Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: krevett62 on November 20, 2014, 03:12:24 am
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Hello just asking has someone managed to convert these ships inside the FS2 engine?
I'd like to have the alliance and coalitions fighters but I've got no skill in 3D modeling. I've got the models extracted from the game with dds textures if someone is willing to take a look and convert them to pof format with gunpoints, lod, etc... I'm also missing the textures for those fighters with external guns (coyote for example).
I don't know if something can be done with these files if someone wants to take a look, I link them here.
Thanks in advance.
Edit: attachement for dae files in this post blender in the next post, cleared other attachements.
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It's a lot of work, but it's not impossible. Find a way to convert ms3d format to something more friendly [3ds? obj?] and the rest is pretty easy in Blender for example.
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I've tried to convert them to .obj, but when opening them in blender I got nothing! As I said I really suck at modeling (I'm good at table/mission editing lol) and was just asking there if someone already thought of converting them. I've seen there was some project that are now dead so I'll probably never see these ships :banghead:
I packed them in ms3d because that was the only one that allowed me to convert them from the original game. Thanks for your words!
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Job like this actually do not require anykind of modelling abilities :P. If these models have UV, lods, debris and textures, all that U need is setting up hierarchy and assign proper textures to materials. Collada Exporter [.dae format] will do the rest. At first You have to find a way to convert ms3d format.
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OK, but these files are only crude models extracted from the game and textures converted to dds format. They don't have any UV, LOD, etc... So much work is still needed and I really don't knoww how to do all of these things :rolleyes:
I don't want super detailed models, I'd just want these models to have one LOD and gun/missiles banks, engine comm nav and sensors but really I'm lost ^^
So perhaps someone will care about this one day (in this case let me know I'm really interested in having these ships ;) ) from now on I'll just abandon the idea of porting them myself to FSO :(
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Don't count on anyone else doing it for you. Starlancer is an old game, and if someone here wanted them ported, it would have been done by now. If you really want to have them in FSO, you're going to have to learn how to do it yourself.
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Hehe I try I try, I managed to import them to blender but I'm lost using the program! I'll need to learn using it first...
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If you get them to show up in blender, then can you export them as DAE?
Then someone else might at least have a chance of poking at it and telling you what needs to be done.
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I get the models but I don't see the textures on the ships.
Edit: nevermind I see them (just learning how blender works ^^) I'll take a look at various tutos here to see how to add LOD and UV.
If someone could tell me what do I need to do before exporting the model to dae to make it useable by POFCS2?
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http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Collada_Importer
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Thanks for the link!
For now I just managed to convert all the models in blender rescale, relocate and reorient them (they were 100x too large).
Now for the hard part I'll see that tomorrow ;)
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I'm not sure but they seems to lost their material data. If models use multiple textures, they need one material for one texture. They still have uvmapping, but all materials are probably gone. You will have to redo all materials manually. It's not fast job.
To more experianced modellers: Correct me if I am wrong.
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Losing their material ID's would be relatively easy to repair, losing their UV's would be a pain in the butt...
BTW if you would like to post just the basic obj/dae files for the ship, I would love to use some of them for inspiration since they do kinda resemble WC ships.
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Here are the file converted in blender into dae. BTW something must be wrong as they show nothing in POFCS2, but I've scaled et relocated the models one more time as the orientation was wrong.
Edit: attachements are in the first and second posts, cleared unused attachements.
Edit2: managed to finally import a model in POFCS2, needed to redo the hierarchy and add some groups in blender (I took a look at an existing model to see how it was done ;) )
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The only downside for now is that models in POFCS2 don't have textures so the models UV map is probably inexistant...
The mosel appears grey in POFCS2 and don't appear at all in-game (it was just a quick test of course)
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Export -> DAE -> Texture Options -> Include UV Textures
Left side of the window.
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Haha the option was checked but I forgot to also check "include material textures". Now it seems to work I'm going to test it in FRED to see if the model appears!
Edit: Great, it works the model appears in FRED and in-game!!! I never thought it was so simple ;) now I have a lot of work to set each ships gunpoint/missilepoint. I'm missing debris but don't understand how to do it so it'll do for now!
Edit2: For gunpoints and missiles points I put the rotation for X-axis at 90 is this right for forward pointing guns/missiles? What should I put for thrusters pointing backwards?? Thanks in advance!
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For gunpoints/thrusters you can just set them up in PCS2 if you want (just look at how an existing model is set up).
That's how I've always done it.
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Yes I know that but as I become more familiar with blender I'd like to do the maximum of operations in the blender model then export it to dae to convert in-game.
I've made some progress since I managed to import pod models (for missiles like screamer pods, hawk pods etc...) and additionnal canons design that I can now add to the ships model. I now also have proper textures for the models with external canons as I had a hard time finding how to read the compressed starlancer format of .tga! The ships were already textured just because I have used them in freelancer before and had the dds textures just there (thanks to a great modder ;) )
When I'll be done with all of this (putting guns, missiles and thrusters at the right place), I'll have to add the shields :rolleyes:
Pfeww still a lot of work but I'm enjoying this for now it's the first time I'm using programs like blender and the like...
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Ok good, for now three are converted and working in-game (coyote, crusader, grendel).
They are basic but at least they have 2 LOD (one without additional guns/missiles pods drawing), a shield, a dockingpoint and very basic subsystems (set as "untargetable" for now).
They're lacking debris and additional texture work but for me it will be enough if I manage to convert the 21 ships like these!
Thanks for your help, 18 more to go ;)
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They are fairly low-poly to begin with, so lods isn't super critical.
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Yes, they are between 800 and 1800 polys. The LOD in fact only removes external appendices I added to the ships (guns, pods from where missiles are launching) that you can't view very far so...
Just a little question is there a way to scale everything without having to relocate all my gunpoints, missilespoints, thrusters, etc....??
Edit: nevermind I found how to do it ;)
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Finally managed to convert all fighters, two heavy bomber (kamov/hades), two gunboat (kurgen/prowler) and three capships for now (reliant, krasnaya, kiev), but I don't know how to make them have a fighterbay docking point (especially the two coalition carriers have big "holes" representing their bay and I'd like them to be able to carry some fighters ^^)
Thanks all for all your help!
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Wasn't there a mod on sectorgame. Com?
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I don't think so. I never found one that was actually done. There's a mod that was on moddb (I don't remember the name) but it's dead from a long time now and they never released a beta or something like this (so there was nothing to download, even converted models)...
Also note that this is not my goal to release something as I said I'm only doing this because I like those ship and wanted to be able to FRED with them for my own pleasure. After all as someone said in this topic Starlancer is an old game and if someone really wanted these models it would have been converted for long now, so if nobody has done it I suppose noone is interested in this game anymore and if someone is, well go on and learn like I've done ;)
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It would be good though if you shared the files in case someone else wanted to try using them. Figuring out what you've been doing would probably have taken me at least a week, and who knows what someone might be inspired to do if the models were available? Someone else might make table files, and another some missions.
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I've done the tables for ships and additional weapons too. The missiles models are also done. The thing is for now these models are very basic I mean they are the original starlancer models with original starlancer textures converted to dds (256x256) with guns and missile pods to represent gunbank and missilebank, no debris, and turrets are non-rotating on capships (but everything else works).
For now I don't share because it's a noob work (;) ) even if ships are playable I doubt that someone might be interested by low res models.
Just some quick screenshots while I'm here.
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these ain't so bad, even now
they probably need normal and shine maps though, which are easy enough to create in crazy bump if you don't need top notch quality
if you don't know how to do that i could do it for you :) (but just in case, you said the textures are converted to dds, so one should use the orignial txtures for that process)
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I don't know how to do this but I have access to the base textures (they're in bmp format) if you're interested, tell me wich files do you need?
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it would be best if you uploaded the the whole thing: models, your tables, and original textures
so i can have a look at the results in game, this stuff is a bit of trial and error for the strength of the normals and shine maps
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Ok I'll need two post so excuse me for the double post :)
First what is working in-game, extract to your FS2 directory and select folder as a mod (but you already know this)
Remember that everything is far from perfect and for now, weapons use old effects (like lasers and missile trails) that are not updated to mediavps standards
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Second post: the last part and original bmp textures!
You'll notice that some ships (like the coalition fighters or the british tempest appears darker in game than other alliance fighters)
If you want to test outside of the tech room, you'll have to create a mission as I've incorporated none in the folder. If something doesn't work tell me because I've packed this in a separate folder without testing (my custom mod folder is much larger but uses some models downloaded here and there or from other campaign so it's only for personal use!!)
Edit: Also note that tbl editing is not completely finished as not all ships have description and some are missing features (reverse thrust, etc...), and the number of guns are not exactly the same as in starlancer of course (after all that's not the same game/engine) I tried to balance a bit but I didn't have time to really test everything ^^
Also descriptions are in french, but who cares? lol
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I didn't play Starlancer but I see some cool ship designs here. Keep up good work :yes:
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i'll see what i can do to the textures :)
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Done the Pukov today, I think I'll take a liite break ^^
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here you go, maps finished, the textures are not converted to dds yet however
some of the models had errors in their texture names, i have corrected them
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dpyem5t1q7e4u4y/New_folder.rar
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Great, that looks better in-game now ;) thanks for your help!
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For those interested, I updated the previous post with new models converted and included fightermedic's maps converted to dds for better look (thanks!). Also some minor changes in tables! The pack includes 21 fighters (12 alliance and 9 coalition), 2 heavy bombers (1 alliance and 1 coalition), 2 gunboats (1 alliance and 1 coalition) and 6 cruisers (Reliant, Bremen, Zakov, Kiev, Krasnaya and Pukov). Some things need a little more work (I noticed the turrets on the Bremen need to be moved a bit on a side of the ship), but for now I'm quite happy with the result.
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Well done!--
Wait. Which post are they in?
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Posts #30 and #31 on page 2!
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Hi all, here's a link to a pack of updated models for those interested:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dcxl5cj3348mf7f/Starlancer_shippack_v0.2.rar
There's no mission, so if you want to test you'll have to build a sample mission to try the ships
Changes:
Bremen turrets are now correct
Added fighterbays for reliant, bremen, kiev, krasnaya and pukov
Added turrets to the fighters which had one (coyote, crusader, phoenix, predator, patriot, reaper, tempest, grendel, wolverine, basilisk, sabre, kossac, saracen, lagg)
Added some SL musics ;)
Added turrets for kamov and hades bombers
New sounds for some weapons
Changes to the tables
Included a small script for basilisk and mines
Feel free to use whatever you want and if someone is interested in building some missions ;)
The mod use some effects from mvp2014 so you'll need a recent build to run
PS: Thanks to fightermedic for his maps!
Edit: what's missing!
Non-rotating turrets for capships (they are just models taken from the game and not multi-parts turrets I don't have the skill to do that...)
Debris part for ships and capships (I've done some for the zakov but they sometimes crash the game so I didn't include them)
More models!! (31 ships for now, 10 missiles and a mine are included in this pack)