Actually, the only experience I have with multiple textures is to stick them all on one image file and use parts of that as needed. To answer your question, I'm not sure.

Hi again Imagine,

Thanks for the advice on getting rid of the importer and for the nice welcome. I was able to export my ship model successfully. I do have another question but wasn't sure where to ask about it. Hopefully you can help me out or suggest someone who can point me in the right direction.

The problem I am having is with the new gun models I have done. I was looking through topics but was having trouble wading through it all.

I am trying to find out what I need to put into the gun models for my turrets before I export them. Specifically I need to know how to make sure that in game the barrels track up and down and that they track from left to right in sync with the turret body properly while staying attached to the model. Also I need to find out what I need to make sure there is something firing from the gun barrels. <lol> Guess what I am saying is that I need a tutorial on guns for people trying to build them from scratch.

Would appreciate any advice you could give me.

Thanks.

Wanderer has made some really nice custom gun models and got them to work. He would be the expert to ask as far as I know.
I, personally, know next to nothing about it.

Thanks for the quick reply Imagine.

I tried getting ahold of Wanderer in e-mail. Will try again. Will also see about posting to one of his threads. Maybe I will get some answers.

Thanks again,

Joe

I apologize for not reading this whole thread to find if someone has had a similar problem to mine. Anyway - here it is: I try to load a small (2 mb) 3ds model into Milkshape and get a whole bunch of error messages stating that my vertices count is somehow too high. I get this with practically all models (except a mini one, which was 150kb). Is this a bug or is it normal? How do I import such models into Freelancer?

has not been asked before.
I think that is normal. 2mb files are quite large relative to what I usually play with. (somewhere between .3 and 1 mb) How many polys are we talking about?

Does anyone know if once you have created a .mat file in UTF, if you can then reedit the finished .mat file? The reason I ask is that I want to make some changes to an existing F L ship (one from the game not from a mod). What I want to do is change its textures and general appearance.

I’ve tried UTF but I can’t do it.

Have I missed something on the website or is it not possible??

I am a bit of a noob at this and I’m learning as I go....

My own ship creations need some more work before I let ya see em !!


oh no the pirates are commin

You can use UTFEdit to export .tga's from a .mat file and then open those in Photoshop for manipulation (though the changes you make obviously won't take effect until you re-import them).

Edited by - Nephilim on 21-10-2003 01:13:45

laza7us,

You can edit a .mat file using utf and replace the native freelancer textures with your own version.....

Now I can't tell you where.... but there is a very good tutorial called: 'Kasdias Texture Guide' that provides the necessary plug-ins for photoshop 7 ....... and gives you a step by step process for it.....

I think you will find it somewhere in the downloads section... failing that email me and i'll forward a copy it's less than a meg..

Hope this helps....

Harrier.



Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

Thanks Nephilim and harrier!
I was wondering: are the textures from the original fl ships in tga or dds format?

.dds mostly, though I saw some .tga's here and there.

BTW, here's a list of potential causes for everyone experiencing the famed invisibility problem:

-compressed .tga's in your .mat file (FL can only read the uncompressed format)
-mesh scaled too small (FL won't display any object under a certain size)
-incorrectly oriented faces on your mesh (none should have to be reversed)
-incorrectly labeled hardpoints (all must follow FL's naming convention)
-texture files that have the same name as a group on your model
-mistakes in your UTF library (the most ubiquitous)

Lemme elaborate on the last two issues. In Milkshape (and any modeling tool worth its salt), a mesh is composed of groups. Each group has a material assigned to it, which in turn references a texture. To illustrate:

<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>
-ship
-group1 <let's call this one "Fuselage">
-material1 <let's call this one "FuselageMaterial">
-texture1 <let's call this one "FuselageTexture.tga">
-group2 <let's call this one "Wing">
-material2 <let's call this one "WingMaterial">
-texture2 <let's call this one "WingTexture.tga">
-group3 <let's call this one "Engine">
-material3 <let's call this one "EngineMaterial">
-texture3 <let's call this one "EngineTexture.tga">
</font></pre>

Clear so far? Now it's important (like, paramount) that no group has to share its name with a texture file. For instance...

<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>
-ship
-Wing
-WingMaterial
-WingTexture<.tga>
</font></pre>

...is valid, whereas...

<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>
-ship
-Wing
-WingMaterial
-Wing<.tga>
</font></pre>

...is not.

Even more importantly, the .mat has to point back at the material name (and not, I stress NOT, at the name of the group to which that material is linked). If it doesn't, your ship won't show up or FL will crash. Always double-check what you do here. To expand upon the previous wing example...

<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>
-material library
-WingMaterial
-dt_name <string "WingTexture.tga">
-type <string DcDt>
-texture library
-WingTexture.tga
-MIP0 <"WingTexture.tga">
</font></pre>

...is valid, whereas...

<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>
-material library
-Wing
-dt_name <string "WingTexture.tga">
-type <string DcDt>
-texture library
-WingTexture.tga
-MIP0 <"WingTexture.tga">
</font></pre>

...is not.

Edited by - Nephilim on 21-10-2003 19:15:52

Thanks to Nephilim and Harrier for the info I was able to get the guide from the site and also the plug-ins for PS 6 all works now. Basically I was almost there just didnt have the plug in (never though of that). DOH!!

Thanks again to you both.





oh no the pirates are commin

Edited by - laza7us on 21-10-2003 19:32:42

LOL, now *I* am at the end of my wits... I've created a planet (just a sphere with two textures, nothing fancy), exported it, built the .mat, yadda yadda yadda. Just one problem: even though I've scaled the thing up to ten, twenty, hundred, thousand, and TEN THOUSAND times its original primitive size (it should fill half a system at its current radius), the planet keeps retaining the same fixed diameter in FL. It's as if the .tga's won't allow themselves to be stretched over the surface and put a cap on the size of the object they're applied to. Any ideas? I'm using Milkshape 1.7 beta, if that helps.

Edited by - Nephilim on 21-10-2003 23:13:54

Imagine,

All the freelancer textures I have found are .dds but are labelled for some strange reason as tga... you need to extract them with the utf editor....they read as tga but are dds ... so save them as dds... to turn them into tga open ps7 (or similar) .... open the file, select the biggest square.. (the one on the left) open a new file say 256 x 256 or 512x512, paste then save as 24 bit tga.

I think 16 bit also works but 32 bit wont .... does that help.......

Nephilim,

While planets are not my thing..... perhaps if you used dds as the textures that might help... or make a bigger tga file....(maybe 1024 x 1024) I have had this problem with ships when I try to "stretch" a texture that is too small ..... the texture is all screwed up, or the model will not display correctly..... btw I have looked a the latest version of milkshape but am reluctant to try it yet... as I am not sure if the export plugin is 100% compatible....

Dunno if this will help......



Harrier

Harrier..




Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

Edited by - Harrier on 22-10-2003 03:38:40