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ORTS new shape format??? Rate Topic: ****- 3 Votes

#11 User is offline   captain_bazza 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 03:08 AM

Hi Sanyit,

Regarding my comment refering to 'lost formats', I should have commented, which formats are likely to be a long term format, for example, like 3ds mesh?

Quote

I can add my TS20xx models to OR after renaming the parts and replace the TS20xx materials to MSTS ones, but i don't want to wrestle with the .s format, also the MSTS materials are not enough.



That is interesting! I had not heard of that being possible. I agree that the MSTS materials are not enough - if used for Open Rails. The shape.s format is very old by any standard and is probably not user-friendly, however, some people can edit the shape file and find it useful to do that for various reasons.


I have tried Blender and 3d Crafter, but they are not user-friendly, IMO. I have never tried TSM.


Cheers Bazza.

#12 User is offline   Goku 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 04:19 AM

View Postdisc, on 13 October 2015 - 01:51 AM, said:

.s format is currently repelling the new content developers/coming from TS20xx or trainz, as it's an ancient format with bugged, old, limited, and payware tools. That is one reason why the most of the MSTS models doesn't look so good.

What is ancient in .s format? It has everything needed for a modern game. Does TS20xx uses open source format with free tools? I think not. S format is simple and it should be easy to write new importers.

View Postdisc, on 12 October 2015 - 02:35 PM, said:

There is Collada, but somebody said it's too heavy for an ingame format and it would be overkill to use it directly in game.

Collada IS an overkill. Worst choice ever.

View PostSP 0-6-0, on 12 October 2015 - 09:58 PM, said:


You can use .obj only for static meshes. It would be good to implement it, but as second/third format.
Object format for games needs matrices transformations.

#13 User is offline   disc 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 04:29 AM

View Postcaptain_bazza, on 13 October 2015 - 03:08 AM, said:

which formats are likely to be a long term format, for example, like 3ds mesh?


All formats are long term that are supported in major CAD softwares. So collada is one of these, which is supported by everything. 3DS is too old, and there are various problems with it(parts fall apart at import, and the shape is rotated 90 degrees, and every CAD software reads 3ds differently).

View Postcaptain_bazza, on 13 October 2015 - 03:08 AM, said:

That is interesting! I had not heard of that being possible.


Why wouldn't be? Every game is using the same triangular uv mapped shapes, just the materials and the naming conventions differ. Every game's 3d models can be added to every other game. One guy that i know converted building 3d shapes from Stalker games to TS20xx.

Zaza's 424 steam loco with 3d cab was imported first to Railworks, then to Openrails. I would be able to convert 6 locomotives that are made for TS20xx to OR, but i don't want to learn the tricks of the .s format, because it's obsolete, and also there are missing materials, like texture with specularity and fake environment maps+mask, or the same with lightmap, or glass materials (blendatexdiff is not how the glass looks like). Of course i can use texdiff and blendatexdiff instead, but these would make the models look dull, and so 2001-ish :)

View PostGoku, on 13 October 2015 - 04:19 AM, said:

Does TS20xx uses open source format with free tools? I think not.


I didn't wrote that we should use TS20xx format. Those format is a real *censored* (bad), and most of all, it's proprietary, closed source, and not an abadonware.


View PostGoku, on 13 October 2015 - 04:19 AM, said:

S format is simple and it should be easy to write new importers.


And yet there are no new importers, people are still struggling with the kuju .3ds to .s converter, and some very old CAD softwares that are able to export to this format. Or are there .s exporter plugins for 3Ds max, or blender?

Yes. .obj can be used for static objects, but wouldn't be better if we have a signle format for all?
However in TS20xx they made a shape format(.GeoPcDx), and each animations are saved to seperate files (.ban), which makes easy to select which animation should be played in game, and if only animations should be changed, then no need for shape re-export. What these animation files are contain is: names of the animated nodes and the animations for each nodes.
Like this:
Attached Image: m62textanim.jpg
Perhaps .obj expanded with separate animation animation files would be a way.

#14 User is offline   Goku 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 05:40 AM

View Postdisc, on 13 October 2015 - 04:29 AM, said:

also there are missing materials, like texture with specularity and fake environment maps+mask, or the same with lightmap, or glass materials (blendatexdiff is not how the glass looks like). Of course i can use texdiff and blendatexdiff instead, but these would make the models look dull, and so 2001-ish :)

Materials are not connected to .s file. Inside .s file you have only shader name and it can be anything.
It depends only on game engine if it has better materials support or not.

View Postdisc, on 13 October 2015 - 04:29 AM, said:

And yet there are no new importers, people are still struggling with the kuju .3ds to .s converter, and some very old CAD softwares that are able to export to this format. Or are there .s exporter plugins for 3Ds max, or blender?

There is sketchup importer. There is no new because almost no one is interested in making new one.
Russians also have their own sim made based on msts formats http://www.trainsim....isplay.php?f=50 - maybe they have something intresting?

View Postdisc, on 13 October 2015 - 04:29 AM, said:

Perhaps .obj expanded with separate animation animation files would be a way.

Route structure has already too much files. Animated obj requires one for shape, one for animations, one for materials. It is not good for game engine.

#15 User is offline   disc 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 06:02 AM

View PostGoku, on 13 October 2015 - 05:40 AM, said:

Materials are not connected to .s file. Inside .s file you have only shader name and it can be anything.
It depends only on game engine if it has better materials support or not.


Do multiple uv channels are supported by .s? Because a lot of advanced materials use different uv channels. For example one for normal texture, and one for lightmap.

View PostGoku, on 13 October 2015 - 05:40 AM, said:

There is sketchup importer. There is no new because almost no one is interested in making new one.

Sketchup is missing various thing that are needed for OR, i think it can be only used for static objects.
Because of no one interested making new exporters, a lot of possible modelers are not interested of using OR, because it's hard to export a model to it.

View PostGoku, on 13 October 2015 - 05:40 AM, said:

Route structure has already too much files. Animated obj requires one for shape, one for animations, one for materials. It is not good for game engine.


I don't think it bothers the game engine. Anyway, some lightweight compression and packing of multiple files can be used (zip, deflate, etc). Route structure is bad, but not because of many files, but because all shape and texture files are in single directory. Route builders usually don't even know where the shapes and textures came from. That's why in other games there are developer/addon directory grouping.

#16 User is offline   Goku 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 06:56 AM

View Postdisc, on 13 October 2015 - 06:02 AM, said:

I don't think it bothers the game engine.

It drastically increases loading time on HDD. On SSD the difference is lower but still noticeable.

View Postdisc, on 13 October 2015 - 06:02 AM, said:

Route structure is bad, but not because of many files, but because all shape and texture files are in single directory.

My editor will support organizing objects in directories instead .ref file.

#17 User is offline   Jonatan 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 07:23 AM

As a user of the "outdated" .s format, I feel a change would be negative, as you currently can bring any MSTS model into OR without too much trouble. A new fromat would require a new program, perhaps a commercial one, and like others have stated those don't come cheap. Unless someone will make a Gmax gamepack for the new format, I don't see any benefits of changing the format. And that's just for shapes, new editors for texture files must also be constructed.

Keep the old formats and find more ways to utilize them. :good:

#18 User is offline   Goku 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 07:29 AM

View Postdisc, on 13 October 2015 - 06:02 AM, said:

Do multiple uv channels are supported by .s? Because a lot of advanced materials use different uv channels. For example one for normal texture, and one for lightmap.

Yes. You can set multiple UV values to vertex:

Quote

vertex ( 00000000 58 31 ffffffff ff000000
vertex_uvs ( 1 64 )
number of uv values

You can assign multiple textures to material

Quote

prim_state Wheels21_AlphNorm ( 00000000 1
tex_idxs ( 1 10 ) 0 9 0 0 1
)
number of textures

And it depends on shader how use them (multiple texture, normalmap, lightmap etc)

#19 User is offline   disc 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 07:31 AM

What new editor is needed for texture files?

#20 User is offline   Genma Saotome 

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Posted 13 October 2015 - 08:05 AM

There is no reason for OR to discontinue use of the .s file... and considering all of the .s file content there is every reason to continue supporting it. Beyond that additional formats can be selected (note that I did make that plural) that support desirable features. Which ones? Who cares?! It's not going to be done any time soon anyway.

I'd much rather see an investment of scarce resources applied to replacing .XNA, which, in case you didn't know, would allow multiple threads to submit draw calls to the GPU and thereby break the existing performance bottleneck. IIRC it would also open the doors to using modern graphics features -- tessellated grass anyone? Water that looks like water?

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