3889 replies to this topic

[gtxjoe]

VBS scripts in the Tables folder...

 

Its because of the VP Installation guide.  The VP Installer puts VBS scripts in the Tables folder and then it tells you to download the latest VBS scripts zipfile and unzip it to the Tables folder also

[hauntfreaks]

VBS scripts in the Tables folder...

 

Its because of the VP Installation guide.  The VP Installer puts VBS scripts in the Tables folder and then it tells you to download the latest VBS scripts zipfile and unzip it to the Tables folder also

 

I have all my VBS files in the tables folder for this reason, and every VPX and VP9xx table I have loaded works fine... I have had to adjust the plunger on a coupe with the latest VPX builds but that wasn't a biggie

[toxie]

If Disney released a cheap Ink and Paint for general non commercial use, it would not use materials. I don't know of any user editors, game makers, or construction sets that use materials, they are just to complicated. You have to have the resource, and knowledge to create them, to be able to use them in anything other than a charity based hand me down way.

 

I'm not saying VPX should not use materials. But it certainly should be able to let you simply give something a color, have a 'don't rape the image' material, or come with a fully documented material creator/editor.

 

i would love to agree, but unfortunately its not 1980 anymore, where something like this was standard in 3D gfx. nowadays, if you want a photorealistic look of things, you have to get into the nasty details of physical material models. and i already tried to keep it as simple as possible, but leaving a somehow wide range of materials open.

 

if not, then you need to stick with the old VP9 way of things (including the look).

 

or simply copy the material settings you like from other peoples tables.

[Shockman]

I would not be opposed to using materials. I just don't know how. If the color of a material is unchangeable, at least the primary colors should be in the program.

 

I could download other tables to hunt materials, if you think that is best. VP9 was never an option and didn't stick. I'd rather play a VPX table in wireframe mode than the prettiest VP9 table.

[gtxjoe]

It can be done.  If you open the new table, the flipper rubbers are Red.  Click on Table->Material Manager.  Click on Red Rubber. Click on the Base Color button. Change the color to Blue or Green.  Click OK and press play.  

 

Flippers are now Blue or Green.  But yeah mastering the materials is completely different topic...

[Shockman]

Mastering materials is a topic I have never brought up. I'm still trying to understand the point, value, and basic manipulation. For example, If you give the side of a flipper the red rubber material, and also give it to a primitive, and a wall, why are they all different colors of red?   If seems everything in the middle pane of the image manager should not be there, but instead be in the properties of the element you are working on. The only alternative I can see, to have everything have the same red is to have a different red rubber material for each element. And there is nothing in the material that makes the red rubber look like rubber, it just looks like red. The same red in fact that it was when it simply had a red applied to it. And any manipulation of the material, besides alpha stuff could be mimicked in a color manager.

 

There should at any rate be a reset to default button. I looked at the white plastic material I was curious about and it was pale yellow. If it's not suppose to be pale yellow I must have changed it at some point, 

[Sindbad]

Hmmm...

 

I never had any problems with materials, and I think the material feature is one of the best improvements of VP10. It has never, never been so easy to get this realistic look for objects, example:

 

 

Look at the fantastic look of the plastic ramps, the bulbs, the wires, the gate brackets, everything ...

 

 

If you apply a material to different types of objects (primitives, walls, or whatever), the result is always the same. In the attached picture, you see a flipper, a wall and a primitive, all have the same material and the resulting look is absolutely identical.

 

 

As you see there are no different types of red.

 

The image manager should stay as it is, because it's a simple-to-use manager for the images. I don't want to manage the images in the object's settings.

 

In my eyes, the rubber of the flippers look like rubber. Maybe my eyes are not the best any more, but how should they look like?

 

And I don't understand the need for a "reset-to-default"-button. What's the default look of an object? 

 

The material settings and their impacts to the resulting look are very well explained in the changelog. I don't see any need to have more documentation than this for 5 parameters, 2 checkboxes and 3 color selection buttons. 

[fuzzel]

rev1953 is up:

 

- Fixed crash in plunger when spring loops and end loops were set to zero
- delete duplicate left slingshot handler (in default table)
- fix some potentially stability issues
 

[lizard]

Hi Sinbad Great effort you are putting into VP10. While the material subject has come up i have a question for you. Reading that you are a perfectionist have you been able to get a realistic chrome look for wire guides.

A while ago i made a wire guide in future pinball for the harley davidson 2nd edition table and imported into the vp9 version using the [chrome-black] texture (i think i found this in the thread on how to do the wire guides) and it looks pretty good i think Pic Attatched. When i import this into vp10 i cant seem to get the same look, the wire always looks a bit too silver. I have played around a heap with the materials but i don't fully understand the texturing side of things in vp10.

 

Cheers

 

 

Attached Files

•  Wire Guide.png   773.76KB   13 downloads

[toxie]

oh, and btw: this was now the first beta build with mjr finally being part of the official VP dev team.. 

[fuzzel]

Yeah welcome aboard

[Shockman]

Hmmm...

 

I never had any problems with materials, and I think the material feature is one of the best improvements of VP10. It has never, never been so easy to get this realistic look for objects, example:

 

 

Look at the fantastic look of the plastic ramps, the bulbs, the wires, the gate brackets, everything ...

 

 

If you apply a material to different types of objects (primitives, walls, or whatever), the result is always the same. In the attached picture, you see a flipper, a wall and a primitive, all have the same material and the resulting look is absolutely identical.

 

 

As you see there are no different types of red.

 

The image manager should stay as it is, because it's a simple-to-use manager for the images. I don't want to manage the images in the object's settings.

 

In my eyes, the rubber of the flippers look like rubber. Maybe my eyes are not the best any more, but how should they look like?

 

And I don't understand the need for a "reset-to-default"-button. What's the default look of an object? 

 

The material settings and their impacts to the resulting look are very well explained in the changelog. I don't see any need to have more documentation than this for 5 parameters, 2 checkboxes and 3 color selection buttons. 

Maybe I just need a different system, or at least a different GPU. The picture I posted is how the materials display for me. Do you have Intel and nVidia?

[Sindbad]

Lizard,

 

I hope that I'm not a perfectionist. Here in Germany this word has some kind of negative touch. A perfectionist is as a man who wants to have always 100% perfect results - and it doesn't matter if he or others are responsible for the result, or if there is any benefit for him or others if the result is 100%.

 

I stated in my previous post that I never had problems with materials. For wire stuff, I never use any images. Imagine: In real life, chrome material has only one color. The texture [chrome-black] itself is not a solid color texture. It's a color gradient that produces a 3D looking effect when it's placed around a 3D object. Depending on the material settings in VP, a 3D effect will also being underlined, reduced or even eliminated. This is new for us table devs and we all have to learn that only an image doesn't reflect the final look of an object. As long as an object has in real life only one color, I don't see any need to use images for these objects in VP. What we like on chrome objects is the mirror characteristic, which gives chrome a very unique character. This characteristic can't be (presently) perfectly being emulated in VP. So using an image for chrome objects in VP is - let's say - not wrong.

 

So coming back to your question: As long as I use images for objects, I leave the base color in the material setting white (255,255,255). Anything else doesn't make really sense. But when I realise that the object hasn't the correct look, then I "play" with the base color. I can darken the object (when setting R,G,B all to the same value that's lower than 255), I can tone an object (when setting the base color to a specific RGB value). This is what you should should do.

 

I'm sitting on the wrong computer now, I'll post a small how-to for materials later on here in this thread.

Shockman,

 

no, you don't need a different system. You need patience and the understanding how materials work. When you know the impact of each changed parameter, you know exactly what to do to get the expected result. As I already proposed above, I'll post a small how-to for materials later on here in this thread. Presently I'm sitting on the wrong computer.  

Edited by Sindbad, 08 May 2015 - 02:38 PM.

[toxie]

intel and nvidia and amd should be the same, btw.

 

the only differences (currently):

- ambient occlusion and stereo 3D are only supported on nvidia (due to technical issues, as we still have these static objects for optimization of the rendering)

- intel chips have a problem with displaying BG elements correctly (=bug, i'm on this (e.g. driving me insane))

Edited by toxie, 08 May 2015 - 03:21 PM.

[Shockman]

Without the continuity I'm looking for, there is nowhere to go. I did not doctor that picture. A spinner face and wall edge are the same red, but everything else is different and unique. Maybe ambient occlusion is the key then. if AO works with nVidia and not ATI then they are very different. You can not have everything working the same and have different effects result from anything. You probably can't have things working differently in only one regard either. If my and Sinbads' pictures show the same material, with the same settings, mine does, there is no continuity, even before AO is factored. Are you using AO Sinbad? Mine is AMD A10, ATI HD

 

Everything in the default table that is metal has a metal image as well as a material. Every convincing metal I have seen has a metal image.

 

- ambient occlusion and stereo 3D are only supported on nvidia (due to technical issues, as we still have these static objects for optimization of the rendering)

- intel chips have a problem with displaying BG elements correctly (=bug, i'm on this (e.g. driving me insane))

 

 

AMD and nvidia then?

[freneticamnesic]

tinker with "enable lighting" on primitive objects

[Shockman]

I will. The drastic difference in my and Sindbads' pictures of material presentation is a road block though. Obviously most see theirs as Sindbad sees his. I don't know what I am presenting to other people. The images I created for mmpac does not need any added or subtracted value though. My experimenting with the materials manager is not to produce anything other than a clear, color and shade correct display of the images prepared for it.

What should be a default, in my opinion, I am finding difficult or impossible to achieve.

Edited by Shockman, 08 May 2015 - 05:07 PM.

[hmueck]

can you upload your test table, please?

Edited by hmueck, 08 May 2015 - 05:11 PM.

[toxie]

@shockman: but why don't you take sindbads tables for example and look at how he did setup things there? and then learn from that and transfer that to your table.

Edited by toxie, 08 May 2015 - 05:13 PM.

[hauntfreaks]

I'm sure i'm speaking out of place here,(because i'm kinda new) but.... when I started playing with these pin simulators I used FP, yeah yeah yeah blah blah blah physics suck I know, (those tables look fantastic) ... but it was a 3d environment, not just a dot sliding around a photograph of a PF.... VPX is bring the awesome pm5 physics and now a 3D environment its needed for along time.... it seems authors are going to have to have some new skill sets and even forget some old habits.... I commend everyone involved in VPX I run most of the beta tables and they run superb to say the least, and I also thank the authors behind these tables for all the hard work.... so with all this change in the end there will be greatness (personally i think its great now).... cant wait to see what the future brings...