PEO editing

[Charvell]

Did anyone figure out how to set a PEO the same as HW ships are set?

Delphy, did you ever figure this one out? If not, where can I find the lates version of peoMAT?

Thenks in advance

[Delphy]

Set a peo the same as HW ships are set?

Not sure what you are talking about here.... do you mean the actual file *format* in terms of 3dex not saving it the same... or the colours... or what?

The latest version of peoMat is the one still on my site - http://go.to/delphy

If I haven't gotten a program then I probably will be able to make one, but I'm not going to be generally available over christmas, so it probably wouldn't be till Jan...

Regards,
Delphy

[Tech]

3Dex saves peo's in a different order. Due to offset handling this shouldn't be a problem.
But there are some minor and major glitches:
- header.nPublicmaterials is always set to 0 (HW != 0), instead header.nLocalMaterials is set (HW == 0)
- header.oPublicmaterials is set to 0 (HW .oPub... == .oLoc...)
- material.ambient and material.diffuse values are equal in RGB but the fourth value in color is != 0 (HW == 0)
- material.kAlpha is set to 1 (HW == 0)
- some minor material values are different
- hierarchy infos aren't preserved (all subobjects point to motherobject, but no sisterobject directive => if not chained, objects wouldn't show up in HW) even if peos are read in
- flags are not preserved

(why had barking dog changed the peo format ? ... apparently there is no use of the new integrated variable in polygonobjects, it points to a field with no useful info, the vertexnormals -derived from adjacent facenormals- are added to the list of facenormals)

[Charvell]

In a nut shell, The HW peo can have separate objects (local) grouped together to form one object with the individual objects having their own mappings and lightings. The PEOs we make don't have the ability to do this. We're stuck with all public objects and any attempt to change this results in a corrupted PEO. I'm not as smart as you guys and I don't have a clue as to how to fix this but I do know that it makes for a very dissapointing ship building experience. I've put many hours into modeling and detailed texture mapping just to have everything turn out as less than desirable when it's all transformed. It's really frustrating. I know there are many others that also feel very let down when their great looking model (3D rendered) shows up as a boxy mess in the game. I won't even get into what CAT does to them (bigger mess).

I was hoping that one of you smart guys would have the answer to this dillemma. I know.........always pushing and requesting the imopssible. I suppose It's a case of "can someone please fix what I can't".

Thanks for the replies Delphy, Tech.

[Tech]

some more info:

peo-specification: http://www.hwmods.de/HWstuff/basics/...ification.html

saving orders orig/3Dex: http://www.hwmods.de/temp/peostructure.txt

dump out of the taaidan heavydefender
HW: http://www.hwmods.de/temp/heavydefender.txt
HWC: http://www.hwmods.de/temp/theavydefender.txt
3Dex: http://www.hwmods.de/temp/theavydefender3dex.txt

as Delphy used in his peomat-editor the flags of materials can be changed (short listing of effects in peo-spec)

the objects and the polygons got flags too, whereas i see no sense for the polygon ons at the moment, but it looks like you can define properties for awhole object

let's see what can be done

[Charvell]

This is good stuff Tech. I see a use for individual polygon flags. This is how HW ships achieve their lighting independent of single textures. This is the crux of our problem. You see, by being able to set the lighting for a specific area of a ship you can run large page lifs with separate lighting effects for each specific area, like the HW ships do. This is the local smoothing effect we are after.

Delphy, The peoMAT I have came from a sight of yours but it's not the most recent version (v1.0). Which site do I need to use? You seem to have a few different ones flying around

[Delphy]

Charvell,

The correct link is on http://www.a-fluffy.demon.co.uk/home...downloads.html - this is to version 1.21

Actually reorganising and changing a 3dex PEO into a HW one is something I've been meaning to do for a long long time now. I kind of do it in some of my programs (peoMat being the most obvious).

To be honest, this kind of thing would be easy to add - peoMat isn't *just* about editing the materials... (At least not when you look at the source coe...hehe)

Let me know exactly what you want done and I'll add it over christmas.

Cheers
Stuart

[Charvell]

HAH! OK, let me see............How bout making it possible to enable/disable every darn flag there is and then we can experiment and see what works and what doesn't......heh

How bout this one. Make it possible to take materials and group them into public groupings. ie: take a group of materials and make one public group out of them. Right now all we have is local groups. We need to be able to take these local groups and merge them into a public grouping. Forgive me but I'm not too bright on this stuff. Tech should be able to shed more light on this..........


PS thanks for the link

[Builder]

Are there any other programs that can convert between the required formats (peo, geo, raw, r3d) other than 3d Exploration?

[Red Kerensky]

Peomat doesnt work, it says its missing a file

[Delphy]

Red, get the VB runtimes. (or get an old full install of peomat from somewhere)

Crook, should be possible to do In fact, very easy.

I'll work on it over Christmas, but I wont be here for the next week or so....

Cheers,
Stuart

[Prime_8]

HI m'8

[Crook]

me?

[Charvell]

Delphy. I noticed the corruption you were talking about. The shading ambiance/diffuse is being turned into a purple shading instead of just gray. I wonder why this is happening? I only notice it on ships after editing with peoMAT. Anyway. It would be really nice to be able to set more than just one global smooth group. Have you had a chance to look into this yet?

Thanks.

[modder_2002]

Is there a way to make a solid color object have the ability to change color (i.e., the red panels on the mothership or the white on the multibeam frigate?)

[Delphy]

Hi Charvell,

Not sure what you mean by the local shading. Basically peoMat allows you to edit the details for a polygon object - this if you have a certain set of vertexes set as an object this will work.

I have a cold though at the moment so my understanding may be clouded

Also, the seperate object grouping - are you talking Mother/Daughter/Sister here, because thats the only grouping the HW peos have...

Thanks
Stuart

[Delphy]

Falcon,

You've actually answered your own question

Basically in a PEO file it can have multiple material properties which all point to the same LIF file, but have different characterictics.

Thats how you can have lots of different page0.lifs specified in the PEO file but only one *actual* page0.lif

What 3dex does is strip out all the extra material properties so that it's one material to one lif.

Thus, the problem occurs that you cannot set smoothing or self illimunation (or any of the flags) on *only* a specific part of the ship, because that part is now part of the whole.

Homeworld:
Many materials -> One Lif

3dex:
One material -> One lif

The only way to assign a new flag onto the engine (to use your example), would be to create another material property within the PEO file, and then assign this material property to each polygon within the area you want to use. Not a quick and easy task to undertake.

Where you only using 3dex to scale the object? ie make it twice as big? Becuase, you see, if you took 3dex out of the equation, the PEO file would still have *all* it's material properties and thus you could set specific materials.

Hope this helps,
Delphy

ps, I seem to have lost the source code for peoMat 1.21 (argh!)

[Falcon2000]

Whoa man! i've never seen anyone reply so quickly to such a large post!! Nice work!

And it seems you've answered my prayers!

Yes all i wanted to do was alter the scale of the mothership and then to shrink the size of the fighters to make the game feel more epic.

I guess i was just scared to delve into the peo world without trusty 3dex or peomat but does that mean i can edit a peo without them? (e.g. as a text file as i think ur implying )

/me licks lips at thought of solving prob

If i used the original peo just rescaled it without using 3dex then i would have to set anything right? Allthe materialproperties would be the same its just the scale that would change. That sounds so much easier than what i was bouncing around in my head for a while there

Just one question how do I edit a peo without exporting with 3dex???

Still can't believe the speed of that reply...:ninja:

[Delphy]

A scaling of a PEO file could be done either using the transform matrix, or alternatively by changing the actual vertex data itself.

It would be relatively trivial to write a routine which scaled the vertexes like this, however I suggest the following:

To scale it using the transform matrix, get Spookys MAD Editor 1.6.0 (I think) and then you can put values in to scale the model in-game without actually changing the vertex information.

Hope this helps,
Delphy

[Falcon2000]

Got a bit deflated at the first paragraph but ive already got madeditor 1.6.5 and LithUnwrap so i should be set!! i'll try it later today but i gotta get some sleep now

Still i will ask, Will the ms perform ok with just the transform of the original peo and a rescaled mex file? If it does that's even easier than text or hex editing!

thanks Delphy

[Spooky]

If you wish to just rescale the peo file to twice the size then all you need is the mad editor and the mex scaler and to edit the shp file. Lithium Unwrap is irrelevant.

One very important thing to note is that the scaling ONLY should be applied to the parent object of a ship, not to any child objects like turrets or barrels etc... And also the scaling factor is an inverse function so that entering a value of 2 will half the size while 0.5 will double it....

[Falcon2000]

Ok the next obvious question is how do i scale the peo using mad editor lol. First itme ive used it although ive always had it. I can get as far as creating a .mad from the "from peo" option and the opening that but im lost as to how to transform the peo. (this is using the R2 ms still) I can't click on the hierachy tab as you might have guessed because R2 ms is only one object right? Is that a problem because otherwise i cant see any scaling options. Any good tuts or texts on mad editor?

The parent object info is good too because Captain Pearce at the Newbie Forums didn't know how to avoid problems with turrets when scaling the peo

thanks Spooky

[Falcon2000]

D'oh forgot to mention the slight problem of a runtime error

"35601"
element not found

When trying to open the peo i mad the mad from.

I have vb6 runtimes does mad editor need vb5? i will download anyway but yeah, ignore parts of my last post, i think i can see how to do it once the error's sorted...

lol i just found i even have Orof Da Ludicrous's mad tutorial on my hard drive as well

[Delphy]

Originally posted by Falcon2000
Ok the next obvious question is how do i scale the peo using mad editor lol. First itme ive used it although ive always had it. I can get as far as creating a .mad from the "from peo" option and the opening that but im lost as to how to transform the peo. (this is using the R2 ms still) I can't click on the hierachy tab as you might have guessed because R2 ms is only one object right? Is that a problem because otherwise i cant see any scaling options. Any good tuts or texts on mad editor?

The parent object info is good too because Captain Pearce at the Newbie Forums didn't know how to avoid problems with turrets when scaling the peo

thanks Spooky

Well, when you scale you don't create a MAD you edit the PEO itself.

However, I've made it easy for you - in an upcoming tool to be released I've actually incorporated vertex scaling, as opposed to matrix scaling.

See http://www.livejournal.com/users/tashiketh/ for more details.

[Falcon2000]

Right yeah I understand that, its just that it seems like u can't make any alterations to the peo using mad editor unless it has a mad file...anyway the mad editor doesn't cater for single object peos so ill just forget about it for the moment and get on with actually making some models for my mod .

This new tool sounds great (very useful for me of course)! I have to ask if there's any idea as to when or where I should look out for it?

Interesting site too, keep up the good work. Your tools help every1 so much!

(and why did i mention LithUnwrap above?? musta been reading a different post at 5am or something lol)

[Delphy]

Did you try just opening a PEO file, instead of a MAD file? You can certainly edit them seperately.

Anyway, this is a moot question really, since it doesn't support single object peos.

Just be patient and wait for the uberPeoTool (whatever I end up calling it) It'll be announced here in the forums (if there are up), or more likely on my journal page

I mentioned LithUnwrap too, but then edited it out of my post, so maybe you weren't hallucinating

[Falcon2000]

oh right glad i'm not losing it just yet.

And yeah i got confused with the editing the mads and peo cause it was just the same error with opening single object peos anyway...

Looking forward to that new tool so good luck and yeah, hopefully the forums will stay up for more than 5 mins to get it

[Ghent]

i may be wrong, of course, but I beg to differ on one point.

case:

I make my T-MAT ship in some program and texture it in Milkshape. Planning ahead, I make several materials with the same texture on them because I want some of them to glow... and everyone knows T-MAT ships "glow" %) ...
so I finish... set the lighting values to:
Ambient 50,50,50
Diffuse 200,200,200
Specular 0,0,0
Emissive 0,0,0

except on the glowing materials... these I set to:
Ambient 200,200,200
Diffuse 200,200,200
Specular 0,0,0
Emissive 0,0,0 <---- try playing with this one tho! :O fun!

save... export as .obj... close

Wavefront Convert (kudos Crook) if needed

in 3D ex... convert .obj to .peo into a new empty folder, yeah, pretty much standard procedure, blah blah blah...

Peochain it, kudos Ratbag (if needed)

pull up my liflist subfolders, find the proper .lif files i made previously, dump them into the lod0,1,2,3 folders to replace the faux 3Dex lifs....

load up HW... voila... glowyness ... and only on the correct parts of the ship.


To double check, sometimes i've loaded up the .peo in PeoMat before loading up HW. multiple materials (in the same order as I made them in Milkshape) can be seen, some which point to the same .lif files, but can be given different spec,Ambient,Diff,kAlpha (wtf is this?), and set to "make self illuminated" (wtf value in the lighting is this?). Strangely contradictory? (unless I read the above posts wrongly)

[Delphy]

Ghent,

To double check, sometimes i've loaded up the .peo in PeoMat before loading up HW. multiple materials (in the same order as I made them in Milkshape) can be seen, some which point to the same .lif files, but can be given different spec,Ambient,Diff,kAlpha (wtf is this?), and set to "make self illuminated" (wtf value in the lighting is this?). Strangely contradictory? (unless I read the above posts wrongly)

Since there is no "Emissive" value in Homeworld peo files, this is provided by the "Self Illuminated" value.

Basically, a Homeworld ship can have multiple material properties pointing to the same texture (lif). This means that the same texture could be used for both the back and front, but the back could be "self illuminated" and not the front. This material property is set on a per polygon basis.

Can't remember exactly what kAlpha is, since the Ambient, Diffuse and Specular have Alpha information in them.

Regards,
Delphy

[Ghent]

as far as I can tell, all HW ships have kAlpha set to the same value. Also the same values for FullAmbient.

kAlpha = 1
FullAmbient = -21760

for normal lighting:

Ambient = 3289650 (50, 50, 50 in RGB values)
Diffuse = 13158600 (200, 200, 200 in RGB value)
Specular = 0

for glowy self-illum:

Ambient = 13158600 (200, 200, 200 in RGB)
Diffuse = 13158600 (200, 200, 200)
Specular = 0


...reaffirm or corrections anyone?

[Tech]

According to the peo-spec kAlpha is never used. Never seen nFullambiant unequal 0 in original ones.

The method to create glowing textures via obj /mtl files is old. Used this since 1 1/2 years, surely posted it on buried boards.