Creating your own ship start to finish

Thu Sep 22, 2005 10:13 am by trem0r

Argh, we've corresponded a couple of times already (me needing your help), and it's nice to see you have your own topic started, congratz!

Anyways, being a noob just getting started, I figured this would be a great place to start a thread for other noobs to get there feet wet. I want to illustrate on this thread everything they will need, from start to finish with your help, if you dont mind.

Any objections to this let me know...and i'll delete.

I'll list the programs I've gathered so far (if i've missed or need any others please tell me

):

For ship making (you could use any of these, i got all 3 to see which i liked better):
-3ds max, lightwave, milkshape.

A UTF editor: still not sure wat this does, but we will find out...lol

A Paint program to make textures/skins:
- Adobe Photoshop, you can also use others for this, maybe some1 could name a few others they use...

And probably a few other programs I have missed, we shall see.

Another confusing part to me is, figuring out the different file types. what they are, and how and when they are used. for example: .tga,.dds,.cmp,.mat among others. Learning from start to finish what files types are used, and especially, when during the process they will be used, as well as what they are for and what program uses/converts them, would be extremely helpful to the noob shipwright. Someone like me

lol

Anyways, good luck, and I hope we can build some useful information on this thread thanks to the help from an experienced builder like Argh.

We were liberated from the fold, that's all, and the world looks the same. And history isn't changed, we're all just part of the game.

Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:31 am by Argh

Well, Drizzt's Tutorial covers many of these topics to one extent or another, and my Tutorial, "How to Skin", covers some things that Drizzt's tutorial doesn't, and shows people the basics of sectioning their model for skinning, etc.- techniques that I see are starting to be used by a lot've folks now.

So... erm... while I'm pretty sure that we could write a more modern, easy-to-understand tutorial, I'm not sure it wouldn't be just re-inventing the wheel to some extent. But maybe a listing of the file types used in FL might be a good idea for a starter. I'm pretty sure I can offer a relatively good explanation of what each file type does, even for the ones that we cannot make new ones...

Thu Sep 22, 2005 5:41 pm by trem0r

could someone tell me how many welds you use when joining 2 pieces together?

We were liberated from the fold, that's all, and the world looks the same. And history isn't changed, we're all just part of the game.

Thu Sep 22, 2005 7:25 pm by AuGuR

Depends really on what you're actually talking about.

If you're talking about two separate meshes (wireframes) of the model, you just have to group them by selecting both meshes and making a duplicate of them.

If your're talking about lining up the surfaces of the two separate meshes so that there are no gaps, you have to line up the vertices of the one mesh with the others.

So, unless without know what exactly you're trying to do, I myself can't help you much.

Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:35 am by ww2jacob

Hey, I was planning on making a new version of Drizzt's tutorial (as he has given anyone permission to update it), with Argh's skinning tutorial as a second option.

Anyone think that wold help?

Fri Sep 23, 2005 1:38 pm by trem0r

ok AuGuR,

not exactly sure how to explain it, so ill show you what i want to do instead:

and if that ling doesnt work try this:

Link

im trying to weld these two pieces together. I am creating the pieces seperate per the advice from Argh so it easy to skin when im finished. lol, however i dont know how to assemble the seperate pieces 8D anyways, thx for your help. peace.

We were liberated from the fold, that's all, and the world looks the same. And history isn't changed, we're all just part of the game.

Linked your URL - Para

Edited by - parabolix on 9/23/2005 7:57:13 PM

Fri Sep 23, 2005 1:42 pm by trem0r

ww2jacob,

i wouldnt mind helping you if you need it. as i am new to this, i dont know how much help i would really be. but if you need information gathered, i would be happy to do that for you as i would be learning the material in the process.

We were liberated from the fold, that's all, and the world looks the same. And history isn't changed, we're all just part of the game.

Wed Nov 30, 2005 8:17 am by angelstandings

@Tremor

Ii'm no modeling expert by any means... however, AFAIK, you can't weld two seperate objects together in 3DSMax. If you're not using 3DSMAX, know that all the modelling software isn't really that much different -- so if you can't do it in 3DSMAX, then you most likely can't do it in MAYA, GMAX, XSI, Milkshape 3D, etc... (I know there are exceptions, but I don't believe welding is one).

I could be wrong... there are lots of tricky things you can do in modeling. However, I don't see a reason why someone would need to actually weld two seperate meshes together, because then you'd have one object, really.

AFAIK, just move the 2 pieces of the model together so the pieces are touching. Keep them as seperate objects. Zoom in real close... pay close attention to vertexes. You should be ok.

If I'm somehow wrong about this, then someone feel free to correct me

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