F-5E-3 Remaster Skins

[waterman]

I hope im wrong about the cash cow theory but - Wags "people were stealing our models" does not sound promising.

Anyway you are Unable to view the new encrypted models in Model Viewer 2.

All you can do for now is -

Load model into a mission. 

Take lots of screen shots in game.

Maybe make a short movie clip.

View pictures in paintshop etc.

[sa63114200]

4 minutes ago, waterman said:

I hope im wrong about the cash cow theory but - Wags "people were stealing our models" does not sound promising.

Anyway you are Unable to view the new encrypted models in Model Viewer 2.

All you can do for now is -

Load model into a mission. 

Take lots of screen shots in game.

Maybe make a short movie clip.

View pictures in paintshop etc.

This is little to no help when a skin in the midst of development when pixels needs to line up and so many other things to come together. In addition, as mentioned by others, there needs to be access to default texture files. Without those, quality of work will suffer. This is all bad news for skin creators in particular, and users of those skins and DCS in general.

[waterman]

17 minutes ago, sa63114200 said:

This is little to no help when a skin in the midst of development when pixels needs to line up and so many other things to come together. In addition, as mentioned by others, there needs to be access to default texture files. Without those, quality of work will suffer. This is all bad news for skin creators in particular, and users of those skins and DCS in general.

Yes i agree but thats it.

We also need Model Viewer to see the args in action and texture names etc.

Also we cannot "steal" a DCS EDM Model and change it in any way.

Thats what the Private DCS EDM format protects against already.

If i could i would have fixed the DCS trains years ago instead of making my own !

Theres more going on than meets the eye as they say .

Edited January 22 by waterman

[Woogey]

The new template gives us all the Roughmets and all we need to make it happen, except having a lua file example and the arg’s needed to switch on/off the various antenna configurations that ED were so kind to give us.  Wish they would do the same for the Hornet and the Viper.  
 

Maybe @Eagle Dynamics you could at least provide a “read me” file with an example lua text so we could actually use the template?  
 

-Woog

Edited January 22 by Woogey

[Mach3DS]

1 hour ago, II.JG1_Vonrd said:

I'm kinda surprised that we haven't heard word one (AFAIK) from ED about this subject. Livery makers have been commenting about since we noticed back in November that the S-3 was encrypted. I really hope that the comment by Waterman about pay skins is mistaken but I can't help but wonder.

I certainly hope not...I love making liveries and textures and custom things, and have been for decades in all flight sims...it's a major love I have of this hobby.  IMHO This would be a 1000% misread of the room  by ED if this was in fact the direction they were going.  I would not buy single livery.  No offense. And I would be just as put off if they somehow tied them to these "rewards" or like career mode or whatever, that you can earn as play as Wags eluded to in the recent QA video that they had in mind. 

No user liveries makes a stale product.  Fast.  Because you know that ED certainly won't be making any of those custom jobs everyone likes.  It would be a LOSE/LOSE situation IMHO.  

[Mach3DS]

1 hour ago, Woogey said:

The new template gives us all the Roughmets and all we need to make it happen, except having a lua file example and the arg’s needed to switch on/off the various antenna configurations that ED were so kind to give us.  Wish they would do the same for the Hornet and the Viper.  
 

Maybe @Eagle Dynamics you could at least provide a “read me” file with an example lua text so we could actually use the template?  
 

-Woog

Regarding new F-5E Template -- Does it give you the normals?  Pilot helmet?  Flight suit? G suit? Glass textures?  internal pilot textures?  There's a whole host of reasons why encrypting the all the textures is bad for community morale.  Especially if you've purchased it.  I understand  (somewhat) if you haven't.  

Edited January 22 by Mach3DS

[II.JG1_Vonrd]

49 minutes ago, Mach3DS said:

I would not buy single livery.

Not when I can make a better product myself.

[MAXsenna]

I don't think they'll go down that route. Imagine purchasing liveries for MP.  

[Mach3DS]

Just now, MAXsenna said:

I don't think they'll go down that route. Imagine purchasing liveries for MP.  

Here's what I'm hoping happens:

1.   According to Skatezilla DRM isn't implemented in the current version of Model Viewer.  So implement it and we can continue doing our thing.  Or take a snap shot of our account and encrypt it with our install to verify our account from like the launcher.  Then we can launch it stand alone and it just checks for our install and account file or something.  Seems like there's got to be a way we could do this where we can continue to produce good user content and preserve ED's IP.

2.  Make the Texture Files viewable.  Since the model files are encrypted, then the textures are seemingly useless anyway and keeping them hidden is just overkill.  And there are sneaky technical ways for people get stuff anyway (I recall someone did something like that with Apache to in order to make a crazy weathering job) and skin.  Anyway, if the model is encrypted then textures should essentially be useless to most people anyway without the viewable model? 

3.  Barring no.2 at least make them useable and viewable for the those who purchased the content.   

[Awacs_bandog]

33 minutes ago, II.JG1_Vonrd said:

Not when I can make a better product myself.

lol, thats not fair when you're one of the greats already 


I really do not hope for a "Paid livery" DLC down the road, just a broken mindset that not even other sims would stoop to 
 

[Doughguy]

2 hours ago, Mach3DS said:

I certainly hope not...I love making liveries and textures and custom things, and have been for decades in all flight sims...it's a major love I have of this hobby.  IMHO This would be a 1000% misread of the room  by ED if this was in fact the direction they were going.  I would not buy single livery.  No offense. And I would be just as put off if they somehow tied them to these "rewards" or like career mode or whatever, that you can earn as play as Wags eluded to in the recent QA video that they had in mind. 

No user liveries makes a stale product.  Fast.  Because you know that ED certainly won't be making any of those custom jobs everyone likes.  It would be a LOSE/LOSE situation IMHO.  

I think what they miss is that actually theyve used the work of modders in their videos and modules...

So what impression does that make?

Yeah. Shot in the foot.

We'll have to stick to textures with skin disease..

And as you said... that encryption is just as good as some internetpages blocking rightclick....

[Reflected]

This needs to be sorted ASAP please.

I spent 3 weeks making 5 realistic skins for my upcoming Red Flag 81-2 campaign. After the remaster I found that they don't work with the new version. Now we got the template, so I could potentially spend another month redoing them from scratch, except we can't see it in the model viewer, we can't check existing remastered skins because it's all encrypted. So it's basically impossible.

Even if ED 'declassifies' the 3D model and I redo these skins from scratch, they won't work for those who didn't pay for the remaster. If I don't update, they won't work for those who upgraded. Lose-lose situation. Alternatively I could rework all my missions to use the F-5E FC version, so everybody would see the skins (it still uses the old version), but who knows if and when that will be updated model-wise.

I never understood all the negativity around the F-5E upgrade, for 10 bucks it's a steal and I'm so happy that module got some attention. However, from a content creator point of view I can't imagine a worse, more destructive way of implementing it. Makes me think twice before hoping for other modules to get the 'remastered' treatment.

[dSAF Dancer]

50 minutes ago, Reflected said:

they won't work for those who didn't pay for the remaster

I think I have found a solution for this part. If you include both skins and both have the exact same name, then at least in multiplayer they match correctly if I understand the matching system in dcs correctly. Probably this would also work for assigning the correct livery for the player but I could not yet test that.

 

But without access to the description.lua it is again hard to test these things.

[Reflected]

13 minutes ago, dSAF Dancer said:

I think I have found a solution for this part. If you include both skins and both have the exact same name, then at least in multiplayer they match correctly if I understand the matching system in dcs correctly. Probably this would also work for assigning the correct livery for the player but I could not yet test that.

 

But without access to the description.lua it is again hard to test these things.

One version uses speculars the other roughmets. One will always look strange. 
 

ah you mean 2 versions of each skin? Gotcha!

Edited January 22 by Reflected

[dSAF Dancer]

But has anyone even been able to make a skin show up from the template at all? Currently not possible without the description.lua or texture names, right?

[PSV_Tango]

17 minutes ago, dSAF Dancer said:

But has anyone even been able to make a skin show up from the template at all? Currently not possible without the description.lua or texture names, right?

Nop, useless in current state.

[YoYo]

2 hours ago, Reflected said:

This needs to be sorted ASAP please.

 

... too. The new Model Viewer 2 is i must and I think everyone will agree with that. If some DRM option appeared, ok, but it should be followed by an MV update. Please update, TY  !

[waterman]

The big problem as i see it is -

The new format model and textures cannot be loaded into the model viewer 2.

This has been a carefully calculated decision made to stop people tampering with the files.

You are asking them to undo that calculated decision.

I dont think they will there is a bad silence here and i dont think theres much hope.

I think they will just let the dust settle and mod making may be just our fond memory and thats it.

[Trooper117]

If it comes down the line that we would have to pay for skins, (hopefully it won't) then I'd just do without... the fact that there is no official word on this makes me think they may have a problem in this regard... the information void at the moment is not helping skin makers and campaign makers that help and enhance the DCS product.

Hopefully, our fears are unfounded and a solution will soon be forthcoming 

[Cab]

10 minutes ago, Trooper117 said:

Hopefully, our fears are unfounded and a solution will soon be forthcoming 

This.

Bignewy recently emphasized elsewhere the modding community is an importantly part of DCS. That, and the fact that ED just released the template, makes me believe they are just slow in rolling out the livery solution for the remastered F-5. 
 

[lee1hy]

when new DRM model viewer 2

[Hotel Tango]

Not being able to see the F-5E remastered in MV was a deal breaker for me. Hopefully they change their mind.

[sa63114200]

1 hour ago, Cab said:

This.

Bignewy recently emphasized elsewhere the modding community is an importantly part of DCS. That, and the fact that ED just released the template, makes me believe they are just slow in rolling out the livery solution for the remastered F-5. 
 

I am not sure this is just about ED being slow, as it does not explain their total radio silence on the subject despite repeated requests from the community to give more information, something that honestly should have been provided with the release of Remastered F-5 on day one. This makes me worried.

[Cab]

16 minutes ago, sa63114200 said:

I am not sure this is just about ED being slow, as it does not explain their total radio silence on the subject despite repeated requests from the community to give more information, something that honestly should have been provided with the release of Remastered F-5 on day one. This makes me worried.

To my mind, this is par for the course. Anything can happen but I don't think it's time to start assuming doom and gloom.

Why would they release the template if they didn't plan on community liveries?

[kitten40]

How hard is it to post a short 4 line code snippet of an example LUA file to at least get us to have a starting point for custom liveries? Nevermind myself, but you have excellent campaign creators in the likes of Reflected and Baltic (and many more) who you have essentially blocked from progression.. Such a shame ..