Good news! I had apparently misconfigured my .mat file somehow. However, my problem is solved with the invaluable help of the ever-handy and well-made "Mat file exporter" found here: http://www.lancersreactor.com/t/downloa ... asp?id=837

It *automatically* updated my existing FUBAR mat file with one that made sense to FL. This could be of use to anyone having invisible ship problems that are not caused by LOD ranges. Thanks so much Colin (the author) for making this utility.

As for creating *new* mat files, this utilty will also certainly help, giving you a much better chance of doing it correctly.

killer9870,

Have no idea what is causing your problem .. However, it sounds like the problem I had with milkshape.., it needed some extra .dlls in order to run properly in Windows XP. Perhaps the problem you have is similar.. and since you bought it, I would suggest you contact them.. I'm sure they will provide help. I dont use GMax so I have no experience with it.

Heraulder,

Glad you worked out your problem, from my experience .mat files seem to be the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to modelling along with scale being too small so the ship while "existing" can not be seen .. all you get is a bunch of components in a 'pile' ..

Harrier



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

Harrier,

I hate to sound like a total noob, but, in milkshape, selecting faces and grouping and all that stuff just seems impossible to me. I cannot for the life of me select the faces I want. I end up selecting all kinds of adjoining faces. It's very frustrating.

I have a two week deadline and I have a beautiful model, but it isn't skinned because I'm hung up at this point. Any tips are greatly appreciated.

First off, wonderful tutorial.
Secondly, hopes for a speedy recovery for Drizzt4.0.

And for third: I think a correction should be made for future editions (if any) in the tutorial in regards to the "How to create your infocards and insert the ship into the game (finally)" section.

This is in regards to copying and chaging the Ids_Info2 = 66608 and saving it to another number. This is completely uneccesary as 66608 is nothing more than a template placement for the ships stats list. Duplicating this entry into a new Ids_Info2 number would be redundant.

The only possible reason I could see for changing/creating a new Ids_Info2 for a ship would be if it's equipment/stats card would be displaying information radically different than the default stats that most all Freelancer ships have.

Just my thoughts.

marduke,

Selecting individual faces or groups of faces can be done several ways, one of the easiest is to maximise the 3D view (blue) and using "select" in the model menu (right hand side) and "by vertex" in the check boxes underneath. Select all the faces for your "Group" by holding down Alt+Shift and selecting a common vertex or series of vertex's with LEFT mouse button as normal, then still holding Alt+Shift go to a vertex on one of the faces you dont want and deselect those faces by RIGHT clicking on the vertex outside of the area you want to retain. For example... Let's say you have a simple structure that consists of a single rectangle surrounded a rectangle on each of its four sides.. you want the center square as your group, but when you select the common vertex , adjacent faces outside your centre box are selected.. go to an outside vertex deselect -then the Next and so on....

It can require a bit of experimentation and sometimes on comples area's its better and necessary to subgroup faces "regroup" them then move onto the next area and do the same, until you have all your subgroups sorted out then hide all , unhide the subgroups, select all then "regroup" into your final group.

There are also a couple of other methods that can be used but I find this method allows you to rotate the model for better access.

Hope you find this useful

Harrier


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

What shoul i do then if my problem is XP do i need an update or something i checked the dlls and they are there but i checked the textures and meshes and other items but nothing is there someone said use Lineu but i have no idea what that is i know its not a virus.

Someone also said reeboot then use Lineu but i cant or it will cost me 80 quid why am i so unlucky mybe i can use another form of 3d program are there any i can buy from pc world or other websites i really am bugged because my friend made a ship and i cant he's been picking on me saying "your computer's weak, your computer's weak"

Please help me anyone i joined lancer's to do this SO SAVE ME FROM THIS INHUMAN TERROR ARRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!

The guy with the mod prob

killer9870,

Have you contacted the software makers...?????? I suggest that's the first place to start. Surely if they can't fix it then the problem lies elsewhere.

Whichever modelling program you use to create a model, it still has to be imported into MilkShape in order to export it in .cmp format. MilkShape is free for 30 days and is not expensive at around US $25.00.

MilkSHape 3D can be downloaded Here

Harrier.


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

okay I just want to check if I have this right for texturing
-select all of butom of the wing o whatever
-regroup
-assighn texcture
-repeat for top and sides
-regroup all 3 as 1

is this right plz corect me if I'm wrong

and do you know what to put in the cmp exporter settings box for the tutorial ship


don't bug me if I can't spell
coerct it if you want

wearwolf2500,

You have it right.... good work.

Which version exporter are you using?

Harrier


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

If no one has told you yet, OpenOffice.org is an open source office suite created for linux. However it has now been ported to windows and mac among others, it can handle .pdf as well as ms .doc and most other formats. It is by far the best office suite type software and is free in open source also. http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

have a good one and thanks for the great tutorial!

Cmp. exporter Version 0.2.1

don't bug me if I can't spell
coerct it if you want

Edited by - wearwolf2500 on 6/15/2004 8:36:27 AM

wearwolf2500,

I do not use 0.2.1, I have looked at it , and plan to use it for weapons, I think that the settings are about 1 though with scale you simply have to experiment. 0.2.1 is designed for ships with multilple components i.e. destructable. and can be used to modify existing cmp files. There is a thread under editing utilities, plus a readme comes with the .zip

I will find and insert a link Here

I Suggest you use the previous version for initial export as it is easier to use....

Harrier



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

Okay, I made my first ship today, but when I did the wings, it was sort of a trial & error vertex moving thing, so there's a couple of places where it dosen't connect to itself by a smidgeon, and there's some backfaces inside of the wings that need to be inverted that I cannot select, no matter the method I try. I really wanna get this ship up and running, but I need somoene's help to iron out the erros I've made. So, if anyone's willing to give me some help, I'd appreciate it.

~DrkLazarus

This may be an obvious question, I dunno... haven't spent a lot of time with the game or editing ships yet. But, anyway... is it possible to edit the original ships in the game? Like use them as templates or something? I know thats cheating and so on, and it would be infringing heaps of copyrights and stuff by putting 'em up for others to download, but I really, really, HATE the way the turret on the corsair titan can't fire forward!! Whats the point of having a Adv. debilitator turret on your ship if you can't use it?? All I want to do is relocate the turret hard point to a place on the ship where its got a proper 360-degree angle of fire. Of course, I wouldn't try and publicise it or anything, just for personal use only, but it's really bugging me. Any suggestions would be welcome...

Thanks for helping a clueless guy out.