I have designed a few ships in Strata that i would like to add to EVN as a plug-in but do not know how to get it from 3D to the 36 frame spin that i need to get it into the game, then on to the plug-in from there. HELP...
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world,
The unreasonable man persists upon adapts the world to himself...
Therefore, all progress is dependent upon the unreasonable man.
Create a 1-second long animation of the ship rotating 360 degrees. Render each frame and you have your sprite.
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one second? That depends on what kind of frame rate you've got.
for all Escape Velocities
What you should do is make an animation that runs 36 frames (1.2 seconds, if you're running 30 fps), with the ship rotating 10 degrees for each frame. What basically happens is that the ship starts at 0 degrees and rotates 350 degrees. Why doesn't it go all the way to 360? Because the sprites need to loop, and if there was a frame for 0 degrees and 360 degrees (the same position), there would be a hitch. What also needs to be considered is whether the ship is large and doesn't turn very fast. If so, you should render more frames with the ship rotating less per frame. Again, you need to loop it. My suggestion would be to set the number of frames to go from 1-37 (one more than you need), except only render to 36. That way, the ship would automatically stop rotating just before the loop (with the 37th frame the beginning of the next rotation).
For Nova Only
If you want to have say 72 rotational frames (twice as detailed rotation, for a slow turning ship), you have the ship rotate fully through 360 degrees in a 73 frame animation. You rotate up to the next to last frame and you have an EV/O/N sprite. If you want the sprite to "bank," you make one rotation (36 frames) with the ship even, another rotation with the ship banking left, and then another banking right. If you want an animated sprite, you make one rotation for every frame of the animation. If you have a rotating gravity ring, you make one rotation with the ring in one position, another rotation with the ring in the next position, and continue until the rotation is supposed to loop.
After you make your render. You continue here. For all EVs
You should render it all in one animation, and then run it through Dr. Ralph's Sprites (m2s for qt movie renders, p2s for individual picture renders, and the other for pics renders). It'll array the frames of the render for use in all EVs. For EV/O/N, you simply copy the Sprites rendered sprite into ResEdit (or whatever editor you're using). For EV/O, you make your spin. Put in the sprite/mask resource ID, then x and y size of one frame of the sprite, and the number of sprites in the x direction, and the number of sprites in the y direction. The spin should have the same resource number as its corresponding ship. Nova is different. Ships use the shan resource, and everything else uses spins. For your ship, put in the base/mask resource ids, then the size, etc. Here's an important note. The FramesPerSet is the number of rotational frames you have (again, usually 36), and the BaseSetCount is the number of sets you have (3 for banking, any number for animated sprites. The number of sets corresponds with the number of animated frames you have). You can set up the glow/running lights/added weapons/shield sphere/alternate layers. Alternate sprites are automatically animated. More on that later. The important thing is making sure that the shan knows where all the sprites are. After you do that, you run it through Dr. Ralph's EnRle (for spins and shans in Nova) to make the picture sprites into rle8/rleD resources. This will make your sprites take less memory when nova displays them.
Alternate sprites are animated sprites. A good example of this is the Thunderforge. It has a rotating block that was rendered as an alternate sprite. You'd use this if you want the ship to have an animated section, and perhaps a section that unfolds. To do this, you make a render of the base image with the section that you intend to be an alternate being pure black. Make sure that it cannot be seen, and doesn't have any specular. A good way to do this is to assign a material with negative rgb values (-1,-1,-1). Basically, the animated section has to be a part of the background, but mask the sections of ship that it overlaps. Then you make a render of the animated section with the rest of the ship completely black. Again, no specular. You're now masking the animated sections of the ship with the parts of the non-animated section that overlap it. The reason is because the alternate sprites are displayed on a higher sprite level than the base sprite, and if you don't mask the two sections, you'll find that the sprite looks weird and totally wrong. This'll take a bit of experimentation, but not much.
For the glows and etc, you do the same thing as the alternate sprite. If you render at an angle, parts of the glows might get hidden. You render the glow and a perfectly black ship so that the ship properly masks the glows. The glows and lights are also on a higher sprite level than the base.
Anyway, I hope this helps. If you have any questions, just ask. If you want an example, I'd be glad to send you some stuff.
Matrix
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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."
Hey, sorry about the essay, but I didn't realize how long it had become :). Again, if you have any questions, or want an example or something, just email me, and I'd be glad to help you.
Matrix
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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."
About a year ago, when I was still quite active on the boards, I made a tutorial for what you need. It is for the spinning and animation of ships in Strata. Since it was written about 1BN (Before NOVA), it may not suit exactly the purpose you require but can probably be adapted quite simply. (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/ewanc/tutorial.html")It can be found here.(/url)
Hope it helps :),
ewan
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thanks for all the help guys. Still can't get Strata 3D base to animate my ship. I couldn't get 3.6 because all the sites i tried at didn't work. I have a ship made but don't know how to post the pic here to show you, some examples would be great, i always did learn better by example. But, in this case i need some serious step by step instructions if you catch my drift maybe even in person or real-time in some way. I need a way to add textures as well, the ship looks ok now except for the nose but it would be really nice with some textures.
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world,
The unreasonable man persists upon adapts the world to himself...
Therefore, all progress is dependent upon the unreasonable man.
You're using Strata 3D BASE? Base is a screwed up piece of cripe that's had key features taken out, if you ask me. I suppose it's got some things that are useful for modeling, but when it comes time to render into a sprite, open it up in Strata 3D 3.02, which is both free (albeit a bit hard to find) and supports animation.
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"No matter where you're going, there you are."
Strata 3Dbase cannot do animations. Period. Intentionally disabled feature. As others have said, look for 3.0.2...
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"Insert witty quote here." - Thomas Castiglione
Or you could just use POVRay.....
Matrix
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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."
