Texturing / Modeling help please

from Sins Forums
Okay, I'm not trying anything overambitious. I want to make a new star, but it's going to be a different size than the standard fare. For that I'm going to need to change the size of the mesh. I'm also going to need to edit the texture.

There's a three-part operation to this, and I'm having a little trouble at each one. Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.

So here's where I'm at. I opened up and changed the texture (.dds file) using the nVidia DTX plugin for Photoshop. However, I don't know what DTX compression method Sins uses, or what the hell a mipmap is (though I believe it's related to alpha channels?).

I'm not proficient at all with models, but shrinking an existing one should be no problem. However, what do I need to open the existing meshes in 3DS Max?

Finally, in-game integration. In the .entity files, there's various pointers to filenames like:

hudIcon "HUDICON_STAR_YELLOW"
smallHudIcon "HUDICONSMALL_STAR_YELLOW"
infoCardIcon "INFOCARDICON_STAR_YELLOW"

I do not know where these files are, or how I need to edit them. I found a handful of files like: "HUDIcon-Action.brushes", but I can't open them in any usable format. What are these 'icons' and where are they defined? They're obviously related to icons_planets.tga, but I imagine I need to define what / where the icon is. How do I edit these then?

Finally, on a related note, is there a way to edit how far away from the star the gravity well starts? It doesn't appear to be a setting in the .entity file, so is it just a set distance away from some part of the model itself?
modding
4,096 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
#3: you can open the brushes files in notepad
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
#3: you can open the brushes files in notepad
End of quote


Odd, I tried to open one in Notepad++ and it was crazy. Maybe it was a fluke or something.

Trying them now and they work... so... whoops ;)

Okay, only #1 and #2 left :P
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Alright I got my star (ooo a sphere) open in 3DS Max.

Now my problem is the texture.

I have the texture, I suppose, a 2048x2048. However I need to generate the mipmaps for it, but I'm unsure what parameters to use in the dds tool to do so.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/307861 go to this thread I post some quick info and also there are three more links that go to good threads about modeling.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Alpha channels are non visible channels that contain data, the most common combiation or use is Red, Green, Blue & Alpha (where Alpha might contain information on transparency). In SoaSE the alpha channel has many uses depending on the file being read.

I use the DTX5 format for the .dds files, cos it includes the alpha channel.

You need Stannum's Import/Export MaxScript to view the games existing mesh objects, there's a long post all about it in this forum.