Problem Anim8or color problem

[Hielor]

I don't understand it why I can't get glowing colours in orbiter.
However I think it must be possible to have emissive colours in orbiter, because I saw this in some add ons.
But how?

---------- Post added at 04:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:24 PM ----------

I now solved the problem. I opend my mesh file with the editor and saw that the information for the emissive light was not well converted.
It was a problem with to converter.

Did you also fix the issue with the triangles? This happens when your mesh is not already triangulated, since Orbiter only handles triangles.

 

[ar81]

Did you set a colour for the emmisive quality? If it is black, you will not emit any light. Also, try not to put the value too high, I use the following qualities in general, as they give a good apearance of light atenuation for things like the inside of cockpits;

Emmisive 0.3 to 0.5,

Emissive in Anim8tor and Orbiter are handled differently.
While in Anim8tor it emits light like a light bulb, in orbiter it makes the surface to be lighted (not black) like the interior of a vessel at night.

So Anim8tor makes a surface truly emissive, while Orbiter adds reflected light to a surface at night.

 

[the.punk]

I opend the mesh file with editor and went to the materials line:
MATERIAL material01
0.008 0.651 1.000 1.000
0.008 0.651 1.000 1.000
1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000
0 0 0 1 This line I edited to
0.008 0.651 1.000 1.000

Now it is blue in the dark.

 

[ar81]

You may like to use Mesh Wizard to tune your mesh.
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2740"]Mesh Wizard 1.9d[/ame]
You also may want to read the manual, since MSH format is explained there.

For one material you have 4 lines (going to describe them for MSH format):
Diffuse: Base material color that is used for coloring texture (you may think as "skin color")
Ambient: Color of reflected light from surface when close to planet.
Specularity: Shining factor
Emissive: How lighted material is at night (artificial light, usually inside vessel cockpit)

Each line has 4 numbers. For example:
0.008 0.651 1.000 1.000
The first 3 numbers are RGB values, and the last one is opacity.
Specularity uses 5 numbers, and the 5th number is specularity power. See Mesh Wizard manual to see what it is.

All values range from 0 to 1.

As you probably may know RGB stands for red, green, blue, which are the 3 basic colors to create all colors on a TV screen. Such RGB values indicate how much of each color it will have. Mesh Wizard allows you to preview colors.

Opacity has different meanings, depending on the line.
It also has different meaning, depending on 3D file format.
Transparency is given by diffuse opacity value in MSH format, where 0 is transparent/invisible and 1 is opaque.

All available convertors use to convert color data differently, in some cases accurately or in some cases data is lost in the conversion. Mesh Wizard has some details on it.

In the case of MeshMaker it converts UV texture coordinates inverted, so it gives a weird appearance if you used textures.

 

[the.punk]

Yes I know mesh wizard. But the mesh I want to open crashes with an runtime error. I think it's too complex.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Sorry, I have been away for a while...

Emissive in Anim8tor and Orbiter are handled differently.
While in Anim8tor it emits light like a light bulb, in orbiter it makes the surface to be lighted (not black) like the interior of a vessel at night.

So Anim8tor makes a surface truly emissive, while Orbiter adds reflected light to a surface at night.

Thank you for this clarification. I have noted before that this is the case, and it is a very good point. All the surfaces you want affected by illumination must be set to emmisive (walls, floor, seats, everything in the cockpit), not just the source, so that they appear illuminated Orbiter. But as the author of the above quote commented, the absolutely correct way to manage the emmisive qualities is in the MSH file. Read his manual, as suggested.

I cannot make any comment on Vista issues; do not use it. However, I did note the part of this thread that mentioned the mesh converter. I use Mesh Maker, found at:
http://www.orbithangar.com/search_quick.php?text=meshmaker

...and have no problems. Maybe worth a try.

What I noticed with your picture of your add on; Are those traiangular see-through voids meant to be there? And there do not seem to be any textures applied. If you are using Shipedit to check the mesh and set PMI's and cross sections, are you making sure you transfer the texture info from the end of your unedited mesh file to your post edited file? And are you generating the normals properly? I cannot quite see what is supposed to be illuminated from the image.

These are just off shoot thoughts that might be related to the problem....

 

[the.punk]

This problem with the holes in the mesh and no texture does only happen when I use obj2msh.
I went back to 3ds2msh and noticed that the emissive value is not converted right.
I added the emissive value as I post above.

 

[Hielor]

This problem with the holes in the mesh and no texture does only happen when I use obj2msh.
I went back to 3ds2msh and noticed that the emissive value is not converted right.
I added the emissive value as I post above.

I would bet that the holes in the mesh are due to your mesh not being triangulated properly. In order to save to a 3ds file, the mesh has to be triangulated (ie, it must be composed only of triangles, no quads or n-gons where n > 3) because the 3ds spec only supports triangles. The obj format, on the other hand, supports quads, so if your mesh in your editor had quads and you exported it to obj, the quads would be maintained.

The orbiter .msh format only supports triangles, and the obj2msh converter doesn't triangulate the mesh, so if you take a mesh that was composed of quads instead of triangles and try to export it to .obj and then use obj2msh, each of your polygons will be half solid and half see-through (since the see-through parts aren't polygons in Orbiter).

 

[the.punk]

Thank you for your information.

 

[ar81]

Yes I know mesh wizard. But the mesh I want to open crashes with an runtime error. I think it's too complex.

Probably it has a typo, or it has more than 65535 groups.
Mesh Wizard was made for meshes with no typos or missing elements.
For example, if you state 5 groups and it has 4, you have a crash.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

The orbiter .msh format only supports triangles, and the obj2msh converter doesn't triangulate the mesh....

The reason behind it being that mesh faces in almost any simulator (not only Orbiter) need to be flat surfaces. Any surface between three points will be flat, no matter what you do with the points. But if you have 4 points or more, it can be "warped", and meshes in simulators do not like warped surfaces. It is a bit of a throw back to the days when graphics were done manually with 3D matrix numeric vectors (it's still that way, in fact, except that we have interfaces like Gmax and Anim8or to help produce our models now). A much older 3D rendering program from yonks ago, something like Anim8or on the Commodore Amiga, called Imagine, forced you to do only triangles by default.

Notice that if you export as 3ds in Anim8or, the triangulation is done for you (reimport your expoted 3ds and have a look), but it is not always done exactly as you would want it triangulating. It is best to take a little time and triangulate the model manually with add-edges and fill-holes...

This is just a note, by the way, adding to the above quote.

 

[ar81]

Oh! Triangulation! Is there any interesting algorythm to triangulate objects?? Yummy, yummy!!
See http://www.cs.unc.edu/~dm/CODE/GEM/chapter.html

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Oh! Triangulation! Is there any interesting algorythm to triangulate objects?? Yummy, yummy!!
See http://www.cs.unc.edu/~dm/CODE/GEM/chapter.html

:speakcool: page!

Cannot download the code, though. ¿Know any more like this?, and, ¿is there any available similar source for Visual BASIC? I am still a bit "cumbersome" at the moment (to say the least!) in C++.