OPTech

Setup

Good news: With JérémyaFR‘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.

Basic controls

OPTech is split into 4 main parts

The Editor Window

This screen on the left provides contextual editing tools split across several tabs

The Preview window

This window shows a shadeless preview of your model. Within the preview window you can freely change your view with the arrow keys.

• Use the radio buttons below the preview window to switch between Rotate and pan mode
• Use the ship icons below the preview window to switch between predefines angles. (Isemotreci, Top, Down, Side, Front, Back)

Selection in the preview window

You can use your left mouse button to select parts of your model within the preview window, depending on what selection mode is currently active.

• Left-click to select a single object or deselect everything
• SHIFT+Left-click to select several objects
• CTRL+Left-clickk to deselect a single object.

Upper toolbar

This toolbar lets you switch between several display and selection modes:

Level of Detail (LOD) Toggle

Here you can switch between High and Low Level of Detail (LOD) Default: High

Selection Mode

You can select between 3 selection modes: -- Mesh selection allows you to select the various meshes -- Face Allows you to select the faces within a mesh. (You must have at least one mesh selected for this to work) -- Vertex Selection allows you to select the vertices of a face. (You must have at least one face selected for this to work)

Mesh Zoom

Default: Off If toggled on, the Preview window will zoom in / center on your selection, depending on the selection mode. If toggled off the current view will remain unaffected by your selections.

Display Wireframe

Toggles the dispaly of the model's wireframe. Default: On

Selecting meshes highlights them in different colors:

• Unselected meshes/faces have a white outline.
• Selected meshes/faces have a Red outline.
• The last selected/faces mesh has a green outline.

Display Textures

Here you can toggles the display of the textured model. Default: off

Selecting meshes highlights them in different colors:

• Selected meshes/faces are highlighted blue
• The last selected/faces are highlighted dark blue

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.

Bottom Toolbar

The bottom toolbar consists of two parts.

• The part below the editor window allows you through the various editors
• The icons below the preview window allow you to toggle between isometric view and various axis-aligned views. You can also select a different background color (Default: Black)

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.

1. Edit meshes, faces and vertices
2. Merge meshes or assign singular faces to other meshes
3. 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.

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.

1. Hangar will prompt a landing option from friendly capital ships/stations and activate the jamming beam effect on enemy ships/stations.
2. Engine will apply an engine burn effect when player gets close

[Table: Hitzone-Explosion Type combinations]

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.

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.