Hey all, another SCI-FI craft



The model is in three parts - service gear (legs and ladder) main ship, and canopy.

The canopy is animated.

I thought about making the computer screen a separate model as well, so I could get more detail in, but it is already split up a bit now, so.....

Current issues:
Not quite happy with the script that runs the animations yet.

Sometimes when the close animation runs, the canopy flashes once when the animation ends. I doubt it is the animation since it is not consistent, in that it may flash and it may not - it is totally random. I found that when it does the flash thing, if I go into edit mode in GG and then cancel edit mode the flash doesn't happen again for that session.

Reliquia....

Looks great! Seems like you really have the knack for spaceship modeling. Do you do your texturing within your modeler or in a separate piece of software?

Hi @darimc, thanks for the feedback.

I use blender for modelling and Photoshop for textures.

Reliquia....

I had that flickering thing going on with some doors I made, I fixed it by adding 1 single blank frame at the end of the animation so ani0 = 0,30, ani1 = 31, 60 and in blender I set the animations to 0 - 61 frames and it did not flicker anymore

that ship looks nice, cant watch the video right now as my PC is refusing to play any youtube videos, it will be great when we get more character control functions, there ships will come into there own then.

Nice work, reliquia.

Hey all, thanks for looking.

@PartTimeCoder, yeah I tried adding 1 single frame and 2, 3 ,4, 5 frames but it still does it, you can have two of them in the same level and one may do it and the other won't. It's about the only thing holding it back from the store atm.

@Gtox, thanks

Reliquia....

I've found it can be one of three things (there might be more but these are the ones I've found)

1. (Animation Glitch): As stated above, an odd frame in the animation, it seems to vary exactly what the cause and cure it, here's a few things I've done to fix animation issues in the past:
- A. Add an extra frame at the end, don't call this frame in the FPE, just leave it as an extra frame.
- B. Add an extra frame at the beginning, start your animations at 1 instead of 0.
- C. Add a blank frame in between the open and close frames, don't call it in the FPE just leave it blank.

2. (Texture Glitch): I've found that if you don't leave enough space around your texture islands the ambient system can overlap and cause single frame glitches like this.

3. (Object Spacing): I've found that if you create a door by using two separate objects in one model (ie door and frame), and you place the models flush together GG sometimes interoperates them as overlapping and the animation makes them occlude for a quick second (sometimes completely, I had a door that disappeared when closed which was caused by this), try to leaves enough space between objects so that they're not flush or won't overlap when animating.

Usually if I do all three of these from the start I don't get animation glitches.

Hey all, has been a long week at work

@Belidos, thanks for the tips. I applied all your suggestions, but still can't stop the flash. I added the extra frames to the animation, but if I don't call the last frame of the closing animation the canopy disappears completely!

I am pretty sure the problems associated with transparency and animations are actually bugs in the engine, and what we are doing as artists is looking for work-arounds. In this case here the issue is compounded by the fact that the canopy is also using transparency. But hey - tis all a learning curve

Reliquia....

Hey all, so what's happening with Stealth Rader?

- Added better textures to the interior of the cockpit
- Added an optional custom dash as a separate model
- Tweaked the specular and illumination maps slightly

Here be a video:


Unfortunately I just can't seam to fix the animations glitches with the canopy. Of course I could always release it without animations, but that would be admitting defeat!

Reliquia....

Just a quick one, test it with occlusion turned off in the test settings and see if it still happens then.

@Belidos, you my man are a legend - in deed turning occlusion off = problem gone!

Weird thing is I always turn occlusion off when testing levels with plants all over the place because they keep pooping in and out, but in my test level for this model there are no plants, so never even thought of that!

Thanks for your help here - I can't tell you how much I appreciate it - wish there was a way to gift assets in the store!

Now I can concentrate on tweaking the script so collisions turn back on, and this baby is finished.

Reliquia....

Yeah I've found that the occlusion system does that to some animated objects, I have no idea why, maybe send a quick mail to Lee and se if he knows why and if so how to fix it if that's possible.

It happens when the object is considered hidden by an object and as with all things works on the origin point of the object.

this is most common when you put a sliding door into a map and it is partly blocked by a door frame or wall etc but of course will happen for anything.
Tweaking the placement of the entity should be enough to fix.

@smallg, thanks for the input.

You can place the canopy by itself in an empty map, and the issue still occurs.

It seams every tweak I try just creates a different scenario as to when\if it flashes. In all scenarios I have tried the issue is mostly random. The only thing that reliably stops it is to turn occlusion off.

Reliquia....

Hey all, thanks for all the input, all the bugs are sorted and Stealth Raider is in the store

You can check it out here.

Reliquia....

How did you fix the glitching?

@ Belidos, in the end I added 3 extra frames to the end for a total of 160 frames in the animation:
Opening animation = 0 - 79
Closing animation = 81 - 160

So I think it was a combination of all the tips you gave me, and just having more than one blank frame at the end!

I have tested till the cows come home, and it is flawless now

Reliquia....