subtargeting without wireframe is possible... you can choose a subtarget which is placed on the left hud calculated by the hardpoint position itself... you can click it... you can shoot it... the only thing that does not work is that you cant see where the subtarget is really located on the ship (for that you will need the wireframe)

"How did you get past the limitations on line numbers? My experiments gave horrible CTD if > 256 lines per submesh"

I never ran into any such limitation, though I was definitely expecting to after reading previous posts on the wireframe subject.

Anyway, now that I have some free time I guess I'll send in this utility thingamajig. I'll have to write a tutorial, too... meh...

And it is sent in. I gave sufficient instructions in the readme that anyone who has some idea of what's going on should be able to get things to work. I probably will still make a tutorial with pictures at some point, but I don't know when that will be.

mmm yummmy - works just as advertised - and subgroups are relatively simple, just follow the same procedure but do all the pieces individually and export as '3dbs - obviously, you're going to have a lot of .vms and vmeshwire nodes to add, but if you use a straight forward naming convention its fast enough - and the result(with destructible surs) is worth it IMHO

p.s. as a piece of advice to anyone making individual-mesh wireframes, make sure your model is perfect before you undertake the task - you will kick yourself if you have to come back to add more hardpoints or whatever, and all your UTF manipulations must be repeated lol

Edited by - Cold_Void on 9/14/2006 1:00:36 PM

Looks nice. But how did you change the UI?

the HUD/UI editing for FL Redemption is done with paintshop pro, the UTF/XML project, and UTF editor

sorry for the late answer, slow day heh

Edited by - Cold_Void on 9/21/2006 9:57:05 AM

heh, sometime since anyone has been here ^^ but i got a problem, it wont actually make a output file, is the make_wire.exe supposed to make a new window or what?

heres what i put into the cmd just incase anyone can see the problem

start make_wire input_vmeshdata_dunno.txt output_vmeshwire_dunno.dat

when i just type in start make_wire a window pops up for a split second and then just closes instantly........

whats wrong!

Cheese On Toast:
Like the name
Beware the player

Edited by - cheese on toast on 12/6/2006 8:25:17 AM

NVM, its sorted me not thinking things thru before doing it agen

Cheese On Toast:
Like the name
Beware the player

first off - nice tool

2. i suggest to rethink the manual

as there is stated to create a wireframe model (new cmp)... and export its VMeshData... use that VMeshdata to create the VWireData and then take this VMesh and reintegrate it into the original ship

that would leave the original ship with 2 Vmeshes which is not needed
it does take additional time to create Vwires and it does make the cmp bigger than it is needed

just open the original cmp with UTF
export the VMeshData
use the tool to create a Vwiredate (use the vms-name of the original vmesh)
add the 2 Vwire nodes to the cmp
and import the vwiredata

it does work perfectly and in the end you will save alot of time, work and you reduce the size of the mod this way (the bigger the mod the more lag you will have)

hope that this will help to simplify the creation

Sure, you can do that too, but consider that if your model has enough polygons the wireframe may end up being completely solid because the lines are so close together. Usually you want a simplified model for the wireframe; it looks more... wireframeish.

what about using a low level LOD? the direct-x mesh reduction tool is quite adequate for reducing the polycount to an acceptable size (say, 400 polys vs 2000 or more)

(and hey, am I the only one making use of the LOD export feature? the directx tool makes it so easy there's no reason not to!)

"Originally I had planned on making this program handle an arbitrary number of meshes from the input vmeshdata. However, the vertex numbering (or maybe it was the triangle numbering) is a bit confusing for all meshes after the first, so I decided it wasn't worth dealing with; after all, since there are no textures to worry about, the difference between many small meshes and one large mesh is effectively zero. */
"

what about the difference between having to create 7 vms nodes for separate part wires vs none?

did you read anton's wire frame documentation, btw? he seemed to have it figured out, but hadn't written a user-friendly program (it uses hand made lists of verts to connect the points)

Edited by - Cold_Void on 12/12/2006 4:45:08 PM

Edited by - Cold_Void on 12/12/2006 4:47:05 PM

true a high polygon ship would look weird

but why not reducing the polygons and create a low polygon ship that does use the same Vmeshdata name

then you can create a low-polygon wireframe that does refere to the original high-polygon vmeshdata of the original ship
in the end you will have a low polygon vwire on just one high polygon mesh instead of having 2 vmeshes (just a suggestion -> for the high res ships)

Sorry for digging this back up, but I didn't want to waste space by making a new thread.

I'm having trouble getting this tool to work, I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, I've followed the instructions and I can't get the wireframe to appear in game, although it hasn't given any errors or caused any other problems. Has any one else encountered this, or know a solution to it?

wrong created wireframes (with errors) usually crash the game
so i guess that the wireframe is working but not is not integrated into the model correctly

did you make sure to use the exact spelling of the mesh name when you created it?
if not the wireframe is just not called by the engine