[Fisneaky]

Anyone know the name/ folder to find this candidate for a makeover?

(Wouldn't want to become "an unemployed house painter " lol)




OK! Found it :lol:

[Fisneaky]

[canonuk]

Looks great.

Many of these ugly buildings aren't being used because they look crap - decent textures will improve them so much

[Fisneaky]

This was one of my priorities as it features on airfields in some maps.

The mat was a bit of a hotch potch in the original. this would be more in keeping with a British airbase.
"Crittal" windows and all. :wink:

[lowfighter]

Keep them coming please
That skin in your shot can be used also in factories, cool!

One thought about city buildings, I think it would be useful to have some more skins to the Slovakia city buildings. These buildings have nice behavior at long distance in contrast to others which either disappear at smaller distance or assume a funny shape at long distance ( the Kiev ones take a triangular shape and the Pacific ones take a 2D flat shape and so on lol). So having more variants of the Slovakia ones gives a better chance to make towns look more realistic.

One thought about the Russian shabby houses, they are shabby but don't catch the eye either, so if you place a big number of them in a town (as it happens on most old maps) it's not disturbing that much that you see just 3 types in the whole town. It would be different if I'd use only 2-3 house types with more distinct features, then you'd see pretty fast the artificial in it. Hm, not sure I'm very clear?

[Fisneaky]

Good point Lowfighter, lots of Hi-res houses would "jump off the map"at you.

Maybe I'll experiment by dropping the contrast of the distant ( lowest res) skins too.

Like so:-



The skin mapping on the ends defies logic, seems to me the 2 segments should be mirrored on this building; which would give a perfect wrap around on the corners. Is there something that could be changed in the .mat file?

If anyones got more complete "Filelist" info for SFS extractor, that would be a great help.

[lowfighter]

Damit, your shots make me salivating!
About extracting files, I'll post tomorrow some hints how to find/get them, and of course if you have any special request I can try to find it. It's a bit of Sherlock Holmes job, but quite easy.

[lowfighter]

Ok, so here's a way to get the missing filenames to filelist.txt of the extractor.
Suppose I want to get the files to a certain object. I need to know first the FMB name for that object, so I open FMB, place the object, save mission, open mission with notepad and get the name. Let's say the name is
House$City_09
This is a city house of Slovakia.
Next I open the static.ini file with notepad and search for " House$City_09'
So I quickly find the section pertaining to that object, it looks like:

[buildings.House$City_09]
Title City_09
MeshLive 3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/live.sim
MeshDead 3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/dead.sim
AlignToLand 0
Body RockMiddle
Panzer 0.45


So I know now at least some of the filepaths for that object and I know the directory for that object, and that's the key.
Up to now I can safely add to the filelist

3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/live.sim
3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/dead.sim

I can safely add also

3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/live.msh
3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/dead.msh
and

3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/base.mat

Remains to find the names of the tga's and of the corresponding mat files

Normaly the mat files have names like skinhi.mat skinmid.mat and skinlo.mat
So try add those:

3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/skinhi.mat
3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/skinmid.mat
3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/skinlo.mat

Add all these to the filelist.txt
Run extractor and if you open the right archive (in this case its fb_3do19.sfs) you'll get these files.
Open skinhi, skinlo and skinmid mat files in notepad and you'll get the names of the tga's, for this example the siin names is the same as the mat files: skinhi.tga skin mid.tga and skinlo.tga

so adding

3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/skinhi.tga
3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/skinmid.tga
3do/Buildings/Slovakia/City_09/skinlo.tga

will get these files.
Remain to try adding the damage mat and tga files which have normaly the names: damagihi.mat, damagemid.mat and damagelo.mat and similar names for tgas. Try adding these to the filelist...Sometimes there are not all hi lo and mid files for a certain object especially for older versions. Sometimes names are different but you can always find them after a bit of trial and error. For example older objects might not have damagihi, lo and mid.mat but simply one damage mat, etc. Sometines name of skin in the mat file is not the same as name of the actual skin (check for example the warehouse files).
One more thing, the names of the skins are always present in the live.msh and dead.msh. If you open those and do a search for "skin" or "damage" you'll get the full names.
Hope it helps...

[Fisneaky]

Thanks , thats a useful guide.