junior1210,

I am not exactly sure what you mean?... Why do you want to move normally non visible parts out to where they are visible? .. what you finish with in milkshape is what you see in game.. also if you tex your hardponts it makes them visible in game..

Use a .sur file from a Freelancer ship that basically is the same shape/size as yours and rename it.. those are the only .sur files available.

Harrier



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

Soory if I wasn't clear. I find that when I try to tex in milkshape that sometimes the tex's i assgn don't show up, except when I use that method I described. Like when making the canopy the material I use for glass doesn't appear unless I ush it out away from the main body of the shipjust that smallest bit(.01). I admit that I might be way out in left field but so far it works, execpt in game which I haven't tried yet(been having trouble generating .dll's too?!). Figured I would ask someone b4 I get too far in and have to go back and completely redo my ships

"we wish for one last landing in the land that gave us birth, to rest our eyes on the fleecey skies, and the cool green hills of earth" - 'Noisy' Rhysling

junior1210,

I assume you are using .tga files and you have flipped them.. versions of milkshape from 1.70 on also support .dds files.

If all else fails Zip all the files and email them to me and I will take a look.

Harrier



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

I am having trouble exporting to ms3d. I have modeled 2 ships with gmax following the tut, and installed the exporter plugin, but when i get to shrinkwrap,save,then attempt to export ,it pops up your save window and save as (Quake md3 file) there are no ships listed to choose from so that it converts to .md3 file. Any help will be greatly appreciated.This is my first time working with 3d modeling and I am having a blast .I keep searching forums for more info but,come up at a loss with explanationsthat do not seem to get me anywhere.Thanks again

Nevermind, it hit me after post to type in a name for the file (slaps self)

Edited by - Xenium on 8/1/2004 3:54:46 PM

Drizzit: Good luck getting back on your feet, just hang in there.
the tutorial seriously rocks, got me to start shipbuilding.

My question for all: I exported a ship I made in maya to milkshape. That worked fine. I made all of the hardpoints, made each one its own group and labled it(Hp/Revolute/Weapon01 and the like). Everything seems fine in milkshape, but when I export it to FL, my ship is invisible and has no shields, weapons, or engine. just as a test, I replaced the cmp and mat files for the defender with my files, and the defender suddenly was invisible and had no weapons, engines, etc.
Seems there is a problem with the model, but I can't figure it out. Could it be a polygon issue? I smoothed it, so there are many, many faces (8633 triangles, 4457 vertices).
I have tried all of the solutions I could find on the boards, (like editing LOD) but none seem to help. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I want to make this thing work before I make others.

@ Lord Anubis--Dunno if this is the same oversight I made on my first ship, but if you modified a pre-existing shiparch.ini entry, the .mat and .cmp files have different paths.
Most people put the cmp and mat files in the same folder, and the paths in shiparch.ini must match exactly where you have the files.

--original lines from shiparch.ini--
DA_archetype = ships\liberty\li_fighter\li_fighter.cmp
material_library = ships\liberty\li_playerships.mat

(notice the .cmp path is one directory deeper than the .mat...easy to overlook)
--new lines--
DA_archetype = ships\custom\custom\myship.cmp
material_library = ships\custom\CUSTOM\myship.mat

If the mat path does not match, you'll get an invisible ship, but still be able to see the shield mount, and if you mount weapons on it they'll be floating. Failling that, check the flspew.txt file. The last few lines will list any problems, and may point you in the right direction. Hope this helps.

Edited by - AWTs0c on 8/5/2004 7:36:53 AM

AWT: already tried that. messed with the mat and cmp and it still didn't work. What exactly is flspew.txt? I couldn't find it.
Could the massive polycount be overloading the software, so it can't be displayed?

Hey guys, i doubt you remember me (i posted a problem way back on pg 3), anyway im still a n00b and need help, i got farther than i did last time i tried to make a ship, ive finished in gmax and milkshape, and have just started on the MAT file (muffled screams), anyway im stuck on what is probably the easiest part, i cant figure out how to rename "new node" to "material library" etc. HELP!

Lord Anubis- flspew.txt is sort of a log of major actions. Look in
C:\Documents and Settings\(your account)\Local Settings\Application Data\Freelancer
If the last few lines say something like, 'unable to load material <some number>', or 'unable to find material <some number>' then the prob is definitely the mat, not the model. As for the poly count, I had one ship with almost 9K triangles, and the performance suffered a little, but it was visible and functional. One other thing you might want to try: Dunno why, but I had a ship that was mysteriously invis, but when I moved all the saves and reloaded the mod, It fixed it. Possibly caused by something in the autosave.

Hi again, dont worry about my last post, i figured it out, anyway im completely lost in FLed-ids, where it tells me to "copy the XML text and place it in (my) next empty slot". What does it mean by "slot"? Where is this "slot"? Help!

Lord Anubis,

I'll chuck in my 5 cents worth as well .......

When you export your ship do you see a collection of weapons etc.. and no tex? Are these weapons in the approximately correct positions?
When you take off... is there any engine flare?
If the answer is yes then it probably isnt the .cmp file.... more likely the .mat..
When you scaled the model did you import the freelancer pilot and use that as a base? A Scale of 100 based on the pilot size is usually about right.
Did you rationalise your groups into as few as possible..? and list your largest group first and give that group a unique name?
Are your Hardpoints listed last in your .cmp file?
Did you select all in milkshape and reweld all the vertices prior to export?
Do your textures list have random names? or similar names?, and are they square and 24 bit ? i.e 64 x 64, 128 x 128, 256 x 256 etc...

Another small point .. make sure your glass texture is not listed as the texture for your first group in milkshape

I also use the "old" cmp exporter as I have had few problems with it and make all my .mat files by hand rather than use the .mat file exporter.. as I have found that the .mat file exporter will sometimes mix textures up for some reason.. Dunno why... it just does.. and also it outputs some weird values.. Most of the time it works fine, but I get asked to look at a few "problem" ships from time to time and these are the things I find.

regarding the polycount at 8000 odd it is high but not too high. I have seen ships in game that would easily treble that and they work... I see a lot of stuff on here about excessive polys, most of which is rubbish.. and in fact asked the same question of Giskard when I first "noobed" my way to making my first ship - his reply and I quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I use the Selpolycount to get the poly count after selecting the entire ship. So what ever it says in there, thats what people are referring too.

The average is 3000 per model but I dont believe there is a limit. However, if all your models have 21,000 polies then each one of your models will be the equivalent of 7 normal ones. Once you hit 16 models in space some computers start to crash. So that would be 3 of yours at 21000 polys = 1 crash.

Hope that explains it a bit better
I'm not sure if the crashes relate to the poly count like I've said above but the 16 ship barrier does appear to exist and does cause crashes. Others have said battleships cause crashes too when there are a few of them on the screen so I may well be right here.

Giskard
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another suggestion is that when you export a model for the first time use a known working model...- temporaily rename your .cmp and .mat file to that ship and test it that way.. It narrows the list of possible problems by a significant margin.. it will either work or it wont.. and you will know that the problem is ship reather than file related.. I see you did that and it didn't work ...

If all else fails send me the model and I will have a look at it for you.

Tha Jev,

highlight the node with your mouse wait a sec then click again, the "new node" will "open" then simply edit the text to Material Library... Play around a bit if this does not explain it.. you should get it eventually..

Harrier



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

Thx for the offer but I want to get this myself.(a matter of pride) I think if I mess with this some more i'll get it and if I can't then I shouldn't be doing this. But i'm glad you and drizzit and others like you guys are here to help us noobs otherwise FL would be like other games that you get bored with

"we wish for one last landing in the land that gave us birth, to rest our eyes on the fleecey skies, and the cool green hills of earth" - 'Noisy' Rhysling

harrier: I have tried changing the shiparch.ini file for the defender, so it would use my cmp and mat files, but with no luck. There is no engine light, none of my hardpoints appear (so no ball of weapons), so not weps engines or anything.
I am just using one texture (its supposed to be an alien ship, so it doesn't use a glass cockpit, holo-projecting type thing)
There is one large group, the hull. After that, each group is one polygon (for the hardpoints). Hull textured, hardpoints not textured.
I did not reweld all vertices, not sure how to do that (I use maya, don't know milkshape very well). Could that be causing the probelm?
I didn't import the pilot to check scale, I just did what it said in the guide "if you are zoomed all the way out in front view and the cockpit is practically in you face, it is about the size of a defender"
I've just been using the newer cmp/mat exporter, maybe it would warp the values and make the ship invisible?
I really appreciate the help, if I can get this working I have a few other cool looking models to throw in (alien shippack)
BTW harrier, I'd like to e-mail it to you, want to pm me your email address?
Thanks again

Hey again, Sorry but you guys probably missed my last post (it was really small and since ppl saw an answer to "Tha Jev" question in Harrier's last post, they probably figured my question was answered, it wasn't, Harrier answered an earlier question, not the one i wanted) any way, here it is again, copied and pasted from my last post
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Hi again, dont worry about my last post, i figured it out, anyway im completely lost in FLed-ids, where it tells me to "copy the XML text and place it in (my) next empty slot". What does it mean by "slot"? Where is this "slot"? Help!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks All, See ya next time i have a problem, (5 bucks says ill be back in an hour)


"You're getting an Xbox? Why? What good games are there?" -A simple minded friend of mine.