I've been fiddling with the Shield Impact pipeline file and adding new shield meshes to the finished ships in my mod. I finally have the shield impacts tweaked to a point that's close to perfect. Unfortunately, some of the shield meshes show a slight distortion: any hits that occur on the far right edge of the shield mesh (front to back) leave an unsightly residue for a second or two in the shape of a stripe across the mesh. The residual stripe was part of the impact effect, but it seems like it gets caught on part of the mesh.
At first, I thought maybe I had an error in my shield mesh, like some polygons weren't welded together. Then I thought about the tangent map, but it's the same on both sides of the mesh. I finally ended up reconstructing a portion of one of the problem meshes from scratch, but the issue is still there. I have one mesh that shows absolutely no sign of the residue, which is the example I'm trying to recreate. I still have a couple of ideas I want to try out, but I wanted to see if anyone had experienced and/or solved an issue like this before.
My remaining thoughts are:
1) There is a problem with the ship mesh itself that's somehow being transferred to the shield mesh. It might seem far-fetched, but one shield that works perfectly is the only ship that I made 100% from scratch. Since all of my shield meshes are derivations of the linked ship mesh, I thought this might be a path worth exploring.
I also attempted to create a simple spherical shield for one of these ships. It also showed signs of the residue on the far right side. This could lend credence to the faulty ship mesh theory; however, I attached the working shield mesh to one of the problem ships and saw no signs of the residue.
2) Something in the pipeline file. To be honest, the only thing that leads me to believe this is a possible issue is the fact that almost every one of the distortions occurs on the far right edge of each new shield mesh.
I've just a thought about the stock game shield meshes. I haven't studied them closely, but I haven't noticed anything peculiar there, which would invalidate this second theory. This will be the next thing I look into.
I also flipped one of the shield meshes upside down to see if the residue remained on the right side, but it flipped to the left with the mesh. This would also invalidate any concerns over my work on the pipeline file while pointing the finger at the shield mesh itself.
3) There is something in the UV/Tangent maps that I've missed, or the shield mesh simply needs more rounded corners since everything is welded together (this is for the best shield effect in my opinion). I'm not sure how this could be the case since the distortions don't occur symmetrically (on both sides of the symmetrical ship).
As some of you might have noticed, a couple of these results seem to conflict. So, I'm going to take a break and come back later tonight. Any thoughts or ideas would be HUGELY appreciated.
While I have almost no experience whatsoever with modeling, I'd have to say that of the 3 ideas you have, 1&3 are the ones most likely to be the case.
However, to elaborate on my opinion, I'd need to know a couple of things:
1. You said that you've made 1 ship 100% from scratch. Please specify the other ships, and what other models/meshes they may draw "parts" from.
2. I'd also like to know how exactly you made the shield meshes.
I made some shields for the eve ships I did. I imported existing SoaSE shield into XSI and enlarged and reshaped and had no problems. Can you upload your shield scene so I can compare?
Thanks for the help Whiskey!
All of the additional models are 3rd party or began as third party. They are Star Trek models, but none of them came from the SOA2 mod.
I began by cleaning up the meshes to the best of my ability (patience). Again, since a few of these are currently 100% 3rd party I'm not completely sure how much garbage is going on beneath the hood, so to speak. For the shield mesh process, my goal was to make sure there were no open shapes anywhere (all vertices were welded together without holes or openings), which I accomplished easily on my own mesh.
Once done with the welding, I used the Shell modifier in Max to swell the mesh out to get a perfectly form-fitting envelope mesh. The UV step is perhaps where I went wrong, as I didn't check to see what the stock shield UVs looked like. I just stuck with a simple planar map as viewed from the top of the ship so that there wouldn't be any seams. In my experience, the seams almost act as a barrier for the impact effect.
I exported the mesh with the tangent map set as a copy of the UV map.
Ultimately, I got one mesh that worked great, and a couple that didn't.
Edit:
Sorry MyFist. I'm afraid I won't be able to attach any pictures. The effect is so quick that none of the screen shots were able to capture it. Just imagine: a weapon impacts the shields, from which point energy ripples across a small section of the form-hugging envelope in a single, split-second wave as damage is distributed over a larger. Seriously, as I said above, it's basically shell of the ship mesh. It was the only way I could get a perfectly accurate shield mesh that was the same distance from the hull at all points. The goal was to recreate the shield effects of Star Trek Nemesis, and, after literally dozens of hours tweaking the pipeline file, I think I've come pretty close.
...as long as I can get this mesh issue figured out.
Update:
I changed the UV mapping on one of the meshes to flatten mapping, and set the prereq to 85 degrees. That split the model up into mostly appropriate clusters.
The helpful result is that the distortions have now changed positions. The far right edge of the mesh is no longer affected by the issue, but the aft shuttlebay and pylon area is definitely suffering. That was also a section with many seams in the new UV mapping and a couple of tangent shading issues.
I also took a look at the stock shield mesh for the Halcyon carrier and found that it was mostly box mapped, which is why I tried the new UV mapping approach. What I noticed in the mesh file for the carrier, however, is that it didn't have a tangent map. So, I'm going to play around with my exporter and see if I can find a way to export without a tangent map.
To tell truth, I don't think I'll be able to give you much help, as I have no idea how Max works, considering what little modeling experience I do have is all XSI-related.
Sorry that I won't be able to help though.
Well, it will be interesting to know what tweak you have made on the pipeline file... GS_ShieldImpact.fx and GE_Shield.fx...
If i good understand, your mesh is somehow a scaled up shape of your model, it mean a lot of poly... all fx are in fact shader/particle thing... sins engine have a max around 50k triangle by model... it mean that model, shield and all particle effects for a model cannot be over 50k tri together...
A other possible problem is that the usual limit for particle is 6k... but you can increase it in your setting.ini...
Be carefull with modding the shield fx files ( pipeline files )... by example, some parameter like the charge of the shield are imported from the game engine... each hit who make the shield weaker make it more transparent at the next hit...
In all case, it is very difficult to help someone when we don't have the files who was modded... how can we help diagnose a problem if we cannot reproduce it ?
The UV step is perhaps where I went wrong, as I didn't check to see what the stock shield UVs looked like. I just stuck with a simple planar map
it is usual for planar UV projection to have graphic artifact... in fact, shield fx file use UVW projection who like the standard Cartesian coordinat system has three dimensions; the third dimension allows texture maps to wrap in complex ways onto irregular surfaces. Each point in a UVW map corresponds to a point on the surface of the object.
is there a way to modify the pipline effect to make a new shieldhit effect? i would like to make an effect that looks something like this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhhnRXdNXCw
If there's a way to create an effect like that I haven't figured it out yet. As far as I can tell, the basic shape is a circle, usually expanding. You can modify that so it's smaller, larger, brighter, non-existent, inverted, multiplied, etc. To be honest, most of those don't look very good, though.
ooh...how unfortunate...
No kidding. I might be able to achieve something similar, though. Give me some time and I'll PM you when I have some results.
okay +1 for you.
When edges don't get linked properly, the sins rendering engine warps the transparency, thus creating a peculiar look.
To make low poly shield meshes you might like to consider the tool
http://www.mootzoid.com/html/XsiCorner/emPolygonizer.html
It integrates easily into XSI and uses the technique of volume filling to create a new closed mesh. I used it to see if I could duplicate the shield meshes for some of the original caps, and yes I could get close in form and count.
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