:blow:New Release (1.2.2.12) Announcement:blow:
The deed is done :king:
Update: There’s a new release centered around a new feature called SoftMSM that blends lighting where cells touch in-game.
Use SVN Update to get the new MSM files that have (all) been modified. It took a real long time to upload them through the SVN system. I don't know why Subversion can't do burst processing of small files on checking in.
Language packages are slightly modified...
English: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/text/English/Neutral.zip
Japanese: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/text/日本語/最新.zip (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/text/日本語/最新.zip)
These can be (manually) updated in the updater app (SOM.exe) but there isn't yet an automatic update detection process for the language packs. They add the Tools menu to PrtsEdit and a minor enhancement to SOM_MAP's elevation facility (it lets you change the unit for using with Shift, which is 0.1 by default. KF2 uses 0.125 because of how the PlayStation worked. You can use it to work with any increment, but it's kind of a burden to have to use Shift.)
There is background information here (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=297.0) and here (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=289.msg2716#msg2716).
(http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=297.0;attach=981;image)
[organic cells blended into one large organic map model]
This is a pretty sexy update. It's something I've been planning to do since working on layers last year. It doesn't have anything to do with layers (other than it integrates with them) but the layer work was the impetus to dig into the MapComp tool. I exhausted myself on layers, but planned to return to MapComp to work on this.
After I completed a major project a little while ago I've been doing small things. This idea captured my imagination a week ago. I thought it would go faster than this, but it turned out there are a lot of details involved.
I haven't made an effort to scrutinize every MSM file. I just mass converted them with the new SoftMSM tool (that you shouldn't have to use) and a few of the exterior set MSM files needed to be forced to blend their edges since they looked like hard edge polygons. PrtsEdit has a new Tools menu that provides easy access to this for when you want to just force a particular MSM to blend indiscriminately. It helps for organic models, but if model edges are a mix of hard and soft polygons then you must remodel them to achieve what you want.
This won't always be the case (forever) but there isn't (currently) a guided system for choosing which vertices to blend or not. Worst case scenario you somehow have to make a hard (flat) polygon be ever so slightly soft (somehow) because you want it to blend but you also want it to appear to be flat, or don't have enough geometry to get the effect you want. Usually models are either organic or not. Another possibility is you have an edge that you really want to be hard (flat) but it's connected to a soft polygon. Unfortunately there isn't a fix for this. Just move the feature away from an edge (note: edges belonging to the same cell aren't blended.)
EDITED: If you're in the business of making custom MSM files know that MapComp will automatically modify the files with the same process as the TOOL/SoftMSM.exe (mode 0) so that you don't have do that. If you need to force a tile to be soft (mode 1) then PrtsEdit is available from inside SOM_MAP. It can also force a tile to be hard (mode 2) but that is more like disabling the blending feature for that tile and its neighbors.
The SoftMSM tool also removes duplicate vertices that x2msm generates, and it "normalizes" your surface normals, because they need to be so for the blend feature to efficiently compare their angles. Normally normals are normalized (that's probably why they're called normals or the process is called normalization one) but for whatever reason some or many of SOM's stock MSM files had normals that were far from normalized. Normalization changes their appearance. This is also described in the background links.