I know in CS you can enable trufrom (tho I'm not quite sure how to, I've read you can), but when you do it bloats the weapons or something to that effect. Is it possible to use truform for NS, as well? And if so, is it possible to remodel the models to be truform friendly?

I'd love to run around NS with truform enabled, so if anyone is up to the task I'd be greatly appreciative. I'll help you test any models you create, if you want.

What exactly is truform? WHat do you mean it 'bloats' the models?

It's a feature available on lots of ATI Radeon chipsets, including the 8500LE (my card. I've seen it, I know what he means). It does look weird. It makes things look round. It smooths out polygons, making it look curved. But the side effect is huge, and it makes things stick out more than usual. For example, the HMG in NS, with Truform, the clip sticks out through the side of the gun, but it looks smoother.

This feature works well for alien and marine player models.

It doesn't work with just about everything else.
I was playing with it for a long time, and turned it off to save performance. I immediately noticed a lot of the marine structures looking much improved. Sharp, high tech and cornered as they should.

It would be fantastic if it were player model only, but I think it is built into the exe to do everything bar the weaponry.

Yeah, I wish it was player model and alien buildings only, no marine buildings. I was switching back and forth between it off and on, and the alien buildings look MUCH better with it on. Too bad marine buildings and guns look bloated.

It doesn't appear to have an effect on the environment though.

Truform sucks. I had it before, and it eats up you fps SOOOOO bad.

this is trueform

Looks like someones ammo discharged inside the clip.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That's butt-ugly. What the hell... What games does truform work right with?

TAKE COVER! IT'S GUNNA BLOW!!!

/me dives for cover and throws gun in the bushes

BOOM!









MEDIC!!

lol

Lol, that shot shows that they didn't take time to stick in truform properly... you gotta test the models when you put it in to make sure they look right when truform is on.

If it's put in right it looks beautiful.

I'll try to find some actualy in game shots of PROPER support of truform to show you guys.

And Chalupa, truform only eats away at your FPS if you don't have a PC that can handle it. I can have it enabled in NS and still run at 100fps (the engine won't go higher). And a lot of times developers don't put trufrom support in properly, they truform everything, instead of just what needs to be truformed (character models and such).

EDIT: Here we go. This first one isn't an actual in game shot, it's a demo, but it shows you what Truform does.



Here are some NWN screens. Tho it doesn't have proper truform support, the screens show it's effects well.

WITH Truform


Without Truform

QUOTE (Darkbolt101 @ Dec 17 2002, 06:06 PM)

TAKE COVER! IT'S GUNNA BLOW!!! /me dives for cover and throws gun in the bushes BOOM! MEDIC!!

damn you! i was gonna say that!!

iimmmm TOOOO FAST WEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaahhhhh

how do you enable trueform in NS?

Yeah , whats the console command?

ati_npatch 1 to enable it (it's enabled by default FYI)
ati_npatch 0 to turn it off

Yes Truform in HL is butt ugly. But in other games, it looks great. I just disabled it in my ATI settings, until Zero told me here, how to turn it off. Thanks mate.

All truform does is double the poly count of certain objects. It's like a "smooth model" function in a 3d modeling program.

not worth it for me

It doesn't double the polys.... it's an effect. Like "Curved Surfaces" in Quake 3. No extra polys. You don't just add polys on the fly.

How do you know? Are you the developer of Truform? Huh?

Huh?

lol

For the technically-minded...

TruForm adds polygons.

There isn't a video card that supports 'true' curve rendering without pixel shaders. They ALL fake it with extra polygons.

As to why TruForm doesn't work right...

Too many vertices 'welded' together. That's it, the whole reason, right there. You want a part of your model to keep it's sharp edge with TruForm, split the edge there to guarantee that it's a seperate set of polygons. This means sometimes roughly doubling the VERTEX count on a model. Not the polygons, same polygons, just different copies of the same vertex, which keeps ATI's TruForm (also known as NPatch) from getting confused.

QUOTE (WolfWings @ Dec 18 2002, 04:03 AM)

For the technically-minded... TruForm adds polygons. There isn't a video card that supports 'true' curve rendering without pixel shaders. They ALL fake it with extra polygons. As to why TruForm doesn't work right... Too many vertices 'welded' together. That's it, the whole reason, right there. You want a part of your model to keep it's sharp edge with TruForm, split the edge there to guarantee that it's a seperate set of polygons. This means sometimes roughly doubling the VERTEX count on a model. Not the polygons, same polygons, just different copies of the same vertex, which keeps ATI's TruForm (also known as NPatch) from getting confused.

Hah! See? I'm right!

Anyone got a screenie of what NS looks like with this truform thingie enabeled?

Before: After:

Before: After:

Before: After:

Before: After:

Actually , that doesn't look to bad.

lol sorry for the uber spam, but I figured high res posts were required. Hey, a friend of mine has been bugging me to make public a private webpage I keep for myself, so I've done some work recognizing people and figured some people might respect it. Its by no means complete, im still chopping it together. Its not recognized by the main page, as it doesn't really exist yet..

http://nullfusion.com/nsmain.htm

Since I have absolutely no artistic merit and bandwidth to spare, I'd like to help out the mappers/skinners of this awesome mod.

Merry Christmas

HAHAHAHAHOHOHIAHHAHA!!!!!!! It's looks so fugly!!! HAAAAAHAHAHAHA! SO...! FUGLYYY!!!!!! JAHAHAHAHAOHOHOOOO!!!

Erm... Trufrom makes everything looks 'fater' (<-sp?)... It sux if you ask me but I've never played with it so just ignore me... HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

QUOTE (Ankan @ Dec 22 2002, 11:53 PM)

HAHAHAHAHOHOHIAHHAHA!!!!!!! It's looks so fugly!!! HAAAAAHAHAHAHA! SO...! FUGLYYY!!!!!! JAHAHAHAHAOHOHOOOO!!! Erm... Trufrom makes everything looks 'fater' (<-sp?)... It sux if you ask me but I've never played with it so just ignore me... HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

In games that don't support it properly, it'll have weird effects. If it's put in right, it's supposed to make everything look better. NS (or any HL based game) is a horrible example of how truform should work. I posted some screens from NWN that show somewhat proper use, but here's a MUCH better example.

It's from Quake. These models are much smoother and more realistic than without truform. Notice how you can clearly see the polygon edges in the non-truform screens (the ones to the left). They completely disappear when trufrom is turned on.

QUOTE (zerohaste @ Dec 23 2002, 02:15 AM)

It's from Quake 2 I believe.

That's from Quake, not Quake 2
(sorry, I just had to)

/me shrugs

I wasn't paying attention to the site I pulled it from... mainly because of the fact that it was in a different language.

I should have known just from the screens,heh... should pay more attention.

Fixed my error.