space-nerds-in-space
space-nerds-in-space copied to clipboard
smcameron
Could use some better 3D models for spaceships
Now that we have shaders that can do normal mapping for more than just spheres, we could use some models that can actually take advantage of this.
Currently our models are mostly just some stl files generated via OpenSCAD, which is OK, but they lack even basic texture mapping, never mind normal mapping. We do have a few models with texture maps and emittance maps, but none with normal maps (other than some procedurally generated normal maps for planets.)
Spaceship models should be oriented facing down the positive X axis, with positive Y axis being up. Other orientations can possibly be accommodated but that is the preferred orientation. Scale should be on the order of 50 to 100 units long, though scaling is adjustable by the engine.
I tried to see if I could load these models: https://v-ktor.itch.io/space-ships
But when I open them with the mesh_viewer utility they are full of holes, I can’t figure out why.
If I hack together an mtl file I can get them textured, but still with the holes.
I also got: Unable to load texture 'share/snis/models/spaceships01//carrier01_emission.png': load_png_texture only supports RGB and RGBA while trying to add the light texture as well. Not sure how to fix that.
Also I did not understand what the _normal.png files are for and if I can link to them somehow. For _specular.png this seems to match the map_Ks mtl keyword but I am not sure the game takes it into account.
I also get ignoring unknown data '5880':s 1 but as the game models also give the same output I guess that is no big deal.
Probably they are "non-manifold" in some way or other. Perhaps some triangles wind the wrong direction and are getting back-face-culled. Brief googling suggests you need to "recalculate normals" (ctrl-N in blender according to google) and possibly re-triangulate if the model contains Ngons (non triangular polygons). But that's just what google says. I do not really know how to use blender, and am not very good at 3d modelling. Another thing to do might be load it into meshlab. I think it might have some things to help fix non-manifold-ness.
Game doesn't handle specular maps (map_Ks). It handles only diffuse and emissive (map_Kd, map_Ke).
Wavefront obj files do not really support normal maps. However, there is an extension I added that allows you to put in "norm filename" into the .mtl file, however, I do not currently have any models that use it, and I do not know for sure that it works. (spherical normal maps for planets are a home-made special case). The normal mapping depends on the uv-mapping, so the normal map would have to conform to the same layout as the texture mapping, it doesn't have a separate uv-mapping (of course). The game does not support multiple normal map files or texture map files, that is to say, the entire texture map must be contained in a single image, and the entire normal map must be contained in a single file.
Another avenue you might explore is the models of oolite: http://www.oolite.org/ The game can read the ".dat" format that game uses (mostly), and some of those models have normal maps and fancy textures, although recently they have done a lot of work on their renderer and are moving to physically based modelling, so probably some of that stuff will be too fancy to be usable by SNIS. http://aegidian.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4494&start=5490
I had to triangulate the faces in blender to get the model to show up correctly. It looks good in the mesh_viewer.
I’m not sure how to add it to the game, is editing ship_types.txt enough?
What do you think about these models?
Here is the fixed version I did if you want to look at it through mesh_viewer: carrier01.zip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oolite_(video_game) says Oolite resources are non-free ("CC-BY-NC-SA for resources") which is why I did not look into it further, not sure if it’s true for all resources.
Maybe look at Pioneer's (http://pioneerspacesim.net/) models. Repo here: https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer-assets.
Pioneer's art, music and other assets are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. See licenses/CC-BY-SA-3.0.txt for details.
They are .blend & .dds files. Probably need to convert.
Ah, hadn't noticed that about the oolite models, good catch.
The model looks good ... maybe a little cartoony with all the fins, and a bit too much like a single pilot ship blown up to mega-ship size. Seems like the windows especially are like a single pilot ship, and also would be cool if there were more windows lit up on the emission map, and the plain white color on the emit map would probably be better as a slight yellow or amber tint to match other lit things in the game more closely.
To add it to the game, yeah, add it to ship_types.txt, and put the model files in share/snis/models/carrier01/
And if you want the thrust flares to match the engines, a carrier01_scad_params.h file will need to be created to tell the game the number, relative position and scaling to use.
For example, swordfish.scad_params.h contains:
{ 3, { { 2.3, { { -20, 0, 0 } } }, { 1.5, { { -16.75, 0, 8.5 } } }, { 1.5, { { -16.75, 0, -8.5 } } }, } }
Which means there are 3 exhaust ports, and three rows describing the scaling, and x, y, z offset of those exhaust flares, generally arrived at empirically.
Also, snis_ship_type.h will need to be edited (that is, if you mean to add a new ship type rather than replace an existing model. Maybe replacing an existing model would be better.)
Also the model will need to be oriented with the front facing positive X, and Y up (or parameters in ship_type.txt to rotate it into correct orientation, but just having the model in the right orientation to begin with is preferable.) I believe this can be done in blender when you export the model.
Yeah, I've been playing around with a little astronaut from opengame art: https://opengameart.org/content/astronaut-1 Also a bit cartoonish.
I don't trust myself to pick something from SolCommand because there's too much on there that's obviously Star Wars stuff, etc. that can't possibly be free, and so the provenance of all of it is kind of tainted. What assurance is there that I won't accidentally pick something that turns out to not actually be free? I definitely don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of various fictional but copyrighted spaceship designs, so the fact that I don't recognize some design isn't sufficient. If they want to host actually free stuff, they should do a better job of curating the content.
SolCommand's added a few from various shows since last I was there. Most are his own unique creations.
@smcameron Replacing models might be better indeed.
What I’m a bit afraid of with the https://v-ktor.itch.io/space-ships models is whether they will look good as wireframe in the science screen and navigation. It’s indeed a bit hard to chose scale and estimated size of the crew.
You can preview what the wireframe will look like in mesh_viewer by pressing R.
It actually looks good in wireframe too.
Regarding pioneer assets, I think we could use these two: https://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Malabar -> to replace the transport model, most likely https://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Kanara_Interceptor -> But we already have the enforcer which is textured, so not sure what this one would replace. Supposed to be a small ship (they say 1 to 2 people in crew). Maybe the vanquisher?
When selecting a ship to replace, I wouldn't put too much stock in the names. Apart from a few (enforcer (police), asteroid miner (mining bot) and transport (used in the RTS mode) and mantis (tow ship -- needs to be a certain scale and shaped a certain way)) I think the names are more or less arbitrary. The properties like top speed, etc. in ship_types.txt are also malleable (not carefully balanced or anything, with some exceptions -- enforcer is fast enough to catch anything, for example).
To me, the ugliest current models are probably... battlestar, cruiser, destroyer, freighter, spaceship2, spaceship.stl, swordfish.stl -- so if you want to specifically swap out the transport model, I'd probably then move transport.scad to replace one of those other (to me) uglier ones.
That being said, there's some things remaining to be worked out about how to replace things. I'm not too keen to put giant models into git. It's not a big deal to put an openscad file into git because they are small and essentially code, which git is good at storing. But an stl file, or a .obj file, and accompanying textures ... I'd rather not put any more of those into git. I can of course put them onto spacenerdsinspace.com -- but this leads to the problem of producing unwanted "git diffs" if they actually replace any files. So I think I need to come up with a way to have models from spacenerdsinspace.com be able to supersede the models in git without actually touching any of the files in git.
Ok, I committed a simple system to replace assets (even if I eventually decide to move to something like git lfs, I figure this will be good for modding). It still needs a little work, in that it's a little fragile if you try to use non-default asset directories (fails by not finding the replacement assets and using the originals assets) and it currently only works for models and their textures, but not textures in general, though getting that to work also should be trivial.
Basically, if snis_client finds a file in share/snis/replacement_assets.txt, it reads it. Each line in that file maps an original filename to a new file name. Whenever assets are read, it checks to see if an original filename has been superseded, and if so, it reads the new one instead.
e607e55a285a3a38d8f5bcba2111f86efda0020f
I have put the carrier01 model on spacenerdsinspace.com and with the new replacement asset system, "make update-assets" will pick it up and replace transport.stl without causing any git diffs. I had to rotate and scale the model a bit. Also the thrust flares aren't quite right yet. Also I still need to work on dealing with asset_dir correctly.
So the license is Creative Commons Attribution v4.0 International : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
However, the only name I have to attribute is "viktor", which seems not quite right. Would be better to have a real person's name.
@smcameron https://opengameart.org/content/spaceships-6 says that the author is "Viktor Hahn ([email protected])"
Thanks.
I have now allowed *.scad_params.h files to be superseded and "make update-assets" will fix the scad_params.h file for the new carrier model.
It would be quite useful to have some way to render all ships from ship_types.txt next to each other. That would help fixing orientation and scaling problems, and to get an idea of which needs changes.
Not a bad idea. The orientation is easy to check. View it in mesh viewer, and initially it should be facing you, and upright. In mesh viewer, positive X axis is facing towards you, and positive Y axis is up, and positive Z is to the left. Not so easy to check them all at once though.
Possibly some modification of this python script and blender? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/39303/blender-script-import-model-and-render-it
Modifying mesh_viewer to have sufficient camera controls and the ability to render more than one model is a bigger job and will complicate it more than I really feel like tackling. Another approach would be to allow Lua scripts to clear everything, add all the ships one by one next to each other, make them all catatonic so they don't move, orient them all, and then move the player ship nearby, facing them. However, that's kind of a lot of work too. The blender approach seems like the least amount of work (or it would be, if I knew how to mix python and blender at all.)
Another approach would be to allow Lua scripts to clear everything, add all the ships one by one next to each other, make them all catatonic so they don't move, orient them all, and then move the player ship nearby, facing them.
This is what I had in mind, in order to get them with the ship_types.txt settings applied and to be sure that we see them as the game would. Lua scripts can already clear everything and add the ships, what part are missing? Being able to orient ships precisely might be useful to missions.
However, that's kind of a lot of work too. The blender approach seems like the least amount of work (or it would be, if I knew how to mix python and blender at all.)
Can’t really help here, I’m no good with blender nor python ^^
what part are missing?
The main part that's missing is a way to put the ships into a catatonic state so they don't just drive away.
Just pushed a few patches. Now there's a lua script, REVIEW_MODELS.LUA https://github.com/smcameron/space-nerds-in-space/blob/master/share/snis/luascripts/REVIEW_MODELS.LUA
Are you running the game from the directory you compiled in, or did you install it?
I suspect it has to do with what I mentioned before about "Also I still need to work on dealing with asset_dir correctly."