I have walls as objects and one has an arched doorway. The objects were modeled in Blender 2.79b. Then I ran 3ds2e and BSP in a command window. In .bin form, the object is 1-sided. Lately 3ds2bin has warned any objects built in 2.79b (also 2.83.3) are invalid .3ds files. Other than 3ds2bin, is there a way to convert to .bin and get a 2-sided object?
I plan to put blockables outside the doorway so the player can walk through the portal, but not pass the solid wall. I'm partly choosing objects over brushes because in mono I had an apparent cell cycle warning with the doored wall in brush form. Also because I want to reduce cells.
Wall textures are from Textures.com (messy brick) and Thief 2 (Rusty metal).
Last edited by wade; 15th Aug 2020 at 13:37. Reason: added Texture details, etc.
3ds2bin is just a graphical interface to run 3ds2e.exe and bsp.exe - so you can simply run those manually from the command line.
But since those are still the same converters that the GUI uses behind the scenes, I'd imagine you'll have the same problems there.
Just add DBL to the list of material tags in the E file.
Are you ticking 2-sided for the textures in 3dstobin?
I would do that if 3ds2bin let me get past this warning:Originally Posted by nicked
Are you ticking 2-sided for the textures in 3dstobin?
Sometimes BSP converts to .bin after Blender, and other times I get this warning. Just wondering if there's a command for 3ds2e that would allow 2-sided conversions.
Great, definitely worth trying. Here's this link in case anyone's interested:
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthre...+material+tags
Adding DBL was it! ZylonBane will be added to my list of credits, since this is an integral part of the mission.
Good to hear the tag worked for you, but I'm wondering if everything is OK with the normals of your mesh. Maybe it's just hard to make out the actual shape from those screengrabs, but typically for solid objects you don't need the double-sided polygons, if all of them face outwards. Double-sided is for thin meshes like leaves, paper, fabric - generally modeled with a single, no thickness polygon, seen from both sides. Otherwise you might be doubling up the polycount of your meshes.
Yeah I couldn't tell from the first image, but the fixed version doesn't look like it should need any double-sided textures. It looks like the normals were facing the wrong way.
Why use objects for walls instead of regular terrain brushes?
I tried terrain brushes previously, but mono gave me an apparent cell cycle warning. I'm not sure why, usually I get those if a solid brush crosses over two air brushes. In this spot, the terrain brush was between two other wall objects.
At first the upper part of the doorway was invisible, much like the inside of a 1-sided object. This is a space where a portcullis-type object would move. How would I go about fixing normals if vertices have already merged or edges have been merged or filled?
See my reply to PinkDot, but here's some screenshots from within Blender 2.79b with solid and wireframe selected. As far as normals facing outward, the object's faces for the upper door area were merely recessed. I merged some vertices at certain points, also bridging or filling some edges, so long as the resulting faces were triangulated.
Oof, that's one messy shape. You could make that with about 75% less polys. You don't actually need to triangulate in Blender as 3DStoBin will do that for you, but manually triangulating complex faces will save you from the algorithm creating impossibly thin slivers.
Bear in mind as well that objects can only have square or spherical collision in Dromed, so you'll have problems making it accurate with a shape like that intended to replace terrain (in addition the other limitations of objects such as light mapping and AI visibility).
Checking Normals: In Blender 2.79b (this will differ for later Blender versions), in Edit mode, turn on Face Normals from the toolbar down the right. This will show you blue lines sticking out from each face:
If the blue line is pointing inwards, select the affected face and click Flip Direction from Shading\UVs panel:
Cell cycle warning: I don't think I've ever seen this error. If you post the exact error message you're seeing, we may be able to help. There should be no problem whatsoever with solid brushes crossing air brushes. Without seeing the error, I would first make sure there's no obvious problems, like ensure your brushes are snapped to the grid.
Well, I can try it again in Face Mode with Select-Similar-coplanar-delete, then Edge Mode, select all edges, F (fill). That will "restart" it and reduce triangles.
Is adding "DBL" in the .e file still a wise choice?
This warning from the first picture will appear after I make some change, and when I move around the grid map in DromEd it will repeatedly appear.
Sorry, I should have said "when one air brush crosses an inner solid brush within an outer air brush". I used to get the cell cycle warning when making stairs and I think I had a floor between air brush rooms. The air brush the stairs were in crossed the solid floor and I got the warning.
I think I've also had this warning when my exterior walls were solid brushes and they crossed other solid brushes. like when a solid brush is overlapping two solid brushes but is turning perpendicular from them. but. Anyway, the last time I made this wall with a portal that was a solid brush with an air cylinder going through it, I got the warning, which is partly why I wanted to try an object instead. Also, when I use objects for walls, the texture gets applied the way I want it.
I have been snapping to grid, but I still get the warning with solid brushes.
Last edited by wade; 17th Aug 2020 at 13:54.
The texture alignment tools for terrain brushes are quite versatile and should allow perfectly good texture mapping.
Using objects as terrain is a bad idea for reasons people have already posted. It's like taking a largely ineffective medicine with awful side effects for a condition that's been brought on by a poor lifestyle choice.
Always worth a try but sometimes brushes snapped to a grid size of 16 can still cause problems if they're complicated enough.I have been snapping to grid, but I still get the warning with solid brushes.
This has a post telling you how to get the the cell that's causing the problem:
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144873
Look out for odd rotations, complex intersecting shapes, possibly extremely large areas, or anything close to the great barrier (+-1000 in any direction).
It may be better for the terrain problems to be discussed in their own thread because making objects and exporting them is also a thing.
I made another terrain brush and resized it to match my custom texture. However, see the issue remaining below.
Been using grid size 12.Always worth a try but sometimes brushes snapped to a grid size of 16 can still cause problems if they're complicated enough.
The cells in question contain a spiral staircase in one and a terrain brush building in another. Even after I deleted both and optimized, I still had the cell cycle warning when the new terrain brush wall remained. For some reason terrain brushes are causing the warning. It might just help to change the size of terrain brushes. My terrain brush wall has a height of 35 because I have taller buildings. Perhaps the height should be closer to 15, like in the unstripped MISS1.MIS file?This has a post telling you how to get the the cell that's causing the problem:
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144873
I'm going back to the drawing board. Several years ago, I had an upper skyhack airbrush with the rest of the map split into bigger airbrushes. At that time, I was having trouble rendering skyhack properly between different map sections. I went back to a singular airbrush, like in the FM "Stowaway". Today I took a closer look at First City Bank and Trust (Miss2) and must admit all this time I've had difficulty comprehending the many individual brushes and how they render. Tried it with a couple smaller airbrushes, highlighted terrain brushes (houses) within them, set the Time "to end" and was able to render them.
Hopefully, if I keep this up, I can bring in more terrain brushes without getting the warnings.
If you're not in the Dromed Discord it may be worth joining there as you will probably get answers a little quicker than here.
Why don't you have hardware rendering enabled in DromEd?
How come that's ended up as a separate server anyway, and not part of the main TTLG one?
There is no "main ttlg" one
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