** Tutorial ** - Making a new ship from scratch

    Hey Guys Im not sure if anyone has already said anything bout this and i really dnt wanna look thru so yea... I hav made a few diff ships and everytime wen i put them into freelancer they are really small. so i hav ten guns sticking out of nowhere. Can anyone help and say wat im doing wrong?

    When you go to export your ship in MilkShape you need to scale it by like 25-30. It´ll be huge but it´ll look right in freelancer. Another easier way to do it is to use FLModelTool. It can resize .sur files to fit your ship and everything. You can also use it to resize your ship without having to re-export it. Good luck.

    my real problem with custom ships is this, u fire a cball at them and they take like half the damage of a normal ship with the same armor, is this due to collision zones and is there a fix? ty damo

    Er... I´ve been having some problems. I have that invisible ship problem, and... I don´t know what to do. It´s no Dc_Type or whatever problem, I can see the hardpoints (guns) where they should be meaning it´s the right size, and the LOD range is 0, 2000. I don´t know if it´s a texture problem, but I flipped it vertically like I was supposed to... And the problem definitely isn´t where all the outside triangles show up black. Can anyone help me here? Graaaagh!!!

    Hey, Im a 3d animator, and I would dig to model sum cool ships for the game, im busy reading the existing tuts and it looks easy enough, hopefully milkshape or whatever can import popular 3d formats like autocad dwg or 3ds or stuff. If it does I can make AWESOME ships coz I built some already for another game im woring on. Interesting question, regarding taking existing battleships and making them playable, does anyone know how? If not Im sure I can make a reasonable simulacrum of the originals, or a slightly smaller more stylish version?

    i have folowed your directions and my ship that i have spent weeks on will not go into the game.....no crashes nothing but normal freelancer....it is as though shiparch.ini isn´t even getting edited....and no it is not readonly. i am totaly lost...please i realy want help....! my email is kable@swiftdsl.com.au

    sandiegospork, This has been done to death elsewhere.. but around 2 - 3000 or lower is cool for a fighter.. 5,000 should not be too much of a problem.. above than it comes down to more polys = less ships, less polys = more ships.. High polycounts should be avoided.. but Freelancer can render them, what you have to take into consideration is that all the equipment hanging off the ship, ai and npc ships and weapons, planets, bases, debris, asteroids etc... all add up, The lower that you can keep polycounts the better, build the detail into the texture not the model.. Harrier

    [img=http://members.optusnet.com.au/~audioele/mypic121.jpg] Retreat[!][!] ---- I`m too badly messed up now[!][!]

    Thanks Harrier. I know it had been answered elsewhere, as I´d seen the answer before, but when I went and spent an hour sifting through forums to find it, I just didn´t see it. Thanks again for answering me though! I think I´m gonna go find a way to drop my poly count a bit, and then post it in the works in progress board. _-=5p0rK=-_

    i have this cute lil problem... i think my CMP model isnt recognizing my MAT file... <img src=´http://dtx.gag-studios.net/my-prob.JPG ´> anything i should edit on the model you didnt tell yet? or is my whole system F***d up? edit: yes, i did use only 1 texture for the whole model Edited by - -DTX- on 10/5/2005 2:17:07 PM

    ___________________________ i can only say im good, nothing more... [img=http://dtx.gag-studios.net/DTX_bannerV4-2-00.gif]