I wrote a Tutorial on this which can be found:

Click here

Freeworlds Mod Developer
Author of Modular Station

'There is no Good nor Evil in the universe, just perceptions and circumstances.'

You are now one of my new heros, gracias senor

Newest member of the Asylum51 IGI development team

that was an extremley helpful thread and Im working on some props right now.

However, I also wanted to be able to edit the actual character meshes, not to put them in the rooms you see when you dock, but to have them visable through windows as you fly by while still in space. To fly up to the base and look through a glass panel and see some models inside. Obviously they wont be animated but I just thought that would be fun and wanted to use the freelancer models make it feel as much like freelancer as possible. If this doesnt work, I can use the model and texture editor in The Sims to import realistic character models into milkshape.

Newest member of the Asylum51 IGI development team

For that, you'd be looking at building custom stations (or converting existing ones to have internal rooms beyond the windows) and then put the figures into the model. Be careful though, the polygon counts should try to be kept to below 11'000 (you can push it a bit more than this, but I wouldn't recommend it, especially for MP mods). The problem with people models is that they tend to have higher polygons. I don't think I've heard though of any one being able to convert the DFM mesh over to something that can be editted yet, but the DFM can not be used in the normal universe game files outside of the room THN's, you have to use CMP's for that.

Ok, got it. My plan was to import the dfm files into milkshape and then export the base as a cmp with the character models inside (part of the base cmp). Also the base is going to be split in several different parts that Glock will then link together so I can put more polygons in. But, apparently and unfortunatley, theres is no way to import dfm files . Oh well, ill just use either sims models or a model I built myself to populate the base.

And I just wanted to say thank you again for the excelent tutorial on dfm texture editing and prop building. It's a huge help.

Newest member of the Asylum51 IGI development team

Splitting the base down still won't solve the polygon count issue as peoples screen will be still showing the combined total of polygons. The more polygons that appear on screen at the same time will result in problems as lower end graphics card have trouble coping with the number of polygons it is trying to work out.

Basically, whenever part of an object is being drawn by FL's 3D engine... the whole object's being drawn (and culled) from that update. You could make a number of seperate objects and bring them all to the same locations, though, which would get rid of this problem- that's one of the reasons why DA built their Stations with modular parts. It's a little more painful to program the Stations that way, but it's higher performance in the game engine