Oh boy...

Isn't there anyone, who can answer this?

This has been answered several times (by me)... but here it is again:

1. To resize a stock FL ship using FLModel Tool without it suffering from parts "falling off"... is currently impossible. This is because each sub-part has its own origin, and FLModel Tool just shrinks each VMESH individually, instead of looking for sub-parts and shrinking them around the first VMESH's origin. Anton will probably fix this in the future, but bugging him about it every day won't help much- it took him awhile to get FLModel Tool working as well as it currently does.

2. You can get around this by exporting the model via MS3D... deleting all but the lowest LOD (i.e., the most detailed version), and then exporting the CMP. This isn't something that's fun, and if you're wanting to do it with a bunch of FL's ships (like Mephistopheles)... you'd better be prepared for a month of solid grind. Even if you're just doing one ship... if you're still a newbie when it comes to ship modeling, this will probably prove more than you can bite off, let alone chew.

So, if you're a reasonably experienced modder and modeler, and you understand the CMP structure well enough to recover the highest LOD and the properly export it... you're going to be fine. If you're new to FL ship modeling... I really suggest you try something less hair-raising first

Edited by - Argh on 1/27/2005 12:38:22 PM

I'm not really new to ship modelling, just to that little part of it.

Now, what exactly do you mean by "exporting via MS3D". I suppose you mean importing it into MS3D, using the bugged CMP importer.

And, actually, I only want to do this whith gunboats, so they fit into the hangars.

Yes, we're talking about importing into MS3D with the buggy importer, and then removing all but the lowest LOD... and then exporting what's left as a new CMP.

<tries to import a gunship>

The Bretonian one imports just fine. The Rheinland and Kusari ones make use of multipart VMESHes, which means that getting that data out alive will probably involve breaking the VMESHes up with MeshConverter, building a working CMP structure using the split VMESHREF and VMESHDATA chunks, and then importing. And that may not even work

Sorry, but DA's crappy modeling techniques really shine through on the gunships...

Absolutely!

Well, maybe I'll just make every hangar in the entire game bigger. That would be a good alternative...

So, what exactly does the MeshConverter do and what's the problem with mulitpart VMESHes (and what kind of VMESHes don't cause trouble)?

The multipart VMESHES were some sort've kludge that DA used at one point fairly early on (if you look at the creation dates for the gunships and capships, it tells you a lot). My guess is that they have references inside of themselves that refer to the next LOD in the series, so that... from a data perspective, they're like a chained array, instead of being discrete entries in an array. This is one of the many kludges found throughout the model formats used in FL... it's quite clear that there were at least 3 generations of models built, and some of the earlier ones... yuck... were over-engineered to the nth degree, presumably because the designers thought they'd be releasing the game sooner than it actually shipped, and were trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out've the game engine.

The CMP importer doesn't know what to do with them. In the importer's documentation (which is actually quite good- it comes with a nice Help file) the coder who built it explains that his software doesn't work on these objects yet, and one assumes that he/she just never got around to figuring out how to do this, which is a shame.

I would love to sped the time fixing the issues with ModelTool! Sadly real life keeps getting in the way This fix is in the pipes along with new bits (editing sur files like utfeditor does for cmp files)... Please be patient, if i win the lottery or someone pays me to do this (purple elephants flying past) i'll put real days into this. For now odd hours when i have them and not exhasted from day job!

I need to find why the rheinland bs turns into a porcupine when resized for instance! Any ideas, answers on a postcard...

+++ out of cheese error - redo from start +++

Hmm, I tried the Meshconverter solution, but something tells me, I did something wrong. Maybe the ripped Rheinland gunboat in my hangar.

So, if anybody has the patience to explain this complex process of meshconverting to me, tthen maybe I had a chance.