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[karla]

Hey, thanks for your efforts Stainless.

I corrected the new line in BBExporter.py and this time it processed without failure. I exported all the separate objects from the carrier and trialled it in IL-2 but found that there was still a rendering/lighting problem. It didn't appear to be as bad as earlier but, for example, there were two obvious boundaries between the flight deck parts as opposed to the one we had earlier. On the lit side of the island the stack and superstructure have different levels of shading; on the shadow side they are about the same. The liferafts, however, didn't seem to have the odd shading that they had before. Unfortunately, I don't like the extent of the odd lighting/shading even though it is better than what we had before.

So, I will call a halt to the investigation if you don't mind. I will export .3ds from Blender into GMax and export the main mesh entities from there then manually create all the .msh files. Thanks again.

[Stainless]

Up to you mate.

At least we have made some progress

[karla]

Bonny Dick turning into wind

I tested three more ideas, none of which made any differences to the shading:

1) Moved the vertices so that they were within 0.05mm of each other at the joining flight deck edges (Blender manual input is +/- 1mm).

2) Removed double-sided normals from collision boxes.

3) Removed all LODs, shadows and collision boxes temporarily from the .msh files.

Aaah well, we tried. Unfortunately, because of my mixing Blender and GMax, the Hier.him coordinates are not in harmony and the flight deck is 90deg clockwise, hull1+2 are also misaligned, the shading is not up to expectation so -

I will use Blender and BlendyBlendy exporter with Stainless' fix and ease back some of the texture .mat settings to subdue contrasts.

As I said, we'll leave it here and hope that everyone is content with the rendering.

Thanks once again Stainless for your time and expertise; we are in a better position now than we were three months ago. Thanks.

[vvaris]

Nice model! Are you sure there isn't somethin funny in the model itself that causes the shading problems? If you want I can take a look at your model to see if I spot something funny. (I do modelling for games as my day job.)

[Stainless]

And when you publish it, I will have a look and see if I can do anything.

[karla]

Stainless and vvaris - you're both welcome to analyse my CVA-31 model and see if it can be improved in terms of rendering. How do you want it? I currently develop in Blender 2.49 and the whole is held as a .blend file. Blender can export as .3ds or most other formats.

The completed carrier was released last month here at SAS https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,46424.0.html

[karla]

It's been a long time, but, the problem is now understood and solved. It looks like it is a VERTEX NORMAL issue where some vertices are carrying 'too heavy a load'. The normal for each vertex should be parallel to it's associated face normal. Ideally separate vertices are required for each face that meets at a corner - giving three vertices at some corners. The uneven textures do not always show up under different rendering/lighting conditions but GMax, Stainless IL-2 Modder and MeshLab can reveal the defect.

To fix a model in Blender: select the Object, Modify /Edge Split /decide a suitable angle, say 88deg /Apply; then go into Edit Mode /select all vertices on the Object /Mesh /Normals /Recalculate Outside; then export Object using BlendyBlendy Exporter. Other methods may be used see http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/7502/how-do-i-fix-this-weird-lighting-problem.

One more thing - check the scaling of objects in Transform Properties (N). If they are different it will probably mess up the lighting in game. To normalize the scale of an object - select object(s), Ctrl+A, Scale to ObData.

This topic is being marked as solved.

EDIT: added scaling fix

[SAS~Storebror]

Cool thing, thanks for sharing the solution to this interesting issue.

Best regards - Mike