UFO:Alien Invasion

Development => Mapping => Topic started by: MCR on March 12, 2010, 12:20:39 am

Title: Animated Textures for UFOs [CODING HELP NEEDED !!!]
Post by: MCR on March 12, 2010, 12:20:39 am
I was looking @ the Alien-Base-mission & I really liked the animated textures there  8)

Wouldn't it be a nice eye-candy to have some animated textures in the UFO-models also ?

I thought about stuff like glowing buttons, buttons changing color, monitors changing content (see attachments)...

I did not want to make the impression to just wanting to request new features, so I attached some examples to show that I would also invest some workforce here if the developers agree that this would be  :)

P.S.: @Kildor: The UFO Gunboat you designed looks great IMO !
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 12, 2010, 12:22:51 am
 ???
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Kildor on March 12, 2010, 05:47:16 am
Hello, thanks for idea and frames. Yes, this is very good idea, and your way is working nice, but there is one problem with jpeg-saving artifacts. Can you make the same images but in png, and with removed garbage around indicators? After that I gladly add animation to the game :-)
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: H-Hour on March 12, 2010, 11:45:01 am
Hi MCR, you should have a look at the wiki on the Material System (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Materialsystem) and it's Blend Modes (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Materialsystem/Materialsystem-Blendmodes). You can blend one texture on top of another, and even animate the textures blended on top.

This means rather than creating a series of textures that are swapped out, you could create a base texture with all black panels. Then you can create a series of textures that are transparent except for the lights and swap these. That way you can have a lot of frames without loading a full 256x256 texture each time.

As an example, check out the /textures_misc/rail_route.png and its rail_route*.tga brothers. In each rail_route*.tga a different stop on the route is overlayed on the base PNG, and in the material definition I'm using, I've set it up to rotate between the TGAs, for an animated sign.

The material definition for that texture is the following:

Code: [Select]
# Rail Route Board
{
material tex_misc/rail_route
{
texture tex_misc/rail_route0
blend GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA
anim 4 0.6
lightmap
}
}

The same principle could be used for your idea, and you can save a lot of space. For instance, all 5 of my 256x256 TGA files (the animation) are less than half the size of the base PNG. So you can have tons of animation sequences to prevent the obvious-ness of the repetition without loading tons of larger files.
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 12, 2010, 12:42:16 pm
@Kildor:
Great, that you will use the frames, I will put hard work into it to make them look & animate as good as possible...
The attachment here is the cleaned-up version of the original jpg. I cleaned the buttons & the grey color around them from all the artifacts already there... Looks much better now ! But if I save it as uncompressed png in GIMP, it gets a lot bigger, which compression rate should I choose there ?

@H-Hour:
Thanks a lot for the links, you are answering questions that already were floating around in my mind, especially how to make the animations small in size, without having to switch the full texture to have some buttons switch color...
The rail_route example you gave explains everything perfectly, I will try to do it the same way, I hope this will not complicate things for Kildor ?!
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Kildor on March 12, 2010, 01:44:07 pm
> I hope this will not complicate things for Kildor ?!
No :-)
His way is much better.

I want to make some investigations according this textures, and may be commit some changed textures.
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 12, 2010, 02:33:07 pm
Another Question:
Should I save the png & tga files compressed or uncompressed ? - makes a big difference...
- Here are some png examples:
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 12, 2010, 02:36:25 pm
Here come the buttons in tga format with & without compression (the other way round  ;)):
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 12, 2010, 02:43:28 pm
@Kildor: I saw you commited stuff already ?  ::)
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Kildor on March 12, 2010, 02:58:11 pm
Yep. :-)

Sorry, if I messed your work. And thanks for http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4540.msg34858#msg34858, this has helped me.
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 12, 2010, 03:10:06 pm
@Kildor: Maybe we should coordinate our workforce a little bit, I think there is lots of stuff which could need some polishing & animation work & IMHO it is a little bit inefficent if 2 people do the same stuff @ the same time...
I am looking forward to seeing the buttons switch  ;)
Maybe you could answer the questions regarding the compression ?


Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 12, 2010, 05:00:26 pm
if you commit them to our svn - don't forget to add svn:copyright and svn:license (the license must be the same as the original texture of course)
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Kildor on March 12, 2010, 05:52:23 pm
I will not be near computer till sunday, so fill free to do all what you want. :-)
Also, you can use jabber.
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 12, 2010, 06:52:26 pm
@Mattn: Thanks 4 the permission to change stuff, but I do not want to mess around with the svn-version yet, because I want to get more familiar with everything, before I start adding things, which will then maybe make a mess of the currently relatively smooth running 2.3dev  ;)
For example I still do not know about the best compression for the tgas & pngs, do not know where to put the code 4 the animation among many other things, but I am happy to help you where I can & if I can help with making some animated textures, I will do it !
I will upload my next results here soon, so maybe you or Kildor could integrate them... (& check the files first  ;))

@Kildor: Thanks 4 your trust, I will start with cleaning the ufo-textures & making some animations with them. I would be happy if you could test the stuff on sunday & integrate it, if it is smooth...
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 12, 2010, 07:19:29 pm
https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ufoai/changeset/28917

this commit by kildor might explain how to do the material definitions. and here : http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Materialsystem you can find more information about the material system.
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 10:47:12 am
@mattn: Maybe you could do me a favour & take a look @ the textures I made so far  :P
I hope everything is correct with them & you could really motivate me, if I could see them integrated by you this time ;)
I checked Kildors entries & they are really helpful with this, for ufo2_06a0.tga - ufo2_06a9.tga just the number of frames has to be changed in the already existing code, but I am quite tired now & it would be really cool if you could check the code this time...
So here are the new animated textures Part 1:
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 10:52:08 am
i will give my best to motivate you ;)
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 10:57:05 am
 8) 8) 8)
Great, I am compiling as soon as I see your commits on cia.vc, because I have to see the frames in action to get some new ideas & to have a better imagination what could push the graphical quality further & how my ideas look in-game...
Thanx a lot 4 all your work !!!
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 11:00:18 am
Do not tell me that you have already finished the code  :o
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 11:10:52 am
i hope this was fast enough?
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 11:14:20 am
As fast as the new UFO-Gunboat  ;)
THANX again !!!
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 11:29:47 am
Okay, I see 16 frames max., what was the former limit ? Do I have to update to watch all frames, because I'm already compiling !?
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 11:31:14 am
you do not have to recompile the maps when changing material files. you only have to recompile the ufo binary as only the renderer changed. the max was 8 before.

and you should update again - i've fixed wrong texture names
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 11:32:47 am
it looks like ufo2_07 frames are only black you add an alpha channel and remove the black background. we could even fix this in the material definition but it should be the same for most of the textures imo.
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 11:40:00 am
I am sorry Mattn, but I do not exactly know what you mean, if you give me a detailed instruction, I will do it immediately...
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 11:50:27 am
Forget it, Mattn, I checked what you mean, will upload here soon...
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 11:58:12 am
Alpha Channel  ;) :
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 12:03:32 pm
thanks - now only ufo2_04a* must be converted, too
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 12:13:04 pm
Here it comes  :P
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 02:11:27 pm
& another one:
Hope you like them, feedback very welcome  ::)
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 03:05:47 pm
the ufo1_02 animations are a little bit to low. they don't match the area of the original texture
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 03:19:29 pm
You are right, sorry 'bout that, will correct this asap...
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 03:52:11 pm
Hey Mattn !

I just made the first test with the new animations & IMHO there are some things which should be corrected:

- The speed in ufo2_06 animation should be tripled 4 all the fx having a better impact.

- The speed in ufo2_04 & ufo2_07 should be at least quadrupled & ufo1_02 would look best at ultra-highspeed  ;)

- Also I forgot that ufo2_04 & ufo2_07 are designed to play first forward & then backward, please tell me if this would be possible with the current code, otherwise I could add frames the other way round, but I think that would exceed the 16 frame-animation-limit  ::)

P.S.: I'm working on ufo1_02...
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 05:42:16 pm
feel free to send patches against the material files.
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 09:25:43 pm
Hey ! Have to get some sleep first, to recharge the batteries...
Will try to join the IRC-Channel & Sourceforge later...
Then, hopefully, patches will follow...
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 09:35:37 pm
Last Question: Is there a possibility to play the frames backwards after reaching the last frame or do I have to manually add the frames to the animation, which would conflict with the max-16-frames-limit ?   ???
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 10:36:34 pm
Have a problem with the authentication:
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 10:39:48 pm
you can't write to the svn until we gave you write permissions - but you can use tortoise to create patches and these should be submitted to our patch tracker at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=805244&group_id=157793&func=browse
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 10:42:27 pm
Just realized another missing alpha-channel & black background - Here is the corrected file, maybe you could commit this:
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 10:44:59 pm
Do you have a minute left for my other questions also, Mattn  ::)
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 10:48:18 pm
Last Question: Is there a possibility to play the frames backwards after reaching the last frame or do I have to manually add the frames to the animation, which would conflict with the max-16-frames-limit ?   ???

no, there isn't
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: Mattn on March 13, 2010, 10:50:23 pm
Do you have a minute left for my other questions also, Mattn  ::)

this image still has a black background ;)
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 10:55:33 pm
Sorry, GIMP somehow did not save it...
Title: Re: Question to the developers - Animated Textures for UFOs or elsewhere ?
Post by: MCR on March 13, 2010, 11:01:25 pm
no, there isn't
Maybe we could increase the max-16-frames-limit then ?

Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 14, 2010, 12:27:24 am
Additional frames for ufo2_07 animation to make it change the colors smoothly (now 18 frames long):
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 14, 2010, 12:33:45 am
Additional frames for ufo2_04 animation to make it change the colors smoothly (now 18 frames long):
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 14, 2010, 12:53:01 am
Repaired ufo1_02 animated texture alignment, although I do not know if this texture is currently even used somewhere:
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 14, 2010, 03:17:03 am
This should really look nice if played rather fast:
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: Mattn on March 14, 2010, 08:45:20 am
Additional frames for ufo2_04 animation to make it change the colors smoothly (now 18 frames long):

there is a 16 frames limit ;) please try to stay inside that limit.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 14, 2010, 10:22:06 am
Good morning, mattn !
I saw you extending the frame-limit to 16 yesterday, so I thought it would be no problem to extend it to 18 frames, but if it is a problem I have to rework the frames, otherwise it wouldn't look as smooth as planned  :'(
Was my usage of the tracker okay ?
Sourceforge reacts kind of slow on my connection...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 14, 2010, 04:57:23 pm
Mattn ?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: Mattn on March 14, 2010, 05:16:47 pm
well, most of the other animations are using way less than 16 frames - so please rework the animation to use 16 - increase the hz to make the animation smoother - you know that you can scroll and scale with the material system, too? if it's only about scrolling, there is no need to add a dozen of new images. head over to the wiki (mapping/material system) to get more info about that (and see the existing material defintiion in base/materials)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 14, 2010, 05:37:21 pm
no prob, will rework the animations  :'(, although I really think 16 frames are not really enough for complex animations like I have planned for the various screens (normal TV: 1 sec.=24 frames  ::))...
Maybe you could think about expanding the frame-limit a little bit or is this a real technical problem like 0-F ?
will also try to create my first patch with tortoise svn...
I already read the info about scrolling, but I think it would not be possible to have scrolling & blending & color-changing fx in one texture, but you are right, ufo1_02 could be changed this way...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: Mattn on March 15, 2010, 06:48:42 pm
if you would like to play longer animations we should think about adding cutscene render support to the material system - should not be a big problem. then you can create ogm or roq videos and play them back in the maps.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 15, 2010, 07:34:48 pm
That would be awesome !!!  8)
Especially for all the screens, I am imagining a lot of movement in 2084  ;)
We could make really cool animations & play them, I am having lots of ideas, without having to use any copyrighted material...
But this has no ultra-high-priority, I need some time to create all the animations anyway...

Regarding animations here are some of my ideas:

- We could use some visualization programs & record the outputs.
- We could make morphings with some free photo-to-photo morphing software.
- We could make some cool-looking Mandelbrot animations using some free software.
- We could record some selfmade video files, with content fitting the scenario of UFO:AI.
- We could record all the stuff that already is in the game to make animations, a morphing of all the UFO-models on the screen of a UFO, or the rotating globe of UFO:AI on the screen of a Phalanx-craft for example.

Step by step we will get it done & produce the best game ever made here !!!

BTW, I think you have done a really great job here already, Mattn ! I saw something of a Particle-Editor ?!   ::)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: geever on March 15, 2010, 07:58:18 pm
That would be awesome !!!  8)
Especially for all the screens, I am imagining a lot of movement in 2084  ;)

Just don't stuff it with much HD films. We want it to run on slower machines too. ;)

-geever
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 15, 2010, 08:58:53 pm
 ;D
16 frames is very okay for all the buttons & stuff, but any video running with a smooth framerate will get very repetitive with only 16 frames available & I also think that there is some time left until the final version comes out  ;), so the power-machines of today will be the calculators of tomorrow  ;D
How do you like the new ufo animations so far ?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: H-Hour on March 15, 2010, 10:54:19 pm
Just don't stuff it with much HD films. We want it to run on slower machines too. ;)

I'm with Geever on this one. You can throw in all the flash you want, or you can use your resources wisely. A well-made smaller texture looks better than a mediocre larger texture, and a well-made 6-frame animation can look better than a poorly-made 25-frame animation.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 15, 2010, 11:16:57 pm
There won't be ANY HD-Films, I swear  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 17, 2010, 12:49:43 pm
I see you are already using the animations, Kildor  ;D
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 17, 2010, 12:50:49 pm
Stay tuned, this is still WIP  :D
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: MCR on March 19, 2010, 09:06:34 am
Just a glimpse 4 you folks ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: Kildor on March 19, 2010, 09:15:44 am
Btw, look to my gunboat, how I animated 2_12:
{
   material tex_ufo/ufo2_12
   {
      texture tex_ufo/ufo2_12
      blend GL_SRC_COLOR GL_SRC_ALPHA
      pulse 0.5
   }
}

IMHO it looks good enough.

PS: And one more about monitors, don`t forget, aliens can have different colorspaces and displays can have really foreign pictures.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: MCR on March 19, 2010, 09:34:02 am
Btw, look to my gunboat, how I animated 2_12:
{
   material tex_ufo/ufo2_12
   {
      texture tex_ufo/ufo2_12
      blend GL_SRC_COLOR GL_SRC_ALPHA
      pulse 0.5
   }
}
How can I do that ?

IMHO it looks good enough.

Good enough ?!
I hope you are joking  ;)

PS: And one more about monitors, don`t forget, aliens can have different colorspaces and displays can have really foreign pictures.

That is why I will pause this project 4 the moment.
I am waiting for Mattn to integrate stuff to the trunk & for comments from you developers, storywriters, designers & also UFO:AI Players & Lovers...

& GIMP makes (almost) all changes possible  ;D
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: MCR on March 19, 2010, 09:39:32 am
Btw, look to my gunboat, how I animated 2_12:
{
   material tex_ufo/ufo2_12
   {
      texture tex_ufo/ufo2_12
      blend GL_SRC_COLOR GL_SRC_ALPHA
      pulse 0.5
   }
}


But I can imagine the pulse looking great, we should combine it with this animation if technically possible:
..
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: H-Hour on March 19, 2010, 11:36:03 am
Those ship and alien head ones are looking good. My only suggestion would be to look again at the screen reflection effect you're using on the left and top sides of the screen. IMHO it's a bit too strong and doesn't seem to fit the shape of the screen.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: MCR on March 19, 2010, 12:03:29 pm
I took the reflection from the original file & originally there is no reflection on the right side of the screen at all.
So I decided to keep the design that way.

Also I looked at the original textures rendered in-game & sometimes the blue text in one monitor for example is barely visible in-game, so I thought it would be best to have rather strong contrast.
But if this turns out bad in-game I can always change that.

But wait till you see this in action, H-Hour, I was working 3 days (almost non-stop) on the new animations.
My girlfriend already hates me 4 that  ;)
I sent all the files to Mattn yesterday already, but somehow he is not connected @ the moment it seems  :'(
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: Mattn on March 19, 2010, 01:13:59 pm
i was connected - and received your mail - see the patch tracker item you posted for this. i've left comments for you.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: MCR on March 19, 2010, 02:06:53 pm
@Mattn: A patch has been sent to sourceforge  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: MCR on March 19, 2010, 08:33:12 pm
@Mattn: Thanx 4 integrating the textures, please do the same 4 the new material files also  ;)
(A new patch has been sent to sourceforge)

Greetinx & Thanx.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 20, 2010, 12:54:24 pm
@ H-Hour: Thanx 4 your mail & thanx 4 your tips, especially the ones @ the beginning of this post, which really helped me to even start this  thingy here ;)

Do not mind throwing stones @ me, I will try to objectively look @ everything you have to say.
That is why I started this post here ;)

BTW, you were VERY RIGHT with the reflection, I took a closer look & integrated the content of the screen to connect better with it.
Thanx for the hint.  8)

The only problem I have with your judgement regarding the textures is actually one I created myself, because I wanted to show all of you UFO:AI fans what I am working on @ the moment & thereby showed stuff which is completely unfinished & unpolished ;), like you did with your unfinished city-map, which I like very much.

I would ask you to wait with your final judgement till my next update, this will be the first 'real' version, I also had to check out things first, before I quote: 'start something that really matters' ;). I really liked that sentence reading it so I remembered it  ;D

Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused @ The Moment]
Post by: H-Hour on March 20, 2010, 02:00:40 pm
Looking forward to it!
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 30, 2010, 06:22:49 pm
 ;D
The first material test file for the U.F.O.-Levels has 14kb :D
The stuff looks so  8) already...
Still some animations missing though  :P
Can post some screens of W.I.P. if folks here are interested !?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: Mattn on March 30, 2010, 07:26:17 pm
a video on youtube would be cooler ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 30, 2010, 07:28:49 pm
You want - I do  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 30, 2010, 07:30:59 pm
BTW, Mattn what is the size limit of your e-mail limit  ::) ?
I have around 1700 (!) frames 4 you.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 30, 2010, 07:31:49 pm
& still far from finished  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 30, 2010, 08:39:14 pm
I tried to record a video with fraps, but in the demo version you are limited to 30 seconds of video recording & the file seems to be uncompressed (600 MB for 30 seconds video), so I do not know if I should invest more energy in this project (recoding video, uploading masses of data), when in a short time everyone can take a look @ it in the 2.3dev version...

Anyway we should think about making a new promotional video 4 the game, since the last one I know of (which is really cool with all the slo-mos & zooms BTW) is kind of old & does not represent the current development @ all...
Wanted to write a feature request about that anyway...

You maybe have a cooler tool for recording stuff out of the game, Mattn ?!
You will get the textures & material definitions soon ;)
I am in the final phase, already adjusting the material defintions & with most of the animations finished...

There will be animated:

- Buttons (all kinds of ;))
- Displays (all kinds of)
- Screen-Overlays (Videophone [Taman], Alienbase anim, Harvester anim, Corrupter anim, Headscan anims, Text anims,...)
- Screens (Full-Screen animations for the big displays & also damaged screens animations)
- FX (ufo2_09, ufo2_10, ufo2_12, Floor, Lights, Flares, etc.)

Additionally there will be:

- Skins (for Metal-plates & other stuff)
- Variations (of existing 'more-than-once-on-a-ufo-used' Monitors & Panels) [to be integrated into the existing & coming U.F.O.s]

- A complex usage of the great material system with every texture defined regarding their material & regarding additional overlays, envmaps, flares, lightmaps & fx (pulse, rotate, stretch, scroll)

- Documented material files

Also I want to introduce a new folder named tex_ua (for all UFO animation-frames).
I will include a description regarding the textures there (readme.txt) for easy usage by the mappers.
The old tex_ufo folder should be deleted & replaced by a new one containing all the base original & new textures only (this means no animation frames & easy navigation there).

...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 30, 2010, 08:51:21 pm
Current W.I.P. mat file attached.
Did you all know that stuff like this is really possible with this system ?
I would encourage all the mappers to revisit their levels & tune them using the material definitions, we could make this game look so  8)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: Mattn on March 30, 2010, 08:59:21 pm
then at least try to create some screenshots with r_materials cvar set to 1 and set to 0 and show them side by side to see the difference (even if we won't see the animation)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 30, 2010, 09:16:15 pm
Mattn, in the long term we should think about expanding the material system.
I think for someone who knows the code here like you do this would rather be easy & the effects would be minimizing the need for additional frames ;)
I would like to have some more commands:

animb - play backwards
animr - play forwards, after reaching last frame play backwards, then begin again
animp - pause the animation for x time @ frame y (animp a15 3.0)

Also we should add additional flares & envmaps, I have done experiments with that & it is working, I now can use 10 different flares with a simple command like 'flare 7', but the envmapping-function seems to have some kind of error, because it does not matter @ all which envmap you use, they look all the same in-game, maybe someone could take a look @ that also, I think there might be a bug hidden somewhere...

Would be happy to read some comments from the developers regarding my last posts here...
I hope you will like my work  ;)

P.S.:
then at least try to create some screenshots with r_materials cvar set to 1 and set to 0 and show them side by side to see the difference (even if we won't see the animation)
Will try that, but how exactly can I set the cvars (in the console ?).
How do I exactly start devmode (win32) to be able to change the cvars in the console ?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 30, 2010, 09:36:51 pm
BTW, if you tell me that your e-mail will deal with around 22 MB, I can send you my working version for review !?
You have the *.mat file, now you just need the 2 folders tex_ufo & tex_ua to get this workin' & see 4 yourself  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 30, 2010, 10:04:58 pm
Okay got it, but setting r_material to 0 will not turn off the entire material system, bumpmapping & material values are still displayed, also the skins are blended, so this will turn off just the animations & the envmaps, even flares are still there  :P...
Will make some screens 4 you nevertheless...
... tomorrow  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:40:52 am
First Screens:
==========
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:42:01 am
max 1024kb  :P
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:43:15 am
 :P
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:46:11 am
 :(
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:50:38 am
Rotating Yellow Light, Pulsating With Green Version Of Itself + Panel + Floor Pulsating With Brighter Version Of Itself
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:52:04 am
 :P
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:55:08 am
Some more:
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:56:17 am
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:57:25 am
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 11:59:55 am
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:02:33 pm
Tuning Of The Materials:
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:03:40 pm
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:09:45 pm
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:10:48 pm
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:13:53 pm
Glowing Buttons In The Dark
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:14:53 pm
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:18:44 pm
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:21:39 pm
Some Of The New Screens:
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:22:32 pm
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:23:29 pm
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:27:32 pm
The Last Series Of Shots:
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: Kildor on March 31, 2010, 12:28:23 pm
And again screenshotes are totally unusable. Really, the worst way to show anything is use jpegs.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:28:57 pm
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:34:24 pm
Kildor, you are very right regarding jpgs. I hate them too & can't see their artifacts anymore, but I used F12 for the screenshots & the game-engine saved the screenshots in jpg format, so I decided to leave it that way (recoding them would have done nothing to improve the quality)...
I also had to reencode the screenshots because the original ones were very dark, generally I always have to enhance the gamma massively when playing UFO:AI, but the screenshots are saved without the game graphic settings regarding the gamma applied...
This is all you have to say, Kildor ?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:36:17 pm
The Last Ones Of The Artifact Ridden Screens
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:41:52 pm
+
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 12:47:09 pm
@Kildor: The next screens will be made in HQ using another screen-capture utility, I promise  ;)
How's the gunship goin' ?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: H-Hour on March 31, 2010, 12:58:14 pm
While it's hard to get a good sense from these images, it does look like you've got some nice work going on there. Rather than go through the trouble of making all new screenshots, why don't you commit the textures/changes so we can see it for ourselves in-game?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: Kildor on March 31, 2010, 12:59:03 pm
you can use png to screenshotes, read the wiki.

It doesn`t going, because I have no time currently.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 01:59:07 pm
While it's hard to get a good sense from these images, it does look like you've got some nice work going on there. Rather than go through the trouble of making all new screenshots, why don't you commit the textures/changes so we can see it for ourselves in-game?
'cause I made over 1700 animation frames, which have to be programmed via the material system for each level individually to be seen in-game & that is still far from finished...
Everything took much more time than originally planned, because I separated many of the textures into seperate layers & animated those, I will attach an example how a screen is built up now:
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 02:13:55 pm
you can use png to screenshotes, read the wiki.
I sometimes really have trouble finding stuff there, this time again - Did find only the anouncement that you can do that, but no description how ?!
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: H-Hour on March 31, 2010, 02:35:38 pm
Quote from: wiki
You can set screenshot format to PNG by executing set r_screenshot_format png. (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Testing#Screenshots)

If you've got the screenshots, you must have a test case up and running. Commit what you've got.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 03:00:14 pm
@ H-Hour:
I do not want to deliver unfinished, unpolished & untested work.

What I can do is promise to deliver 3 to 5 optimized material files & a big part of the already done animations ASAP for the first testing phase & a few days later I will upload the rest...

You have to understand that it takes time to finish things, you should know that, I also would want to play your level now...  ;)
You could help me in the meantime by replacing all monitors & control-panels which are used twice (especially for the harvester, corrupter & bomber) by versions of them I could upload this evening.
That would help in making even nicer U.F.O.s  ;)
...& would help me be even more motivated to finish thiz with the highest quality possible.
 
This game deserves the best-looking U.F.O.s !!!
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 03:08:46 pm
If you want more information regarding this subject read this:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2975344&group_id=157793&atid=805245

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2975360&group_id=157793&atid=805245

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2975405&group_id=157793&atid=805245

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2977655&group_id=157793&atid=805245

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2975351&group_id=157793&atid=805245

Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 04:06:10 pm
Some comments & statements from the developer-team regarding the above would really be nice  ::)

@ bayo, BTAxis, Destructavator, duke, geever, Kildor, Muton, Winter & all the others I forgot...
- I can't believe that you have no opinions to all of thiz ?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 04:11:46 pm
Now is the time to tell me what you would like to see going on on the monitors of the U.F.O.s & what you do NOT want to see...

What I got already finished are just some animations for the smaller monitors, the big-screens are currently in the worx...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: Kildor on March 31, 2010, 04:20:01 pm
I have no opinion because I can`t see anything in this jpegs. I like the main idea, yes.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on March 31, 2010, 05:33:04 pm
I have no opinion because I can`t see anything in this jpegs. I like the main idea, yes.
Maybe this picture brings you some light ? ;)
(just some experiments with the new flares)

You could tell me how to tell the screensave-system to use png instead of jpg if you want better screens 4 the future...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: H-Hour on April 01, 2010, 02:05:08 am
You could tell me how to tell the screensave-system to use png instead of jpg if you want better screens 4 the future...

I posted this earlier:

Quote from: wiki
You can set screenshot format to PNG by executing set r_screenshot_format png. (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Testing#Screenshots)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on April 01, 2010, 11:31:43 am
I posted this earlier:

Thanx, H-Hour, sorry, I did not get it somehow ?!
Also I started a new technique - Because of my inability to find stuff in the WIKI, I now print out those interesting pages ;)
It's maybe just my laziness, because if I know that there are people with an answer I simply ask ;)
But when I got the answer I will not ask the same stuff again ;)

Learning never stops... ;)

Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on April 01, 2010, 11:56:57 am
& H-Hour, sorry if i was a little rude in my comments yesterday, but sometimes it can be 'a little lonely' feeling in this forum here & I sometimes do not understand why people are not answering if they know the answer & can help ;)

So I ask here once again: Are you willing & able to help me exchange those textures in the 3 big U.F.O.s if I deliver the textures & the description which ones have to be replaced ?
Then we could finish this stuff here together & I would have time afterwards to help you polishing your map if you like me to ;)

I will start getting my already finished stuff to Mattn now & I hope he commits it to trunk soon ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: H-Hour on April 01, 2010, 04:20:13 pm
So I ask here once again: Are you willing & able to help me exchange those textures in the 3 big U.F.O.s if I deliver the textures & the description which ones have to be replaced ?

I probably won't work at the speed you'd like, but if you prepare the textures I or someone else can get them swapped in time for the 2.3 release. It would make it much easier (and therefore more likely to get done quickly) if you spell out very clearly which textures are to appear in which locations in which UFO (ie - which map files).

Also, I know you're eager to get everything completely done, but smaller changes are more likely to get implemented. If you prepare the textures to appear in one UFO on one map, and then prepare a brief on what's to be changed, that will be much better for the person doing it than being faced with a list of dozens and dozens of changes to be made across dozens of maps.

If you get impatient waiting, though, I'll tell you that swapping out the textures on the UFOs is actually something you could do pretty easily without needing to learn almost anything about Radiant. You'd only need to get to grips with the most basic controls.

Side question to those who have built more of UFORadiant's features: is there any way to track prefabs across maps so that changes on a prefab effect the maps where it's used? My guess is no, but thought I'd double check.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on April 01, 2010, 04:58:48 pm
I probably won't work at the speed you'd like,
I hoped that you are motivated to see the new stuff in action !? ;)
but if you prepare the textures I or someone else can get them swapped in time for the 2.3 release. It would make it much easier (and therefore more likely to get done quickly) if you spell out very clearly which textures are to appear in which locations in which UFO (ie - which map files).
I would make screenshots with the exact locations of all the textures + add a description which is to be exchanged with which one, but that means work for me, that I only want to do if someone is willing to help me with this ;)
I already made a feature request regarding this subject on sourceforge, but I can't reach the server @ the moment so I will post a link to this here later...
Also, I know you're eager to get everything completely done, but smaller changes are more likely to get implemented.
That's why I uploaded 7 new flares yesterday, as 1st step ;)
If you prepare the textures to appear in one UFO on one map, and then prepare a brief on what's to be changed, that will be much better for the person doing it than being faced with a list of dozens and dozens of changes to be made across dozens of maps.
That is why I want to finish documenting everything, so the code will be easy to understand...
If you get impatient waiting, though, I'll tell you that swapping out the textures on the UFOs is actually something you could do pretty easily without needing to learn almost anything about Radiant. You'd only need to get to grips with the most basic controls.

Side question to those who have built more of UFORadiant's features: is there any way to track prefabs across maps so that changes on a prefab effect the maps where it's used? My guess is no, but thought I'd double check.
This is one of the questions regarding this subject, that also were floating through my mind & I have no experience using UFORadiant, know just the absolutely basics regarding this tool & I really have no time for long experiments, when I know there are UFORadiant professionals around who could do this stuff in 20 minutes for all 3 of the U.F.O.s, with no questions left unanswered & I would need hours & hours of testing to get it done ;)
The benefit of this work done would be that there would be different animations for every panel & every monitor in all the big U.F.O.s on every map ! The bomber for example has one monitor-texture used throughout the whole ship, so there can be only one material definition defined for this monitor with the effect that all monitors in the ship would have the same animation running, we could just change the configuration for other maps, but not for each monitor separetely...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: Mattn on April 01, 2010, 11:39:10 pm
Side question to those who have built more of UFORadiant's features: is there any way to track prefabs across maps so that changes on a prefab effect the maps where it's used? My guess is no, but thought I'd double check.

no - i'm sorry - you have to replace all those brushes in all affected maps then.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
Post by: MCR on April 02, 2010, 12:27:28 am
no - i'm sorry - you have to replace all those brushes in all affected maps then.
Now we know for sure, that this will be not made in 20 minutes.  :P
Nevertheless I will create the textures for exchange, we can do that @ any time in the future then...
At least all the buttons colors will be matching each other throughout one ship. ;) This means some kind of 'easier design' for the first phase of the new layered animations...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 08, 2010, 10:44:10 pm
Status Update:
The first test version of the new animations & the first *.mat testfile were sent to Mattn for review.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: H-Hour on April 09, 2010, 10:46:44 am
Cool! Hopefully it will get put in trunk so we can check it out.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 11:11:18 am
one thing i should note here - i will not commit every single texture of the archive you send me. a lot of the textures are almost the same just with a different color. that is something you can control with the color attribute of the material system.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 11:19:32 am
@Mattn:
You can also leave the old animation frames in tex_ufo untouched for now.
Just overwrite all other files with the new tex_ufo ones I sent you.
We can safely delete them later, so that in the meanwhile (until all .mat files are done) the old animations will still work. (I saw you used one of the old animations for alienbase also...)

I designed the ufo_tex folder to contain ONLY textures for the mappers for the future & ALL animation frames will go into tex_ua, maybe we should even make subdirectories for displays, buttons, screen-overlays, screens, skins, fx, damage-skins,... there for easier navigation through the thousands of frames ;)

If we add support for multiple .mat files per map, we could make different U.F.O.s land on the same map & bring more variety into the game  ;)
Just another idea...  ;D
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 11:23:30 am
one thing i should note here - i will not commit every single texture of the archive you send me. a lot of the textures are almost the same just with a different color. that is something you can control with the color attribute of the material system.
I know that. But I thought it would be much easier to keep a certain color-code, when mappers have the ability to surf through the frames & the filesize the 'reduced' frames need now is so small that I thought it would not matter, but would give everyone the possibility to choose the colors by comparing them without the need to code something like color 0.3 0.7 1.0...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 11:27:32 am
Many of the animation frames are just played backward & almost all of the frames turn around after frame 8 to make a smooth loop possible...
I wrote all this into my feature requests btw.
We could save many frames by adding more code to the material-system...
But look @ the sizes of the animation frames. I reduced them down to almost nothing. But you can throw out everything you do not like of course  ;)...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 11:28:45 am
i just don't like to the idea to add content to the game which can be computed (very cheap)

i will look into the animation system of the material subsystem...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 11:55:42 am
i just don't like to the idea to add content to the game which can be computed (very cheap)

i will look into the animation system of the material subsystem...
I knew that you would say something like that, because I have the same opinion on this  ;D.
That is why I wrote this feature request:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2975344&group_id=157793&atid=805245

Quote from 03-28:
I had to make so many to keep repetition @ a minimum, but I could reduce
the size of most animations by factor 2 if I would have the ability to play
forwards & then backwards again. I will look @ the code after I have
finished this stuff ;)
Also there is room for optimization in better usage of the different
blendmodes & I am sure there is some kind of automation tool which will
analyze the frames & save only the differences between them, that will
reduce size drastically also, but I had no time to look for that (yet)...
I also made different color-versions of many of the animations, because
this will make the mappers work easy in 'programming' the material files &
also made animations that are just reverse to their originals. This also
would not be necessary with some code optimization... ;)
Quote end.

Or here:
    
Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP]
« Reply #80 on: March 30, 2010, 08:16:15 pm »
   
Mattn, in the long term we should think about expanding the material system.
I think for someone who knows the code here like you do this would rather be easy & the effects would be minimizing the need for additional frames Wink
I would like to have some more commands:

animb - play backwards
animr - play forwards, after reaching last frame play backwards, then begin again
animp - pause the animation for x time @ frame y (animp a15 3.0)

Also we should add additional flares & envmaps, I have done experiments with that & it is working, I now can use 10 different flares with a simple command like 'flare 7', but the envmapping-function seems to have some kind of error, because it does not matter @ all which envmap you use, they look all the same in-game, maybe someone could take a look @ that also, I think there might be a bug hidden somewhere...
Quote end.

Regarding the colors. I really did this on purpose, you never could adjust the colors so exactly with the 'cryptic color command' in the material system without lot of testing & time...
This color command is nice for the flares  ;)

But this is only v2 version of the animations. There is a lot to find that could be enhanced, modified & repaired, but I think before putting all this stuff in trunk you maybe should check out this stuff in your personal version ?!
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 12:06:11 pm
I know that all this stuff adds a lot of complexity to the whole U.F.O.-system for someone who does not know the material system & its possibilities ;)

That is why I did not want to complicate stuff for mappers & decided to introduce a completely new folder with the frames & skins in it.

The mappers can create their U.F.O.s like they did before any of the animations was introduced & someone else can take care of adjusting the material file.

I thought: 'We have this great material system. Why not begin to use it a bit.  ;) :D ;D'

btw, I really think it would be useful to make subfolders in tex_ua to make surfing through the frames & skins easier...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 12:18:36 pm
I also realized that I think there is only one corrupter map @ the moment.
I did more much animations for those monitors than currently needed, because I thought this will not stay that way.  ;)

We also now can design monitor-textures which would be 'compatible' with the animations, so that we could use the same animations (with different combinations & multiple different overlays) also on other monitors.

One example:
You can take the so2_17 screen-overlay-animation & program it to run on ufo2_13-16 monitors also as overlay. This accidentially 'fits'.

But for future texture-designs, we can make a definition where the screen must be for the overlays to run smoothly...

I also plan to make special skins & animations for the ufocrash levels, now we can make real cool stuff, like add scratches as overlay-skins over the existing textures or make exploded monitors or sparkle throwing displays  ;)...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 12:33:06 pm
Maybe you have seen also, that in the new tex_ufo textures nothing is cut out. This is the 'start configuration'.

I made this, so that there will be no problems for folks who completely want to turn off the material system.

I think from the programming-standpoint it should be really easy to implement this function to turn off the entire material system (simply tell the engine NOT to read the material file @ all when the map is loaded... ).
The current function to disable the material-system did not work as I expected.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 12:33:56 pm
animp would not be needed - anim has a fps parameter already.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 12:42:42 pm
animp would not be needed - anim has a fps parameter already.
?
But I cannot stop @ a certain frame for x time & continue afterwards  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 12:43:46 pm
but this is not so important, but would allow us to make a speedy animation with 16 frames with a pause before restarting  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 12:45:17 pm
Now I have to add the same frame over & over to make a text stay on the screen before the 'disappearing' animation starts for example...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 12:46:34 pm
@ least I added a screen flickering effect to justify the additional frames somehow  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 12:55:10 pm
two new animation features are done now - backward looping and alternating the frames

use anima for alternating
and animb for backwards
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: H-Hour on April 10, 2010, 01:07:00 pm
What does alternating the frames mean?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 01:07:21 pm
0,n-1,0,n-1,0

http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Materialsystem feel free to extend
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 01:10:00 pm
Great !
I knew that it would no problem for you @ all  ;)

The problem is that I programmed Basic, Turbo-Pascal & Java, but have not touched C (yet). So I know basic structure & programming logic, but not the exact syntax & it would have costed me much more time to do that...
THANX AGAIN !!!
[/b]
This is what I call cooperation or teamwork !!!
I will make a new version of the frames. I am glad, that I did the coding for only one material file yet  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 01:18:56 pm
please also try to use the color feature. having dozens of texture whose only difference is the color isn't very nice imo.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 01:20:11 pm

http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Materialsystem feel free to extend
That was my plan, but I want to finish one stuff before starting the next  ;)

btw, alternating is nice also, but what would really be important regarding the framecount would be this:
a0-a15-a0-a15-a0...

so with 4 frames it would look like that:
a0,a1,a2,a3,a2,a1,a0,a1...

This would really help a lot.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 01:26:14 pm
please also try to use the color feature. having dozens of texture whose only difference is the color isn't very nice imo.
Seems like you want to see the framecount reduced @ all costs  ;)
I do not agree on this one, but what should I do, you are the decider here... ;) - So,  I will do  ;)

2 last questions:

1. Did you try the tropic.mat file with the tex_ua folder enabled & the new version of tex_ufo ?

2. Will I also get animr ?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 01:38:57 pm
please also try to use the color feature. having dozens of texture whose only difference is the color isn't very nice imo.
btw, I made a maximum of 4 different color versions for one animation, never more, but often only 3 or 2 colors, the rest are different animations...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 01:55:35 pm
Seems like you want to see the framecount reduced @ all costs  ;)
I do not agree on this one, but what should I do, you are the decider here... ;) - So,  I will do  ;)

2 last questions:

1. Did you try the tropic.mat file with the tex_ua folder enabled & the new version of tex_ufo ?

2. Will I also get animr ?

animr == anima 0,1,2,3,4,3,2,1,0,1,2,3,4,3,.....
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 01:56:12 pm
btw, I made a maximum of 4 different color versions for one animation, never more, but often only 3 or 2 colors, the rest are different animations...


then please only do one and use the color value ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 02:14:11 pm
then please only do one and use the color value ;)
No prob. Will do.
animr == anima 0,1,2,3,4,3,2,1,0,1,2,3,4,3,.....
8)
Okay, I thought frame 0 would alternate  :) ;) :D ;D

Now only one question remains  ;):

1. Did you try the tropic.mat file with the tex_ua folder enabled & the new version of tex_ufo ?


You already know, I need to hear something like: 'Yes, looks great, you did a fantastic job there...' or something like this to gain motivation  ;)
So if you have not tried it yet, please do so, when the whole geoscape issue & your time allows it, I will not stress, but I think my work deserves to be @ least reviewed & commented on before I will continue, so please take a look @ Harvester & Corrupter tropic+bigufo, day & night version & tell me how you like it to also avoid more extra unnecessary work from my side.
Thank you in advance.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: H-Hour on April 10, 2010, 02:53:32 pm
0,n-1,0,n-1,0

http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Materialsystem feel free to extend

I'm sorry, I still don't understand. 0,n-1,0,n-1 looks to me like alternating between two frames, but the description suggests there are an uneven number of frames...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 02:55:18 pm
it goes from 0 up to n-1 back to 0 up to n-1

feel free to edit the wiki description
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: H-Hour on April 10, 2010, 04:12:48 pm
it goes from 0 up to n-1 back to 0 up to n-1

feel free to edit the wiki description

Thanks, wiki edited.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 06:11:34 pm
@H-Hour: Thanks for editing the wiki, but are you sure about that:
Quote:
'The number of frames should be uneven for this to work properly. Otherwise the mid frame (resp. the last frame) will be shown twice.'
Quote end.

?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Mattn on April 10, 2010, 06:20:37 pm
that was my sentence, and yes - i'm sure.

the last frame (which is in fact the mid frame) would be played twice

if you want this effect, you can of course also use an even number of frames.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 10, 2010, 06:32:21 pm
Good to know  ;) !
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 11, 2010, 11:56:15 pm
Hey UFO:AI Developers & Friends,

Private Messages with a link to a preview version (just one level:tropic) have been sent to some of the folks currently active in this project.

If someone else interested in this subject wants a download-link to the preview, feel free to send me a message...

For those who got the links, feel free to criticize ;)

I am open for any discussion regarding this subject.

Please also have a look what the 1pics.pk3 contains, because there are lots of versions & other animations there which I am unable to show all together in just one level ;)

Also I want to note here, that plans are already much further than this preview might show. We can also use the material system to make 'skins' for the textures & so we are able to make special ufocrash-textures & animations (exploded screens, sparkle throwing buttons, etc.). Also we could use the material system for 'special' U.F.O.-levels, where 'special' U.F.O.s can land ;)

I am looking forward to a nice discussion...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 12, 2010, 12:05:58 pm
The first version of these files had a CRC error in 1pics.pk3  :'(, I have sent a new version to Mattn for upload to the same place.
So if you did not try it yet, please wait with doing so, until a new version without bugs in the zip is uploaded.
I will shout here, as soon as this is done.
Sorry for this mistake, it was my fault  :-[
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Gren on April 12, 2010, 12:18:35 pm
The first version of these files had a CRC error in 1pics.pk3  :'(, I have sent a new version to Mattn for upload to the same place.
So if you did not try it yet, please wait with doing so, until a new version without bugs in the zip is uploaded.
I will shout here, as soon as this is done.
Sorry for this mistake, it was my fault  :-[

It worked OK for me.. :D

Corruptor.
Ground floor effect, with just the rows of hold lights and a little light pulsing is very effective. Gives an eerie feel to it as you bring your troops in.

The internal walls look quite good and the movement produced as you move through the ship is probably what you intended, with the red/black "ripple" effect. It does look pretty cool.

I did notice that as you move viewing position on the UFO, there seems to be a light/shadow effect which moves along the ship with the camera. almost as if someone was holding an electric torch or lamp?.. not sure if it's intentional, or if it just happens at night, but that bit doesn't look right. (see pic)

I really love the floor effect on both the Corrupter and the Harvester!! The light pulsating between the floor tiles is excellent! and with the other lighting and equipment animation, seems to be a big improvement all round.

Great work imo!.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 12, 2010, 12:56:39 pm
No, it did not, Gren, you just thought that ;)

Here is the link to THE WORKING VERSION :

http://www.hyperupload.com/downloadfile.aspx?fv=Public/6340665152277287011pics.pk3

Please review that version. Sorry, this was my mistake  :-[

btw, please rename it to 1pics.pk3 & after you downloaded it & simply overwrite the old version in ufoai/base

Hyperupload is down, you can find the file here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/375834363/1pics.pk3.html
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Gren on April 12, 2010, 01:08:13 pm
Hmmm... - OK
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 12, 2010, 01:22:14 pm
Hey Gren  ;)
Thanx for the compliments.  ;D
I love to hear that.

The light/shadow effect you noticed is still far from finished. I am not satisfied with this either.
But this has to do with the fact that we currently have effectively just one envmap built-in, so I cannot make this effect better @ the moment, but I will do so for sure when the next version of this comes out ;)
I am already experimenting with 8 additional envmaps I have created, but this is just in the first experimental stages yet, but I am quite confident that with more different, 'lighter' & more subtle envmaps I can make this effect look really cool ;)
Also I already agreed with Mattn, that the specularity & hardness settings have to get lowered to make the reflections less shiny...

Regarding the FloorFX, I was not so sure that it would have the effect on the player that you described, but this was exactly what I intended to do: Enhance the creepy feeling for the player when going in ;)
But I can imagine some different floor versions as well ;)
I also wanted to make this whole stuff a little bit lighter, because especially @ night, but also @ daytime everything can get quite dark, especially when using those nasty, dark envmaps ;)

Thanx for the nice review, Gren. I would be pleased if you could take a look @ the 'correct', new version as well ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Gren on April 12, 2010, 01:33:10 pm
I just checked with the working version... The walls inside look much better this way (lol - I thought the red/black texture was intentional - neither did I think it was bad) The work on the extra info screens in the ships looks pretty good too.

I aint no kind of artist/critic, but I still love the effects on the ship floor!!!.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: MCR on April 12, 2010, 01:40:05 pm
@Gren: How do you like the 'Engines & Powersource' animation with the added green flares (Corrupter) ?

If you like the floor, how do you like the lights animations & fx synchronized with the floor in Corrupter @ ground level ?
(btw, you can enter 'set cl_campitchmin 0' into the console (Press '^' to open it) & then you can check out additional flares emitting from the green/yellow lights also)

Thanx for the comments  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 12, 2010, 11:12:04 pm
Quote:
exactly - use less different textures, try to combine them or reduce the animation frames - often the animations are already looking good with only 4 frames and some color effect or scretching.
Quote end.

@Mattn: Sorry, posted in the wrong thread ;). Thanx for the fast answer. In the next version framecount will be reduced drastically anyway, just with the new material animation playback commands alone (thanx a lot again), so I am not really worrying, but generally it would be good to know where exactly the limits are for everything...
But the good thing is that this is all open source & I can try to check out the code & should invest much more time in studying how everything exactly works  ;)
My method for finding limits & exploring how things work was more or less 'Trial & Error' to this point, but this is not really professional.
So my first bigger project regarding this will be trying to find this nasty envmaps bug  >:(
& kill it  8)
 ;) :D ;D
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [Paused]
Post by: Gren on April 13, 2010, 12:57:40 am
@Gren: How do you like the 'Engines & Powersource' animation with the added green flares (Corrupter) ?

If you like the floor, how do you like the lights animations & fx synchronized with the floor in Corrupter @ ground level ?

The Engine effects look great MCR  ;D I think it adds a lot of realism to an undamaged ship.. I also think the internal power units on lower level are very cool - the rear ones look a tiny bit like the Kit scanner and the front right power units (level 2) have a  pretty effective pulse animation too! :) The Info-screen activity is also very effective - I like those a lot... but I think I already said that  ::)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 13, 2010, 01:25:04 am
Thank you very much for this.
This is exactly the stuff I need to read to get motivated for preparing v3 of this, I now have additional commands for the animations & it looks like arisian will program additional effects for the battlescape like the 'Tron 2.0' glowing effect as you maybe have read...

As I said before : IMHO this game deserves the best-looking U.F.O.s in the gaming world ;)

& I will try my best to make that happen, although the coming 'Crysis 2' is hard competition ;) :D ;D
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: H-Hour on April 14, 2010, 03:17:13 am
Alright, finally got a chance to put together something on your animations. First off, I think you've done some great work on these animations. The monitors with the ship and the human model are excellent, and the green glowy panels throughout are really nice. I can see you've done a ton of work, and that's really the only problem: it's excessive!

The map is virtually unplayable on my machine (which is probably slightly lower than the minimum the devs are shooting for), and load up times were very long. It looks like you're already doing some optimization, and that's good, but consider also that in future maps the UFOs might not be the biggest part of the map. There must be room for other details in a map.

First, I think you can cut back a lot on size by reducing the number of variations. For each animation, you've often got 5-8 versions that are basically the same, but slightly different. It's good to have this so that screens right next to each other don't have identically flashing buttons, but there will almost never be more than 3 panels next to each other, so you shouldn't ever need more than 3 variations of any given animation. This is the case for almost all of your animations, but just as one specific example, you've got the same little button animations for b2_13-16_1a* to b2_13-16_1h*. Eight different variations of this same very tiny animation is really unnecessary.

Other examples are the screen with the human head (s02_13-16_2*). This is a great animation, btw, I really like the paneling on differnet sections of his body. But there's no need to have dozens of different color variations. The player is not really going to notice or care that this screen is a slightly different color than that other screen. This is an example of what I would describe as "different without difference". The animation is technically "different", but the player does not experience it as "difference". All of the s02_13-16_2* files take up 3.6mb, but just one set of the animation would be 98.1kb. And this really isn't an issue of working on lower systems. If we were going to spend 3.6mb on these panels, it would be better to have them in higher res, rather than have dozens of variations. Or, better yet,  to have entirely different kinds of animations rather than these slight variations. It's just a poor use of resources.

The same is true of all the variations of the UFO, etc, also a great animation. One of my favorite is just the text that appears on the screen, a great example of how a cheap (resource-wise) and simple animation can still be visually attractive.

In addition to the excessive variations, I also think perhaps you should consider not animating everything that could possibly be animated. bctex001* is an example of an animation that is barely worth animating. You should think about a better balance between more/less/non animated screens. There is such a thing as overkill here, and empty space is just as important a part of design as filled space. That's why the text screens work so well. The animation is a small part of the screen, but it pops because it's surrounded by all that space.

If it were my UFO/map, I would use your green glow stuff and the main screens (ufo, human, text). I would leave all but a very few of the button animations out, simply because I think they're unnecessary, they add less than they cost.

Ok, now let's talk about the so2_med* animations. If I remember correctly, you just started on these, and I don't like them as much. I'm only commenting on the ones in the corrupter. I see you've got some human ones that look like they might look nice. The bright green one doesn't really look good or seem to make sense. Also, it could all be done with one file, no animation, just a scroll.

The stars one is a good idea and looks good, but it should be optimized in some way. I think you can make the stars static and blend the shining over that image, then animate the blended texture. That may not make much sense when written...  Also, it would be cool if there was some text added, like it was saying something about the stars.

Not sure how the devs feel about nudity. It would be worth running that one by them.

And now see the attached images for more details that were better described with images.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: Mattn on April 14, 2010, 08:08:51 am
and if you update the textures, make sure to submit the xcf source files with layers ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 14, 2010, 11:30:55 am
@Mattn: Sure, you get ALL source files if you want, but I thought it would not be necessary, because:
 
1. All animations are already split up in layers, so the xcf source files will look the same as the pngs ?!

2. The a versions of the animations are more or less the starting point for the variations, so there you have the source already ;)... I made this especially, so other gfx-artists can easily build up from there & make new variations if they like. So the a versions are more or less to be used as source files & not for the animations ;)

@H-Hour:

Hey, H-Hour  ;D
Very many thanx for the review. I knew there would be some stones coming, flying in my direction  ;), so I really have to counterattack many of the things you said  ;)

But where should I start ?!
It looks like I have to comment everything here:  ;)

Alright, finally got a chance to put together something on your animations. First off, I think you've done some great work on these animations. The monitors with the ship and the human model are excellent, and the green glowy panels throughout are really nice. I can see you've done a ton of work, and that's really the only problem: it's excessive!

Maybe I should have stopped my work on 18th of march, because that is the date, when the version you would like to have was finished already ;)

The map is virtually unplayable on my machine (which is probably slightly lower than the minimum the devs are shooting for), and load up times were very long. It looks like you're already doing some optimization, and that's good, but consider also that in future maps the UFOs might not be the biggest part of the map. There must be room for other details in a map.

I already wrote a feature request regarding this & I am all for supporting old systems & slow computers also, that is why I think there should be an additional graphic option to turn off the material system & all new tex_ufo textures (already in trunk) are ready for that (nothing cut out in the standard-texture)
I tried to make the animations as small as possible that is why I even cut out the skins around the smallest buttons to not have to load them into memory for each frame...
So do not worry, Nate, I will optimize this stuff to make it use as little resources as possible. I have additional plans also, but do not know if this will be working yet, so I will shut up for now.
But I must stress here that we are in 2010 (or 2084  ::)) & we should not make a game that looks like it was made for computers from the year 2000.

Look what competition is doing now: www.sosnewyork.com

First, I think you can cut back a lot on size by reducing the number of variations. For each animation, you've often got 5-8 versions that are basically the same, but slightly different. It's good to have this so that screens right next to each other don't have identically flashing buttons, but there will almost never be more than 3 panels next to each other, so you shouldn't ever need more than 3 variations of any given animation. This is the case for almost all of your animations, but just as one specific example, you've got the same little button animations for b2_13-16_1a* to b2_13-16_1h*. Eight different variations of this same very tiny animation is really unnecessary.

Look @ them again:
b2_13-16_1a - 1c are completely different button behaviour animations ???

& as you know I already agreed with Mattn, that there will be no versions of animations in v3 anymore, which just vary color ;)...
I just wanna stress here again that I did this on purpose, because for the mapper who has to adjust the material file, it would allow much easier 'programming', just using a nice picture-browser & surfing through the frames to find the correct colors for his map instead of having to use cryptic 'color 0.5 1.0 0.6' commands for the animation overlays with an outcome that is almost unpredictable...
Or maybe you can tell me which color command I have to choose when I want a red/green combination to become a yellow/blue one ?!
This makes a LOT of work if you want to keep a certain color code through dozens of animations...
But this is already decided anyway.

Also as mapper who is building 1 map all the time you should not forget, that I made animations which will be seen on dozens of maps & my goal was to make no U.F.O. look like another, to create the illusion for the player that each U.F.O. is a special one. That is why I did all of this work, because I realized that this IS possible via the great material system.
But with the system of 'layered animations' we can make this possible even if we would have no color @ all ;)

Other examples are the screen with the human head (s02_13-16_2*). This is a great animation, btw, I really like the paneling on differnet sections of his body. But there's no need to have dozens of different color variations. The player is not really going to notice or care that this screen is a slightly different color than that other screen. This is an example of what I would describe as "different without difference". The animation is technically "different", but the player does not experience it as "difference". All of the s02_13-16_2* files take up 3.6mb, but just one set of the animation would be 98.1kb. And this really isn't an issue of working on lower systems. If we were going to spend 3.6mb on these panels, it would be better to have them in higher res, rather than have dozens of variations. Or, better yet,  to have entirely different kinds of animations rather than these slight variations. It's just a poor use of resources.

Again, stuff is already decided on, I just wanna note here:

1. As 'non-layered' animation & in tga format this one animation had 704 KB
2. As 'layered' animation in png format this one animation has 175 KB, maybe I should have used your 98.1 KB, although I do not know where you get that from
3. - so2_13-16_2a: Source File  ;)
    - so2_13-16_2b: Source File Reverse (not necessary anymore thanks to Mattn & animb)
    - so2_13-16_2c: Source + ScreenFlickering
    - so2_13-16_2d: Source + ScreenFlickering backwards
    - so2_13-16_2e-l: 4 additional different color variations of the HumanScanner in some nice colors
    - so2_13-16_2m & o: Changing the color during the animation
    - so2_13-16_2q: Defect Screen Animation (unfinished)
    - so2_13-16_2s & u: Unfinished Copies

The same is true of all the variations of the UFO, etc, also a great animation. One of my favorite is just the text that appears on the screen, a great example of how a cheap (resource-wise) and simple animation can still be visually attractive.

Thank you very much.

In addition to the excessive variations, I also think perhaps you should consider not animating everything that could possibly be animated. bctex001* is an example of an animation that is barely worth animating. You should think about a better balance between more/less/non animated screens. There is such a thing as overkill here, and empty space is just as important a part of design as filled space. That's why the text screens work so well. The animation is a small part of the screen, but it pops because it's surrounded by all that space.

I leave this decision to the mapper, my friend, that is why I invented those layered animations. Now you can choose if you want a button to be displayed or not, you can choose if you want a button animation for a screen, you can choose the speed of each of the animations, so you can have a fluently moving screen animation with 8.0 fps, while @ the same time the buttons beneath the monitor 'move' with 0.2 fps.
Also it is now possible to combine the animations of the buttons or displays for example with the 'pulse' command which was not possible before.
It was also not possible before to have buttons & displays, which do not use the maps lightmap & have their own 'glow' even when it is completely dark...  ;)

You would not write all this stuff, if you had understood the new system I am introducing here.  ::)
Please take a look @ the tropic.mat file to get a small overview & also try to make some experiments there if your time allows it...

 
If it were my UFO/map, I would use your green glow stuff and the main screens (ufo, human, text). I would leave all but a very few of the button animations out, simply because I think they're unnecessary, they add less than they cost.

I would enjoy seeing you 'program your individual U.F.O.'. If you like I invite you to take over the material definitions for some of the U.F.O.-maps, when v3 of this is finished, you can be 100% sure, you can make your own individual style now ;)
Man, if you like, everything can be turned off in the U.F.O.s on your map, or you can make a U.F.O. land, which only has different kinds of text animations on all of its screens... ;)

 
Ok, now let's talk about the so2_med* animations. If I remember correctly, you just started on these, and I don't like them as much. I'm only commenting on the ones in the corrupter. I see you've got some human ones that look like they might look nice. The bright green one doesn't really look good or seem to make sense. Also, it could all be done with one file, no animation, just a scroll.

These are not finished @ all. This is in a first test phase, I somehow also have problems to clear the screen first there...
Quote from tropic.mat:
/* Widescreen 1 TODO: everything */
/* Widescreen 2 TODO: everything */
Quote end.
I have some additional concepts & ideas for those, but I do not know yet if everything I imagine here is technically possible, but it should be...

 
The stars one is a good idea and looks good, but it should be optimized in some way. I think you can make the stars static and blend the shining over that image, then animate the blended texture. That may not make much sense when written...  Also, it would be cool if there was some text added, like it was saying something about the stars.

Not sure how the devs feel about nudity. It would be worth running that one by them.

And now see the attached images for more details that were better described with images.

See above. Thanx for the review.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 14, 2010, 11:40:15 am
Thanx for the pictures.
I hope you know that you compared 2 different skins to each other ?
You discovered my skinning system !
These are the two skins you compared:
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 14, 2010, 11:44:33 am
1. Original
2. Skin

You are right, that the originals are almost too flat & they could need some nice skins, that is why I made them, please do so also I could need some additional variations there & your skills regarding textures are much better than mine ;)
But you also discovered a small downside of my system, because we do not have the ability to define special normalmaps for the overlays, so we have to stick to one normalmap per texture   :-[ :-\
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 14, 2010, 11:48:48 am
I did not touch the light-textures @ all. All I made there was a nice 1 frame animation with a pulsating, rotating orange version of the same light...
Look @ the original to compare it with my version.
Also I added yellow flares to those lights, but these are only visible if you enhance the campitch-abilities...

Here the 'code':
/* Small Light (green) */
{
   material tex_lights/land_li_green
   {
      texture tex_lights/land_li_orange
      pulse 0.2
      rotate 0.3
   }
   {
      flare 5
      color 0.7 0.7 0.5
      scale.s 1.5
   }
}
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 14, 2010, 11:56:09 am
Thanx for the suggestions regarding the floorFX...
I still have to work on these fx. I hope together with arisians new material enhancements we can create some cool new stuff  ;D
I also think that those are not perfect yet, want to make different floorFX versions also, I have to experiment to find out what looks best...
The good thing here, is that nobody really knows how the floor in a U.F.O. looks like, so we can stick with what looks good & adds a creepy feeling for the player...
This was my intention here, also I wanted to counter the darkness (which comes from the use of our only & dark envmap) a little bit.
Maybe you noticed that the pulsating floor is synchronized with the lights also, so everything looks quite real ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 14, 2010, 12:03:27 pm
Here you can see the different skins made so far (for all of the metal plates we got different styles like this):

But we can use this also, to make special skins & animations for the crashed U.F.O.s, so there will be exploded monitors, buttons which throw sparks, scratches & all the stuff that happens during a crashlanding added to the original textures ;)

Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 14, 2010, 01:38:49 pm
btw, for v3 of this I will introduce subfolders in tex_ua for much easier navigation through the frames...

So if you are searching for a skin or for a screen-overlay or button, you will find all of these in their designated subfolder...  ;)

I am just not 100% sure what to do about the buttonskins, because they should be in the same folder like the buttons are & maybe even stored redundantly for each animation, so the 'coder' of the material file can not 'forget' the skin around the button, if they need one (not all of them do)...

Also I will make some additional demo material-files for other levels, like basedefend, where I will show more of the benefits this new system has to offer & that is, that we could use most of the screen overlays for multiple different monitors (example: the so2_17_0*.* animations also 'fit' on the screen of ufo2_13-16), so we can use the same overlay-animations on different monitors & screens if we design them wisely ;)

Also I will introduce a new readme.txt file, which gives a short explanation on how many frames a animation has, what it shows & which playback-command to use to best show it in all of its beauty & to help making the set-up of the material file as easy as possible for the mappers ;)

There will be also a material file, which contains a whole setup for the most complex animations for the U.F.O.s possible (all buttons, all displays, all animations enabled), so mappers can copy & paste from there & just have to delete what they do not like for their level afterwards. So it should be possible to set up a complete U.F.O. material definition in 2 minutes if one does not like to optimize stuff  ;)

Also each other material-file I will make, will have a complete documentation (with comments), so it would be easily understood even from people who know nothing about the material system & also can be copied easily to other material files ;).
You can see a preview of this (unfinished & unpolished) in the tropic.mat file of v2 already...

I will also update the wiki (never done that before) to keep everyone interested up-to-date regarding all of this.
I found out for example that it is not necessary to compile @ all, when adding new definitions or changing existing ones in the material files. You can set this up on the fly. That also will help mappers in setting this whole thing up nice, fast & easy...

Also I want to note here, that this new system is really innovative, I checked out ALL available demo-material files from Quake2world, before I started this, to see what others have done with it & to learn what is possible, just to find out that NOBODY  :-[ pushed this as far down the rabbit hole as I did here for UFO:AI  :-[. Maybe it got a little complex  :-\, but it adds loads of functionality & variance-possibilty to our U.F.O.s for sure...  8)

For all of you interested in this, please check out tropic.mat from 1materials.pk3.

And now I will  :-X :-X :-X
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 14, 2010, 06:33:03 pm
Here once again 1pics.pk3.

I am really sorry for all of you who had trouble downloading  :-[ :-\ :P
I think me & Gren killed Hyperupload.com  ;) :D ;D

Here is a new link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/375834363/1pics.pk3.html

This one is triple-checked by me (uploaded, downloaded, decompressed & surfed through (=opened) all of the frames once), so I really hope there will be no problems anymore...
Unfortunately you will have to wait 35 seconds until the downloadlink appears & there are only 9 additional downloads available from v2 of this. So you maybe will have to hurry to get your copy  ;) :D. Just joking.

Really hope everything worx thiz time...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 15, 2010, 10:18:08 am
@Mattn: I have 3 additional questions regarding the material system:

1. Are all the property-textures & textures loaded into memory, which are defined in the material file, or only those textures & their property textures that are really used in the map loaded ?

2. Is there a possibility to use one of the blendmodes with 'empty' frames (only alpha channel), so that I could use simply 'empty' frames when nothing changes in the animation for a couple of frames (e.g.: buttons not changing for 5 frames) & if there is such a possibility which opengl blendmode command do I have to use to achieve this effect ?! I already made a couple of experiments, but did not find out somehow, but I am quite sure that this should work somehow & could help us save additional ressources  ;)

3. I also had problems with property textures deleting or overwriting the original texture during the animation if I try to use ressources wisely (see animation fx2_10_0a0-15 for example), which deletes the original green color below when used (gets black below) >:(... (will attach 4 screenshots of those frames to show what I mean)

Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: H-Hour on April 15, 2010, 11:56:12 am
I already wrote a feature request regarding this & I am all for supporting old systems & slow computers also, that is why I think there should be an additional graphic option to turn off the material system & all new tex_ufo textures (already in trunk) are ready for that (nothing cut out in the standard-texture)

I don't like this idea, because some aspects of the material system are vital. My street textures, for instance, simply wouldn't make sense without their material blends.

Quote
I tried to make the animations as small as possible that is why I even cut out the skins around the smallest buttons to not have to load them into memory for each frame...
So do not worry, Nate, I will optimize this stuff to make it use as little resources as possible. I have additional plans also, but do not know if this will be working yet, so I will shut up for now.
But I must stress here that we are in 2010 (or 2084  ::)) & we should not make a game that looks like it was made for computers from the year 2000.

The optimization is not really the concern here, it's all very small. The problem is the excessive number of uselessly different animations.

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Look @ them again:
b2_13-16_1a - 1c are completely different button behaviour animations ???

& as you know I already agreed with Mattn, that there will be no versions of animations in v3 anymore, which just vary color ;)...

I think we're crossing signals here. b2_13-16_1a all the way through to b2_13-16_1h are all animations of the same exact button set. That's 6 different animations for the same sets of buttons (there is no "d" or "f" for those paying attention). They're not "completely different button behaviour animations".

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Also as mapper who is building 1 map all the time you should not forget, that I made animations which will be seen on dozens of maps & my goal was to make no U.F.O. look like another, to create the illusion for the player that each U.F.O. is a special one.

There is not a player in the world who is going to notice that the button sequence on this ship went 1-3-4-2-1-5-5-2-5-1 and the button sequence on the other ship went 1-4-5-1-6-2-6-1-4. This is pointless variation.

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That is why I did all of this work, because I realized that this IS possible via the great material system.
But with the system of 'layered animations' we can make this possible even if we would have no color @ all ;)

Look, this is part of a bigger issue I don't want to go into, because this game does not have enough artists. But it really lacks artistic direction. The artwork should not be guided by the technical capabilities of the engine. It should be guided by an artistic vision and those components which are necessary to make it work. Just because something is technically possible doesn't mean it should be done.

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3. - so2_13-16_2a: Source File  ;)
    - so2_13-16_2b: Source File Reverse (not necessary anymore thanks to Mattn & animb)
    - so2_13-16_2c: Source + ScreenFlickering
    - so2_13-16_2d: Source + ScreenFlickering backwards
    - so2_13-16_2e-l: 4 additional different color variations of the HumanScanner in some nice colors
    - so2_13-16_2m & o: Changing the color during the animation
    - so2_13-16_2q: Defect Screen Animation (unfinished)
    - so2_13-16_2s & u: Unfinished Copies

These were the lists of variations you have for the man animation. This is precisely an example of the excessive variation I'm talking about. You should not have 12+ variations of the same animation. If you want to make every UFO look unique, you will not succeed with different colors, or having a screen flicker a little bbit in this one animation. You will need to make screens that show completely different objects. When the player sees two of these animations on different UFOs, he will not think "This one is purple and the other one was green." He will think, "It's the human face animation again". He will recognize the similarities, not the differences.

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I leave this decision to the mapper, my friend, that is why I invented those layered animations. Now you can choose if you want a button to be displayed or not, you can choose if you want a button animation for a screen, you can choose the speed of each of the animations, so you can have a fluently moving screen animation with 8.0 fps, while @ the same time the buttons beneath the monitor 'move' with 0.2 fps.

This is exactly what I don't want. I want three variations of all the button panels, so that I don't have to spend forever setting up complex material files.

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You would not write all this stuff, if you had understood the new system I am introducing here.  ::)
Please take a look @ the tropic.mat file to get a small overview & also try to make some experiments there if your time allows it...

I stand by my opinion that it's excessive, unnecessarily complicated and not artistically useful. Those animations you've done which have a subject -- the UFO, the human, the text, the planets -- are excellent and great work. I think your work adds a lot to the UFOs. But I think you've gotten caught up in the world of the technically possible and lost site of the artistically meaningful. Beyond a few different options, variations of the buttons add very little value to the end user's experience.

If you want to make each UFO different, you should put your energy into developing diverse SUBJECT MATTER. This means you should create animations that are entirely different in terms of what they represent.

I'm not a dev and I don't make these decisions. You've asked for my opinion and this is it, and I'd probably give it even if you didn't ask for it. But in the end the dev's will decide what they want to include. 
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: Mattn on April 15, 2010, 08:09:41 pm
Quote
1. Are all the property-textures & textures loaded into memory, which are defined in the material file, or only those textures & their property textures that are really used in the map loaded ?

they are all loaded

Quote
2. Is there a possibility to use one of the blendmodes with 'empty' frames (only alpha channel), so that I could use simply 'empty' frames when nothing changes in the animation for a couple of frames (e.g.: buttons not changing for 5 frames) & if there is such a possibility which opengl blendmode command do I have to use to achieve this effect ?! I already made a couple of experiments, but did not find out somehow, but I am quite sure that this should work somehow & could help us save additional ressources  ;)

no - not possible

Quote
3. I also had problems with property textures deleting or overwriting the original texture during the animation if I try to use ressources wisely (see animation fx2_10_0a0-15 for example), which deletes the original green color below when used (gets black below) >:(... (will attach 4 screenshots of those frames to show what I mean)

where is the question here?
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 15, 2010, 08:22:58 pm
they are all loaded

Good to hear, I thought so after testing tropic on a old laptop yesterday.  8) 8) 8) - room for optimization !!!  ;D

no - not possible

Now I know that for sure, no need for additional experiments for me on that field. Thanx.

where is the question here?

You are right, I forgot the question (lol), as this was intertwined with the second question...
So you answered this one also, even without question & answer  ;) :) Reminds me of magic somehow ;)
Thanx again.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on April 15, 2010, 11:52:09 pm
@H-Hour: I will not comment your stuff anymore, as this is beginning to remind me of kindergarten.

Just one note here:

Your animations (3 animations: advertaa, advertab, advertbb):     22 frames, 2.63 (!) Megabyte

All my Buttons-animations (countless animations):more than (!) 1222 frames, 1.33 (!) Megabyte


I will stop here.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: H-Hour on April 16, 2010, 01:53:47 am
I'm sorry if I've upset you, MCR. I really do think some of your animations are great. I may have pushed my point a bit hard, but that was the second lengthy response I gave to your work, both making the same point (both of which at your request, btw). So I may have tried to get my point across a bit too forcefully.

But we're certainly capable of disagreeing, I hope. And we're also capable of critiquing the work that goes into this game. It doesn't mean the critique always has to be accepted, but I believe it ought to be given.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on May 15, 2010, 11:28:42 am
I will revive this project this weekend, so if you have any suggestions left, feel free to post those here...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Paused, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on June 22, 2010, 05:08:44 pm
I am currently in the process of reworking v2 of the ufo-animations.

I've already managed to reduced the size of all animationframes & skins together to under 5MB.
Unfortunately I am really not able to control all the colors of the animations just via the color command of the material system, this produces sometimes weird results & in many cases you are not able to use it for more than to 'influence' the color, but you are not able to make something that is completely green red for example...
So I am forced to keep at least some of the colored animation-versions to make the design work correctly...

The new commands are very useful, especially 'anima' & work fluently, thanks again for that, Mattn !!!

I will also introduce a new folder for the property textures named 'pt', where all of the frames, skins, buttons, screen-overlays, damage-animations will be stored in their respective folders.
This will make sure that no mapper will be confused with those textures, as those are purely defined & managed via the material system & will not be mapped directly in UFORadiant.

I will then delete all of the then unused property textures already messing up the tex_ufo folder.

I hope everyone agrees with this version of things, otherwise just make some noise here ;)
I hope everything can be finished tomorrow evening...
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on June 24, 2010, 10:32:33 am
I am uploading @ high speeds between 0 & 0.5KByte/second. Why is this so slow ?!?!?!?
Yesterday my commit failed after 3 hours of uploading  >:(

But I am fighting to get the new ufo-animations in-game ! I am not giving up !  ;)
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [WIP, Feel Free To Comment On It]
Post by: MCR on June 24, 2010, 02:47:41 pm
Okay, everything uploaded !

If you have suggestions or experience any bugs, please post those here.

Have fun with the new animations !
I hope everything worx as planned !
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [v2.3 finished, collecting ideas for v2.4]
Post by: MCR on June 25, 2010, 12:15:42 pm
@Mattn: Is there a possibility to upgrade MAX_GL_TEXTURES ?!

1024 is not a problem on most maps, especially I am having the problem of hitting the maximum always just in tropic.
Several reasons: Tropic has not only the big Corrupter landing there, but also the Harvester. This would be no problem in tropic +bigufo alone, but there are also other tropic maps, where many additional textures for houses, interior & plants are loaded & here I am starting to get real problems with this limit...
In the mid-term problems with this limit will occur on other maps also, as our textures will get upgraded with ,_gms, _rms, _nms, _sms.

I tested increasing this limit & my problems were gone, no new problems occured...

So if it is some kind of oldschool-quake-artifact limit & not important anymore in 2010, please increase it by at least factor 2.
Title: Re: Animated Textures for UFOs [v2.3 finished, collecting ideas for v2.4]
Post by: MCR on May 31, 2011, 01:46:53 pm
I have some ideas how to reduce the amount of texture slots needed for the animations by ca. factor 8-16, but I need help from a experienced coder to make this possible...

I want to introduce a new set of material animation commands which, when executed, will just use one texture per animation, so a 1024x1024 pixel texture could hold 16 frames of a 256x256 pixel animation.

@any experienced coder: Please help me realize that vision.