[At]

I made one for a ship, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it.

First, has this been answered already, if so, where?  If it's easier to answer here, though, just reply.

Do I model it as part of the rest of the mesh, with the bars, then just wedge some extra polies in for the glass?

Or, instead, is the inside of the cockpit a separate mesh, with the glass as part of the outside of the ship fuselage mesh?

And yes, for those who may remember me, I'm that Atalhlla bloke from awhile back.  I was away so long that HLP wanted me to update my password or something.  But since the old email account I used for it no longer exists... Ja.

[Scooby_Doo]

Well heres how I do it...

I've got a cockpit tub prefabed with Nico's? pilot, everythings setup to resemble what a real cockpit would look like. The frame needs to be created on both sides (inside and outside), the glass however doesn't need to be created for the inside.   If you want to do tweaking, not all sides of the frame need to be polyed, especially those that are never seen on the inside and very hard to see on the outside.

When your constructing the ship/cockpit tub you will definetely want to merge the two together to get the vertices to be exact, otherwise you'll see seams in-game and voids into space.  Once their lined up, break the cockpit tub apart from the hull.  In truespace I setup the cockpit internals, like cockpit, seat, pilot, HUD...etc as a subgroup, the glass and frame go with the hull.  Otherwise I'd noticed when you look into a ship from the outside, the cockpit disappears. 

Only other thing to do is setup the eye position. Which is quiet easy with truespace, (I just use an EngGlow point for that, convert to pof and notepad the "engine" position, delete it and use the cords for the eye.

 :-)

[StratComm]

There are generally two approaches to making the cockpit.  One is to fill the gap underneath the pilot and chair with something simple just modeled and textured directly from the hull itself.  The other approach (and one I tend to use) is to make the cockpit structure actually touch the hull exactly where the glass does, and then just leave the space under it empty when only looking at the hull itself.  I also make a point to make the "frame" solid (usually an extension of the hull actually) so that you can't get in to a funny situation where it dissapears.

Scooby Doo, that's exactly what happens with transparency if it's not set up perfectly.  I've done enough experimentation with it to know, in general, how to make it "just work" but it's not trivial by any means.  Be careful with how you attach the glass because if it's done wrong then you could be unable to see the outside of your ship through the glass.  Your crossbow is at risk for that being a problem, actually.

[Scooby_Doo]

Oh, I thought I remember reading something about the order of rendering that was causing it. (something about subobjects getting rendered after the hull)

adn I've got the layout something like this:

hull
     wing_1
     wing_2
     frame
     glass
     cockpit
            pilot
            tub

Edit: Opps me bad, I forgot to mention not only is the cockpit invisible but you can see through the ship into space (since the ship polys are only one-sided)

[StratComm]

Are those things (wing_1, wing_2, frame, glass) subobjects or just siblings? (i.e. do they have terminating local lights attached or not?   And is hull a piece of geometry or just a group?)  You really should only have two true subobjects - hull and cockpit - for a fighter unless you've got something special like a rotating section.  Of course, if you have multiple geometry instances in a group like that they merge into one subobject in PCS.

My Max preference says that heirarchy is terrible, but you maybe aren't using max.  So if it works, and you don't have a half-dozen subobjects in LOD0, ignore my ranting

[At]

Aaaah, mein mind... Could I have an example model, please?

[Scooby_Doo]

Actually I do use MAX, but I never really got the pof plugin to work well, so I just stick with the tried and true max->cob->pof.

Wing_1, _2, frame, glass are siblings, the cockpit is a subobject. Actually I have several subobjects: cockpit, detail-1a, detail-1b, detail-1c, and shield.
Btw, I don't attach the frame or the glass when I'm building the model, they don't have to be exact unlike the cockpit tub.  And since the tub is using a different texture, I attach the cockpit to the hull, weld and target weld the vertices together then detach the tub from the hull.

http://rapidshare.de/files/17906524/newscene.scn.html

[At]

Ah, thank you very much, Scoob.

[Nuke]

i usually have my windows and the outside facing protion of the struts as part of the main mesh. then i make a copy of the model and cut the whole canapy section off of it, discarding the rest of the model and invert the polies. then i usually point by point model the inside of the struts and model the chair and panel off of that. then i do everything on a single texture, i just be sure my transparent window panes are disconected from non-transparent polies on the uv map. i never have a problem with it.

[StratComm]

i usually have my windows and the outside facing protion of the struts as part of the main mesh. then i make a copy of the model and cut the whole canapy section off of it, discarding the rest of the model and invert the polies. then i usually point by point model the inside of the struts and model the chair and panel off of that. then i do everything on a single texture, i just be sure my transparent window panes are disconected from non-transparent polies on the uv map. i never have a problem with it.

You may never have noticed it, but I KNOW that doesn't work in the general case.  Transparency really has to be its own texture.  It may look mostly ok from most angles, but when it breaks, it really breaks strangely.  Where they are on the UV map has nothing to do with it.

[Nuke]

yet my cockpits look perfect and the models are stable. the uv disconection is more for asthetics than anything, so you dont have transparency running into solid polygons and vice versa.

[StratComm]

The cockpit itself will look fine.  It's seeing other parts of the ship through the cockpit that isn't.  Trust me on this; I've spent a good bit of time figuring out how to force the render order to do what you're claiming it does, and nothing I've tried has even come close to working perfectly.

[aldo_14]

yet my cockpits look perfect and the models are stable. the uv disconection is more for asthetics than anything, so you dont have transparency running into solid polygons and vice versa.

I've never experienced that.  Are you sure you've checked everything - it's incredibly easy to miss these problems in my experience.

[Scooby_Doo]

Now I'm getting confused. 

[StratComm]

Scooby: as long as the glass uses its own special texture and is the last thing you glued on, it should be fine.  PCS's poly ordering is a little unpredictable (because Truespace itself is a little unpredictable about things like that) but you're doing it the right way. Our argument with Nuke is that he isn't, but he also isn't doing it the same way as you.

[Nuke]

it works fine, i looked at theese ships from every posible angle in the freespace engine and everything looks fine. even if by chance you could find a minor quirk the elimenation of a texture pass is well worth it. i just think pcs likes my models

[Kieve]

Does anyone still have an example Cockpit Tub for Max (5)? I finally came up with a fighter concept I want to test, and the main hull section is just about done (although not UVMapped yet)... bah, nm progress reports. All I really need to know is proper scale, so I don't end up with a pituitary giant flying my deathtrap.