SIDENOTE:

dds files doesn't need to be flipped horizontally.... just make sure to use MIPS not MIP0 for dds to work.

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Firebase,

Thanx for that... did not think to mention it...

Harrier.

I can't recall where I downloaded it from...try doing a search for it..

If you can't find it, I can send it to you via AIM (my ICQ simetimes has problems sending it), or mail it to you. It's only 663Kb large!

Firewing,

I found it... the original link to it no longer works... but the site links led me to it eventually.. havent had time to play with it much as yet... looks very interesting....I found it on a games site somewhere...

Thanx for the info.....

Harrier.


Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

Hello, I'm jsut starting to edit and try new things in my games, and I have now made my own ship in Gmax, exported it to Milkshape, added all the hardpoints, but now I don't know how to texture certain parts.
I gather from reading these posts that I should break my ship into "groups" to assign textures to them. However, I have two problems:

1) I do not know how to break my ships into groups, and then put it back together after it's been skinned. I read through the posts in here, but I couldn't find anywhere that told me how to actaully assign say a left wing to a wing group (some posts talked about having ALREADY done this and 'then you can do this-and-that with your _group...', but none said how to do it in the 1st place). So i do not know how to do this

2) Whenever I try to tell Milkshape to Assign a texture to a certain polygon, nothing happens- no change whatsoever. Does this have to do with my not having any groups, or not having flipped textures(another thing I don't understand or know how to do :\ )?

Like I said, please don't flame me or lose your patience with me; I have never done this before and I'm trying to learn and get better. then I won't have to bother many people
Thank you in advance

ro9ue,

I am assuming that your imported model is simply 1 piece i.e. it appears in MilkShape as one item...

Ok.... In order to assign parts to a group they must be "selected" .... let's say we want to assign the 2 wings to a group to be called "wings", firstly, to select the items in any of the milkshape view windows, use the tools menu on the right hand side of the milkshape screen, press the "select" button then under options (below it) select "face" and make sure the "by vertex" box is ticked.. Then using the standard "grey" window's hold the "shift" key down and holding the left mouse button down drag a box around the "wing" vertex's, select the faces you want to make into your "wings" group.... dont worry if you dont get all the faces in one go.. and if you select faces that you dont want to include by mistake, these can be unselected using the right mouse button.... do not let go of the shift key .. hold it down until you have as many faces as you can get easily..... these faces will go from standard white on grey to red (showing that they are selected) ..
Now go to the "groups" section of the tools menu....under group subheading there are 5 buttons; "Select", "Hide", "Delete”,” Regroup" and "Rename" and a small white "text window" to the right of the "Rename" button... press the button labelled "Regroup” and your selected faces are regrouped into "Regroup01"which appears in the small window to the right of "Rename".... now if you have all your "wing group" regrouped, simply highlight the text, type in wing or wing_group and press the "Rename" button. Then save the file.... However, you may have to do this several times to get all the faces belonging to your "wing" group.... To make things easier you can hide the regrouped faces to allow you to get to faces previously missed.. Select the faces you need to add to your group unhide the faces select them and regroup again ......Another way to select faces is to maximise the 3d screen (Blue), this allows you to rotate the model to get at faces that are hard to select in any of the plane views, except that in order to select faces in this view you must select vertex's directly using the mouse button, and you need to hold down both the "shift"+ "alt" keys.

Next, having done that we need to assign a texture to it.... in order to do that the group must be selected... Select your group using the groups window... Highlight the item with the mouse, use the "Select" key and select your "wing" group (it should turn red in the plane views) (grey), now open the materials menu, select your texture and using the "Assign" button, assign the texture to the "wing" group. Then open the texture coordinate editor and since most "wings" are on the top/bottom plane, use that view in texture coordinate editor, hit "Remap" and your group is then overlaid in wireframe on the texture, move it around until you are satisfied and then save the file..

In some instances the texture on the top of the wing and the bottom may differ.. however any "group" can be broken up into subgroups .. for instance.... Using the wing as an example we could have 4 "major" subgroups - wing top left, wing top right, wing bottom left, wing bottom right, plus the leading and trailing edges could also be separate "minor" subgroups. By using the various views available in the texture coordinate editor, (or by rotating the ship) we can assign the same texture to sub groups, then when satisfied regroup the subgroups back into a single group.

I do hope this answers your question...

Harrier



Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

Yes, thank you very much! I hadn't read teh Help files for Milkshape when I posted earlier, either (silly me). But you did help me out a lot.
Can you answer this, too, please?:
I've read a lot of things saying textures need to be "flipped", saved, and then applied, or else FL won;t recognixe them. I haven't a clue what this means or how to do this; if you could a) point me to somewhere that does, or b) explain how to do that, I would be very grateful.

Also, I have looked but could not find this, either:
Is there a way to make my ship and a weapon that I made both into a sinlge file that I could activate/deactivate throguh FLMM? I cannot play on MP right now because i have added a weapon to my game. I don't know how to turn it "off" for MP, and then be able to reactivate it for my SP. I also guess i will have to do this when i get my ship into the game. I don't want to just delete something that took me several days on end to make/do, and then restore my backup files.
Does having a personal weapon in my files make servers kick me? what about a ship?
If it does, like I was wondering before, is there a way to make them into a file i can activate in FLMM so i can easily switch b/t SP and MP? And if i can make such a file, would i be able to send it to a fiend?

Thank you very much!!

EDIT: Also, how can i mirror a texture i applied to one wing onto the other?

Edited by - Ro9ue on 4/12/2004 9:27:06 AM

Nevermind that about mirroring; i think i kinda know how to now.

But Harrier, how did you make your "Glass" texture in the Mystere ship? THAT's what I really want and need; my transparent textures that I try to make in Photoshop have the Opacity set to 10%, but in Milkshape, my canopy's glass texture is still opaque. :If you could tell me how to make one like yours in your ship (the example that people can download and look at, along with the "Night_st1" or if you could maybe email it to me (if you wouldn't mind... ? I won't take credit for it! but i would like to be able to do it myself) , I will really appreciate it! Thanks for your help so far; it's been invaluble to me in my ship-making. I'm almost done, just need a transparent texure (I spent 3-5 hours making little details in the cock pit BECAUSE I thought my texture would be transparent. No such luck :\

Ro9ue,

Ok flipping textures and the need for it...... If you construct your model in the "correct" view for Freelancer, i.e. upside down and nose toward you in 3d view in milkshape .. then in order for your .tga texture to display properly you need to flip it upside down .. also freelancer has the annoying habit of inverting tga. textures... but does not do the same to .dds.. odd I know and I am not sure I have it 100% right or why it happens.. its just the easiest way for me to remember...

As to making your ship and weapon in one file...... I am not exactly sure what you are asking...You can include fixed weapons in a .cmp file but not weapons that are removable... you can only provide revolute hardpoints for them... If you are asking if all the files can be included in a mini mod for you to use on SP, yes it is possible.. You can even script it so it can be used in sp missions (storyline) though without scripting you will have to run open sp mod.... There are separate threads on creating mini mods so I wont go into it here.. Take a look at some of the small mods offered they should give you some idea of the structure.. Though please do the right thing if you see something that you want to use, email the originator and ask for permission.... Normally if you try to use personal files in mp the server see's the difference and kicks you... It is a constant source of annoyance for server operators.. and by trying to log into the game using modified or old version files.. You can cause a server crash....

Glass ........... Well I presume you have followed the transparent glass texture tutorial... you need to save your files as .tga 24 bit and ignore the fact that photoshop does not like it.. There are several ships I have used this technique on.. also follow the thread down and there is a separate section that deals with transparency and how to achieve it

If all else fails there is a .mat file exporter in the downloads section that will do it for you, so long as you provide a texture with glass in the name...it automatically sets transparency to 80.. and these values can be edited in the .cmp file.

Again, I hope this helps..

Harrier



Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

thanks harrier!!! it would be impossible to overstate the usefulness of this tutorial. GREAT JOB and THANK YOU. i'm currently working on my first ship and think i might actually be able complete the task entirely due to the combined effort of you and drizzt4.0. the fact that you guys were willing to put forth so much effort to help n00bs is just incredible.

THANKS AGAIN!!!

Yes, Harrier, thanks for your help. I did figure out how to make a transparent canopy for my cockpit, and I'm almost done inserting my ship into the game
Thank you again for your help.

i saw a reference to the subject here, but no where else. how do you determine the number of polygons a ship has? and how many is too many for freelancer?

CAN SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE WEN I DO THE TUTORIAL I DONT KNOW HOW TO GET UP ALL THE SHAPE THINGS ON PAGE 3 PLEASE WRITE BACK AND TELL ME WAT I MIGHT HAVE DONE WRONG ive installed milkshake3D 1.6 the vet tool for it gmax the untitled thing unwrap ultimate thats the name and of course dolby reader is there any more i HAVE to download please help me i need to help me friend.:C

Edited by - coolwoody on 4/18/2004 2:44:39 AM

HEY HARRIER PLEASE SHOW US MORE PICTURES OF YOUR MODEL PLEASE ITS COOL
:C