So I've been exploring art meshes for a few days now. I made many new protos for customized cloaks and shields skins, a few oak trees with different colored leaves, and other pretty basic stuff like that. It's pretty much as far as I wanted to take it for my purposes, and I'm happy with what I've learned and what I can create. I'm Not looking to make new complex 3D models, so my exploration hasn't taken me into the innards of the SKM files themselves, until now. I want make a custom shaped water surface. In short, I have a swampy area on one of my maps, and I textured the ground on the map art and added the appropriate HSD data, so it all looks and works pretty well with the splash and the water ripples. But I would like it to have a surface like the swamp at the moathouse or at Imreydis Run. My current options are to use the existing scenery SKM's from the game like Moathouse-Ext-pool01.skm or imreydis_run_water.skm and build my map around that shape, but I think that with such a simple shape I could edit one of those files and create my own SKM. Before I venture in to this I have 2 questions maybe someone could answer: 1) Is there any known alternate method of creating a custom sized water surface mesh other than editing the SKM file? 2) Is the data format for the SKM file shown in Agetian's thread accurate to the best of eveyone's knowledge? A short comparison with the format and a small SKM file I cracked open seems to look like it is OK. http://www.co8.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3664 Lastly, it looks like XVicious created some sort of tool to do this (http://www.co8.org/forum/showthread.php?t=10499), but the thread was filled with a confusing drama that I couldn't quite get a grip on, so I will probably just follow Agetian's thread and edit the file manually. The files are pretty short for simple meshes like a water surface.
I've never known a user-friendly way to manipulate that stuff, so it's been a matter of using the existing stuff exactly as-is or just doing without. (Think outside the box - players don't actually have to go in the water, so it can just exist in your art, etc.) Can't answer #2 - way over my head.
With WB you can rotate and resize an existing piece of water, then 'clip' it with judicious placement of trees etc. That's what I would suggest, unless you want to make a really distinctive water shape (a triangular pond or something). Then you'll have to go into uncharted territory.
Thanks guys, that's what I figured. You can just reuse the existing meshes and make them "unique" by resizing and/or rotating and/or chainging the TGA that defines the skin of the water. As it stands, for my current map I think setting HSD for the sector tiles to water is good enough, You get the splash as you enter, and the ripples as you wade through. The floor of the swamp on the artwork is set to a nice grungy texture and color. Add some ferns and tree stumps and it all comes together nicely without the particle mesh.
