Forcing 2d portraits

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IskatuMesk
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Forcing 2d portraits

Post by IskatuMesk »

I want to replace all portraits with still 2d portraits for selecting units, transmissions, whatever. The game uses dds textures for this. No problem to make them. But...

But how do I force them? There doesn't seem to be an option to exclude a model from the portrait since the portrait is, in itself, a model entry. Making an m3 for every portrait is not only not possible (same camera export restrictions apply) but also a texture on an m3 will certainly be subject to some kind of quality loss I'd prefer to avoid.

Am I missing something stupidly obvious?

(I could just "disable" the 3d portraits in the options but I'd like to, you know, avoid that if possible.)
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Lavarinth
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Re: Forcing 2d portraits

Post by Lavarinth »

Wait, so you can't apply a DDS texture to a plane or cube and use that as the portrait model?
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Re: Forcing 2d portraits

Post by Alevice »

Lavarinth wrote:Wait, so you can't apply a DDS texture to a plane or cube and use that as the portrait model?
IskatuMesk wrote:Making an m3 for every portrait is not only not possible (same camera export restrictions apply) but also a texture on an m3 will certainly be subject to some kind of quality loss I'd prefer to avoid.



Anyway,

The portrait model data, as you might know, has a .dds reference for the 2d portrait. I am not sure yet what would happen if you set the model path to a non-existent .m3, but I guess it would default to the texture file.
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IskatuMesk
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Re: Forcing 2d portraits

Post by IskatuMesk »

I tried setting it to an invalid m3 and the game throws an error while the portrait remains this creamy white color and certainly not the static dds. Presumably the creamy white m3 is the placeholder m3 with some random camera.
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Re: Forcing 2d portraits

Post by Taeradun »

I dunno how the m3 file format works but if you made a model that just showed the flat texture for one portrait and found the quality wasn't so bad, it'd probably be a very simple task to make a script that saves copies of it modified to use your other portrait textures
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IskatuMesk
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Re: Forcing 2d portraits

Post by IskatuMesk »

I'd need to have cameras. Which, unfortunately, is also why "normal" 3d portraits aren't possible.

This probably isn't possible until we get startools.
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Re: Forcing 2d portraits

Post by Gradius »

There's some workarounds, but not really any way to actually force 2d portraits afaik.

1) Make an actor for the portrait, and remove the animation play messages. This will freeze the portrait, but it will still be 3d. But obviously you can't actually import new portraits with this method, which is what I'm assuming you're trying to do.

2) At least for transmissions, you can just display a texture.

If there's a way, it will definitely be through the portrait actor. Maybe the "texture video play" message does something useful.
IskatuMesk wrote:(same camera export restrictions apply)
This can be fixed by set position & rotation messages in the portrait actor I think. It was a pain in the ass adjusting all that for my rextured 3d portraits in my own map, but it'd probably be easier for 2d portraits since you'd just use the same settings for each 2d portrait.

But yeah, bottom line, support for campaigns & portraits at this stage is abysmal. There's not even a default talk animation for each portrait. :/
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Re: Forcing 2d portraits

Post by Lavarinth »

Can't you just create a dialogue boxes to mimic the user interface and plop the portrait into the texture of the dialog box?
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IskatuMesk
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Re: Forcing 2d portraits

Post by IskatuMesk »

If I was a master at triggering/galaxy maybe.
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