cdoublejj wrote:Waht's an NIF? and why do you want remove it if it's going to make thing harder for texture pack makers/modders?
Not remove, just the post-1.0 OpenMW will focus on other formats.
.nif - proprietary format, needed only to support Morrowind and his content.
Quote from another topic:
Chris wrote:For any post-1.0 enhancements, I'd like to see more open formats used in place of proprietary stuff like NIFs. I'd really like to avoid handling different NIF versions because of structure changes and the lack of official documentation. Like I mentioned before, using Ogre's .mesh and .skeleton formats, along with a variation of the .scene format would probably be better in the long run than trying to reverse-engineer the unknown data in the newer NIF files.
cdoublejj wrote:Waht's an NIF? and why do you want remove it if it's going to make thing harder for texture pack makers/modders?
Not remove, just the post-1.0 OpenMW will focus on other formats.
.nif - proprietary format, needed only to support Morrowind and his content.
Quote from another topic:
Chris wrote:For any post-1.0 enhancements, I'd like to see more open formats used in place of proprietary stuff like NIFs. I'd really like to avoid handling different NIF versions because of structure changes and the lack of official documentation. Like I mentioned before, using Ogre's .mesh and .skeleton formats, along with a variation of the .scene format would probably be better in the long run than trying to reverse-engineer the unknown data in the newer NIF files.
And I completely agree with this decision.
I just think that texture effects like normal mapping should be decoupled from the model. So then it wouldnt matter what kind of model you use. With materials files, thats not just a drag and drop kind of thing though, you cant just spit out a mat file from something like paint.net like you can with a dds.
Tarius wrote:I just think that texture effects like normal mapping should be decoupled from the model. So then it wouldnt matter what kind of model you use.
I agree. From an artist's perspective, if I wanted to create a texture replacer for say, the Velothi tileset that included normal maps, I'd have to distribute new meshes along with the mod to make the game use my normal maps. This can be problematic if someone else wanted to replace those meshes, because they'd have to make them use the normal maps as well if they wanted it to be compatible with my mod.
Disassociating the effect maps from the meshes would make things a lot easier for modellers and texturers.
With materials files, thats not just a drag and drop kind of thing though, you cant just spit out a mat file from something like paint.net like you can with a dds.
.mat files are just plain text files you can spit out with any editor of your choosing.
material foo
{
parent openmw_objects_base
diffuseMap diffuse.jpg
normalMap normal.jpg
}
material bar
{
parent foo
diffuseMap diffuse2.jpg
}
This gives you much more flexibility - what if you wanted to reuse the same normal map for several materials with a different diffuse texture? That would not be possible if simply appending "_n" to the diffuse texture and using that as normal map.
It even allows you to make a material completely from scratch with its own shader instead of inheriting from openmw_objects_base (although that isn't simple - if it's supposed to work on all of openmw's platforms, it needs to provide a shader based and an FFP path, and in the future possibly a deferred path as well)
With materials files, thats not just a drag and drop kind of thing though, you cant just spit out a mat file from something like paint.net like you can with a dds.
.mat files are just plain text files you can spit out with any editor of your choosing.
material foo
{
parent openmw_objects_base
diffuseMap diffuse.jpg
normalMap normal.jpg
}
material bar
{
parent foo
diffuseMap diffuse2.jpg
}
This gives you much more flexibility - what if you wanted to reuse the same normal map for several materials with a different diffuse texture? That would not be possible if simply appending "_n" to the diffuse texture and using that as normal map.
It even allows you to make a material completely from scratch with its own shader instead of inheriting from openmw_objects_base (although that isn't simple - if it's supposed to work on all of openmw's platforms, it needs to provide a shader based and an FFP path, and in the future possibly a deferred path as well)
Oooooh! Well that makes sense. Based upon the fact that I didnt know this, I revise my opinion. I did not know you could simple make them with a txt file.
There is no reason to worry about mat files, as every 3D modelling program I've looked at can use them: blender, truespace, wings, I think even NIFskope imports them when importing an obj file. If NIFskope can import them along with the mesh data, then it would act as a mat to tga conversion utility.
Not really. There's no standard convention for mat files since they heavily depend on the engine that is used. Pretty much every game engine and authoring tool uses their own version of it, or embeds it into other files (e.g. the mesh).
The version that we are using is derived from Ogre's .material format, but is not compatible and has a few extensions to be able to use shiny's features.
Well, I admit that I am not an expert on 3D modelling, I have a little bit of experience but certainly could be wrong. But, if there is no "standard" of mat file then this makes the original worries for conversion of mods made in MW more valid.
I don't know if this would be a huge deterrant for MW modders or not. there are quite a few who make multiple releases such as MW, GoTY/both expansions, and MWSE versions.
silentthief wrote:Well, I admit that I am not an expert on 3D modelling, I have a little bit of experience but certainly could be wrong. But, if there is no "standard" of mat file then this makes the original worries for conversion of mods made in MW more valid.
I don't know if this would be a huge deterrant for MW modders or not. there are quite a few who make multiple releases such as MW, GoTY/both expansions, and MWSE versions.
ST
Well, I would have to say that if its as easy as adding in a txt file, then there shouldnt be much to worry about in this case. Although I do have to point out that having to type up said file each time is still a bit of a hassle, especially if you are doing alot of textures.
Material files are a pain but they probably have a use somewhere.
The idea would be to use mat files if found in the directory otherwise just resort to the standard _d,_n,_s etc.
That way you can use more advanced possibilities of a custom material file, if you don't want/need that it would just search for the file name like Oblivion.
