It's just HardCMP's representation of hardpoints. The Milkshape exporter requires a triangle with the center being the average distance between the three points and the orientation forward being the vertex closest to the center point.

Because HardCMP uses a cube to represent a hardpoint, the "bottom" of the hardpoint isn't the bottom of the cube, it's the center. It makes sense once you figure it out though. It's just another way of doing it.
Personally I prefer using the triangles in milkshape as moving and rotating them are a lot faster then in hardCMP, and orientating them is a lot easier. BUT, you can't set the weapon angles in milkshape when setting up weapons.

AluminumHaste,

Ahh.. I understand.. I guess it's just that I've been using utf to hand locate my hardpoints not HardCmp..

Btw... you can set hardpoints on angles in milkshape and they will export at that angle, tho - the 'face' side of a hardpoint is the normal 'up' or 'down'.. and a hardpoint may simply 'attach itself to the nearest model poly.. They dont like to just 'sit in space' and usually have to be edited for orientation ..
and since the .cmp exporter is not perfect.. and things go 'wonky', I was 'educated' by Glock36, to fix it in utf.. the fact that you can do the same thing much simpler in Hardcmp.. is a boon but not the whole answer..

I said I was old fashioned...

Harrier

Yeah, I know, that's what I liked about setting up hardpoints in milkshape. You can rotate them and move them a lot faster than in hardcmp and doing it in utf edit must be a pain in the ass.

AluminumHaste,

Actually doing it in utf is not so bad once you have done a couple.. the only real problem is working out the 'position' co-ords.. but you can do that in milkshape by exporting a .cmp.. looking at weapon positions in game.. then adjust.. fine tune position etc.. Then it's fairly simple to sort out, and or 'lock' orientation particularly to exact 'plane' values, you can even adjust the arc the weapons fires and tracks in to stop longer barrelled weapons traversing 'into' the hull - take a look at the weapon max's and min's for the Kusari Drake and you'll see what I mean - however to my knowledge the only thing that can be locked into a fixed position are torps, which have no depression/elevation arcs.. Now before you start shouting.. hey..... you can lock any weapon to fixed .. you can even make it so the whole bloody ship must be lined up to guarantee accuracy, the depression/elevation values have not yet been cracked (to my knowledge) for weapons.. i.e. Guns.. making a 'fixed' weapon 'true' or 'false' is done mainly in ini's.

The combination of exporting to .cmp, adjusting weapon arcs etc in both utf and HardCMP.. is the solution that to me results in a 'cleaner' ship, and one that presents freelancer with 0.000000 values to work with rather than 0.999789.. etc.. that it has to calculate..

There are values that I can provide for 'absolute' up down parallel to the 'flat' plane if you want them..

Now i may be wrong,, but to me the 'cleaner' a ship is MATHEMATICALLY then the less calcuation of values in game by the 'engine' ... and the better the game runs, and the ship behaves..

Harrier

Edited by - harrier on 6/16/2005 11:26:36 PM