Ship mesh Importing Problem

Ok guys, here's the problem...

Made my first Freelancer ship mesh...

Exported it from C4D as an obj file...
Imported to Milkshape...
Re assigned the materials names MS didnt bother reading from the obj file, sorted out the direction of the mesh normals MS didnt bother reading from the obj file...
Exported meshs from MS as a cmp and sur...
Added the missing part info etc, that the exported didnt sort properly, also added con/rev node and data for baydoor anim support, and added an animation node via the utf editor.
Created a mat file...

Ship loads ok in hardcmp, looks ok, everything there, sur file viewable, and fits.
Ship loads in FL, its hardpointed, basic script done to make it flyable, loadout with some temp turrets that dont look right till the custom ones are done.

BUT...
Bay doors seem to be missing, have no clue where they have gone to...
and the surfile isn't picking up hits, except for the occasional one at the extremes of the bow and stern, I think it's a radius problem but I'm not sure.

Ship is 140 m long, fairly even centered plus/minis 70, 22m high, 27m wide, flmodeltool suggests radius of 89.9, so I set it to 90 via the utf editor, only time it takes hits is bow stern collisions, real rare shots as the npcs aim for the center of the hull, 70 m away, or collisions in debris fields.

Other than that, it seems to work fine, handles ok, the mass settings in the sur seem to be about right, its just the missing doors and the dammed shots sailing through the hull...

Like I said this is my first FL ship so I've probably done something stupid, so, anybody got any ideas?

http://lancersreactor.org/inde…hotoID=435#profileContent

Thanks.

Nah, cargo bay doors, two of em, 15m long 2.5m wide each are on the underbelly, in the belly between the lower for and aft turrets. Cargobay is big enough you could carry a Liberty Patriot in there without scratching the paintwork...

There is an animation node in the cmp, but I havnt edited it yet to change it from the mesh names of the source ship (li-freighter baydoor1 baydoor2) to the meshes on the new ship (ad-dest-01-bay-port ad-dest-01-bay-star) since cargobay doors wernt my first priority. the mesh names all seem to be ok, first thing i checked.

The cmp files UTF tree

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

i assume that its a spliced sur - right?

Nope, custom fit sur mesh, made, as was the ship mesh, in C4D, then exported to Milkshape for fl format conversion.

Single skin, the sur exporter added a 'shrink wrap' style large ship shield around that, loads fine in hardcmp, all seems to be there, and it doies seem to pick up hits and collisions at the extremities...

Strictly speaking, animated cargo bay doors are a fairly low priority, getting the main sur to take hits is far more important, as for the need for a multi part sur, I wonder, some of the vanilla turrets for example have scfire anims, but only have single part surs as the anims take place entirly with in the boundry of the sur, soooooo....

If the bay doors fold INWARDS, they dont need their own surs but can hapliy animate within the main hull's sur?

Frankly, if the worst comes to the worst, I'll just make the doors a fixed part of the main mesh, baydoor anims are icing on the cake.

So, real question, could the failure to pick up hits in the center of the ship be a radius problem?, or something else?

ok, just checked the entries for the meshes again... the mainhull has a radius, but the bay doors dont... radius 0 !!!! And the centers dont match up with the meshes, fixed that. So setting their radius to match the rest of the ship, see if this makes the game engine show the damm things....

Hahahahahaha! Yeah bay doors showing up finally.... And in the right place...

Meanwhile, tried re exporting the sur, did two varients, one with a fighter style bubble shield, one shrink wrappeed, both show up fine in Hardcmp, the bubble didnt register any hits ingame...

The shrink wrap does register hits, but only on or near the bows, and if i ram something like a station, it picks up a collision about 15m infront of the ship, where there is no part of the sur at all, I can reverse the ship into a station wall untill I get to about 15 m of the bows, basically its only working within 15 units of the HpMount

Gah!

Oooohhh, a new exporter toy, thanks, I'll give it a try, obj format isn't a problem, it's what I use to pass meshes from C4D to MS anyway...

Ok, tried it... bad news good news scenario...

The sur it exported crashes hardcmp, but... It picks up hits just fine, seems perfect...

You're a total star!

Quick question, do you have any info on what part of a sur file I need to hex edit to add mass/inertia data as the new converter doesnt ask for that info like the mssurexporter 1.1 did (fyi, I had tried using the ms sur exporter to export a simple box from ms184 and the sur it made, just from a big box, also did the freaky only works within 15m of the hpmount thing too, and adoxa's 1.3 ms exporter wont even show on the ms export plugins list... sigh)

Is there any info on which way round the mesh has to be, like the old ms exporters back-to-front/upsidedown option, or scaling, since it wont show in hardcmp for me to check visually.

Well, I used the older version of mssurimport (adoxa, your newer version crashed ms again, same dll prob? dling directx updates as i type, and i grabbed a _42.dll) to reimport the custom sur i had already exported with mssurexport 1.1, stripped off the autoadded 'shrinkwrap' shield, and exported as obj, so from what I read in the tut on this converter (other thread), its the right size and orientation..., thats cool.

As for the dll issue, bloody winbloat 7, I've installed directx 9c (auto install when i loaded a game up, but 7 seems to interfeer, it didnt install a whole range of the dlls, like most of the late 30's, so missing 42 doesnt come as a suprise, lets hope the new dirextx from the microbloat dl center for win 7 has all its bits.

Well, I've given up on the 1.3 exporter, I'm afraid... I did get it running with the new dlls, but...

It crashes during export if I DONT disable directx mesh reduction. When I disable mesh reduction it exported the sur, but on reimporting the sur to check it, and viewing it in hardCMP, I found it had UNwelded 1 vert, leaving a hole in the resulting sur mesh, any attempt to run fl with that sur produced hang crashes, in case it was a 'concave' thing generally with the mesh, I added entries to concave.ini, no dice, even tried exporting a damm cube as a sur, no dice...

I ended up using the obj-sur converter suggested by Swat, all it produces is a shrinkwrap mesh rather than a nice form fitted sur with a shrinkwrap or bubble shield as per option, but, the sur it produces works in hardcmp, and more importantly, the game, and while it isnt perfect, its good enough, better than most custom ship using vanilla surs.

Ships in the game and runs, takes hits collides with things, and has a sur thats damm near the right shape, that will do, cant waste anymore time on this, got the turrets to do, and escorts and loadsa stuff, one woman modding team, can't sit back and wait for my teamies to finish the mod for me... I might go back and make a nicer, spliced multipart sur, later for version 2...

So, does anybody remember how you hex edit a sur to set the correct ship mass for anti spin etc.