Zephyr Net

I said the creator of AIRBRUSH was ahead of me in decoding the .SH format 'cause AIRBRUSH seems to load files that my program cant decode by itself (User input is required for analyzing Vertices Indices and UVs size). Also it seems to know the relationship between Normals and Polygons plus the proper shading for such a polygon (Flat, Gouraud, Textured). I havent got the time to continue working on this but I'll figure it out...eventually...
Full burner if you have any info please share it here. Any information, even if small, could be valuable.

Dave (the developer of airbrush) developed the "vertices mode" to make a drag and drop shape changer for FA but he never finished the work.

_________________
Fighting for justice with brains of steel

Let your anger be like the monkey which hides inside the piniata.

Actually... Sickpuppy (Dave) has said that stable shape altering wasnt possible in FA and abandoned his work...

Thus no further developments of the shape editor beyond recoloring...

What about giving new bitmap coordinates for texture bitmpas for the shapes? Could this be possible?

For example, is it possible to create bitmap coordinates that would cover the entire B-52 shape? The B-52 shape would look great if the entire shape was able to be textured (for an example).


I think FA has so many shapes that not being able to alter shapes isn't that big of a deal. But being able to texture the entire shape object (and giving the bitmpas the smallest pixel size) is important.

If you notice, some textures have big, blown up pixels, and some textures have tiny pixels. Getting all the shapes to have small pixels would mean better graphics.

Thats definitively doable with what we know right now. The only problem would be that polygons that are not Textured Mapped (Dont have UVs) cant be changed to do so. At least until we know more. I'm more interested in modifying the shape. I think it's possible to move the points, but cant add new points or polys, until we figure the whole thing out.

Full BUrners idea is probably the most practical and the most wanted... If we can impreove the skin coverage of the models, then we would not need as many new models...

However not be able to skin aircraft taht have minimal skin coverage now, would in my opinion, cause major problems... These are the models we need to skin the most...

Like the C-17, B-52, B-1, B-2, etc...

CAG out...

I would like to extend invitations to both of you to join the VNFAWING EGroup development center...

Just go to the following URL and request to join... Its a very active group with 76 or more members ... This month alone we have 0ver 300 messages posted towards our development issues...


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VNFAWING/

Just request to join and I will approve you both, then you can read through the message archive and check the image files for screens of our work, plus you can also visit http://vnfawing.com to see additional info and downlaod our FA Futures projects...

CAG out...

This is my first attempt at editing shapes based on my research. Basically removed forward canards from the SU35 and smothed the neck of the plane so we dont have to use that ugly SU27 shape anymore...




So better SU27s and SU30s are possible...Havent finished editing the damaged models yet. I'll release everything when I'm done...

hotfrog

Very cool. The USNF vintage Flanker shape is looking especially tired.

Zephyr

Thanks for the invitation. I would definitely be interested in joing your group.

And to Hotfrog, nice work.

You know what I really think would be cool? To get the TRACER shape to be shortened to about half the size. I think the tracer shape is a bit too long when used from ground fire coming at you. I think a shorter tracer shape would be great if possible.

Very impressive work, Hotfrog! How do you manage to avoid CTDs from that?

no foolin that really does look NICE

_________________
Fighting for justice with brains of steel

Let your anger be like the monkey which hides inside the piniata.

Ok it wasnt easy, it took me like 2 hours of research (Knowing the points that I wanted to move) and like a half an hour of trial and error. Yes I got CTD at the begining. The problems seems to be invalid polygons as a result of moving the points. The FA renderer doesnt like invalid polygons (Complex polygons, polygons with crossed edges,etc). In a properly programmed renderer these polygons would be detected and simply not rendered, in FA's case you get CTD. Zero area polygons are fine. Thats how I deleted the canards. The polygon is still there but changed two vertices coordinates to match the other two, basically converting the quad into a line (invisible polygon).

hotfrog

Can you send me this shape file to test? I would like to see if I can also recolor the shpe using my hex editor coloring agent I built to edit unstable shapes that cant use the sick puppy color editor.

Also, can you fix the canopies on the F-18 C and the F-18 D to be more realeastic? The problem they have is they the D is to square and doesnt blend back into the fuselage, and the C the main segment of the canopy doesnt align with the rear segment and makes a 'bump' that is evident when you color the canopy. This needs to be fixed, every time I did it I caused CTDs...

Also, were you able to edit the second and third stage fo the SU-35B shape to also not reflect the canards?

And yes very, very impressive work!!

CAG out...

An additional question... how did you get the skin file to not still show up where the invisible polygon is? The skin file should still overwrite it, just as it would the canopy if you added texture to it, but in this case the texture already existed, so how did you remove it?