The light is actually an easy fix, you have to define your second one as 02, if you add 01 again it thinks that you wanted just one (or some such nonsence). I had that prob too and I think its an err in the tutorial that its listed as 01 for both spots.

I'd suggest using HardCMP downloadble from here to do hardpoints,it's so much easier in my view

Well that would explain the lights. Thank you. And I'll check that program out.

Valkry3b,

I will send this in email and also post this same message in the thread so perhaps others can learn from it.

I have taken a good long look at the files you sent and this is what I found to date:

1. There are no textures in your mat file. If you open the file in utfedit you will see what I mean

You appear to have used the mat file exporter to export the .tga. textures and it hasn't worked as the texture panels are not square.. Panel sizes of:
98 x 39
419 x 287
489 x 413
will not work.. Textures need to be a multiple of 64 x 64 and 24 bit.. the preferred sizes are 128 x 128, 256 x 256, and 512 x 512 (.tga or dds - dtx3 - with mipmaps) panel sizes of 1024 x 1024 and 2048 x 2048 can also be .tga or .dds (dtx1 - no mipmaps) however .tga files are larger than .dds and MUST be flipped.. which can make mapping of ships somewhat interesting.. and in the larger sizes are very large indeed.. .dds on the other hand IMO have many positive features.. they are smaller files for the same res..(better compression) they can be saved in the smaller sizes with lods and they dont need to be flipped. The .mat file exporter seems to handle them better as well..

One other small point.. small detail items like impulse and glass can either be incorporated into the main texture panel as an insert.. or made in an 'acceptable' size for freelancer..i.e. 128 x 128 tho if needed Fl will support 64 x 64 but IMO are not worth the bother for ships.. though before someone jumps on me they are used elsewhere as are many of the texture panel sizes I've mentioned
2. The model seems to have exported ok but since the textures haven't I cant really tell
Hardpoints - could be better oriented and given that the centre of the triangle is the hardpoint they should be semi equilateral, your method of splitting faces then copying them as hardpoints seems odd.. as it also creates gaps in the mesh that may impede correct viewing.. at certain angles the ship could appear to have holes in it as you may look through the ship at untextured or 'back panels'.
Far better to create 3 vertex's on the 'y' plane and join them to make a new polygon.. which can then be moved into position and duplicated then mirrored and renamed.. while your method will still work it may mean extensive tweaking in HardCMP to orient/centralise hardpoints.. I always move my hardpoints for lights etc away from the hull
You also have duplicated faces that are not seen any of these that are untextured will throw an 'unable to load' type error/warning file into FLSpew.

Somewhere along the line whatever textures you applied got mashed up, primarily the hull texture.. perhaps in the conversion.. this seems to be the case as I cannot open any of the 'Discrete' max type files (nor import them into max) I suggest you get one of the free unwrapping program like lithium unwrap and use that to remap your textures.. the hull tex in particular looks 'odd'

Group order:

This has been hammered but is mainly ignored.. the best chance of success is
to:
make the largest group (most polys) FIRST and GIVE IT AN UNIQUE NAME .....(not box01) name it after the ship or something unique:

e.g 97_luft_balloons is an example of an unique name

Followed by the next largest etc... again it does not hurt to use unique names here as well.. and its not such a huge binder to do...
oooh.. and try to use unique texture names as well

Hardpoints are last:

First hardpoint: Hp/Fixed/HpMount followed by the balance of the fixed hardpoints then the revolute.. again look at freelancer files.. the structure in utf is preordained they may not be in the same order always but fixed always precedes revolute.. so I set up .ms3d files the same way.
That's it so far.. fix those small things and you may have more success

Then exchange your model for a known working native freelancer model and try it.. if it works then start playing with shiparch/goods and other ini files..

Harrier


Edited by - harrier on 4/28/2006 12:21:48 AM

HardCMP is great, thanks! I got all of the hardpoint issues fixed.

Sigh... Everything I did I did using what I thought the tutorial was telling me to do, I admit its not the newest one, but its maybe one version out of date. I can' believe that I messed up that badly. Oh well, maybe I should redo everything startign at the milk shape lvl, and use the newer tutorial. Thanks Harrier for the assictane. As for the hull texture, I made that and the glass one myself and didn't know about the size restrictions, that would explain why their so strange.

valkry3b,

Well I re-read the tutorial particularly the section devoted to exporting the ship and agree that it is a little 'sketchy' on some area's.. this is one section that seems to cause a great deal of problems one way or the other so perhaps a mini supplementary 'expansion' in this area is needed.. as while the information is available here it can be buried in another thread..

So.. to me it seems two things are needed..

1. Troll through the veritable mountain of threads .., (very very time consuming), and collect the salient bits into a reference thread..
or
2. Spend some time on a mini tute that outlines the steps most likely to result in success first time..

Harrier

Yeah... I just reread the new section on hardpoints, and the first thing it told me to do was duplicate the points I wanted to use, so... I guess if that is incorrect, it needs revision

I know I said I was going to start again, but I decided instead to salvage the model if possible. I fixed the size prob, its about the size of a standered ship now. And I fixed the skin, but oddly only in space and now there is a bit of a fuzzy area, not sure whats up. All I can say is yay it works, somewhat. Actually I think duplicating the hardpoints might be a good idea, you can move them about wherever you want, and they don't get skinned so they are invisible by nature, good for perfecting placement of stuff.

So, if you know what might be the prob with the skin (in the planet scenes, like after docking) or even why it might look fuzzy, it would be helpful. Oh also I used the version 1.5's suggested mat exporter, so that might have helped. - weired, the skin finally appeared on my last repair on the size of the ship... I dunno how but if it works... still, if you know what happend to it it would be nice to find out for my next ship


One other thing, I tried to make it a flmm, and it works with the manager, it just doesn't autoextract, know how to make it do so?

Also the turrets are not turning in a full 360 degree arc, any idea why?

thanks for all the help.

Edited by - valkry3b on 4/30/2006 11:06:20 PM

Edited by - valkry3b on 5/1/2006 12:36:37 AM

Edited by - valkry3b on 5/1/2006 1:11:11 AM

I have a problem ...
freelancer crashes when i want to buy my ship and in milkshape i don't see my textures.

Who can help me please?

Hmm looks like this topic is dying, but I have a question.

In MilkShape I added two seperate engine HPs. I set Shiparch to display 2 seperate exhaust trails, one from each engine hp, but I am unable to actually mount my second engine. (The second engine glow shws up anyway.) I tried to find something in the ini, but the only mention of engines i could see was under something about shields (right above the other HPs.) I added my 2nd engine to the list but still nothing happened.

I noticed that in thr Rebalance Mod, when you purchase the Death Scythe, it comes with 2 engines; however, if you accidentally disconnect one your screwed cuz after that only one can be attached. Will I have to edit it so I have my own 2 special engines? (I had to skip the part of the tutorial about creating my own engine and powerplant, as well as my own ship info cuz that caused the game to crash from the start for me. I went with the bare bones this time.)

Also, my DOB (or whatever it's called) is set to 999999 and my ship is still invisible when docking and cruising. Could this be only cuz I haven't gotten my textures on right? They show up in HARDCmp and in the thumbnail while purchasing, but not on the ship itself. Maybe this is because I have no freaking clue what you mean by "flip the texture vertically for the MAT" especially when the auto-MAT-program-thing selects my normal textures automatically?

Thanks for any help... hope someone reads this

Edited by - bjj8383 on 6/24/2006 3:06:41 PM

well, fllipping the tga is only to do with orientation, for instance if you just put the tga in it will be upsidown, as in if you had a picture of an a at the front of the ship, it might end up on the bottom of the ship at the back, its just way it looks ingame, and as for your missing textures, use the new version of the milkshape exporter, it can create the (I think its the) .mat file, that one you had to make using a special program where you told the program where to find the textures. Also Harrier had some advice about textures from when I was having a similer prob :

---

You appear to have used the mat file exporter to export the .tga. textures and it hasn't worked as the texture panels are not square.. Panel sizes of:
98 x 39
419 x 287
489 x 413
will not work.. Textures need to be a multiple of 64 x 64 and 24 bit.. the preferred sizes are 128 x 128, 256 x 256, and 512 x 512 (.tga or dds - dtx3 - with mipmaps) panel sizes of 1024 x 1024 and 2048 x 2048 can also be .tga or .dds (dtx1 - no mipmaps) however .tga files are larger than .dds and MUST be flipped.. which can make mapping of ships somewhat interesting.. and in the larger sizes are very large indeed.. .dds on the other hand IMO have many positive features.. they are smaller files for the same res..(better compression) they can be saved in the smaller sizes with lods and they dont need to be flipped. The .mat file exporter seems to handle them better as well..

---

And about the engines, make sure you don't name them both engine mount 01, if you do it only draws one, I dunno if that helps but I hope it does. And you only need to have a view length of 0, 2000. All that means is that your ship can be seen from the distance of 0 to 2K.

Good Luck, hope I helped, somewhat.

Edited by - parabolix on 7/4/2006 11:41:37 PM

Hi Again,

...One other small thing on larger texture sizes..

At 1024 x 1024 and 2048 x 2048.. you have the option of saving (with the .dds plugin for photoshop), with or without alpha channels.. for texture panels that DO NOT contain lit panels or transparencies.. i.e. cockpit glass.. etc.. these can be saved without and it makes little difference to Freelancer plus saves a little on the file sizes.. tho if the panels contain 'effects' i.e. textures on glass then the alpha channels which play a part SHOULD be included.. havent played much with planetary textures but I suspect the same may be true of them..

Harrier

Hey!

Great tutorial btw. very rewarding when it loads up...

Until it comes to buying the ship in the game. For example i can load the game up until i get to the point of buying the ship. When i speak to the dealer i can view the ship, however when I click select ship the game crashes. Please Help!!!

Hi and a big thanks for the super tutorial made by Drizzt4.0 AKA [DOA_Dragon, Jerimiah Meyer !

I have a problem with a crash that i havnt seen on these forums, the problem:

- Freelancer singleplayer crashes as i hit "Buy" after selecting my added ship.

Second Problem:

- The ships info is correct, but the stats are wrong, also all you can see of the ship is the little "dot" just above my mousepointer (as shown in the ss below), i belive that is the Thruster. Also the ship seems very large if i compare the time it takes for my "dot" to go a full lap with any of the two other original ships. I used the xyz scale to 50 as said in the tutorial. Anyways here's the ss:



This is what the fighter looks like at the moment, it is a little modified version of Drizzt tutorial fighter.



here is a link to the actual mod i've made maybe you can find the error?

RavenMod

Applications used to create this mod:

- Complete Freelancer Ship Editing & Creating Tutorial V1.4.pdf
- acdseepro
- fled-ids.zip
- gmax12.exe
- ms3d179.zip with ms3d_cmp_exporter.zip
- utf_edit__static_mfc.zip
- FreelancerSDK-v1.3full.zip

Thanks in advance