WAR PAINT - Q&A
polycounter lvl 19
If you have any questions for this contest, whether it has to do with Company of Heroes 2, its Steam Workshop, Polycount, or the contest in general here is the place to ask it. Either the team at Relic or the moderators of Polycount will be on hand to help you out.
Replies
http://polycount.com/discussion/162837/company-of-heroes-2-war-paint-contest#latest
The forums and sponsor should be Polycount, but they've attributed it to the Vox Media property and game review site Polygon. I've checked Polygon's forums for anything cross promotional and come up empty. Seeing as its technically a legal document they might want to correct it so the proper parties are named.
Tools don't show up in your Games Library in STEAM - so check you've switched to Tools Library in the STEAM client from the LIBRARY drop down.
It's probably wise to install the game as well since you'll need it to test and publish.
Here's a quick link with some additional details on the tools: http://modding.companyofheroes.com/skin-pack-wizard#sourcefiles
Is this contest only about texturing? Are we able to add additional mesh to the tanks?
With the British faction, is there a way to get their texture files as .PSDs, or are we stuck using Substance Designer if we choose them?
The categories seem pretty rigid, is there much room to move creatively? Or is it like that intentionally to keep with the theme of the game?
http://www.coh2.org/topic/27537/all-factions-vehicle-skins-database
Please let the community have access to the mesh with UV's!
I've managed to get all the Soviet assets into a useful format.
If the admins and Relic are ok with it I can post a download link, and continue converting the rest.
I have to stress that, should these become available, they're not going to necessarily reflect the in game models to full accuracy, but they're "close enough for government work" (as it were)
So if you wind up doing tight detail work where you need a one or two pixel wide detail to align across multiple shells: use the engine to check. These would be for broader strokes.
Other things to note that may be of help: of the 15 models in the soviet arsenal, 2 share textures. The Truck and the Katyusha and the SV-1 and SV-8 (things you learn from contests: SV-8 IS an sv-1 flamethrower variant) So you only need 13 unique textures.
I try hit print screen, and I just get an image of my desk top and not what I'm seeing in game.
Thanks
edit: Nevermind, if you hit printscreen in game it will save a screen shot to My Documents\My Games\Company of Heroes 2\screenshots
Another thing to add about the Soviet faction, in addition to the 13 textures you'll work on you need to get the texture for the Sherman 76mm which is under the US faction category, so don't forget to add that when creating the skin mod.
You can also paint over the IL2 plane, even though it's not required.
So I got the normals in, and the spec. Gloss still won't build. I used the rgt viewer from http://www.coh2.org/topic/37612/tool-coh2-rgt-viewer/page/1 to pick apart their normal map and found its laid out as:
Red - Spec
Green - +Y normal
Blue - Gloss
Alpha - Red Normal channel
of course these are built by the exporter so you just need tgas with the correct file extension added. However I still can't get the gloss (gls) to build into the map
file extensions for building the tga textures appear to be:
diffuse - _dif
normal - _nrm
spec - _spc
gloss - _gls <- won't build though
alpha -
We've added some more clarification about this to the wiki in case you want to change more than the diffuse layer.
http://modding.companyofheroes.com/skin-pack-wizard#input-output
If they want to make this competition as most appealing as possible, they must provide meshes for the units.
Otherwise, only experts in designing will be able to partecipate, while casuals (such as me) will be clueless about how to actually start reskinning the models.
So, I'm not sure adding in the normal maps, etc into a skin pack is even possible to upload a curated version because of Steam's upload cap.
Feel free to post the download link and use this if it helps. Just know its not an officially supported tool.
In the mean time if you do decide to include more than the diffuse layer the workaround would be to break up the mod even more. So you could break it into 6 and have heavy/medium/light x winter/summer.
(not very convenient but a workaround)
If we do get those 3d meshes (Vailias should get a reward for that!) you can either paint in 2d and then see the results instantly in some 3d package like Maya or 3DS, or go right ahead and paint directly in 3d in a package that supports that.
Night and Day.
The additional information is much welcome. Up until now I wouldn't have known the blue channel in the nrm tga is ignored. And I guess if you need to edit any one of the normal, spec, or gloss maps you have to include all three files as inputs? But I am still looking for official confirmation on the burn settings to use. MixInputsDefaults, PreferredFormat, etc.
The reason I ask is because I've tried tweaking the normals and can't get results that look right in-game. I've tried feeding in the unedited nrm, spc, and gls maps and it looks wrong. All the features line up, so it's not that the map is flipped or shifted, but the shading as the model spins around in the light makes it look like the normals are changed too far in whatever direction was indicated. I've also tried maps which are solid grey (rgb 128,128,128) and used that for normal, spec, and gloss, and the normals still look out of whack in the game, so I'm stuck trying to determine where the problem is. If I knew I have the correct burn settings I could at least eliminate that possibility and keep investigating if the range of values or the tga file is wrong.
Thanks for any help.
To remove the color profile in photoshop do the following:
The numeric values should stay the same, but do check that they are.
Can you post a link to the Soviet Asset? I'm a Maya user so if it's possible to have a .fbx format will be great. (I'm able also to import .3ds)
Tnx in advance for your help.