Contents
Setup
Good news: With Jéerémy‘s v2 revision setup is fairly simple. You can download it from his github page or use xwaToolsDownload to get it, then unzip it to a directory of your choosing. And that‘s it, you‘re ready to go.
Basics
Selection Modes
Mesh Selection
Allows you to select the various meshes
Face Selection
Allows you to select the faces within a mesh. At least one mesh must have been selected.
Vertex Selection
Allows you to select the vertices of a face At least one face must have been selected.
Model View
Wireframe View
Displays the model as a wireframe.
- Unselected meshes are displayed white.
- All selected meshes are displayed red.
- The last selected mesh is displayed green.
Texture View
Displays the solid model with textures.
High / Low LOD
Switches between the high detail and the low Detail LOD.
Show/Hide Normals
This feature toggles whether or not the face normals(the axis ortogonal from the face plane. Per OPTech v1.1 this is set to show by default.
Creating a new Project
Just click on File > New OPZ. This will trigger a prompt to name the project.
Click OK and OPTech will create the folder with the name you specified. It will automatically include the Default.bmp texture.
Importing a model
You can import either a DXF or OBJ model. See the Modelling guide for details.
Importing textures
Simply place the texture files in the project folder. See the Texturing guide for details.
Geometry Editor
Geometry
Allows you to edit the model itself.
- Edit meshes, faces and vertices
- Merge meshes or assign singular faces to other meshes
- Add a LOD model.
Textures
Allows you to assign texture and tweak their mapping to the model. This can be done in face mode and vertex mode.
Texture Editor
In this screen you can add transparency or illumination to a texture. Note: As per now, you can add only one effect to a texture.
Transparency
Illumination
Hitzone Editor
In this editor you can assign hitzones and explosion types to speciffic meshes
Hitzone type
These define certain characteristics to a mesh
Explosion Type
Explosion types define a mesh's behaviour if taking damage or upon a model's destruction.
- Hangar will prompt a landing option from friendly capital ships/stations and activate the jamming beam effect on enemy ships/stations.
- Engine will apply an engine burn effect when player gets close
[Table: Hitzone-Explosion Type combinations]
Center
Span
Minimum
Maximum
Target ID
Target
Transformation Editor
This allows to apply certain animations/transformations to a speciffic mesh
Pivot
Defines the coordinates of the origin point of the Transformation
Rotation
Makes a mesh rotate around defined axes. The xyz coordinates, along with the pivot point create the axis of the rotation.
Translation
Makes a mesh move into a speciffic direction (rarely used) The xyz coordinates, along with the pivot point create the axis, along which the mesh moves.
Scale
Makes a mesh grow or shrink along the defined axes (rarely used) This editor has an Animate feature which allows to preview the animations. The xyz coordinates, along with the pivot point define in which direction(s) the mesh is scaled.
Hardpoint Editor
This editor allows you to add and modify hardpoints. Like Hitzones hardpoints define certain characteristics within a model, e.g. the origin point of lasers and missiles, docking points or the cockpit POV (can be edited in MXvTEd)
Position
Hardpoints can be alligned within the center of a face, assigned to a vertex or placed freely using coordinates.
Hardpoint Types
[Table] List of Hardpoints
Engine Glow Editor
This editor allows you to add and modify engine glow effects.
Position
Engine Glows can be alligned within the center of a face, assigned to a vertex or placed freely using coordinates.
Size
Rotation
Inner Color
Outer Color
Direction 1-3
These fields are not editable
Additional Controls
Calculate
- Face Normals
- Vertex Normals
- Hitzones
- Transformations
- Texture Coordinates
- Software Vectors
Fix
- Vertex Order
- Quads2Tri converts quad faces into tri faces
- Tri2Quad converts planar tri faces into quad faces
- Coincident Vertices removes superfluous fourth vertexes from tri-faces. This is a phenomenon common with models created in Rhino3D. Here all faces are created as quad faces, so that even triangles have 4 vertices, Some vertices are double.
Options
Allows you to modify the program's appearance such as display colors, backface display and face lines.
Info
These options provide information about the OPT in its current state
- Face Count shows you the number of tri-faces, number of quad faces and number of faces in total.
- Error Check analyzes the model and displays any errors that
- Check for flat textures analyzes the model for faces with flat textures (New in OPTech v2)
- Model Dimensions displays the length, height and width of you rmodel.