Cirevam Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 Hey, promeshes. I discovered a few things about them that greatly expand their use, and I'll also take this post to document things that are already known. At the bottom of this post you'll find a chatlog which contains some ideas for expanded usage. Basics - Promeshes follow a standard naming convention like biome textures, and the names correspond to each other. If we're looking at the texture Rock00.bmp, its promeshes are RockPM00a.lwo and RockPM00b.lwo. I didn't check to see if there's a CFG entry that defines this. - Promeshes come in two parts, A and B. A is the bottom half and B is the top half rotated 180 degrees. In the model itself, both promeshes together form a square. The right angle of the promesh is placed at the origin. - .x files seem to have no effect on promeshes, as I removed all of them from the ice biome and there's no apparent difference. - Promeshes do not affect the tangible shape of the ground. The mounds seen here do not hinder the Rock Raider in any way and he will walk right through them. Advanced - Ideas to come once they have been confirmed. See the chatlog for some initial brainstorming. Cirevam k TheDoctor Also TheDoctor regarding tests A and B TheDoctor isnt there a fog RGB value somewhere in th ecfg Cirevam Yeah, I confirmed it was the fog about twenty minutes ago Cirevam I'll make the crystal fog white and the problems will go away TheDoctor yay Alexpanter "If you ever wanted proper slug holes or to fix the Recharge Seam's no-mesh problem, then I'm here to tell you that it can happen." -you Alexpanter Will that happen soon? Cirevam Yeah, all I have to do is put in a mesh for it. Cirevam It turns out that all I did to make ground meshes was to put them into the promesh folder and name them properly... and the game did the rest. 3:15 PM Alexpanter How do the names work? Cirevam You know how the names for the textures look like "ROCK00.bmp", yes? Alexpanter Yes. Cirevam Promeshes are RockPM00a.lwo and RockPM00b.lwo Cirevam If there's a texture for it, the game also looks for the promeshes. Cirevam So add in missing ones and bam, you win. Alexpanter So you can make custom PM's for the powah paths 3:20 PM Alexpanter Also, what is the use of the X-files? Cirevam I think they're used with textures, but I removed all of them from my ice promesh folder and nothing looks different. I think they're deprecated. 3:25 PM Alexpanter Is there any difference among the rock's, lava's and ice's PMs? Alexpanter Also, a and b parts only apply to walls, right? Cirevam a is the bottom half of the wall. b is the top half. It applies to all promeshes because every tile is made up of two triangles, a and b. Alexpanter K. Cirevam As for differences, they're all the same right now, but they all have different entries, so you can make all of then different. 3:30 PM Alexpanter Is it possible to go 'under' the ground level, or are PMs like a sort of bump map? Cirevam They are not the bump map. The raider will go through them. Alexpanter So not any sort of collision detection. Cirevam Not at all. Cirevam I should say "none at all" 3:35 PM Alexpanter lol Alexpanter Can you also 'lower' the ground with PMs? Alexpanter I mean like negative bump maps. Cirevam So the raider looks like he's floating? Yes. Alexpanter Hmk Cirevam The physical ground level is still defined by the heightmap, so the promeshes won't change how high or low the raider walks. Alexpanter k. Alexpanter And water? Raiders seem to sink in it. Alexpanter And vehicles don't. Cirevam I haven't a clue with that, but... wait a second. I think I know a way to make transparent water with a seafloor underneath it. 3:40 PM Alexpanter Cirevam Making a double mesh with a transparent water texture on top and an opaque seafloor texture should work. Figuring out the distance between water and floor would take some work, but I think it's doable. Cirevam The floor would act just like the water, and the only way around it wouldn't work in 3rd person, so I won't bother with it. Cirevam Wibbly wobbly seafloor can be explained by the water being wibbly wobbly Alexpanter And the edges Alexpanter Between water and land Cirevam Oh yeah... Cirevam Wait, there's no problem there. Just build a riverbank into the ground promesh. LiquidGravity 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McJobless Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 Well, I know that .x files are DirectX models and can be viewed and converted with any of the DirectX toolkits circling around. Anyways, thank you for this. I'll be trying to use some of this research for one of my upcoming levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cirevam Posted October 29, 2011 Author Share Posted October 29, 2011 While I've been trying to find the correct alignment for the wall meshes, I also looked at water meshes. From what I can tell, giving water a promesh makes it stop moving (not in 3rd person obviously). That doesn't make much sense to me. The alignment in general is bugging me since it seems like the top edge of B is aligned correctly, at least for water, but it's hard to tell since there's no top-down 1st or 2nd person camera. I'll have to make one along with a gridded promesh just to figure out where everything aligns. Oh, and the texture I applied to the water promesh is being overridden by the biome's water texture. I don't know why... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amauros Posted October 29, 2011 Share Posted October 29, 2011 Oh, and the texture I applied to the water promesh is being overridden by the biome's water texture. I don't know why... You're kidding... right? ---- Blarg, I'm going to wait and see what you come up with. I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to accomplish with the water promesh, but I don't think you can get transparent water AND a sea-floor at the same time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cirevam Posted October 29, 2011 Author Share Posted October 29, 2011 I don't think you can get transparent water AND a sea-floor at the same time... Face. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McJobless Posted October 29, 2011 Share Posted October 29, 2011 Oh, and the texture I applied to the water promesh is being overridden by the biome's water texture. I don't know why... Maybe the developers had to eventually hard-code it to the water texture for some god-awful programming reason? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amauros Posted October 29, 2011 Share Posted October 29, 2011 Oh, and the texture I applied to the water promesh is being overridden by the biome's water texture. I don't know why... Maybe the developers had to eventually hard-code it to the water texture for some god-awful programming reason? It's my understanding that textures are applied to their corresponding promeshes if one exists; that's why the hardrock promesh works with the seams. So why would a water promesh be any different? ---- Also, at Cire's picture..... it seems like you just removed the biome texture for water and applied a pseudo texture to the promesh.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cirevam Posted October 29, 2011 Author Share Posted October 29, 2011 Why would it be any different? Maybe because not all of the promesh has the water texture applied to it. The rocks on the seafloor have their original textures, and the floor also seems to have its proper texture too. It's hard to tell, so I'll have to make a new test mesh just for water. I didn't remove anything. I made two new half-meshes from scratch, each with three new materials. All three use textures from within the promesh folder, and nothing is pseudotextured. What's bugging me is that the biome's water texture is not being applied to the entire mesh, just the water surface. Plus, it's not just being overlaid, it's outright replacing the water texture I used on this mesh. The material names are also completely different, so it's not like the game is recognizing a material and replacing the texture (I doubt the game would look for a material named 'wildmineralwater'). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amauros Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 The rocks on the seafloor have their original textures, and the floor also seems to have its proper texture too. What's bugging me is that the biome's water texture is not being applied to the entire mesh, just the water surface. Plus, it's not just being overlaid, it's outright replacing the water texture I used on this mesh. So do your textures work or not? You say they have their proper textures and then say the biome overrides everything... Anyways, I'd expect the biome texture to override anything you apply. It seems to me that the game uses a ray-tracing type method to apply biome textures to their correspond promesh. Thus pixels can end up stretched (which is most noticeable on the reinforcement brace) on angled surfaces, but only the top surface of the promesh will receive a texture. Apparently (as you described what happened to your water promesh), the ray tracing algorithm does not pass through surfaces and apply texture to every surface it hits, but applies texture to the first surface it finds and then stops. Once the game engine has finished rendering the promeshes, it overwrites any existing texture links with its own to memory. --- Well, that's just my theory on the matter. Seems kind of inefficient, but makes for easy adjustments without having to create new promeshes. Edit: Reread what you said, and now I understand that only your water texture is being replaced by the biome's. The seafloor remains perfectly intact. Same basic theory applies though. What I'd suggest is adding another layer to your promesh for the biome texture to apply to, then you'd have two different water textures for the promesh. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cirevam Posted November 3, 2011 Author Share Posted November 3, 2011 Here's a quick video I made to show what I've been doing with promeshes: The green grid and purple text are both using emissive pseudotextures but obviously they don't glow much at all. That's not a big deal. Once I get the alignment correct I'll be able to distribute templates for people to use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McJobless Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 Gotta love the music...but seriously, that's a fantastic use of Promeshes...hell, if we could code it right, it might be possible to make LegoRR chess... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts