[JGZinv]

Has anyone got a stash of rigging tutorials or how-to's for said subject in Max?

I've got completed models, but the modeler is on vacation and needing to learn this myself anyway.
Might be able to handle the POF export to PCS 2 part on my own, but need to figure out the step
by step process to rigging for FS2 in Max.

Most of what I'm seeing for web tuts is for NURBS, bones, animation, skeletal structure for human models.

Using version Max 7 btw.

[Vasudan Admiral]

There is no rigging involved - FS doesn't use any kind of kinematic bone structures. All it uses are subobjects - these can be set to rotate about their centrepoint, and can be set as children of other subobjects to allow more complex motion. For example the turret arms are the child of the turret base, and the turret base is the child of the hull.

For the exporting to PCS2, then you'll need to save to DAE and open it with Spicious' PCS2 build (sticky in the FSU forum).

[Nuke]

well pretty much you set the origin (center of rotation) by changing the pivot. you go to the heirarchy tab and hit the affect pivot only button. this allows you to move the origin point. children inherit the rotation, so its possible with some invisible child objects to do pseudo translations. simple rotations on principal axes are easy to do. you want to start doing off axis angles, then it gets tricky. best bet is to tweak it , or do the math. i usually just convert eulers to matrix, multiply it by a rotation matrix (you have to know how to build one for an off axis rotation) and then convert it back to eulers.

[JGZinv]

Ok perhaps we've got a difference in terminology from how it was related to me as "rigging."

What I'm looking at is after the model mesh has been built, you have all of the firepoints, engines,
and what not setup in Max so you can then export the model and work in a secondary program.

Or to illustrate:

Take from A -
(first attachment)

To B -
(second attachment)

Mainly I ask in this fashion because that's exactly what I'm dealing with, times about 10 fighters.
I've got blank detail-0 models... but they are not setup "rigged" to be exported for PCS2 editing.
I need something that details how to create the dummy objects (if that's correct in the first place),
what setup they should have, what requirements if any the shield mesh bubble should be, and anything
else I'm randomly missing.

Yep - I need the "noobs guide to getting your fighter model out of Max 7 for use in FS2" second edition.

[attachment stolen by Slimey Goober]

[chief1983]

If there _was_ one all-encompassing guide for that, it would be considered the Bible, the Holy Grail, and the bee's knees, all in one by FS community modelers.  Unfortunately, I think the only way to get all that information is to scrounge around on the forums and the wiki, and ask questions about individual subjects when you get confused.  There _is_ Freespacefaq.com, but its turreting tutorial is based on Truespace 3.2 and ModelView, both of which are obsolete apps now.  There's a lot of good general info there, though.  Might be a decent place to start.

[JGZinv]

Ok how bout this offer then... tech me the proper way and I will make the tutorial.
We can wrap it up as a PDF and stick it on the Wiki.

I'm not against making tuts if people will teach me on any subject, long as the method
is the proper (read: least amount of / no errors) way of doing it. There's no point to
leading other noobs to ruin.

[Scooby_Doo]

It sounded like he was interested in modelling characters, not ships... 

A sample schematic layout for a fighter with 3 gunmounts, 2 missile mounts, and 2 mult-part twin barrel turrets would be:



edit: is it possible to do resiable picture links on this forum?

[Galemp]

Yep - I need the "noobs guide to getting your fighter model out of Max 7 for use in FS2" second edition.

You mean this?

Warning, models exported with the plugin will ALWAYS require reconversion and touch-up to fix the radius and collision errors. If you have the patience, though, it can be worth it. It also works just fine for simple models like missiles, skyboxes, and cargo.

[JGZinv]

I think that's primarily what I needed Galemp.
I'm still going to end up having some questions though on various sections in there,
I can see that already.

Probably the first one being, it seems that "turrets" and "guns" are at times used interchangeably
in the tut there. I would assume that only "guns"should be placed on fighters and not turrets.
However reading about beams, you get the impression that in some cases you need a turret, although
this could be table-only - not model setup related. <- is confusing.

Has there been any way to correct the moment of inertia?
I've actually got that on a couple models already that's popping up in debug.

Going to have to take this piece by piece since I'm really not "that" familiar with Max.

[Scooby_Doo]

Your probably better off using Spicious's converter:  http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,54757.0.html

Basically guns are what fires when you use the shot button.  Turret's are controlled by the AI.

[JGZinv]

Or the other way of saying it... turrets = for caps, guns = for fighters

Not sure about going with Spicious conversion. I like what the project is doing as
it's something that needs doing... but I'm almost lost as is with trying to follow what info I've
already got. Adding a utility that's not fully matured on top of that is liable to mess me up even more.

In short, I'll probably wait till some more of the bugs are fixed and we've got some documentation other
than 25 pages of a thread to go through and contradict each other. Have to figure out Max first.