Um... why would you re-import the CMP back into MS3D? That's definately not in the instructions

i was just trying it

but i did anyways . so what about the grey and upsidown-ness ?

What does re-importing a CMP that you've already successfully exported have to do with skinning? <sigh> ... At any rate, the basic answer to your question is that it's upside down because you have to export models from MS3D upside down so that they're rightside-up in FL (FL uses a reversed coordinate system, which is annoying but not uncommon). It's gray because you don't have a Material on it. If you can't figure out how the MAT Export Plugin works... please, go read Drizzt's Tutorial. This is about how to skin... not how to make ships for FL...

Is there a comparable freeware program that can handel the tasks you used photoshop for? Call me cheap but Photoshop is way outside my price range.

I found an open source program called GIMP that seems to have most of the features needed. Here is a link for anyone who is interested: link

The GIMP can handle the TGA format alright but it can't use the DDS format, I haven't found any free programs that can use them. Paintshop and Photoshop are the only ones (so far) that I've found that can use DDS.

**shuffles of with a new headache**

...

Edited by - Argh on 2/28/2007 12:05:49 PM

Here is the Correct DDS plugin for PSP9 users.

I tried DXTbitmap (freeware) and the settings were correct, but FL choked. I got PSP to do it after tweaking it.

Thanks Argh for this great info.

Thanks for a well laid out tutorial.
The only thing I was looking for a little more depth on was the light mapping stuff. If one were to include lighting in the texture, does a second texture specifying the actual lit areas need to be made and included? (white areas lit, black non-lit) Or does it go by color matching to determine which areas are lit? I ask because the main part of my texture would be rather non-metalic (think invid scouts from old robotech), while the lighting would be mostly green except for the eye which would be yellow.

The answer to that is that the lightmap is a second 16-bit DDS file, that will use the RGB values, not just the gray values, to determine the final light level. IOW, you can use colored lights- you're not forced to use a grayscale alpha. Just make a DDS DXT1 file, using whatever areas you want lit up against a black background (iow, layers are your friend). It takes a little practice, and you have to set up the .CMP correctly to get the glow effect working, but once you do, it's very versatile!

Thanks for the speedy reply Argh =) looking forward to giving this a shot