Starmade Visualization

[Crusade]

Remade my materials! now including normal mapping, sort of. I don't think blender really agrees with SMs normal maps, (wrong light direction?) Saber maybe you can give us some insight!

I made glass foggy to hide the fact it's reflecting twice, only issue is that it's now super opaque, I'll get around to fixing that at some stage

reflections are still in, I toned down the reflection amount and made the surface a little more rough, however.

As soon as i find a way to export materials, I'll post them in this thread!

 

[Heillos]

I've been doing some work in 3DS Max since the posting of this thread, and have now worked materials out to the point where I have some renders I'm content with showing off:






These are using NVIDIA mental ray rendering, which produces fairly convincing results (although I still have a lot of improvement to do). Reflections, in particular, are probably a bit much at the moment.

The station pictured is the Derelict Beta.

Also relevant to this thread: does anyone know if there is a reasonable way to extract the nice, high-resolution skyboxes that the game generates?

 

[Ironic_Golem]

Crusade All I can tell you is that there is two types of normal maps. One is called Tangent Space normal map and consists of only two mixed colours, the other one is using the whole RGB spectrum and are called Object Space normal map. Maybe starmade uses the RGB one why blender tries to read the other format?

 

[Captain Tankman]

Crusade All I can tell you is that there is two types of normal maps. One is called Tangent Space normal map and consists of only two mixed colours, the other one is using the whole RGB spectrum and are called Object Space normal map. Maybe starmade uses the RGB one why blender tries to read the other format?

I got normal maps to work kinda in blender, but it's nowhere near perfect. It really screws with the overall lighting. I need to check some other options. Here's my result so far:

And in an earlier state with the model just importet into blender

The first and last time I used blender was two years ago, so I have almost no idea what I am doing there :D

 

[Heillos]

Just finished making this GIF, using 3DS Max's animated textures (image list files that call a texture for a certain number of frames)!

 

[Saber]

Everything's looking awesome everybody! Loving how the renders are turning out.

lastly, Saber I'm having trouble opening certain 3d model files for the game such as the player model as well as the other 3d player items. can only certain programs open/import those files? cuz I cant with blender

If the software you're using isn't able to import .mesh files (we use a specific exporter to create them) there are a handful of online converters available online that will change your 3D files to different formats. One which I've used in the past can be found here: Online 3D Converter So you can use that to turn the .mesh into an .obj file and then import it into most any 3D modeling software.

I don't think blender really agrees with SMs normal maps, (wrong light direction?) Saber maybe you can give us some insight!

Based off the image I agree that it isn't coming in right, however I'm not able to determine the cause from the one image, we've had to do some pretty tricky things with our maps to reduce the number of necessary files by including alpha's in certain channels and some other texturing magic, so kupu is likely to know more about what could be wrong than I would.
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I can offer general advice to people based off my 3D knowledge, but I haven't worked too extensively with creating scenes, animations, or even high-res renders using exports that StarMade outputs. I've been busy with other areas of development so you're all more likely to figure out the nuances to working with said exports more quickly than I will. That said I love seeing what you've all done and look forward to seeing more. If you ever have questions about any of StarMade's 3D assets feel free to drop a post in my 3D thread in "Schine!" here on the forums.

 

[Crusade]

more more more, normal mapping is working correctly now.

 

[Xtremesonicboom]

I'm going to leave this here. Have fun with nice textures and bump maps in both atlases and individual files. I used the program I mentioned earlier to generate these textures, as that's the only thing that still works. It's only missing LOD textures, as those are in a separate directory. Have fun!

 

[Crimson-Artist]

just to ask does the model imports work with blender's cycles render engine? every time i switch over to cycles render the model's textures get removed and when I do a render some of the non block shapes turn into blocks. I am doing something wrong?

 

[Crusade]

1: Update blender to latest.
2: You need to manually create the materials for cycles to work.

 

[Ironic_Golem]

I'm going to leave this here. Have fun with nice textures and bump maps in both atlases and individual files. I used the program I mentioned earlier to generate these textures, as that's the only thing that still works. It's only missing LOD textures, as those are in a separate directory. Have fun!

Thats really interesting. By the looks of it I am guessing the software creates seperate objects for all materials? That can be pretty useful if you just want to edit the characteristics of a single material.
[doublepost=1472198724,1472198436][/doublepost]Crusade Hey I've been looking at your renderings and I always notice those nice reflections of light that doesn't seem to occure on the whole block. Is this the effect of the normal maps or do you also use something like specular/reflection maps?

 

[Crusade]

something like specular/reflection maps?

That'll be the normal mapping doing it's thang!

 

[Heillos]

I'm going to leave this here. Have fun with nice textures and bump maps in both atlases and individual files. I used the program I mentioned earlier to generate these textures, as that's the only thing that still works. It's only missing LOD textures, as those are in a separate directory. Have fun!

The bump-maps you've pulled, unfortunately, are not the correct versions; you'll notice that some of the maps, particularly the doors on Atlas_0_bump, are in the wrong slots. The correct, and most up-to-date normal maps are the TGA files of the same names as the PNGs you pulled this stuff from.

 

[NITRON100]

so i want to start converting my ships into Source Filmmaker.
exporting them as 3D models in the game work, and i have blender to so i'll be able to port them into the source engine, somehow...

but i want to know what is the process of importing those 3D models into Blender?
so far i can use 3D builder to see the ships, and it doesn't seem that any of the files can be opened in blender...

 

[Crimson-Artist]

so i want to start converting my ships into Source Filmmaker.
exporting them as 3D models in the game work, and i have blender to so i'll be able to port them into the source engine, somehow...

but i want to know what is the process of importing those 3D models into Blender?
so far i can use 3D builder to see the ships, and it doesn't seem that any of the files can be opened in blender...

when you export a ship 2 files will be made. a .obj file and a .mat file. you import the .obj into blender and blender will automatically import the textures from the .mat file.

If you are using blender render (The default render engine) after importing press alt+z to get the textures to appear

 

[NITRON100]

when you export a ship 2 files will be made. a .obj file and a .mat file. you import the .obj into blender and blender will automatically import the textures from the .mat file.

If you are using blender render (The default render engine) after importing press alt+z to get the textures to appear

OOOH! okay, thanks

 

[0ldSkull]

I got normal maps to work kinda in blender, but it's nowhere near perfect.

StarMade's normal maps invert the red and green axes vs. what some other programs use. When using gimp-normalmap to generate one for use in a texture pack I have to select both the "Invert X" and "Invert Y" options (not for preview, just for the result). I remember this being discussed in a forum thread long ago. This looks like the problem with them in your image. It sounds like Crusade resolved his normal map issue, though I can't see the issue nearly as clearly in his original image (if it was the same problem).

Inverting the color values in the red and green channels may transform it correctly for your use.

Separating out the alpha channel is easy in GIMP... just "Add layer mask" and pick "Transfer layer's alpha channel". The normal or alpha (specular+emissive) images can then be copied or displayed independently.

Not sure if anyone is using GIMP on here, but if more detail would be useful I'd be happy to write a bit more. I haven't done anything with Photoshop or Blender though, so can't really speak to that side of it.

 

[Crusade]

I believe it's time for a bump before i reformat my PC!

 

[Crusade]

You want more? You got it.

If this thread is dead (pls no ded) I may start a community render thread.

 

[Blodge]

If this thread is dead (pls no ded) I may start a community render thread.

I don't think this thread is dead but, this one does contain a lot of discussion on the how-to side of rendering. Maybe a separate thread with just the finished works in it might not be a bad idea?