Pretty pictures of the mechs

[DoctorEw]

Obviously an extremely minor issue, but it would be great to have nice looking pictures of the mechs while you're working on them. Pulling the models out with the crytek dev kit is an exercise in frustration... I can view most of the game assets (pilots, cockpits, coconut monkeys, trees, etc.) but not the mechs.

[DoctorEw]

I may try the approach from another direction... instead of trying to load the models in Crytek SDK and exporting to an easily used format for Blender/3DSM/your-modeling-software-of-choice I may try using some import/export scripts some person wrote for exporting blender files to crytek (and includes some limited import functionality).

There's also the easy route of just screenshotting things in the mech lab, but wheres the fun in that?

Back to square one. The blender plugin was for a previous version of the CryEngine so it won't work with the new stuff. Time to teach myself the SDK after all.

[DoctorEw]

Had a bit of success with getting the mechs to show up but there are still issues with missing meshes (some weapons and most cockpit exteriors) and/or extra ones popping up (pilots standing on top of the mech). Hopefully I can get this cleaned up enough to get some nice high res screenshots. In the meantime here's a fun video of all the mechs lined up.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bz12sAkAZL97SGNSSFBCbUVuSjQ

[Kusmeroglu]

So, we can't just take the pictures from sarna.net? :D

Seriously tho, this seems like a ton of work! Once you get this all figured out.. Could we make our own skins for the mechs? That would be hella cool.

[DoctorEw]

Why do things the easy way? :P

It is possible to make your own skin, but other than hacking it in to replace an existing texture, I don't see any way to get it to show up in the game. I also don't know if PGI does any sort of file integrity checks (or if that's even possible). I suppose we can always make an Oosik skin for the thread OP if we don't ever get the opportunity to submit our own skins.

[Kusmeroglu]

So, I just got on a computer that could play the video, that is fucking awesome. Way too cool.

I was thinking for the screen shots that you're trying to get for the website, it would be fun to skin them up Oosik style. But that might be a rediculous amount of work, I don't even know. My sole experience with 3d was Bryce way back in the day, and I learned that it's hard as hell to make anything look good.

[Kusmeroglu]

Oh, out of curiosity.. Is it possible to take screen shots highlighting each of the hit boxes on the mechs? I am not very good at knowing where the hit boxes are and we could also work that into the mech builder for reference.

[DoctorEw]

I may be able to do that.. after the hurricane though On Oct 30, 2012 12:41 AM, "Kusmeroglu" notifications@github.com wrote:

Oh, out of curiosity.. Is it possible to take screen shots highlighting each of the hit boxes on the mechs? I am not very good at knowing where the hit boxes are and we could also work that into the mech builder for reference.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/Kusmeroglu/MWOOSK/issues/15#issuecomment-9894820.

[mvrckpa]

Uh, reskinning them COULD be done fairly easily if Doc could extract the skins they already use for me to use as a template. Without being able to open the models and unwrap them in Blender it would be an absolute nightmare otherwise though.

[TOGSolid]

Yeah, I ran into these exact same problems when I was trying to find pictures of the mechs front a head on perspective. I was starting to poke around the SDK before I had to go to work but lolwork etc. If you're still having technical difficulties by the time I get home then I'll get back to poking around the SDK. Thanks DoctorEw!

[DoctorEw]

Okay, so far this evening, instead of getting some sleep, I decided to play around in the SDK. Some results:

• I found a way to turn off the internal cockpit pieces and pilots standing on top of the mechs (as seen in the video I posted). This makes a nice pretty model of a mech just standing there.
• So far, I am unable to export the models from the CryEngine format (.cgf) to a more friendly 3d modeling format. I found a way to load each component and I can stack a mech together like LEGO™. This way I can build up a mech arm, leg, torso section, etc. in a sort of exploded view to maybe be used in the mech bay. This method takes quite a long time to get everything lined up but looks pretty neat.
• The SDK is really temperamental and prone to crashing. The exploded view of the mech sections for the Awesome I was working on got lost :(
• There are a bunch of skins sitting around in the kit but the colors are way off and I haven't yet figured out a way to get them normalized. I'll see if I can figure out decent looking colors so we can get a preview of what some of the upcoming skins look like.

[Kusmeroglu]

Nice. Having the individual component pictures would be super cool :)

[DoctorEw]

Atlas: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bz12sAkAZL97TGd1b3Bfd2ZWajQ