modelling planet scenes

[Yuveraj Khan]

Has anyone ever attempted to model a landing scene? A custom planet effect?

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[DAnvilFan]

Modeling a landing scene is like modeling anything else.

The question you want to ask is how do you import it effectively into Freelancer.

[arvg]

K so let's ask that question

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[Linkus]

CMPs.

You can simply swap the CMP of a planet's landscape with another, or just edit it.
Just like ships, stations etc.

Only issue would be the landing cutscene, which is a script. Designing a cmp that wouldn't have a mountain in the way of the landing ship wouldn't be hard anyway.


Basically, easy to do, just no one has done it.

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Facilitating the rise of robotics since 0 A.D.

[Alley]

Well that could be a job for me:P
But then we need references to have a size chart

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Alley was right.

[DAnvilFan]

Animations of ships and camera work is the real deal. Otherwise I could model you a scene from Blade Runner and it wouldn't be a big deal. The question is how well can we do it without the tools that DA had.

[Curios]

Also vanilla planetscapes are having some lights, traffic, animated ADs, some other stuff.
Not sure it'll be easy to do the same.
Without DA tools.

But just 3D model of scape will probably look dead.

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[Linkus]

The planetscapes actual shape, buildings etc, are merely CMP files just like Ships and station components.
The ships flying through are scripted stuff most probably.
Simply leaving the scripts in and altering the CMP would work well.

It's easy to alter the CMP of a planetscape, tis something I'm working on right now.

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Facilitating the rise of robotics since 0 A.D.

[DAnvilFan]

The planetscapes actual shape, buildings etc, are merely CMP files just like Ships and station components.
The ships flying through are scripted stuff most probably.
Simply leaving the scripts in and altering the CMP would work well.

It's easy to alter the CMP of a planetscape, tis something I'm working on right now.

I've noticed that there's animated textures in the original FL planetscapes. Can we do this too?

[Valarin]

It's been quite a few years since I thought about it, but I *think* the landing cutscenes, animated traffic in the background etc. are managed by .THN scripts, much like the main menu background scenes.
If I'm not wrong there, they're completely customisable, and it's been done before. I started playing around with them once but didn't have the motivation to delve very far. The starport (if it's still around) or equivalent might still have a few tutorials somewhere.
If, like me, you're not familiar with similar scripts it might seem confusing at first, but if I remember right you can do some pretty neat things with them. I think lots of minor animations - i.e, idle animations, movement of dust clouds in the window of a bar, things like that - can be played with. Not a huge concept of the game, but fun and interesting to fiddle with:DI'm probably getting mixed up with something else, but they *might* have something to do with scripted effects ingame too, such as the way capital ships explode over time and into parts etc. Don't quote me on that; As I said, it's been many years since I last even thought about FL modding, and even then I was never very knowledgeable.

Ninja-edit:
Here is a brief starting tutorial for THN scripting, which does seem to cover the landing scenes. A quick search also turned up a discussion relating to rotation within the scripts and a link to a thn decompressor. If you're interested in these, I hope they help.

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