Some JK modding questions

[Lord Grievous]

Hi guys, I've recently started mapping for JO/JA but I have a few questions:

 

1) what is the max map size for these games? And is this the same for OpenJK?

2) can you have a day/night cycle and other skybox effects like lightning as in Star Trek Elite Force 2?

3) I'm doing my terrain creation in blender since I don't like the other methods. Now, when I export it as a patchmesh (.map) it does show in gtkradiant but only as a soft wireframe. What texture/material settings do I use in blender for it to show in game/editor?

4) as for the exported patchmesh, do I need to set collision or is this automatic for patchmeshes?

 

Thanks on advance!

[Noodle]

Hi guys, I've recently started mapping for JO/JA but I have a few questions:

 

1) what is the max map size for these games? And is this the same for OpenJK?

2) can you have a day/night cycle and other skybox effects like lightning as in Star Trek Elite Force 2?

3) I'm doing my terrain creation in blender since I don't like the other methods. Now, when I export it as a patchmesh (.map) it does show in gtkradiant but only as a soft wireframe. What texture/material settings do I use in blender for it to show in game/editor?

4) as for the exported patchmesh, do I need to set collision or is this automatic for patchmeshes?

 

Thanks on advance!

 

1) I don't know the exact answer, not even maps like mp/siege_destroyer seem to be that big.

2) Yes you can, but the light will be limited. (see: 

)

3 and 4) I don't know that, but Langerd did a pretty nice tutorial explaining i. Read here: https://jkhub.org/topic/9233-scarif-small-test-map-checking-the-terrain-making-little-tutorial/

[Lord Grievous]

Thanks

 

EDIT: only problem is that he exports to md3 which has a max size of 512units from object origin. So maps in md3 can only be max 1024*1024 size if I understand correctly.

 

Thing is, the JO/JA export plugins also allow exporting as a patch mesh (.map), I was kinda hoping that I would be able to model my terrain in blender and then export as a patch mesh so that gtkradiant recognises it as if it were created within gtkradiant.

[Ramikad]

Hi guys, I've recently started mapping for JO/JA but I have a few questions:

 

1) what is the max map size for these games? And is this the same for OpenJK?

2) can you have a day/night cycle and other skybox effects like lightning as in Star Trek Elite Force 2?

3) I'm doing my terrain creation in blender since I don't like the other methods. Now, when I export it as a patchmesh (.map) it does show in gtkradiant but only as a soft wireframe. What texture/material settings do I use in blender for it to show in game/editor?

4) as for the exported patchmesh, do I need to set collision or is this automatic for patchmeshes?

 

Thanks on advance!

 

1) Technically the max map size is 128000 x 128000 x 128000, at least creating maps for the base game. Warzone has developed Wzmap, which apparently allows you to create much larger maps, but that's very specific. Also, the map size seems to vary between various Radiant versions, so, for example, GTK Radiant 1.5 only allows to create maps of 64000 x 64000 x 64000 units, while 1.3.12 (and I think 1.4 as well, but I'm not sure), allow to reach the grid boundaries before deleting everything beyond them.

To be even more technical, I'm not sure if there's a limit to where you can travel - it's a technical detail that has been exploited on Lugormod servers to allow a very large space for flying ships. You can basically travel to a VERY far away point in any direction (I think we're talking about billion units, if not infinitely more, I can't remember right now) before the player's position in space "resets", as if it transported you to the other end of another map space. So for example, you travel to -2560000000, 0, 0, and the moment after you find yourself at 2560000000, 0, 0. You won't get back to the same point of the map if you reach the proper coordinates of the new map space. Weird sci-fi stuff.

2) As Noodle pointed out, you can have a surrogate of day-night cycle, but with the base lighting system it won't really look that good. An alternative would be using Rend2, where you can actually enable a skylight that can rotate creating an effective day-night cycle, but it's still pretty much experimental, and it won't look too great either.

3) You should be able to select the map patches in Radiant and texture them normally, unless you prefer to texture them in Blender and keep them. In that case, if .md3 export doesn't work (although you can always scale the terrain down so that it fits the limits of 512 units size and then scale it up again in Radiant), you can try to export it as .ase - which shouldn't have those limits, if I remember correctly.

4) The exported patchwork, with the proper texture, is indeed solid, although players and entities could clip through due to bugs. Models on the other hand will require either autoclipping (spawnflags 2) or manual clipping. Usually autoclipping a model is considered positively when dealing with terrain models and simple geometry in general.

 

Edit: A quick in-game test shows that the map space seems to reset somewhere after 1 billion units. Not sure about the exact number, but that at least gives a lower boundary.

[AshuraDX]

Thing is, the JO/JA export plugins also allow exporting as a patch mesh (.map), I was kinda hoping that I would be able to model my terrain in blender and then export as a patch mesh so that gtkradiant recognises it as if it were created within gtkradiant.

 

I have done precisely that, using my own patch mesh exporter for 3ds max.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fmmf74h3l7fccy1/KothlisTest.pk3?dl=0

 

It's a rather large Tropical Islands with mountains terrain, currently far from being finished - but it should be good enough as a proof of concept.

here's a picture:

 

it doesn't like taking screenshots, I usually get about 90-110 FPS on this

[TheWhitePhoenix]

 

I have done precisely that, using my own patch mesh exporter for 3ds max.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fmmf74h3l7fccy1/KothlisTest.pk3?dl=0

 

It's a rather large Tropical Islands with mountains terrain, currently far from being finished - but it should be good enough as a proof of concept.

here's a picture:

 

it doesn't like taking screenshots, I usually get about 90-110 FPS on this

Doesn't look too bad for a proof of concept, Ashura. 

[Lord Grievous]

Thanks! I'm still trying this with blender but with mixed success

 

I can get a softly shaded wireframe of my terrain in gtkradiant, and it appears there are two quads missing even though I selected everything:

 

 

Can I just add ground textures (yavin grass for example) to my mesh, and is there a limit to the amount of quads? On a same note, do I have to triangulate the mesh before exporting or does the engine do this automatically?

 

EDIT: @@AshuraDX, could you tell me how you texture the patchmesh and export it because I can't find any info on this. Every tutorial is about texturing and exporting a finished model (md3/glm/ase) for immediate use in the game. But a patchmesh is just an intermediate model for use in the editor as far as I understand it.

 

I've been trying all night but I just can't get my textures to show in gtkradiant.

[AshuraDX]

Thanks! I'm still trying this with blender but with mixed success

 

I can get a softly shaded wireframe of my terrain in gtkradiant, and it appears there are two quads missing even though I selected everything:

 

 

Can I just add ground textures (yavin grass for example) to my mesh, and is there a limit to the amount of quads? On a same note, do I have to triangulate the mesh before exporting or does the engine do this automatically?

 

EDIT: @@AshuraDX, could you tell me how you texture the patchmesh and export it because I can't find any info on this. Every tutorial is about texturing and exporting a finished model (md3/glm/ase) for immediate use in the game. But a patchmesh is just an intermediate model for use in the editor as far as I understand it.

 

I've been trying all night but I just can't get my textures to show in gtkradiant.

I'm sorry but I have made my own export plugin for 3ds max - while it exports to the same format it works differently than the blender plugin. Simply due to different inner workings in 3ds max.

[Langerd]

Thanks! I'm still trying this with blender but with mixed success

 

I can get a softly shaded wireframe of my terrain in gtkradiant, and it appears there are two quads missing even though I selected everything:

 

 

Can I just add ground textures (yavin grass for example) to my mesh, and is there a limit to the amount of quads? On a same note, do I have to triangulate the mesh before exporting or does the engine do this automatically?

 

EDIT: @@AshuraDX, could you tell me how you texture the patchmesh and export it because I can't find any info on this. Every tutorial is about texturing and exporting a finished model (md3/glm/ase) for immediate use in the game. But a patchmesh is just an intermediate model for use in the editor as far as I understand it.

 

I've been trying all night but I just can't get my textures to show in gtkradiant.

I know what might be wrong - You must turn on the auto perspective. Go to file->user preferences->interface-> in the middle check the auto perspective it must be checked. 

 

It is my method but it might have some problems. Pay attention on the face and tris values. 8,192 is a lot. 

 

And the whole terrain will be MD3. The Patches are only to apply the clip texture on the terrain to make it solid.

[AshuraDX]

@@Langerd

8192 faces are a lot when it comes to small characters and other models.

 

8192 faces on a large terrain that's 4x4 km are not a lot.

Allways think of the scope you have with your work, don't constrain yourself to never adjusting boundaries.

 

@@Lord Grievous iirc I heard @@SomaZ say that the blender Patch mesh exporter by default does not export texture coordinates which makes using it as you want to impossible. But I know that he modified it to do that.

[Lord Grievous]

Okay thanks for the replies guys

 

I'll contact SomaZ to see if he has a solution. Also, I've been thinking about exporting the terrain as .ase but I don't know if this has any downsides compared to patch meshes.

 

As far as terrain is concerned, what is too much faces/tris to use?

 

EDIT: doesn't md3 have a size limit of 512units from the origin? This means the terrain can only ever be max 1024*1024 if I understand it.

 

UPDATE: I finally realized you have to place the .ase model in the models directory

 

[Ramikad]

 

Make sure you triangulate the faces before exporting as a model, otherwise all non-triangular faces will be cut in half.

[AshuraDX]

Also, I've been thinking about exporting the terrain as .ase but I don't know if this has any downsides compared to patch meshes.

 

As far as terrain is concerned, what is too much faces/tris to use?

 

EDIT: doesn't md3 have a size limit of 512units from the origin? This means the terrain can only ever be max 1024*1024 if I understand it.

 

UPDATE: I finally realized you have to place the .ase model in the models directory

1. Vis culling is not as good with models as with patch geometry from what I know. A model will allways be rendered when its bounding box can be seen.

 

2. The number opf faces/tris to use depends massively on the scale of your terrain. I tend to optimize my terrain to use a higher face density in places that need to be very detailed, while keeping larger, flat areas relatively lowpoly. Here's my Kothlis terrain without any textures in wireframe overlay. You will see that the Ocean floor uses fairly large faces while the monutain ranges and island shores use much smaller faces.

 

3. yes that is correct, md3's clip everything off that extends beyond 512 units in either direction on each axis. You can however scale your meshes down to fit inside that bonudary and use the modelscale key to scale them back up to iriginal size - which allows you to create any size terrain using .md3 models

 

4. that should not be required, I have compiled maps using .ase models that have been placed inside the maps folder isntead of the models folder.

[Lord Grievous]

@@Ramikad: thanks I'll keep that in mind

 

@@AshuraDX: Yeah I meant it has to be in the models folder or it just shows up as a box in gtkradiant, now I can preview it in editor.

 

From what I've read so far I'd very much prefer the patch mesh method for terrain. BTW, I send you a message AshuraDX

 

Thanks for all the help so far guys!

[AshuraDX]

@@Ramikad: thanks I'll keep that in mind

 

@@AshuraDX: Yeah I meant it has to be in the models folder or it just shows up as a box in gtkradiant, now I can preview it in editor.

 

From what I've read so far I'd very much prefer the patch mesh method for terrain. BTW, I send you a message AshuraDX

 

Thanks for all the help so far guys!

which I allready answered to If you'd care to check your pms

[Lord Grievous]

Check my post menstrual stress

 

JK (just kidding not jedi knight )

 

BREAKING NEWS: I managed to get a textured .ase file in gtkradiant! I triangulated the mesh first, exported as .ase and then edited it with notepad to reference the texture that I made.

 

 

Obviously it's just a single texture and I haven't optimized the mesh, but this is definitely good progress. I'm not very familiar (at all actually) with idtech3 shaders so I can't do fancy texture blending yet

 

Still, it's imported as a model instead of a patch mesh. I do think that is the better way of doing things so @@AshuraDX if you could help me out that would be awesome

[Lord Grievous]

I've been going over some of these files with notepad and I found a few strange tidbits:

 

A patchmesh created and textured in gtkradiant and saved as a .map file has this to define its texture:

patchDef2
{
yavin/ground

But a terrain created in blender and exported as a JA patchmesh with the .map extension has this as its texture:

patchDef2
{
system/physics_clip

Presumably the physics_clip is to make it its own collision mesh, but since each face/triangle can only have one texture on it this would make it impossible to add another texture to my terrain!

 

Am I missing something here?

 

EDIT: Or is there a way to attach the physics_clip collision property to my regular texture?

[AshuraDX]

I've been going over some of these files with notepad and I found a few strange tidbits:

 

A patchmesh created and textured in gtkradiant and saved as a .map file has this to define its texture:

patchDef2
{
yavin/ground

But a terrain created in blender and exported as a JA patchmesh with the .map extension has this as its texture:

patchDef2
{
system/physics_clip

Presumably the physics_clip is to make it its own collision mesh, but since each face/triangle can only have one texture on it this would make it impossible to add another texture to my terrain!

 

Am I missing something here?

 

EDIT: Or is there a way to attach the physics_clip collision property to my regular texture?

Materials/shaders/textures in the game applied to patches are solid by default. Physics clip is used when you just need the collision aspect.

 

Your other observations are correct.

It seems that the developer of your patch mesh exporter never went the extra mile to support different textures.

[Lord Grievous]

I have this one:

 

https://jkhub.org/files/file/1413-blender-264-jedi-academy-plugin-suite/