i have browsed the original FL texture filebase - but haven t found good ones that i can use - so maybe someone has some decent textures for bretonian ships? - all i was able to do was to texture in some lame civilian skins and dye the texture ( which looks stupid )
this shows how far i got with the default textures - only the engine thrusters look OK. - the whole shipbody doesnt look good. - so i m in need for some nice bretonian skins - if someone has ... ( or i might have to make some myself ... or worse - download them from turbosquid ) i tried to apply the capital ship skins for the silver parts and the red parts - but they don t look good on a fighter. - for the fighters - i d need something like the red plates - and some default UV skin for the silver parts.
The problem, as I see it from this point, is that you apply textures flat on several surfaces, i.e. you select several surfaces, pick a texture for them and flat skin them from one of the axis. It's fast but such approach is easily noticeable. Lack of textures or details on them can be compensated by manually mapping textures upon the polygonal surfaces: a technique commonly known as UVW unwrapping. Low polygonal models often rely on it to make details and make emphasis on curves whereas additional polygons could be too expensive given polygonal budget. Textures themselves, while may be few of them are there, have plenty of details, lines and curves which can be used nicely by following polygonal edges and curves. The only thing to be careful is to keep texture distortion to the minimum. Don't blame textures, in fact take a closer look. I can see how they can be split into parts and there are several nice trimming elements on them which can used greately. Lack of mapping seamless feel can be compensated by mirroring adjacent surface map, developers used it quite often on vanilla ships by the way. Guess it's time to make tutorial about texturing and mapping.
A general rule of thumb: detailed textures (textures with contrast patterns) are mapped manually, while homogeneous "nautural" (mild mono-duo colored surfaces, such as ground, grass, rocks, etc) textures are using fast axis mapping.
Here is an example:
Horizontally or vertically tiled, seamless elements on texture can easily be adopted for trimmings. Vanilla textures have a lot of those and developers used them accordingly. See Kusari ships for example, you'll find plenty of trims on them, they can greatly increase looks.
I have marked with blue another possible trim element on texture, but of course there are a lot more upon closer inspection, I'll leave it to you to find, and mirroring technique increases texture elements double-triple times. Analyze textures to see which parts of it can be applied to what surfaces.
UVW unwrap is the key. Having more textures will not help it.
yea - i do choose region and spin the tile i selected to get an appropriate "part" of the whole texture. - tried at least on that ship - but the problem is ... i do not have the appropriate bretonian files. - i haven t done normal UV mapping there - as you see on the thrusters - i have chosen specific parts to blend in with the model itself. - its no coincidence that those golden ornaments point this way.
but i do not have the skins to choose from - simple as that. the FL texture file i have includes the whole files for the destroyer , gunboat, battleship and fighters - but they are only examples of the mat file - like thumbnails. what i need is the real textures that are applied on the ships.
i simply don t have the collection of skins to choose the correct placements for the faces i selected.
so, i appreciate that hint, but you shouldn t assume that i haven t manually tried to fit the faces onto the skin files manually. hardly any ship i make uses a simple "select all the texture file and slap it over the surface" - the older ones do, the later ones with more complex structures don t anymore.
still leaves the problem that i lack the appropriate skinfiles.
Extract real textures from material files using FL UTF editor. You miss the point of my advice, again: you need proper application of textures on surfaces. I tell what I see here - minimal mapping, mostly missing trimmings on edges, which is why I put emphasis on them here.
I was so noob and split the textures via GIMP to those parts, then exported them to dds. Seems that UVW mapping is a far better choice. I'll try that one out, thanks for pointing it out.
' Wrote:I was so noob and split the textures via GIMP to those parts, then exported them to dds. Seems that UVW mapping is a far better choice. I'll try that one out, thanks for pointing it out.
Indeed. UVW unwrap is one of the most important tools for low polygonal models. It can make horrible meshes shine. It does take a good amount of patience to map them properly, polygon by polygon, but that's the way. There are many simple yet very effective techniques in, I'll try to explain them a bit later.
gosh, treewyrm - i have no idea what you re talking about. i m no computer geek. utf editor, extracting textures etc. - thats all gibberish to me. - i am quite aware that i miss the fundamental points of professional texturing allright. - and that is why i am asking for textures or skins , neatly packed in .dds or .tga files - seperated and split to the tiles that are easy to use.
i haven t learned that profession, its simply a spare time activity while i m writing my exams in university - for me, its either "easy" or its "i don t understand how to..." - so i try to either get it the easy way - or i don t do it otherwise. i don t have the time and will to work on this stuff professionally. - i do it as long as its fun for me - and learning all the converting, extracting whatever stuff is no fun. i am most certain that you are much better doing that stuff and that your knowledge is superior - but you gotto accept that others are not as far as you are and are rather asking for easier methods.
so, even if i knew what you are talking about with that editor thingy - it would still be easier, if someone simply had a texture pack - if someone had done the work allready and had packed some extracted bretonian textures in a neat little file - simple as that. - else i would have asked for assistance doing those textures myself instead of asking for a skinpack.
mind - if there is none - i ll just make the texture the old/classic way and make them myself by screenshots/modifying them in photoshop and exporting them in a .tga file. - thats what i know how to do - still it would be "easier" if someone allready had the skins in a usable resolution and file format.
Jinx, I'm trying to teach people, sharing techniques and my knowledge. Whereas you lack knowledge it doesn't mean that you can't possibly learn something like that, it isn't esoteric knowledge, merely several techniques which can be quite useful and are quite easy once you are used to it.
There was vanilla ship pack around somewhere, if you will not find I can extract .dds files for you or show you how to to that by yourself.
Download Freelancer UTF Editor (link). Open file -> located .mat file in DATA\SHIPS directory. Open "texture library" node by clicking on cross to the left. Open texture node. Select "MIPS" node. Press "Export" button and name it as texture above is named, except that extension must be .dds. No voodoo magic here. If you see several MIP0-9 nodes instead of single MIPS - export MIP0 with .tga extension.
Extra bit: .txm files can be opened with UTF editor as well. The difference between .mat and .txm is that the latter contains only set of textures, while first one can also have set of mixing materials.
Is there a reason you don't want to use the original Bretonia textures, Jinx? I got them in that zip file. All are in DDS format: http://www.mediafire.com/?ymutzz9y3z5 You gotta use ythe UVW mapping stuff, though. It's easy to learn, actually.
Also, I found the function in Milkshape (Texture Coordinate Editor). It's going to be a big help for my later projects. Thanks for the quick tutorial, Yuri!
now, thats a lot more useful than pointing out the flaws of the texturing - thank you for that hint. and i ll attempt to check it out. i still have the FL texture package and the UTF editor zip.
@i am ready: i use the milkshape texture editor and usually define specific regions in the texture files to apply the faces to by rotating, scaling etc. - the problem was, that i had no bretonian files. - i only had civilian / liberty / utility.