[TanakaD]

Hi All,

I've just started work on a new mod (which hopefully I'll be able to post details about soon!), my first for Freespace 2, and I've already run into problems with my first model. I'm trying to set up the turrets, and I just had a couple of questions about how to do that.

First, I've got the mesh and texturing done on a multi-part turret and have been reading the TurretSetup tutorial in the Wiki and Scooby Doo's Max to PCS2 tutorial on the forum, but I can't quite get my head around how multi-part turrets work.

Basically, I've got a naval battleship style turret, with a base which consists of a cannon housing, and then three separate barrels. Theoretically each barrel should have the ability to independently traverse up and down, so I've got each barrel as a separate mesh, with all their pivot points correctly configured. Reading the tutorials though, the naming conventions reads as "turret0X-arm", not "turret0X-arm0X", so I'm guessing that all arms need to be collapsed to a single mesh? On the same point, I was hoping to have each barrel fire independently, or at least to have weapons fire animation cycle through each barrel - can this be done as part of a single turret?

As far as orientation goes, at present the barrels are at the rest position, in other words perpendicular to the base, as per the picture below:



Will I be able to set limited elevations later in PCS so it looks right in-game, or should their z-axis rotation be set to 0 now? It's just, if I set their rotation to 0 they clip through the cannon housing, and don't make for a pretty model in Max...

Last, I was wondering about  the destroyed turret model. According to the Max to PCS2 tutorial, I should create the destroyed turret model in the same scene as the normal turret, but I was planning on keeping the destroyed turret in a separate file and merging it into the main ship model later - is this ok?

Sorry to ask such basic questions, I had a good search for the answers but I couldn't find anything. Any advice you guys could give would be great!

[zookeeper]

Basically, I've got a naval battleship style turret, with a base which consists of a cannon housing, and then three separate barrels. Theoretically each barrel should have the ability to independently traverse up and down, so I've got each barrel as a separate mesh, with all their pivot points correctly configured. Reading the tutorials though, the naming conventions reads as "turret0X-arm", not "turret0X-arm0X", so I'm guessing that all arms need to be collapsed to a single mesh?

Yes. You can't have one turret with several independent arms.

The only workaround I can imagine would be making a turret with one arm, and then mounting two other turrets (which have invisible bases and can't rotate horizontally) on it to act as the other barrels, but I seriously doubt that would work.

On the same point, I was hoping to have each barrel fire independently, or at least to have weapons fire animation cycle through each barrel - can this be done as part of a single turret?

Yes, at least by putting the "cycle" flag on the weapon which the turret uses. To make each barrel fire independently, maybe making each barrel use a different weapon bank would work, but I wouldn't know.

Will I be able to set limited elevations later in PCS so it looks right in-game, or should their z-axis rotation be set to 0 now? It's just, if I set their rotation to 0 they clip through the cannon housing, and don't make for a pretty model in Max...

You can set the initial elevation and the rotation limits in the ship's subsystem table with animation code. I don't know if you can make it work right without having the arms point straight up when exporting, though. In any case, it should be easy to rotate them to point straight up right before exporting even if you don't want to keep them like that in your working file.

Last, I was wondering about  the destroyed turret model. According to the Max to PCS2 tutorial, I should create the destroyed turret model in the same scene as the normal turret, but I was planning on keeping the destroyed turret in a separate file and merging it into the main ship model later - is this ok?

Probably, yes, by exporting those objects from another file in PCS2 by going into the subobject tree and using the "load" button at the top of the right panel. But I don't really know why you'd want to.

[TanakaD]

Thanks zookeeper, you answered all my questions!

I'll be getting back to work then, next up: multi-part flak turrets