[StratComm]

Can this go on the back burner until next week?  I can manually look at the scene and pof once I get back to school but I can't do anything from here.

[Cobra]

have you tried aurora?

[Grug]

I checked a few earlier posts, and spoke with Omni dude as well.
Turns out shield mesh exporter hasn't been working anyway.

Oh and what is Aurora?  
Name rings a bell, but can't quite put my finger on it.

[Cobra]

Bob's model editor.

[Grug]

This is why the wiki needs an overhaul.
Plus why forums can't be trusted as newsposts.
You miss a day, and something important can be washed under the sea of spam.

Do you have a linky for Mr.Can'tBeBotheredToSearchForIt?

[Cobra]

hmmm, lemme get back to you while i search for Bob's sig...

[Cobra]

Here.

Clicky

[StratComm]

Don't use Aurora.  It'll corrupt your POF more often than you realize, and most of us aren't accustomed to working with backups.  What I'd do is export the shield mesh as a 3ds file, convert it (joining verts in 3dexploration, of course) to cob, slap it in a dummy heirarchy and convert it with PCS.  Then you should be able to import a (stable) shield mesh from that.

[karajorma]

Aurora works well if you only ever work with backups. It is THE best pathing tool in the community for instance.

Just load the model. Autopath save it under a different name and then import them into the original model in PCS. Takes about 2 minutes to do something that takes hours otherwise.

[Cobra]

I wonder why Bob has a faulty model editor in his sig, hmm?

[karajorma]

Like I said there are some things it does very well.

[Cobra]

looks like a timewarp happened...

[Grug]

Originally posted by StratComm
Don't use Aurora.  It'll corrupt your POF more often than you realize, and most of us aren't accustomed to working with backups.  What I'd do is export the shield mesh as a 3ds file, convert it (joining verts in 3dexploration, of course) to cob, slap it in a dummy heirarchy and convert it with PCS.  Then you should be able to import a (stable) shield mesh from that.

It may be that I'm two days without sleep, or that I'm stupid, but could you please clarify this thanks?

Are you saying make the shape in max, but avoid the exporter, import it into 3dexploration (don't currently have) and then do what? Re-order a shield mesh?
Can truespace export a shield mesh model without issues?

Sigh. Maybe we could request Styxx to fix his shield code. Need something to bribe him with though. Maybe a cookie or two?
Will more gratitude appeal?

Sigh, we really need a one step process for ship conversions...

[StratComm]

PCS can import a shield mesh from a Truespace .cob with no problems.  But to get it there, you have to export the mesh from Max as a .3ds, open it in 3dexploration (I think Kara's got a link to a free version), save it as .cob, open it in Truespace, set up the heirarchy, and convert it to a game model via PCS.  I'd just put the shield mesh around a cube or something so that it's convertable, then import it from the dummy pof into whatever you're working on.  By the sound of it, you're using the same shield for multiple ships, so you'd only have to go through conversion once.  But enough of that, give it a few days and I'll see if I can do it for you.  But don't complain too much about the conversion process; the plugin is extremely close to a one-step conversion, if it's used correctly.

Originally posted by karajorma
Aurora works well if you only ever work with backups. It is THE best pathing tool in the community for instance.

Just load the model. Autopath save it under a different name and then import them into the original model in PCS. Takes about 2 minutes to do something that takes hours otherwise.

It is the best pathing EDITOR in the community.  The Max plugin makes pathing even easier as it adds more flexability to path generation (how hard is it to draw a line?) but it's only really good when you're converting something.  After the fact, it's useless as there is no way to get POF files back into Max without losing half their data.

[Grug]

Ok.

BTW, what does the heirarchy have to be like?

Its several ships I'm trying to get a shield for, but a couple can use the same shield mesh anyway. But I can line them up properly by exporting from max, opening in Modview and then adjusting in max as need be.

[StratComm]

In truespace, load the cob that you've converted from the shield in Max, and place down a cube and a pair of local lights.  Name the shield mesh "shield" and glue one light to it and the other to the cube, and finally glue the shield group (should also be called "shield" just to be safe) to the cube as well.  If you can get trueview it should look like this:
cubeGroup
-cube
-local light
-shield
--shield
--local light

Save the top level entry as a cob and convert that to POF using PCS.  Then you can import it to your fighters as needed.

[Cobra]

heh, i'm adding lights as firing points for Getter Robo G

BTW, sorry about the looong delay, Getter, eh, school crap got in the way.

[xenthorious]

Good news.  I got it working.

This is what I did to get it working with Max5:
1) Get the latest plugin offered from this thread.
2) Make sure you have Max 5.0 installed.
3) Download this patch @ ftp1.discreet.com/web/support/3dstudio/3dsmax_51_Update.exe
3) Follow the instructions with the archived file which has the plug-in.
5) Start max, your done.

Hope this helps guys.

[xenthorious]

Now, for the really really good question.  So good, it's totally retarted.  How do I use the features of which this plug-in offers?

[Grug]

I'm already using max 5.1 for one, and two the exporter was working it was just not loading properly ingame.
But I tried it with other original meshes as well, so I'm thinking its the pof, because I got the same results in both modview and pof construction suite.
As for using the pluggin, it has a max file which shows what you need to use it properly. Once you have your model and everything else setup just goto export->save as '.pof' in the drop down list, then select the options you wish after clicking save.