Strat_map ship models question.

[AnthoniusII]

I used ITWE tool to convert Ship .cas files to milkshape and it was succesfull.
Then ussing the same technique with residences i assigned my new strat_mao shio model to a TGA texture.
I oressed "read ms3d_cas" i checked the texture entry. And then I pressed the write ,cas and i had a ship cas file.
I put the cas file in to the Strat_map folder and its texture in the strat_map/textures folder.
The result is an invisible ship only faction symbol is visible.

[makanyane]

could you send me the ms3d and the .cas and texture please

I have no idea what's happened on that!

[AnthoniusII]

I use IWTE 17_03_A because I use milkshape.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/5i84g..._ship.rar/file
Here is the discussion of what i have tried so far. https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...1#post16135416

[AnthoniusII]

When IWTE tool converts settlements .cas files to ms3d among the groups is the faction symbol in a form of a cube.
The ships have this group -propably for faction symbol- named CaozSceneCustomAttribNode but after convering with the latest version of ITWE it does not simply there and in the older version of IWTE i used it had not box or any vertex to allow me place the ship musts in the proper possition and even i I merge a model with that group (no material like settlements symbol) it has no vertices to assign to the ship bone like the rest of the model.
The results are:
1: Reversed facyion symbol
2: 3d Musts follow the ship's movement with a couple secs delay after the move of the faction symbol of the ship that has the shape of a must/sail combination.

[makanyane]

When IWTE tool converts settlements .cas files to ms3d among the groups is the faction symbol in a form of a cube.
The ships have this group -propably for faction symbol- named CaozSceneCustomAttribNode

some do - not all - navy_greek.cas used by carthage_admiral (aztecs) didn't have one - lots of the .cas files had the Caoz thing - it's a left over from 3dsMax editing, the game doesn't use it. 'Symbol' is something different and it's used for the residence.

but after convering with the latest version of ITWE it does not simply there and in the older version of IWTE i used it had not box or any vertex to allow me place the ship musts in the proper possition and even i I merge a model with that group (no material like settlements symbol) it has no vertices to assign to the ship bone like the rest of the model.
The results are:
1: Reversed facyion symbol
2: 3d Musts follow the ship's movement with a couple secs delay after the move of the faction symbol of the ship that has the shape of a must/sail combination.

The faction symbol part (unless you included it on the texture) is applied to data/banners/navy_banner.cas using the symbols1.tga.dds etc, that will loosely follow the 'bone_root_navy' around. If you try getting the character models to properly hold a flag in their hand you'll notice a similar issue that the movement of the strat flag is not precise.

[AnthoniusII]

You are right. It was bizzare not all ships to have it. When we re-create with IWTE tool even a vanilla ship model the ship turns and after 1-2 secs turns the faction symbol.
Is there a way to merge those two .cas models to avoid that?
How can i include the faction symbol in the texture when CaozSceneCustomAttribNode has no verices at all. The textures indeed include "sail" texture.
Do I need exept the color the sail with the faction banner to make some coding?

[AnthoniusII]

I merged the navy_symbol.cas with the ship one but now i have two symbols one that turns with the ship (the merged one) and the other that the game creates.

[makanyane]

You are right. It was bizzare not all ships to have it. When we re-create with IWTE tool even a vanilla ship model the ship turns and after 1-2 secs turns the faction symbol.
Is there a way to merge those two .cas models to avoid that?

I really don't think IWTE is making a difference to this - if you watch vanilla unedited boats you'll see a lag when they turn sometimes too - so no...

The textures indeed include "sail" texture.
Do I need exept the color the sail with the faction banner to make some coding?

you'd need to edit the data/banners/navy_banner.cas and/or descr_standards.txt to stop the default faction symbol banners turning up, then edit your textures to manually add the faction symbol onto the sail. I don't think you can do that without losing the 'strength' colouring of the flag though. See here https://wiki.twcenter.net/index.php?...2TW#Strat_Flag for my attempt to explain how the character held strat_flag.cas works

[AnthoniusII]

Here is the vanilla descr_standards.txt

;
;    this file describes the appearance of the strategy map banners
;

file_scale            0.185f
file_army_banner    data/banners/strat_flag.cas                ; can't have spaces
file_scale            1.0f
file_navy_banner    data/banners/navy_banner.cas

banner_star            0,       0.67969, 0.19141, 0.86719
banner_button        0.19922, 0.67969, 0.38281, 0.86719
banner_flag            0.58813, 0.01,    0.99,    0.99
banner_sail            0.01,    0.01,    0.42,    0.41
banner_crusade            0.02344, 0.44531, 0.28906, 0.67969,   banners/strat_flag.tga
banner_jihad            0.29688, 0.44531, 0.5625,  0.67969,   banners/strat_flag.tga

factions
symbols                banners/symbols1.tga
symbols                banners/symbols2.tga
symbols                banners/symbols3.tga
symbols                banners/symbols4.tga
symbols                banners/symbols5.tga
symbols                banners/symbols6.tga
rebels_factions
symbols                banners/symbols7.tga
symbols                banners/symbols8.tga

I removed the pole from the navy_banner.cas and kept only the banner. But the game still reproduses the vanilla navy_banner.
i will try to change the name both in the txt and in the .cas to see what will happen.
When you write"

you'd need to edit the data/banners/navy_banner.cas and/or descr_standards.txt to stop the default faction symbol banners turning up, then edit your textures to manually add the faction symbol onto the sail. I don't think you can do that without losing the 'strength' colouring of the flag though

Can you give me an example based on the vanilla txt above?

[makanyane]

it's one of the files with a path related to the m2.exe - the 'data' at the start is the giveaway, you need to write it like:

file_scale 0.185f
file_army_banner data/banners/strat_flag.cas ; can't have spaces
file_scale 1.0f
file_navy_banner mods/your_mod_name/data/banners/navy_banner.cas

banner_sail 0.01, 0.01, 0.42, 0.41

is x,y positions of the top left and bottom right corners of the part of strat_flag.tga.dds that gets displayed on the banner part of the flag - if you move it to an area that is alpha'd out then I think you won't see the symbol

I'm not 100% sure - but you should be able to experiment now...

[AnthoniusII]

The part you highlighted i missed. Thank you again.
EDIT:
fROM THIS:

file_navy_banner mods/your_mod_name/data/banners/navy_banner.cas

TO THIS :

ile_navy_banner mods/TGC_Melt (based on the version in confg.txt)/data/banners/navy_banner.cas

Cause CTD in the start .
Question : How do i see the curent coordinates?
In all the rest of text files they do not need the name of the mod to use mod's curent data folder. That is bizzare.

[makanyane]

Cause CTD in the start .

do you have the .cas in there AND the correctly named .tga
not .tga.dds a real .tga ?

it is bizarre - it only happens on those - some projectile models and some battle banners - it will cause CTD's if you change the mod folder name and forget!

the coordinates are based on % so assume top right is 0 0 and bottom left of the tga is 1 1 and work out how far across you want to be

[AnthoniusII]

Sure.
TGC_MELT (Its the version of data we have so far).
Inside you will find the cfg.txt to verify the mod's curent version.
The folders models_strat and banners. The descr_model_strat.txt , the vanilla descr_standards , the modified descr_standards having the number 1 before it to avoid aover write with the additions you mentioned and it causes CTD.
In the models_strat folder you will find 3 versions of the same ship.
The Dromon.cas is the one we use now.
The dromon3.cas is the resullt of merging the ship with the pole of the navy_banner.cas withour the sail.
In the banners folder you will find the vanilla navy_banner.cas and the navy_banner1 , that is actually only the sail from the vanilla navy_banner.cas (the number added to avoid overwriting) for the dromon3 version.

type                greek_cities_admiral
skeleton            strat_navy
indiv_range            40
texture                byzantium, models_strat/textures/navy_dromon.tga 
model_flexi            models_strat/navy_dromon.cas, max
shadow_model_flexi    models_strat/navy_roman_shadow.cas, max

I created a folder in the IWE tool named Banners and placed the vanilla navy_banner.cas in it before I convert it to ms3d format. In a strange way the ms3d model always located in the folder models_strat inside the IWTE tool where the ship models also are.

[makanyane]

Your navy_banner.cas in banners has 'textures/navy_julii.tga' as the encoded texture name in it - you'll need to provide a tga in
your_mod/data/banners/textures called navy_julii.tga

the models_strat folder you sent doesn't contain any .cas files, it only contains ms3d files called
navy_dromon_cas.ms3d etc
if you've not actually provided a .cas file
navy_dromon.cas
that will also CTD

[AnthoniusII]

I convert those ms3d models to cas ones as you told me and placed it in the data/models_strat . In the vanilla data the navy_julii.tga is in the same folder with the navy_banner.cas aka data/banners.
EDIT: Check you PMs i sent you my models_strat folder as is in our mod's data.

[makanyane]

Vanilla navy strat flag definitely shows the symbol reversed

I've had a go, but can't get it to do anything about that, and hiding part of the strat_flag.tga sail texture doesn't get rid of the symbol

You can 'remove' the whole navy flag by sinking the banner and pole underwater, then you could do your own symbol on the ship model/texture

but you wouldn't have any strength indicator to show larger/smaller fleets

[AnthoniusII]

Vanilla navy strat flag definitely shows the symbol reversed

I've had a go, but can't get it to do anything about that, and hiding part of the strat_flag.tga sail texture doesn't get rid of the symbol

You can 'remove' the whole navy flag by sinking the banner and pole underwater, then you could do your own symbol on the ship model/texture

but you wouldn't have any strength indicator to show larger/smaller fleets

That is an interesting idea. To have to sink the pole and banner underwater. As for the streghth of a fleet its more realistic to be in range to put the cursor on the ship and see how many ships are there.
I will try that and let you know. Again THANK YOU For your time and effort.
Now the question that emerges is how do i code the texture of each faction ? Ships do not seam to have textures entries like the strat_map characters.
Any idea?
From this:

type                greek_cities_admiral
skeleton            strat_navy
indiv_range            40
texture                byzantium, models_strat/textures/navy_dromon.tga 
model_flexi            models_strat/navy_dromon.cas, max
shadow_model_flexi    models_strat/navy_roman_shadow.cas, max

With your idea i will have to make each faction a similar tga texture with the faction symbol on the sail and name it like this: [EXAMPLE]
To this:

type                greek_cities_admiral
skeleton            strat_navy
indiv_range            40
texture                byzantium, models_strat/textures/navy_dromon.tga 
texture                byz_reb, models_strat/textures/navy_dromon_reb.tga 
model_flexi            models_strat/navy_dromon.cas, max
shadow_model_flexi    models_strat/navy_roman_shadow.cas, max

AM I right?

[makanyane]

AM I right?

That's correct, if you look at vanilla it already has

type german_admiral
skeleton strat_navy
indiv_range 40
texture hre, models_strat/textures/navy_cog.tga
texture saxons, models_strat/textures/navy_german.tga
model_flexi models_strat/navy_cog.cas, max
shadow_model_flexi models_strat/navy_roman_shadow.cas, max

(do check it works before you make all the faction's textures...)

[AnthoniusII]

How did you manage to put pole and banner under water.

• I opened to navy_banner.cas with IWTE.
• I moved the pole and banner under the bone.
• I used the IWTE to convert the modified navy_banner to data/banners folder and replaced the vanilla one.

The game still gives me the vanilla navy_banner.cas!!!
What am I doing wrong?
EDIT:
Its a pity such model not working:

Can you upload your factional modified navy_banner.cas?

[makanyane]

The game still gives me the vanilla navy_banner.cas!!!
What am I doing wrong?
EDIT:
Its a pity such model not working:

Can you upload your factional modified navy_banner.cas?

We discussed this before - descr_standards.txt needs your mod_folder name in it with a full path from the M2TW.exe

I did mine like

file_scale			0.185f
file_army_banner	data/banners/strat_flag.cas				; can't have spaces
file_scale			1.0f
file_navy_banner	mods/common_parts/tgc/banners/navy_banner.cas

I've advocated having a mod folder called 'common_parts' for this sort of thing, which can be released alongside your mod folder and means it still works if you change your mod folder name (or someone wants to use the banner in a different mod)

EDIT: obviously whatever file/folder path you put in descr_standards.txt has to match the location you actually put the .cas file!