You Have to dowload the ms3d plugin

when you have copy the dll to your milkshape folder
this will alow you to export your ship as a cmp file i dont know how to do the mat files if u gat a tutorial plz post it here

do you neet texturing help?

**** the rest im the best

hey,

while we're on the subject, how do you judge size in milkshape? I mean how do you know how big the finished product will be when exported to the game?

Im trying to make a small light fighter, how do I prevent it from turning into a dreadnought when I export it? is it just trial an error?

a dreadnaught is not normally the problem .....

your first export is normally a Micro-Machine and believe me i make big models.

the easiest way i found is put a pilot hardpoint in, export run the game and see how much bigger your pilot is to your ship that gives you some idea how much you should scale it up.

as every model i have done is on a different scale ???(there not meant to be i just create till im happy then export) i find it is somewhere between about 700% to 1500% increase in size you need.

American Scientists spent millions developing the perfect writing utensil; It writes in Zero-gravity, upside down, under water, in space... The Russians used a Pencil.

Thx Spirit

hey spirit,

I wonder If I can ask a favor. I'm trying to create a wedge shaped fighter, very light, with four hardpoints. But in the end, it end's up looking like a Victory Class Star Destroyer. Do you think you could take a look at my work and tell me what I'm doing wrong?

The Milkshape website has lots of tutorials on using the program.

As for mat files. Check out the Lightwave to Freelancer tutorial. It covers the topic. The only thing it doesnt mention is the textures have to be square. EG 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512 (max). I tried 256x512 and several others and the textures just didnt show.

Giskard

JohnHawke zip everything up and send it to me (my email is in my profile. just make sure it is under 2megs or my isp wil bounce it). i will take a look and see what i can do.

just to show what i can do try this link millenium falcon


giskard- i have textures that are square and textures that are weird sizes (try 432 x 32 x24bit tga). but it depends on whether you use tga's or dds's (dds's must be square and i think multiples of 256 but dont quote me on that). so what you say isnt always true (it has more to do with lod values whether your ship shows or not), but square textures are better,

It must be a power of 8 actually... from 8x8 to 1024x1024 and even more (in theory) but we generally use 256x256 and 512x512 for this type of work, 64x64 are used for small details, 128x128 too but also for lightmaps and, sometimes, 1024x1024 are used when we need a lot of details or to texture really big objects.
But in this game, I only remember having seen 64, 128 and 256 so you might prefer working with those dimensions (to save some video memory or because some older video cards can't handle hi-res textures... )

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darkpetzi you say

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It must be a power of 8 actually... from 8x8 to 1024x1024 and even more (in theory)......

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define "it must be". it dosent have to be with tga files, it is just better if it is, i have seen textures that are weird and wonderful (i.e 1093 x 66) and they work fine. free lancer dosent seem to care.

now if it is a dds file it must be a power of 8 . 256x256 being the common size

"It must be" means it's much much better to have this kind of dimensions. It's mainly a question of compatibility.
Some other dimensions might work but some (older) graphic cards won't handle them (that's for sure, it's a hardware issue... ie: voodoo cards can't go above 512x512).
And btw, it's very probable that the texture you found are resized by the game (I's say to 1024x64 in this case). If it works, it means FL's engine is quite a good one, able to correct "errors" by itself.
Altough, I have to say that what I wrote the last time is not totally correct. The texture (at least in TGA) hasn't to be square but the size of each side should be a power of 8. Therefore, you can have dimensions such as 256x64 or 128x512 but using excentric dimensions such as 1093x66 is bad because your computer have to calculate more adapted dimensions (you lose at least 1 clock cycle for the rendering of the texture). You probably don't see the difference with 1 object but you probably would if it was the case for each and every craft, planet, station, nebulae, etc...
I may be wrong on some points (simply because I haven't work on the game and hI havn't tested everything I say) but that's how most of graphical engines work. If you want to test my theory, extract any texture form any game and you'll see I'm not wrong (except in some special cases like half-life where there are some 240x224 files for example but again, there are resampled by the game before being displayed. And note that 240 and 224 are both multiples of 8.)