Hi POLY model HELP!

I'm making some progress with a very detailed jedistarfighter. I just finnished the model it'self textures & all. Now I need to port it to FL. I export the ship piee by piece into milkshape as it's tringle count is over 65k. The main part of the ship is FL worthy now. I now have a hll without a cockpit and engines. How do I attach the other two exactly as I knowthey should be?
PLS help! I know the osiris battleshipis made kinda the same way so I know it's possible...

this is the ship:

This is what I haveso far:

65K ????

and milkshape hasn't crashed once you went past 10K polys?

Even the Osiris has a low poly count.

no, it renders fine up to 65k after that it f*** everything up. anyways what is that triangle replication thing that knife is talking about?

It's a beautiful ship, Nym, excellent work.

I don't know if I can help except to say you do need to reduce your poly count, such a high one will cause some processing overhead and is not necessary to maintain your level of detail - spend some time on a part to reduce the faces on flat areas and you will see that this is true.

Knife, my friend...

Quote

replicate triangle in where you want engine in milkshape,
rename texture for that new created triangle to HpEngine01,
if u have more do same for all triangles
HpEngine01, HpEngine02....
in shiparch give that name to engine, ie put all of 01,02, etc in shiparch too

I do detest incomplete info, knowing that new people read this stuff and are totally thrown off track by it.

And also remember that people like me who do have the experience dislike reading it too.

General
Firstly remember that your ship should be made in several groups if you want it to break apart when it's destroyed in the game, even if you don't want to have small destructible parts (like a wing tip breaking off but still being able to fly the ship). FL will separate (explode) the groups of the model when the ship is destroyed. Nice.

This point is especially important if you want to make a custom .sur file for a large ship, without a huge shield bubble, which follows the shape of your ship. This is because to make such a .sur file it will have to be made in several parts which are all convex and "stitched together" using Sur-Splicer, and each .sur part must be attached to a different model group by its name. That is another subject.

Hardpoints in MilkShape:-

First, be aware of the following problems in using this method:-

1. The exporter will attach a hardpoint to the ship group (part) that it thinks it is mounted onto. This may often be incorrect, a when a wing gets blown off the weapons that are supposed to be mounted on it will still be present in empty space!! This cannot be fixed unless the hardpoint is deleted and remade in HardCMP (easy) or UTF Edit (hard).

2. The hardpoints may well be facing incorrectly (orientation). This is easily fixed in HardCMP.

Process
... Make a triangle with one side a little shorter than the other two, so that it appears like a wide arrow-head. Now turn it to point in the direction (orientation) that you want in each axis, using the long tip as the forward direction.
... Rename it to "Hp|Fixed|HpEngine01" or "Hp|Revolute|HpWeapon01" or "Hp|Revolute|HpTurret01" etc. Why? Because Revolute hardpoints like weapons and turrets have weapon axis and left/right swivel (turn) values to track their targets, and fixed ones like fixed cannons, tractors, engines, HpMount, Mines and Countermeasures and so on don't.

You will need at least the following hardpoints:-
Hp|Fixed|HpMount
Hp|Fixed|HpTractor_source
Hp|Fixed|HpShield01
Hp|Fixed|HpEngine01
Hp|Revolute|HpWeapon01

Optional hardpoints (replace 01 with 02, 03 etc for more than one):-
Hp|Fixed|HpMine01
Hp|Fixed|HpCM01
Hp|Fixed|HpThruster01
Hp|Fixed|HpCockpit
Hp|Fixed|HpPilot
Hp|Fixed|HpHeadlight01
Hp|Fixed|HpRunningLight01
Hp|Fixed|HpDockLight01
Hp|Fixed|HpContrail01
Hp|Fixed|HpEngineGlow01
Hp|Revolute|HpTurret01

Use numbers where they are shown, if there is no number you don't need one.

If you want more than 9 hardpoints of a certain type, name them Hpxxx010 to Hpxxx099, in some areas (e.g.engines if I remember) naming them HpEngine10 will not work, they won't show in the game. HpEngine010 is correct.

Note:- You do NOT need an HpScanner hardpoint, I have seen so many!

When you have made all your hardpoints and positioned them and named them correctly, make sure they are listed at the bottom of the MilkShape Groups list, after all the groups for your model.

Now you can export the model. Then open it in HardCMP and check the orientation of the hardpoints. You will probably find that some are squashed, and/or badly oriented. If they appear squashed don't worry, just fix the orient values and they will re-appear as cubes again.

Note:- the actual attachment point is the middle of the hardpoint cube, and the cube size is about 1 metre x 1metre x 1 metre in the game. So if you attach the base of the cube to the ship surface, your weapon will be mounted about half a metre above the ship surface in the game - floating weapons!

Once you have fixed your hardpoints / made new ones, and saved the model, you can make your entries in shiparch.ini, goods.ini, loadouts.ini / loadouts_special.ini / loadouts_utility.ini, faction_prop.ini, npcships.ini, and MSHIPPROPS.INI (most people miss this one!).

Note on shield_link in shiparch.ini:-

This is the only correct entry type (shield type can be different and number of HpShieldxx hardpoints too of course):-
shield_link = l_freighter_shield01, HpMount, HpShield01, HpShield02, HpShield03

This next example is nonsense and may well cause some of the random crashes:-
shield_link = l_freighter_shield01, HpMount, HpShield01, HpEngine01, HpEngine02, HpCM01

Why do people attach shields to engines and other non-shield hardpoints?? Make enough HpShieldxx hardpoints to cover your ship, and spread the hardpoints along / across your ship. Each shield is good to cover about 300 metres of your ship.

AMEN!

Also, no disrespect intended on such a beautiful rendering..
You should have a look at this line from the dacom.ini...

;EMAURER added this line to fix problem with runtime alchemy running out of vertex buffer
;maxVertices and maxIndices are now determined by alchemy based on the particle pools
;Alchemy.maxVertices ~= 11100
;Alchemy.maxIndices ~= 28200

That should tell you what the approximate max should be.

Making it parts-destructible is one thing, but...

I think he means that he can't export the REST of the ship model, because they will end up in a separate cmp file, or when using the update function of the cmp exporter, in a separate VMeshData section, which doesn't help. He just can't export it all in one go because MilkShape can't handle so many polygons.

My guess is that your best shot is: Exporting the rest of the ship into a separate file, and link them to the ship the same way cargo pods are linked to Transport Ships. I do not know exactly how to do that, but it should be vaguely like this - if you follow me closely you might get a shot at it and figure it out yourself... So.

- First, export as much of the ship as you can as a cmp (like you already did)
- Locate where the transport ship cargo pods are in the Freelancer folder - yes, I should have told you this, but I don't know where they are, and haven't the time to search through every folder.
- Export the rest of the ship like one of those pods.. a 3db if they are a 3db, a cmp if they are a cmp...
- Set up hardpoints in your main ship (HpParent I think?) that will be the connection points for the other parts of yours ship - resort to the Transport's CMP to see exactly how to do it.
- Set up hardpoints for your "rest of your ship" (HpConnect?) as the connection points. Resort to the transport ship cargo pods to see how it's done..
- Link the pods "rest of ship" to your main ship - it is done through one of the ini files in the equipment folder - exactly which, I have no clue at the moment.. search for those cargo pods.. It should be some [CargoPod] or something like that sort of entry.
- If you are lucky that might just work. I never tried it - but I guess it should.

Assuming I understood your problem correctly.

Edit: DATA\EQUIPMENT\MODELS\COMMODITIES\TURRETS is the folder for the cargo pods (at least for me)

I believe what you're referring to about the Osiris (and many other vanilla ships) are the damage parts. But if you open up the main ship .cmp, you'll find that it's a complete model -with all the parts exported into one file. So you will* want to export the whole thing into one file, using multiple groups to set up your components. That is, if you wish for pieces to blow off and look thrashed.

As for poly count and such, if 65k or so is the limit, what happens when you get patrols and other ships flying by a complex station? That'll be a heap of polys onscreen at once and may cause your computer to plot your demise. Personally, I was always better at creating 3d structures -and lots of them- than I was at texturing. But in an FPS oriented gaming environment, low poly modeling is essential. Much can be accomplished by simulated structures and details, to reduce the count and ensure players using your model don't slit their wrists waiting for the next frame to render. Toss in some drop shadowing and some simulated lighting in the Dt texturing, and add Glow mapping and your model looks badass with 2k - 5k triangles.

Texturing is always more time consuming than the modeling, but its well worth the effort and can be fun experimenting.

Have a look at those two posts, they are what make me believe that he is actually having a problem with getting the whole model actually into in-game and not the dmg parts:

Rankor said: 65k?? And doesn't milkshape crash when you go over 10k polys?
And Nym's answer was: Nope, it renders fine up to 65k, but over that it is all messed up.

So I guess the model is MORE than 65k polies, and the problem is getting them exported in one go (or in any way).

I know what you are saying but there is a small problem... for example in the screenshots you can clearly see that the engines are cut out of the main hull...if I don't attach them exactly as they should be there wll be empty spaces between the hull and the place where the engines should fit perfectly.... If I load the hull into milkshape, and then add the engines, they are not loaded into the hull, they are placed in the scene but further away from the hull and not evel close to the place where the cut out shape is... I can't edit their coordinates perfectly by eye... I need a way to fix this...a way to import the coordinates from 3ds into milkshape so that when I add other components to the scene they will appear where they should be.

Help me get through this ppl and I'll throw this baby into the mod (only 4k poly)

Your engines "should" be mounted as detatchable points then.
The engines themselves should be HpEngine01 & HpEngine02
then mounted to the ship as:
DpEngine01 & DpEngine02 at the frontmost part of the engine nacells
closest to the ship. (where the engines attach to the ship)
This probably involves HpConnect at the places on the ship itself
where the Dp's "attach" the engines.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
a high poly model should not have problems being rendered in the cmp editor
since that's where all your hard points and completed model is thrown
together.
I don't have any experience using the utf editor when it comes to adding
things together on a ship, but if I understand some of the posts I've read
in the past, that is the tool you would use to put a complex model together.

If you don't mind, I'd like to show a little ship I just finished.
It has less than 3K polys.

I can send it to you but you must understand no modifications must be made on the model itself...I know ith super high poly but it's a very old project and I want to see it through. I'll e-mail it to you first thing in the morning...right now I'm a lil bit busy... oh...and if you don't have 3dsmax or some other program that reads 3ds files you won't be able to load it into milkshape uless you import piece by piece..that means multiple 3ds files.

Nym, if you e-mail me the file I can also take a look - I have some comfortable experience with 3d models and the format of CMPs; I might be able to get it to work.
My e-mail is bbalazsmail (at) freemail.hu

Edit: Just to add, I have been watching this project of yours, and I know exactly how amazingly old it is. Naturally, I acknowledge every detail you give - that is - no modifications to the model itself.