Vertex Colored ASE Models using DarkRadiant and Blender 2.53 Beta

[SneaksieDave]

My material sucks, but it's working now

 

 

One problem I see (not sure if with the model, or the technique; hoping not the latter): note that both bumpmaps spread across the entire surface. The bricks have pebbled normals and the stones have brick normals. Can this be prevented (either a model bug or different material etc)?

 

Here's the simple material again:

 

textures/darkmod/stone/brick/bricks_dirty_yellow_vertblend

{

stone

 

qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/stone/brick/bricks_dirty_yellow_ed

 

{

blend diffusemap

map textures/darkmod/stone/brick/bricks_dirty_yellow

vertexColor

}

 

{

blend bumpmap

map textures/darkmod/stone/brick/bricks_dirty_yellow_local

vertexColor

}

 

 

{

blend diffusemap

map textures/darkmod/nature/dirt/dry_earth_stones02

inverseVertexColor

}

 

{

blend bumpmap

map textures/darkmod/nature/dirt/dry_earth_stones02_local

inverseVertexColor

}

 

}

 

 

 

[Fidcal]

Imported my .ase into Blender but its offset from the world 0,0,0. Is this from DR? So when exporting we should move our selection to 0,0,0 like we do for prefabs? How do I move it in Blender?

[rebb]

One problem I see (not sure if with the model, or the technique; hoping not the latter): note that both bumpmaps spread across the entire surface. The bricks have pebbled normals and the stones have brick normals. Can this be prevented (either a model bug or different material etc)?

 

If the vertex-colour of a vertex is not fully white or not fully black, but some in-between grey value, then essentially both textures will show on this vertex.

 

You can display vertex-colours ingame using "r_showVertexColor 1".

 

Having a fully white or fully black value on a vertex makes sure that the respective material will fully "own" the area around this vertex, so to say.

[Fidcal]

Having told me how to navigate and the LMB to paint it the tutorial jumps straight to export! Desperately needs to tell the user what, where, how, to paint.

 

Let me guess: The whole object/thing/model/selection looks white. That will show as the material I set as vertexcolor in the shader? So I set black paint? then paint the area black that I want to be the made the material I set as inversevertexcolor?

[Fidcal]

I have no way to tell my orientation or where to paint. I'll guess and see how it comes out. This needs some guidance.

[rebb]

White should fully show the "vertexColour" part and black should fully show the "inverseVertexColour" part, yes.

 

With in-between grey values mixing the two depending on the value.

[Baddcog]

OK, my vert colored model was handy so I figured I'd try and get it working (exported from Max).

 

And in the ase file it clearly states 852 verts of the 'pot' mesh have vert color. The metal part doesn't. And I I sure my mtr is correct.

 

But in game it looks no different than the regular non-vc one. I didn't go overbored but there should be dark spots around the bottom, inside,a under the rings.

 

Edit: see below

Edited July 25, 2010 by SneaksieDave
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much text

[Fidcal]

OK, I selected black paint and I see a huge circular mouse pointer. I try to paint black on the object but nothing happens. I look at the paint section but see nothing intuitive.

 

I cannot proceed. So again, the tutorial needs something here even if it is only a link to a Blender painting tutorial.

[SneaksieDave]

@Baddcog: sorry, had to remove your inline text; couldn't even load the page without freezing the browser with a javascript error. You can simply rename the files .txt (e.g. mymodel.ase.txt) and include them as attachments.

[Baddcog]

Yeah sorry. I tried to put it in spoiler tags after I realized that but IE locked up on me 3 times. Thought I killed the thread

8O

 

Thanks for fixing it.

---------------

 

OK, the ase file shows vert color on the ceramic material, I used black or brown in Max. (the metal has no vert color)

and I think my material is correct.

 

But I see no vert color in game, upside a regular material pot they look exactly the same.

 

This pot should have shading at bottom, inside, under metal rings.

 

Any ideas?

pot_test.ase.txt

vertcolor.txt

[SneaksieDave]

Having a fully white or fully black value on a vertex makes sure that the respective material will fully "own" the area around this vertex, so to say.

I gave this a shot in game; here are the results:

 

 

The "stony" normalmap seems equally strong throughout, regardless of the vertex colors. Something is wrong.

[rebb]

@Sneaksie :

 

Could you attach the files again please ? ( map, model, material )

[SneaksieDave]

Yup yup:

 

vertblend.mtr.txt

verttest1.map.txt

verttest9.ase.txt

[rebb]

Thanks

 

It seems like simply making sure that the bumpmap-stage comes before the diffusemap-stage fixes this.

 

Try this material :

 

textures/darkmod/stone/brick/bricks_dirty_yellow_vertblend
{
stone
qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/stone/brick/bricks_dirty_yellow_ed

{
blend 	bumpmap 	
	map		textures/darkmod/stone/brick/bricks_dirty_yellow_local
	vertexColor
}
{
	blend diffusemap
	map 	textures/darkmod/stone/brick/bricks_dirty_yellow
	vertexColor
}	

{
	blend	bumpmap			
	map textures/darkmod/nature/dirt/dry_earth_stones02_local
	inverseVertexColor 	
}
{
	blend diffusemap
	map textures/darkmod/nature/dirt/dry_earth_stones02
	inverseVertexColor 
}
}

 

I vaguely remember reading something about the "proper" order of stages on iddevnet.com at some point, most id materials seem to adhere to the order of "bumpstage, diffusestage, specstage".

[SneaksieDave]

Woot thanks! That looks much better.

 

[Fidcal]

I love it when there's a real easy solution to a bad problem! Good fix.

 

Tomorrow I'll search for a paint tutorial and try to resume.

[Fidcal]

I remembered something about not having enough vertices so manage to made a crude paint job as a test. But the export is exactly the same as the import so no idea what's wrong there. Maybe you have to 'fix' the paint somehow when you've painted it.

 

BTW the export script caption says 'load' instead of 'save'.

[Fidcal]

Ah - got it. I thought it would show on the model in DR. Suddenly occurred to me maybe it only shows in-game.

 

So, working perfectly. I got it backwards of course - I finished up with a grass path through stone!

 

So, if I've got this right, paint BLACK for vertexcolor and WHITE for inversevertexcolor materials.

 

Also I need far more vertices on my patch

[rich_is_bored]

Black for vertexcolor sounds right but it's easy to swizzle them if you get the colors mixed up. All you need to do is swap the vertexcolor and inversevertexcolor statements in your material shader.

[Fidcal]

Blender's file manager is a bit tortuous and probably adviseable to have one save/load folder and copy/move them to where needed.

 

Redid my model exactly the same except more vertices on the patch but this time I got default texture in DR. Redid it the same and now it works. Dunno what happened there.

 

So it's starting to look promising. I think maybe I need to move vertices closer so the fuzziness width is reduced.

 

One thing I was happy to see was the edges of the model appear to exactly match where they join the rest of the grass which is worldspawn. So placing the model exactly where it was originally created in DR it looks like the texture is exactly the same alignment.

 

[Fidcal]

Extra note to add: If there is no distinctive shape then the user should take note of the alignment say with the green (North) arrow to make sure they paint the right part.

 

I think I vaguely recall a button to invert black/white on the object but couldn't find it in 2.5. Useful if dominant color is black. It just seems easier to paint a path on grass than to paint all the grass around an imaginery path.

[rich_is_bored]

You can assign a color to the entire mesh when in vertex paint mode with Shift+K.

 

And in case you don't want to remember the shortcut you can also invoke a search dialog by pressing the space bar anywhere. I found the operation by searching for "color" while in vertex paint mode.

[Fidcal]

You can assign a color to the entire mesh when in vertex paint mode with Shift+K.

 

And in case you don't want to remember the shortcut you can also invoke a search dialog by pressing the space bar anywhere. I found the operation by searching for "color" while in vertex paint mode.

Thanks I'll try those now.

 

Added note (I'll pick all these up later if needed to modify the wiki article)

When painting it often seems to do nothing when you LMB drag. Often I find I have to keep persisting then suddenly it works. Bit like a sticky biro. Also check your paint color isn't the same as the one underneath. Note that undo even undoes your paint selection!

[Fidcal]

Distorted texture. My guess is I didn't get the correct save copied over. Hard to tell. Needs some thought how to manage this.

 

Redid it. Getting the sticky biro effect real bad. Eventually paint roughly what I want. But wtf does it mean?

 

 

 

Do a bit more. Can't squeeze any more out of the biro without going into grass areas.

 

 

 

Export. This is approx correct on the left but the right is too fuzzy. That probably agrees with the paint job but how to paint better?

 

[Fidcal]

Ctrl + S or Blender save is the same as 'save as' and defaults to 'untitled'. What is the point of that when you want to do frequent saves during a session?