Tutorial : engine trails and glows

[MatthCoFreak]

Alright here is a quick and dirty tutorial on how to add engine trails or engine glows on a ship.

Obviously, you first need CFHodEd. This tutorial is using CFHodEd v3.2.4, but should work on any recent version. You are expected to master the basics of CFHodEd (aka placing hardpoints, importing/exporting/transforming meshes) and HW2 modding in general.

Let's start on engine trails and burns. The ship used here is the derelict light corvette, featured as an interceptor in the Onslaught mod by Durandel, and hodded by LeviathansWrath.

EDIT : Added link to the finished product at the bottom of the post.

1st step : add the necessary engine nozzles hardpoints on your ship.

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The naming convention is critical. You must name your hardpoints EngineNozzle#, with # from 1 to 9. HW2 doesn't seem to handle more than 9 nozzles.
Note the 180 degree rotation on the Y axis. It has its importance for the engine burns, so make sure you correctly set it.

2nd step : export an engine burn mesh from a vanilla ship (preferably with an engine of similar size). Here, the Vaygr Assault Craft.

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3rd step : create a new engine burn slot on your ship and import here the mesh you just exported. Make sure you assign it to the correct hardpoint.

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While this is not over yet, you can now save your hod. Let's move on the .ship file a bit.

4th step : set the burn flare in the .ship file.

setEngineBurn(NewShipType, 7, 0.5, 1, 15, 0, 0.7, 0.1, 20)

Make sure you have something that looks like that in there. You can copy-paste this line from a vanilla ship and/or have a look here to see the different settings available.
You need only one of this line, even if your ship has several engine burns.
And now, ingame.

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If you did everything correctly, you should see this flare behind your ship. Congratulations, you accomplished the first part of this tutorial !

Now, the actual trail.

5th step : export an engine shape mesh from a vanilla ship. Preferably the same as before.

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6th step : create a new engine shape slot on your ship and import here the mesh you just exported. Make sure you assign it to the correct hardpoint.

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7th step : set the engine trail in the .ship file.

setEngineTrail(NewShipType, 0, 2, "trail_ribbon.tga", 0.1, 0.5, 0.025, 6)

Specifics for those can be found here.
Contrary to the burns, you need one of these for each engine trail your ship features. On the other hand, having more lines than the number of actual trails on your hod will result in debug warnings that will appear in your hw2.log or as popups in windowed mode, as every other debug warnings/errors. As warnings, they don't cause crashes, however try to avoid it, it's bad design.

The moment of truth : load your game.

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If you see that, then you're done. Wasn't as hard as it sounds, was it ?

EDIT : Here is the finished hod so you can have your hands on the final result yourself. : http://www.mediafire.com/?zwmvwytzrnz

Engine glows are to come later. Hoping it'll be useful .

[LeviathansWrath]

WOot Success TK you matt god gotta love ya and your helpful stuff :P +)

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[Vipey]

this is good, now all we need is engine glow tuts because i could really use them.

[MatthCoFreak]

Alright, now lets have a look on engine glows. Staring here, the Faal-Corum from HWC, featured as a Command Carrier in the Onslaught mod by Durandel, and hodded by LeviathansWrath.

1st step : add the necessary engine nozzles hardpoints on your ship.

Spoiler

It's the exact same naming convention than the engine trails. Nothing new here. You might want to add a 180 degree rotation on the Y axis, because most vanilla ships do, and we're gonna import from them, but you can also manually rotate the glows from the geometry tab, as we will see below.

2nd step : export the engine glow meshes from a vanilla ship. Here, the Hiigaran Destroyer.

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You will surely have noted that although the destroyer features only one engine block, it has not less than 9 glow meshes. Let's have a closer look on the available settings.

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There are three engine meshes per LOD (level of detail). Sounds logical. But why is there still several meshes for each LOD ? Let's see what those mesh look like.
Go in the Miscellaneous tab and click Hod Preview.

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You can check some boxes and see those meshes.

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So as you can see, the three meshes are like matryoshkas. It is supposed to give a more "realistic" appearence ingame, giving more volume and thus more glow closer to the engine.
Now that we had fun with the previews, lets get back to our ship.

3rd step : create the new engine glow slots on your ship and import here the meshes you just exported. Make sure you assign them to the correct hardpoint, and that you set the correct LOD for them.

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Note that if your ship don't feature as many LODs as the destroyer, you don't have to create as much slots. Just create and fill in those you need, it'll save you some work .
There is no naming convention to follow here. I suggest you to use a Engine#1Glow#2_LOD#3 convention, with #1 being the number of your EngineNozzle, #2 the number of the glow mesh and #3 the LOD, but feel free to adapt. It's up to you.

But here is the main snag compared to trails : the glow will probably not fit with the shape of your engine.

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And that's where the tricky part comes in.

4th step : adapting the shape of your glow meshes.
First go in the Geometry tab. Create a new geometry and assign it to your EngineNozzle.

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Add a LOD and import here one of the glow mesh using the Replace button.

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Now go in the Transfom menu and use the different options to tweak the mesh. As said at the beginning of the tutorial, you are supposed to master this kind of command. It's pretty straightforward anyway.

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Go in the preview screen of the Hierarchy tab to check your changes. Make sure you remind exactly the changes you made. You will probably need several trial-and-error attempts before you get the correct shape.

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Once you have finished a mesh, export it.

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You can now do that for each of your glow mesh. Did I mentionned it was gonna be tricky ?
Try to use the exact same transformations you made for the first mesh, in order to keep the "matryoshka" effect.

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Time to import those back in the Engine Glows tab. You know what to do.
Make sure you delete all meshes you may have added in the Geometry tab.

5th step : set the engine glow in the .ship file.

setEngineGlow(NewShipType, 1, 1, 1.02, 20, 450, 200, 2, {0.27, 0.47, 0.69, 0.25,})

Like the burns, you need only one line for all the glow meshes you may have. Also note that this line determines the color of the glow - somehow. I didn't managed to find the specs of this in Karos.

And that's all ! Let's go and see the result ingame.

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[Ringleader]

Nice, thanks!

[Ringleader]

Question: How can you change the engine glow color? I need it to be red/orange instead of blue, and is there a way to adjust the transparency of the glow?

[LeviathansWrath]

personally i think it would rock if engine glow was determined by your stripe color. That is what it did in hw cata.

[Zephyr]

Isn't the trail done by stripe colour?

[LeviathansWrath]

for HW 2 trail yes glow no.

[MatthCoFreak]

For changing the glow color, try to copy-paste the setEngineGlow of a Vaygr ship instead of a Hiigaran one. The difference probably lies in the {0.27, 0.47, 0.69, 0.25,} value - you can try to tweak those.

And no, I don't think there is a way to have the color changed with the team colors.

For the transparency of the glow, try to add or remove some glow meshes. Vanilla ships use 3 meshes per nozzle and per lod, but nothing prevent you to change this number.

[TonyOneBlairoby]

Nobody have any idea about how trail and burn mesh work? In which way the engine exploit those mesh?

I mean, why just not to use a vector like any other weapon hardpoint.

[TON_Viper]

For changing the glow color, try to copy-paste the setEngineGlow of a Vaygr ship instead of a Hiigaran one. The difference probably lies in the {0.27, 0.47, 0.69, 0.25,} value - you can try to tweak those.

And no, I don't think there is a way to have the color changed with the team colors.

For the transparency of the glow, try to add or remove some glow meshes. Vanilla ships use 3 meshes per nozzle and per lod, but nothing prevent you to change this number.

I haven't checked it to make sure, but I'd guess the first three values are RGB, and the last one is alpha.

If you enter the first three values into a color picker, you get the default hiigaran blue color.

[Ringleader]

Yeah, I have confirmed your suspicions Ton, but now I find myself faced with another problem. I have made a custom engine glow for a fighter I have, and I need them to appear just right, or they will not look good. I need to make the glow appear hazier then the default engine glow. Looking at the default, it's not just the solid surface of the HOD, there is a distorting haze effect that makes it looks more like an engine wash then an empty blue mesh.

I need to know how to increase the haze effect, to make it look... hazier.

*edit*

Alright, I think I found it, the 5 after the 50:

setEngineGlow(NewShipType, 1, 1, 1.02, 20, 300, 50, 5,
{1, 0.85, 0, 0.0125,})

The larger it is, the hazier. It would be nice to know what the other values are, I couldn't find them on the Karos page.

[MatthCoFreak]

After testing by Doci7, I can now confirm what part changes the color of the glow :

setEngineGlow(NewShipType, 1, 1, 1.02, 20, 300, 50, 5,{1, 0.85, 0, 0.0125,})

The bold part correspond to RGBA.

[saladin1973]

Is it possible to add an engine burn glare to a subsystem?

[LeviathansWrath]

anyone else ever have trouble with creating an engine glow for a ship and when you launch the mod the thing crashes on universe after you make the engine glows? Because im having some nasty problems with adding engine glows and the game crashes for no reason, i mean i didnt alter anything about the hod or anything but the damned thing still crashes, Any ideas anyone ?

[saladin1973]

What does your log say?

[LeviathansWrath]

it dont say anything....................

[Elowan]

hi,

i want to know, how to create a glow texture. i mean, in photoshop, what steps must be done, to get a engine-exaust look
like it´s "glowing" (on the texture)

example

i got a texture (diffuse-map) and there is no "glow" in the engine-area
i got another texture (from a vanilla ship), with a "glow" is the engine-area

so - how do i create a matching glow from scratch on the other texture?


hmm, where is the button for attachment?

[pc871226]

Hi I am a modder from the Chinese Gundam Seed mod group. right now we are dealing with adding engine burn to the feet part of a gundam. But as you know that part will move in response to a gundam movement. Unfortunately the engine burn won't move with the feet. We have already added the hard point under the moveable parts hierachy but it seems not to be working...........any solutions from you guys?

[TON_Viper]

As far as I know, there isn't any kind of hardpoint that will actually move along with moveable parts, apart from guns on turrets, of course. I think it's hardcoded, sorry.