i cant get milk shape to work on my computer, so is there a way to do the texture stuff and the hardpoint stuff in gmax?

HAILS TO THE KING BABY, TO THE HERO OF THE DAY !!!!

Reverting the triangle made it, now the "great converting session" will be started !!!
When I'm done with my mod (will take time, but getting to work the models was the vital thing), you and all others who helped me will get a memorial in the game, I promise !!!

Thx so much
Khan Goldi


btw.: anybody knows of a working hardpoint tutorial ? Don't get a simple 90' facing to work. Have some tutorials already read, but I don't get to work the last set of coordinates...

hey all

im a n00b at this and just dwnloded that tutorial by drizzt, everything went fine i made the jet in gmax and everything, but i cant export to MD3! i got the exporter, did wut i wuz supposed to with it, but i could only export in P3d (plasma) format! after that i tried some other exporters, they didnt work, i looked all over the net and couldnt find any info that wuz useful to me......HELP!

Ok, thanks drizzt4.0 for making that helpful tutorial. I followed the intructions, everything went off without a hitch besides the links given were somewhat off not by your error but because the site for the quake three export file had changed thier directories a bit so you had to search a little bit. I assume thats the problem some of you are having in getting it and all I can say is use commen sense and you'll find it. Just look where the link directs you and then go to that site without the subdirectories. Its still there just gotta do your own footwork, don't be lazy people. Anyways on with the question... I made two ships no problems and then... I was creating a model for an Starcraft line of ships I am making. You know the terran Battlecruiser? Well if you played starcraft you might know but if not thats of no consiquence. The ppoint is I spent hours and hours going into great of detail as possible and even spent a very long time checking the scale to be sure it would balance out the way I wanted. Then when I went to export it tells me there is no one on one correspondence for texture to blah blah blah... it said that the previous times as well because theres no textures yet. But it also said that there are possibly errors in my uv map. I dont remember if it said that with the other ships but I think so. But when I try to import in milkshape, I get nothing more than a deforming oversized three dimensional BLOB with no real shape at all. I'm like wtf? I retried and rechecked all my movements for like 2 hours and even backracked in some of my final movements before the shrinkrap process and uv map. So, I hate asking for help and hate looking stupid, but I am forced to turn to a greater experienced one such as yourself. Have you seen this case before and do you know what mistakes or elements can cause this? The only details I can give that may be diferent from the other two ships is this: the scale is by 1000 ( I wanted to see how big I could make it lol) and there are 2 seperate polys that have been created seperatly and later were fused or attached to one another to make just one poly. But G-max does recognize just one poly at this point so I can't figure how that could become a problem. I made no errors in this ship I am sure and did not delete anything and have searched inside and out of the ship (making parts transparent so as to check any points or polys that could be hidden inside by chance) and there seems to be not one error that I can find. Maybe I just don't know what I am looking for. But although in G-max the ship is seemingly flawless asside from lack of texture, hardpoint, and cockpit, no matter what I try milkshape only recognizes the same shapeless blob! In the non perspective views i get a mass of lines and points that are just literally scrambled in no particular pattern, just an insane work of random art! Hmm.. I have a headache. If anyone would have an idea of what went wrong, that would be great. I am willing to regretably remake the hsip entirely if need be, but I don't want to end up in the same position again by not learning from this mistake. So before I continue I have to get to the bottom of this. Thank you in advance to any that can help.

Chibi

im sorry but i cant help with the regcodes... discreet kinda yelled at me.

shayne: missiles are revolute. so are any guns or weapons. groups are used to both make it easier to work on your ship and to make it easier to texture a ship as each group you make can only have one texture. and yes all hps have their own group as they are individual objects and as far as the exporter goes i dont know what one you are using so i cant answer that... but the level of your ship is declared in the shiparch.ini file. and for the exporting orientation.... find your front view window... the one where you would normally find the nose of your ship pointing towards you and then turn your ship completely around so you see the tail instead and then flip it upside down.

sublime... try downloading the most recent dll files for ms3d from chumbalumb site... (did i get that right? lol)

Shayne: second posting... there is only one tractor point allowed on a ship so no need to put a number after it, and the same with the mount. almost everything else you can add more than one of so they must be declared seperately... ie 01, 02, 03 etc...
contrails are the wind lines off of your wings. if there are 2 you would need a 01, and 02
ok and as the different kind of turrets go.... those arent declared on your ship but in the ini files... i think that would be declared in the shiparch but at the moment im not sure. what we are using the numbers for is to seperate weapons and give them an order like how in the equipment dealer you have the guns goin from top to bottom in an order... this is the same thing. weapon01 and 02 are usually best placed near the middle of the ship or on the nose while 04 and 05 or the last guns or missiles are near the outside of the ship... like on the tips of the eagle's wings. help any??? and your great textures have to be made to fit nicely on your ship in ms3d.. you fit them in the windows-> texture coordinate manager.

Tha Jev: gmax and any other program shouldnt need an additional exporter the only one you need is the cmp exporter for milkshape... try exporting your ship from gmax using the autodesk .3ds format and importing it with the same format once you are in ms3d. then when your done with your ship you want to export using the freelancer cmp exporter.

ChibiSphere:
yes i have had this problem before but only when ive done alot of cloning of objects.. when you do alot of cloning and copying your just asking for trouble and a jigsaw puzzle to put together when you import it to ms3d... all i can say is dont clone unless youre use to it. beyond that i dont rightly know what would cause the blob. and dont make your ship big in gmax.. start small and scale it after youve finished it in ms3d.
oh and try to stay away from REALLY complex designs... in other words if you have more than 2000 pollys ITS TOO DETAILED and will slow down freelancer. id like to see what you got though... mail me the design in the gmax format or .3ds format.

thanks for helping with my prob drizzt, but it didnt work, (either that or i read it wrong), anyway, i may not have told you, i can ONLY export as .p3d, the dropdown list only says .p3d, or "All file Formats", if i choose all file formats, and try to save it as myname.3ds, it gives me a window that says: "Don't know how to export that filetype", i get the same message if i try to export as .md3, sorry to keep bothering u guys, but im completely lost!

im sorry... im so used to using 3dsmax now i forgot that you do need a plugin to export in gmax.

i tried this one out and ive had no problems with it.

this link should work i used it today. just export it to the gmax\plugins folder and when you open the export dialogue it should be the first thing you see in the save as drop down box.

shayne

Don't include the hardpoint meshes in the number of groups. If you are exporting the ship as 1 model, not multiple parts, use the default group quantity of 1. The hardpoints are not exported, only used to calculate positions etc.

When exporting the ship with multiple parts for use with .sur files etc, only group ship meshes together.

Example.

Ship made up of 6 meshes - shipname, cockpit, glass, port wing, starboard wing, tail fin + the many hardpoint meshes(triangles)

Exporting as 4 groups

Group 1
1st mesh = shipname
2nd mesh = cockpit
3rd mesh = glass

Group 2
4th mesh = port wing

Group 3
5th mesh = starboard wing

Group 4
6th mesh = tail fin

All hardpoint meshes should follow the model meshes

The entries to put into the exporter would be as follows

Number Of Groups = 4
Group 1 = 3
Group 2 = 1
Group 3 = 1
Group 4 = 1

Hope this helps.

I really want to kick Discreet's *** for the hell they are causing me i even used my grandpas email address and I registered FIVE times and still nothing!
I really want to givce them a ****ing ***wooping since thy are halting my website design because of it!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.S. sorry for the lang and i really didnt say it; i used those star things!(*)

colinS

thanks that fixed every thing. just exported me first mod (kids are wraped)
me to. lol
downloaded mat file exporter, exported mat file l think !
downloaded utf editor, opened up file vulture (access table) file.
looks like l`m done but not shore !
l have a access table file,ms3d file, cmp file and a ces file
this looks like a freelancer file

is that it ? (except the ini files)

never heard of the ces file... that must be from the new mat creator... is that what you used? but yeah excluding the .ini files that about does it.

Hi, first of all: great tutorial!!! I didn't have any problems (almost) understanding it. However i can't really get my ship to work... I can buy it, and the game don't crash or something like that, but it's invisible...lol
I have changed the LOD to 0,2000. Does it have something to do with the textures not loading correctly? In that case, shouldn't the ship be white?
Should the textures in the mat file be flipped horisontally or vertically?

I wanted to submit a screenshot, but it seems like it's not possible...
Please help!

couple of things! i am still pritty low at moddin so all this about creating ships is kinda confusing! but if i had time to really read into it im sure it wud be good!(too much coursework!!)neway! has anyone ever made a star trek ship, was just thinking that wud look really cool! lol second! and i dont mean to be a pest! but is there some place where it wud make it soo much easier for me and loads of other people wher we can download premade custom ships? please would be so grateful! thanks!
Gizmoeddy

Dead men dont lie!

Hi it's me again, this time with a problem. After the great success of the Vampire X2000 , I've now almost completed the F6F Hellcat. When I tried it out in freelancer everything worked perfectly, so I desided to try it out with the Vampire. That's were the problem started. When I'm docked on anything both ships have the same graphic, eg if I'm flying the Vampire and I dock to buy the Hellcat, the Hellcat will look as if it's exactly the same as the Vampire. When I'm in space though the ships are normal. Does anyone know what could have caused this? I've tried having both ships as seperate mods and in one mod, but the problem persists.