30x50 ship has some "steps", what did u include to make this edges unsharp??

I see what's the problem is, used the image from your first post with screenshots and it was larger. It seem the image library I was using doesn't handle small images rotation very well.

I'll have to rewrite all the rotation code when I have time I guess.

sorry! :-]

Therlun,

Thanks again for all your help! I actually managed to get a (rather ugly) ship coded. Unfortunately, I had to download a trial version of Paint Shop Pro to do it. CorelPaint 7 will only save alpha channels to Corel's proprietary .CPT file format.

So, if I want to code a few ships, I've got 30 days to do it before the Paint Shop trial version expires. :notsure: This doesn't bode well for somebody with an attention span as short as mine.

End transmission.

~SDC~

screenshot !! :-]
(just press "print"[dunno the english name....] ingame and then alt-tab to paint shop, then ctrl+v, -> screenie)

here is my first "ship":
http://www.8ung.at/wontellu/pics/testa5.jpg

(actually no real ship, only some lines, but the aim was to get them ingame and working ;-] )

Btw, you don't have to use a alpha channel in your image at all cost when making ships. You can create a separate file with the alpha channel. Black is invisible and white is solid. The rest is in between. Carielf tut on ship encoding is more detailed.

On a side note, my ship rotator can produce alpha mask (what I mentionned above) of rotated ships.

Dark Rain,



That is great news! If you create a separate file with the alpha channel (as Corel forces you to do), how do you get the file into MUtil? Does it just automatically pick up all files with the same name convention? (I.e. ship01.tga, ship01_icon.tga, SHIP01_MASK.TGA, etc.) BTW, in Corel, white is supposedly transparent, black is supposedly opaque.

Methinks CariElf's tutorial was written by a programmer, for programmers... As a charter member of the "Could You Explain That Again?" Club, I had to rewrite it from a Help Desk POV so that I could follow the steps without getting dazed and confused. Of course, now that I've had several other people explain things to me, it's starting to seem pretty straightforward.

How does your rotator produce alpha channels? Is it automatic?

Lastly, I tried creating a strip by manually rotating an original ship image. This allows you to use anti-aliasing on each rotation, which makes for a slightly more polished look.
As well, you can (in Corel, at least) set the 90- and 180-degree rotations using specific commands, as opposed to 'Rotate, Custom...' This centres the rotated image at the 90-, 180-, and 270-degree mark much better than if you use the original image as the base for each subsequent rotated image.
In other words, my manual rotation also came out better than using either ship rotator.
In further words, it took too bloody long. I might advise creating the rotated TGA manually as a final version of a ship that you've already got working properly (no shadows, no gaps, etc), but otherwise it's just too time-consuming.

End transmission.

~SDC~

it can crerate alpha layers??
hum i did not notice that....

and i did not entirely understand what u ment with creating a different image with alpha channel...

Creating the alpha mask with my ship rotator :

Settings->Save Settings

It's in the mask section. Check the box saying "Output a .bmp mask using fill color".


About mutil : If you use mutil directly to create your animations, you must make sure to toggle "alpha" on before importing the .bmp. Also, the file with the alpha mask must be called myFile-a.pcx and the one with the image itself myFile-c.pcx. Also, when you import, you must import the file called myFile-a.pcx. Of course, I'm pretty sure you don't have to use only .pcx files but I never tried something else.


I've restarted work on hacking the galciv file format this week and I can already decode and extract a couple of the image types. Hopefuly, I should have an alternative to mutil out at some point in the near future. The original program is really driving me nuts.

Ah yes, a side note on the ship rotator : I'm planning on upgrading it to use OGL rotations, so it should give me free anti aliasing beside good looking rotation. I'm sort of worried about compatibility problems because OGL might not work on some machines but I'll handle that by using the old rotation system as a backup.
[Message Edited]

rofl.....