Sun Feb 01, 2004 4:43 pm
Custom Ship Woes
I've read through the new ship creation tutorials, and for the most part, I'm happy with what I've come up with, but for a few bugs. I'm wondering if any of these sound familiar to anyone and whether they can point me in the respective correct direction(s). The problems:
1) my ship disappears if viewed from too far away
2) I can't create a valid .mat file from scratch(as described in Drizzt4.0's tutorial) using the Freelancer UTF Editor program.
The details:
1) During cutscenes involiving my ship, and during docking/launching, and even on the launch pad, whenever the view point gets too far from the ship, all the textures disappear, showing only the weapons/equipment/running lights mounted on an invisible frame. In contrast, the ship always shows up in the equipment room and in "Turret Mode" because the camera (or view point as I call it) is close enough. This problem does not, in anyway, affect gameplay, it's just an obnoxious, painful thorn in my side.
I used Kurt's CMP import plugin for Milkshape on the Dagger model. From there, I've followed Drizzt4.0's "The Complete Freelancer Ship Editing & Creating Tutorial" pretty much to the letter, but for my problem with .mat file creation, described in the following paragraph. To circumvent this problem, I simply copied the bw_ships file & bent it to my will, which seems to have worked except for the minor ship disappearing problem. I thought it might have something to do with the mip-mapping and the textures with different levels of details, but since I'm basically using the original bw_ships.mat file with the .dds textures still included & untouched by me, I don't see how.
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2) While using the Freelancer UTF Editor to create the .mat file, I set it up exactly as it's described (as nearly as I can tell), and then I save it. However, once it's saved and I close it, if I try to open it back up, it shows only the root, with absolutely no nodes (texture library, material library, Dt_name, MIP0...nothing). It's completely empty, although the file size seemse roughly correct (~150K). To verify it's not something to do with the executable itself, I tested it on the bw_ships.mat file, editing, saving as bw_test.mat, and successfully reopening. Is there something I'm missing or something ambiguous or incorrect in the tutorial?
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Any ideas?
1) my ship disappears if viewed from too far away
2) I can't create a valid .mat file from scratch(as described in Drizzt4.0's tutorial) using the Freelancer UTF Editor program.
The details:
1) During cutscenes involiving my ship, and during docking/launching, and even on the launch pad, whenever the view point gets too far from the ship, all the textures disappear, showing only the weapons/equipment/running lights mounted on an invisible frame. In contrast, the ship always shows up in the equipment room and in "Turret Mode" because the camera (or view point as I call it) is close enough. This problem does not, in anyway, affect gameplay, it's just an obnoxious, painful thorn in my side.
I used Kurt's CMP import plugin for Milkshape on the Dagger model. From there, I've followed Drizzt4.0's "The Complete Freelancer Ship Editing & Creating Tutorial" pretty much to the letter, but for my problem with .mat file creation, described in the following paragraph. To circumvent this problem, I simply copied the bw_ships file & bent it to my will, which seems to have worked except for the minor ship disappearing problem. I thought it might have something to do with the mip-mapping and the textures with different levels of details, but since I'm basically using the original bw_ships.mat file with the .dds textures still included & untouched by me, I don't see how.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
2) While using the Freelancer UTF Editor to create the .mat file, I set it up exactly as it's described (as nearly as I can tell), and then I save it. However, once it's saved and I close it, if I try to open it back up, it shows only the root, with absolutely no nodes (texture library, material library, Dt_name, MIP0...nothing). It's completely empty, although the file size seemse roughly correct (~150K). To verify it's not something to do with the executable itself, I tested it on the bw_ships.mat file, editing, saving as bw_test.mat, and successfully reopening. Is there something I'm missing or something ambiguous or incorrect in the tutorial?
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Any ideas?
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