Modelling Organisation
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Ah that’s cool then, thanks Moort.
So a Eurofighter Typhoon would be welcomed if I get one completed soon ish.
Would be nice to know some specs of what can and can’t be done so I can optimise things, probably mostly for the interior. I’ll set up a WIP thread once I get going then I can ask the relevant info at the relevant points
I’m also looking forward to tweaking the flight model. I guess this is where getting as much material as possible helps to make sure the virtual model apes the real thing where you have the material to make such checks!
Thanks
Dave
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The “of course part” is not so obvious, especially if you follow the “as close to real” as possbile idea.
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@Mr:
So a Eurofighter Typhoon would be welcomed if I get one completed soon ish.
Thanks
Dave
Hi Dave,
I am upto my neck in sick and nappies in RL atm…
So IF you are serious about this then you can have my WIP to finish -
Wow Naldo, that looks really great so far!
It is a shame you can’t finish it up.
My motivation lays in other directions too, primarily a nice high quality render version for video compositing or individual rendering. However with the tools/pipeline today it also makes sense to develop that same asset for real-time use… it’s also a little something for my personal portfolio as I’ve recently started freelancing and need a piece like this I think.
Thus using your model would defeat my own goals unfortunately…It does look really nice so far though… sooooo many buttons haha
Reference for the cockpit is my weak point right now but I’ll have to see how lucky I can get at Farnborough this year
Dave
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@Mr:
I’ve had a dig around but the shader files are all encoded.
Just wondering if we have access to a specular control map on the diffuse maps alpha channel for the main aircraft diffuse surfaces?
How about normal maps, any shaders that implement it or are you trying to avoid it due to the high texture loads from terrain already?
Where are 3D object material properties (specular strength, glossiness, texture reference etc) stored? Within the 3D object file?
I’d like to make some content for Falcon BMS, but I get this feeling you are optimising for the campaigns based in the 70s/80s and not so much the modern stuff? I liked the idea of a nice Eurofighter Typoon that is all.
Many thanks
Dave
None of those things you mention are controllable at the present time. There are no specular or normal maps.
Details about face count and textures are contained in the first post of this thread.
Regards
Dave -
None of those things you mention are controllable at the present time. There are no specular or normal maps.
Details about face count and textures are contained in the first post of this thread.
Regards
DaveI’m continuing to dig deeper with time but I guess I can just edit the shader to look for the rgb.a channel and multiply it by the specular to get the control I need.
I’m assuming then that ALL aircraft use the same basic shaders, and that shader implies all the properties of the material, so the specular intensity and glossiness values are hard coded.
I’ll have a play around any way. I can’t imagine it’ll be too hard to add. It’ll just add so much to everything in a great way!
Normal mapping isn’t essential any way. It’d be nice but considering good normal maps take so much effort to make to get full benefit from them it’s probably not worth it. Also, I’d have no idea where to begin to make them work
Currently struggling with Typhoon blueprints that don’t line up nicely haha. Oh for a 1:32 Revell model completed and painted in profile line livery
Dave
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hi
…and Bump mapping, it’s possible ???..
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Somebody has interest to build choppers? There are only these in the TacRef:
- AH-1 Huey Cobra
- AH-64A Apache
- AH-64D Longbow
- CH-46 Sea Knight
- CH-47 Chinook
- CH-53 Sea Stallion
- UH-1N Huey
- UH-60L Black Hawk
- MD-500D Defender
- OH-58D Kiowa
- Ka-50 Hokum
- Mi-24 Hind
- Mi-8/17 Hip
- Westland Lynx
- AH-66 Comanche
- A-109
- A-129
I built the AH-1 and AH-64 to SP/FF more than 6~7 years ago, but my work was lost.
Best regards.
Like that? -
I’m just looking at things.
It seems LOD models use the same texture, just the engine will mip down to a lower res texture. However, even if an aircraft like a C130 Hercules is out at 10km you are still loading about 50meg of texture into the VRAM. It’s also spread over lots of textures so will be doing lots of calls to the graphics (I’m guessing as you are now shading with SM3?) for one aircraft.
Would it make sense to duplicate the texture, make it 4x smaller say (512x512 rather than 2048x2048) and then use that on the LOD models?
Since in combat you will rarely get near an aircraft to see it’s higher LOD (bar your formation which use the same texture anyway, probably), or the refuel tanker, it will mean almost EVERY other aircraft that is loaded into scene will just be loaded up with 16x less VRAM use, which is a lot.
In the case of the C130 you might even combine the textures into a single atlas and do one call on it too, rather than four!It’s all small fry in isolation, but when you are in a dogfight or escort and have maybe 5 unique planes running around you are loading maybe 2 x 2048 per AC (32meg) x 5 ~ 160meg. You could be loading 40meg just by halving the texture size lookup for LOD models, or half again would probably even be perfectly acceptable considering where the first LOD model appears after the beauty/close-up model.
You could also quite quickly/easily atlas most of these 2 or 3 texture AC into one texture/render call too.
Just curious if that has been looked into? It wouldn’t really be that hard to see the FPS impact by just running a batch to halve or quarter the folders contents in resolution size (bar the textures for YOUR specific aircraft you’ll fly during the test)
Or am I barking up the wrong tree and there are smaller mips loaded dynamically or something!?
Cheers
Dave
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Also, do weapons have LOD capability or not?
Thanks
Dave
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@Mr:
Also, do weapons have LOD capability or not?
Yes, all 3d models have LOD capability except cockpits. And even they may have the capability, but it would not be sensical.
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Like that?
Oh geez, these rotor animations still suck big time (i know, not your fault) … apart from that - great models.
About time someone got to the Helos… -
@Mr:
I’m just looking at things.
The recommendation is to use one larger texture rather than 4x smaller textures.
A model 10km away should probably not use any texture at all but this depends on what is being modelled and other variables.
Regards
Dave -
The recommendation is to use one larger texture rather than 4x smaller textures.
A model 10km away should probably not use any texture at all but this depends on what is being modelled and other variables.
Regards
DaveI just did a test. I reduced all textures to 25%, 81meg vs 1gig hehe.
Really rough here because it’s hard to set up a quick FPS test environment with lots of different aircraft and trying to get some particle systems going off etc. But I looked to have about 47/42 improvement in performance, so about 10%…
I only used 3 AC types and took off over a city airbase.
Even if that is 5% due to random error, it could be near 10% with 6 different AC types, lots of weapons going off etc. Not a huge amount but easily worth the extra 80meg in the textures folder and re-directing LOD models textures to a different texture name.
Ie, batch the dds > *_small.dds
Batch (code guru) the models LOD model texture reference to that dds.
10% saved there in the heat of combat is either smoother gameplay, or the option to crank some other stuff up higher instead that adds something of actual value?!
Thanks
Dave
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What is your PC configuration (hardware) please?
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I seem to recall a thread regarding stuttering caused by loading lots of (smaller) textures into memory instead of fewer larger textures.
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What is your PC configuration (hardware) please?
Is this me?
If so:
8gig RAM (2 4 gig sticks, 866mhz or something fancy)
2500k 4 core Intel jobby running at usual auto-overclock ~ 3.3ghz
GTX275 with 896meg or something, latest driver bar one, standard clock rates
1920x1200 screen
G25 wheel plugged in for rudder and gears
Logitech Attack 3 (the shame!) for joystick
Win 7 on an SSD
Swap file on another SSD
BMS on a 2tb fast hdd (sata6 is it?)
Win7 64I had a few reference points on FPS, the other was 106 vs 90 (again ~ 10% with wooliness ratio added in because the test wasn’t exactly the same each time) which was with objects/density turned right down (so textures were the primary ‘load’ I guess), looking back at an airport full of F16’s, B2’s and Tornados.
Thanks
Dave
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I seem to recall a thread regarding stuttering caused by loading lots of (smaller) textures into memory instead of fewer larger textures.
My FPS were a bit slower at first, I guess as stuff is loaded in and all the particle systems get ‘aged’ and haze and so on all become steady state.
I’m generally impressed F4 runs as well as it does but I guess it’s been down to strict adherence to the low batch count, ptypes, not sure what the exact term is here
It’d be nice to optimise some stuff to then relax other stuff for the authors to be more creative in efficient ways. I totally get and really appreciate the BMS team wanting to keep things solid and clean, it’s what makes it even work today… which is also why I really want to make a nice EF Typhoon for it as it’s a great canvas to work on imo!
Dave