BZII loads X file, but where's my texture?

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

I finally got a working X model into the game, but my model appears bright white without any textures at all. All the Hp's work fine along with all the objects appearing where they should be, and I got into the unit a variant of the cvtalon and flew around a bit to see if everything was working. A side from the missing textures the only odd thing I noticed was the hp_trail thingy is right in the middle of my cockpit area...why?

I bypassed any editing in Threed and used notepad to edit the hp entries manually; The X exporter in TS 7.6 adds an extra - plus a number to the end of the object name like, hp_whatever-01 which seems to prevent BZII from reading the name correctly.

The texture information in the X format displays as shown below

Material bodyMaterial_0_0 {
               0.501961; 0.250980; 0.000000; 1.000000;;
               44.000000;
               0.100000; 0.100000; 0.100000;;
               0.205804; 0.102902; 0.000000;;
               TextureFilename {
                  "C:\Program Files\Battlezone II\addon\BNG Assets\taloncamo.tga";
               }
            }
         }
      }
   }

Question: Can I just rename the texture path to that of my addon folder as that's where all my model textures are stored to get the texture where BZII can find and load them on to my model? Tanks, BNG.

[mrtwosheds]

Question: Can I just rename the texture path to that of my addon folder as that's where all my model textures are stored to get the texture where BZII can find and load them on to my model? Tanks, BNG.

The path is irrelevant. BZ2 will find it if it just said

               TextureFilename {
                  "taloncamo.tga";

The taloncamo.tga .tga must be in the addon folder or any other referenced by your cfg file.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Whoa! Now I see why I see the trail in the cockpit because the geometry has been flipped like 180 degrees backwards! BZII, read the X model file wrong, but loaded it anyways! I wonder if I rotate the model 180 degrees in TS 7.6 and save it again perhaps that will make it right again...Bump-n-go, here I go again! Woo Hoo what a ride!

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Whew! Okay I figured out the backwards geometry problem. The settings in the TS 7.6 X exporter needs to be changed from the default left hand coordinate system to the right handed coordinate system and then saving the model again.

Now if I can just fiqure out the missing texture problem then I can start using X model files and get a way from using Threed altogether. Any suggestions on what I should try?

Geeze! Do you guys know what this could mean for getting animated x models in to the game people?! Eww, slap me somebody I'm drooling all over my self at the mere thought!

[mrtwosheds]

Put the texture somewhere bz2 can find it.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

I zipped and uploaded my X model to Filefront. Could someone please have a look at the model in the map editor and help me figure out why the silly texture won't appear on my model? The model works perfectly with all the weapons and stuff, but for some unknown reason the texture refuses to appear on it even though it's in my addon folder. I tried a TGA, PNG and BMP file to no avail. Tanks, BNG.
http://files.filefront.com/cvtalon2xzip/;12334996;/fileinfo.html

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Geeze, doesn't anybody have clue about why the texture won't appear on an otherwise perfectly working X model? What I was hoping for is some honest feedback guys? What I've discovered so far is that BZII can read, load and manipulate this X format, but why can't it display a simple BMP, TGA, or PNG texture? Would converting the texture to the SI PIC format work? I haven't tried that yet as TS 7.6 doesn't support that format, but I guess I'll try that next unless someone has some other suggestions that might work. BNG. 

[mrtwosheds]

I opened it in threed, it was not visible.
I opened it in 3dex 1.5 and saved it as its version of .x.
I converted it to xsi with x2xsi.
I opened that in threed, little bits of it were visible.
I selected the body frame, edit and the render backwards option and saved it.
The body it now 2 sided, everything else has the texture (the normals) on the inside...


Odd.
When I loaded your original model cvtalon2x.x into bz2 its was all brown (the same color as in your texture) the model is not brown.

Its probably due to the .x format you are using, try saving your model as .obj or 3ds, convert to .x with 3dex, and to xsi with x2xsi (it works for me)

[Nielk1]

BZ2 incompatible texture coordinates?

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Wow, so even though BZII can read the geometry, hp's, and everything else the texture information is not compatible with the BZII render engine? Getting the hp's and flame_1 to work required me to load the X file in to notepad and remove the characters at the end of the object file name.

I tried converting the texture to the SI PIC format using Xnview, changing the name in notepad to no avail; PNG and TGA were a-no-go as well. What's really odd is that this X format looks astonishingly similar to the XSI format used by BZII, but the texture related information in the file is all wrong as far as the BZII render engine is concerned. I noticed that in game the model geometry appears translucent, i.e., inside out looking so you see faces on the opposite side of the model parts.

Do you think that if I inverted (flip) the model normals that might fix the issue guys? I have so little modeling knowledge of such things that I don't really understand much more then trying different stuff in a sort of random non sensical method of try it and see what results kind of experimentation. If the normals are oriented in the wrong direction would that mask the textures from being seen on the model geometry?

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Cool, flipping the faces in TS 7.6 got rid of the inside out transparent oddity of the model and now it appears with solid geometry; much better looking but still only has a brown color as noted by 2 Sheds and myself. The texture is still not present. Will continue making modifications to see where it leads. BNG. Here's a screeny of the X model with weapons and all minus any texture but with the faces flipped>


I'm still stumped by the missing textures but now that the model faces have been flipped; I'm going to try reapplying them again to see what happens? 

[mrtwosheds]

I think just opening it in 3dex 1.5 and saving it as .x will probably fix the texture problem now, then you might just as well convert it to xsi with x2xsi.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

You know you're probably right 2 Sheds, but I have a feeling I'll eventually figure out the texture issue minus conversion to XSI as I'm after a workable X version so eventually I can get some animated models done. The XSI tools we have to work with now suck at making animations in the XSI format.

Threed screws everything up and X2XSI requires the SI_ be added to the AnimationKey entry and doesn't show the texture either. I've tried just about everything I can think of short of converting the TS 7.6 X version using 3DEX; which I'll try next just to see what happens.

Sure wish I knew more about the X version that BZII supposedly supports. BNG.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

The 3DEX 1.5 X version sucks. Like Threed it truncates the numerical entries in the file conversion from the TS 7.6 X version. It wouldn't even show the model geometry in the map editor. I also tried adding a top level frame to no avail. I learned that adding this to the MDL exporter in GMAX which also outputs a dual X file when enabled allowed me to work with that X version in Threed a while back.

Back to the drawing board and square one. I'm going to figure out the missing texture issue if it kills me...um well maybe not kills me, but drives me to shear insanity. LOL.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Do you guys suppose that because the TS 7.6 X exporter adds extra characters in the file body that that might cause the BZII engine to ignore the texture information lissted for my model?

Take a sample section from one of my TS 7.6 exported models shown below:

Material cockpitMaterial_4_0 {
               0.000000; 0.000000; 0.000000; 1.000000;;
               44.000000;
               0.100000; 0.100000; 0.100000;;
               0.000000; 0.000000; 0.000000;;
               TextureFilename {
                  "C:\Program Files\Battlezone II\addon\BNG Assets\BLACK512.tga";
               }
            }
         }
      }
   }
   Frame hp_eyepoint-6 {
      FrameTransformMatrix {
         1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000,
         0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000,
         0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000,
         0.003428, 0.681057, 1.370986, 1.000000;;

See how the "Frame hp_eyepoint-6" entry has the extra -6? Well, when I load even a converted XSI file with these extra entries; BZII ignores the hp point especially weapons and they won't function on the model in the map editor until I remove them manually.

So I guess my question would be wouldn't the same apply to the extra charcters added to the material entries as well? I plan to try using the global replace function in Notepad to elimanate the _0 which may or may not be the source of the missing textures on my models. What do you guys think? Has BNG totally lost it, or is he possibly on to something here?