The Legions of Skaro

[mrtwosheds]

I have done some experimentation with domes.
Allways put the model's root at the bottom, nothing below it will be visible.
A single frame model seems to work best.
The size of the model may be fairly critical to how it looks.
Dome lighting is also quite tricky to set up with odd shaped domes and they often look broken in some way until you get the lighting and positioning just right.

It took me a few hours of tweaking to get this huge spinning overhead icemoon to not look broken.

Discovering that it is the lighting that makes things look broken may mean that models with more than 1 frame might work! I have not experimented further yet.

[General BlackDragon]

I did something very similar with BZC's Io sky. I had to make 3 or 5 or...7 attempts at making a "flipped" upside down dome model. At first it didn't even show up, so i did the moving the pivot. Then I had to aquire a flattened texture of Jupiter....Bla

Got it good though. Only one thing bugs me though, the middle/bottom when u look straight up is not light up, it's all shaded...although it looks more "natural" it doesnt look like BZ1.

[mrtwosheds]

You just need to play about with the dome lighting, The pic/map above started as a new (empty) sky, It has a bright blue light on one side and a much dimmer one on the other to make the moon look like it is lit on one side by the blue sun. Funny stuff with the uv-mapping of the dome occurs if it is not lit just right, some parts of the moon scroll in the wrong direction and look all wrong.

[mrtwosheds]

Pasted in frame with same texture from another model and fixed issue.

Hmmm, not. its back again...

[General BlackDragon]

make sure the dome's uvspeed is only 1 way. one of the numbers should be 0...

[Nielk1]

I can make a multi part dome with some luck. I made one with a planet that still ahd a 360 deg space dome too, and the textures even worked right! But making the planet spin made the stars move.

[General BlackDragon]

Thats why you make the dome only the spinning planet, and use the "stars" console config or editor menu to make the stars.

[Nielk1]

Except I am making space maps and need stars on both the top and bottom.

ORBIT WIP (planet on bottom because of above issue):

[mrtwosheds]

I have now fixed my illumination problem, it was the __e of the daleks eye, for some reason bz2 decided to apply the emissive property to every frame using that material rather than just the frame with the __e on it.

[bigbadbogie]

Except I am making space maps and need stars on both the top and bottom.

ask GSH to make 360 stars an option in pb4

[Avatar]

I have now fixed my illumination problem, it was the __e of the daleks eye, for some reason bz2 decided to apply the emissive property to every frame using that material rather than just the frame with the __e on it.

This is actually pretty important info for modders...  apparently the way emissive tags (__e) work is by making that material emissive, so any emitter parts have to have their own material.  Interesting, good to know.

-Av-

[mrtwosheds]

This is actually pretty important info for modders...  apparently the way emissive tags (__e) work is by making that material emissive, so any emitter parts have to have their own material.  Interesting, good to know.

Actually its just damn weird, I have loads of models with emissive frame tags, allot of them use the same material all over and the emissive effect only occurs on the frame with the __e tag. Two of my models have decided to be weird and apply the emissive effect not just to every part of the model using the same material but to every model in the mod that uses that material...Understand it I do not.

But yes maybe it should be considered good practice to define a material in the model that is used on emissive__e tagged frames only.

It seems that this weird effect occurs at mesh build.
I can place a tank, for example, in the editor, It has emmisive tags on a frame with that material and untagged frames with the same material , its mesh is built fine and illuminated correctly.
Then I place one of the 2 weird models, the tank's illumination changes as the new mesh is built and both units have the problem.
Delete the msh's and the tank can be placed again without the problem.

[Avatar]

Do they share the same material, or just the same texture?  Big difference...

-Av-

[Nielk1]

My guess would be texture since it caused all the other models using the same texture (since other models cant have the same material) to light up.

[mrtwosheds]

The same material, (that includes texture) this is the confusing bit, setting up another material for the __e frame using the same texture fixes the problem. It would then seem that at mesh build BZ2 makes some sort of list of materials used by models throughout the game and decides that some have the same values, and are then "the same material" its the only way I can rationalise other perfectly functioning units suddenly inheriting an error from another unit.