Corto

Bingo! That was it. Now it's taking the shader. Unfortunately, editing the cusomt pset didn't do the trick. I had to manually edit the file with Notepad ++. I'll talk about this with Archangel. Thanks guys!

Practically every kitbash requires some manner of Photoshop work to make it look right, but the amount of original texturing varies from model to model. For example, in those last two previews the Balmorran War Droid only required some colour-shifting on the clone trooper accessories I added to the main model, whereas something like a clone officer skin or a galactic senator usually requires something a little more involved.

 

As for creating textures completely from scratch (such as for a Bith) - I've never done a total 'from blank page to fully-fledged texture' job before, mainly due to lack of hardware. The best results seem to always come from digital tablets these days.

Ok. I couldn't sleep last night so I started reading your comics. It made it worse, they hooked me right away. Nice job!

I've removed the blaster_r shader from the factory shaders a long time ago, just in case. I tried modifying the custom pset, I tried redirecting the actual texture in the material, I deleted the custom pset. Nothing. The game only shows the diffuse texture. It's completely ignoring the shader file. I'm going to take a look at the sourcecode to see if I can figure out exactly how the shaders work.

I downloaded Ashura's Bryar, changed the main stage to whiteimage and the gun is showing all white.

Somaz, I changed the texture name inside Softimage, exported again. Now it looks exactly as Ashura's md3 and still nothing.

@@Corto okay so, I assume that this is for your E11 model.

Doe the following files exist:

 

models/weapons2/e11.jpg/tga/png

models/weapons2/e11_spec.jpg/tga/png

models/weapons2/e11_env.jpg/tga/png

 

I'd assume they don't.

Are ou testing your shaders with the same version of the model as the one hosted here currently?

They exist. They are under models/weapons2/blaster_r. The filenames you see on my example are different than the ones I've uploaded here, but that's just because I've been trying a lot of different alternatives.

You can all use the model available here at Jkhub. That's what I'm using. But still, even if there is something wrong with the way I created my shader file, that doesn't explain why my changes on the factory shaders don't seem to have any effect on the other guns. I should be able to screw the shaders that are, supposedly, working. My concern, now, is that shader files are not working correctly for first person view models. I tried with the vainilla version of JA and same thing. My changes to guns shaders seem to have no effect. So now I would like to have actual proof that view models use shaders.

Almost all up to date programs have some sort of unfolding/pelting tool to unwrap UV maps. Don't use the factory, geometrical projections because it will drive you insane and the results will never be as good.

I'm modifying the factory shaders with the whiteimage flag and nothing is going on. Packing the files into a pk3 changes nothing. Can somebody post a video where I can see the shader file actually working on the model? Like, try the whiteimage trick and show me it's actually working?

There are countless tutorials about modeling and UV unwrapping on Youtube. On top of that, unwrapping a 3D model is more about common sense and what makes sense under the specific needs of your model.

You could try something really drastic, like changing the shader to just one stage that displays $whiteimage. If the model doesn't show up glaringly white in-game, then you know your shader file is having no effect (for whatever reason).

 

And obvious question--if you're in MP, is sv_pure set to 0?

I tried this and my gun is still showing the diffuse map as normal. So now it's clear that the model is not even loading up the .shader file. Once I sort this issue out, then it will make some sense to experiment with shaders.

Is the shader file encoding right? "UTF-8 without BOM" would be the right encoding afaik.

I created the initial file with the ShaderEd tool that comes with the SDK, but I'll check the encoding just to be safe.

One thing I would recomend is to extract all the assets files into your base folder, in the exact order they are named. You will be asked to replace some files, so go ahead. Then rename all your assets files to .bak just in case. Now you can reverse engineer or replace the original assets with yours.

Don't ignore it. He always has a point. Just don't take it personally. Back when I started in Lucasforums, I couldn't take a bit if criticism and that set my progress back a lot. Having Ashura pushing you forward it's kind of flattering, in a way. I would rather have my stuff being ripped apart than completely ignored.

You guys just don't get german sense of humor. Don't take it personally.

Just trying to add some humor.

Do you make these skins? They all look terrific. Are you these characters available for download? Another thing, how would you like to make the texture of a bith musician?

I feel like I should give you my two cents, so here I go:

I can't seem to get the shader for the E11 to work. No matter what changes I make, at I should be able to break the damn script, but nothing. Here's my shader file:

models/weapons2/blaster_r/e11
{
    {
        map models/weapons2/blaster_r/e11
        blendFunc GL_ONE GL_ZERO
        rgbGen lightingDiffuseEntity
    }
    {
        map models/weapons2/blaster_r/e11_spec
        blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE
        alphaGen lightingSpecular
    }
    {
        map models/weapons2/blaster_r/e11_env
        blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_SRC_COLOR
        alphaGen const 1
        tcGen environment
    }
}

At least, the final stage should make the model look glossy, because I did this for the dianoga model and the phase 1 dark trooper and I know it works. But nothing I do seems to work with blaster.

@@Corto, you didn't freeze the transforms of the tags did you? They need to retain their local transforms that they have when they are created to work properly.

No, I didn't freeze the tags transformations. The only thing that worked was to actually position the gun in the odd way you see in the screencap. Maybe it's something we need to look closer with Archangel.

Ok, that's good enough for me. Thanks! On other thing. Do you know if .shader files work on .md3 models the way they work on .glm models?

My issue is simple, I would like to play around with .shader files to learn more about them. I mean do a lot of trial and error and see for myself what each change or option does in-game, if any, until I'm satisfied with what can be achieved. Since there's no viewer to test them in real-time (I think Wudan's Dragon did the trick back in the day), I was wondering if there's a way to, while remain in the game, reload the .shader files and see how my changes impact the end result. My first thought is to reload the level, but I haven't tried that yet and maybe with OpenJK there's a command that will do the trick. Thanks.

I can explain this.

The game loads *weaponname*_hand.md3

This .md3 only holds Tags. The game then proceeds to bolt the other .md3 files to tags found in the *_hand.md3, therefore the orientation of the weapon models does not matter at all. Only the relative orientation in comparison the the tags matters.

 

As for why the pistol and e11 models are that skewed: either a mistake on the developers end or it was done on purpose to fuck with us modders.

Well, I tried changing the orientation and position of the tags and nothing changed at all, so I had to come up with what I presented here.

This Weapon looks lovely! Are You going to change the scope texture?

I will release another version, hopefully the final one, with a better shader file and some more fixes I have already spotted. For now, I'm giving it a rest and working on other Star Wars stuff. I'll show you very soon.

Is there a sound or map I particular that comes to mind?

I would start with the sounds of jumping, footsteps, falling, getting hurt, etc. They all sound so "soundboardish" right now. Also, the pickup sounds. They worked for games like Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament, but for Jedi Knight, they should sound like actually picking up something instead of just being a sound cue that just walked over an object. Having inventory sound would be nice too. When you change your active inventory object, a sound like when you equip a new item on games like DayZ or any RPG would fit perfectly. Everybody focuses almost exclusively on graphics, but I'm a strong advocate that level design (no matter how basic the graphics look) and sound design can improve the ambience and immersion more than top of the game graphics.

All these skins look really nice, but they all lack proper lighting. If you could paint some highlights it would bring out the textures and the feeling of each material a lot more.