[Pilot Of The US]

I need some help with getting rotating subobjects, rotating properly in Modelview and setting up the axes/hiearchy in TS3.
Ive setup the hiearchy so that the 3 scanner objects and a local light are grouped togather.

<<< PIC HAS BEEN REMOVED >>>
(if the pic isnt showing it's coz ive exeeded my data transfer so my site is down temporalily)

When ever i set (in modelview) my scanner subobject to rotate around any axes it rotates in a "orbital" way, and not in a "pivotal" motion like it should.

I think it's because of the axes circled in purple that causing the problem because it isnt in the centre of my scanner. The other three (circled in green) are. I cant seem to move the purple axes, even when i use the "move axes to centre of object" tool.

And occasionally when i do get the scanner to rotate properly, when i view it, it is inside the hull!

[TrashMan]

Can't see the pic...

What I do is make sure the object itself has the axes set properly AND that the FS2 subobject (object+light) has it allso.
Watch out for that one.

[Pilot Of The US]

Well i got it rotating properly but it's inside the model when i view it in Modelview, but it shows up fine in FS2. So i set them to rotate and tested it in a mission, but the subobjects arent rotating. So im try to turn them into rotating subsystems, but i dont know what to write in the "properties" box under the subobject tab in Modelview.

[karajorma]

From Bobs PCS Tutorial

for physical subsystems, and rotating submodel

   1. type;
      $special=subsystem
      $name=whatever you want
      Into the properties section
   2. make a reference in the ships.tbl, this is all you need for physical subsystems, keep going if you want to make the rotate
   3. add;
      $fov=360
      $rotate=(some number)
      into the properties section
   4. check movement type to rotate around axis
   5. set movement axis to be the one the model will rotate around
   6. you may need to make some adjustments to the ships.tbl

[aldo_14]

Just to reinforce what Kara said; you'll definately need to adjust ships.tbl.  Each physical subobject has 2 floating point entries after them which define the percentage strength they have (i.e. sets their hitpoints) and their rotational speed.  Check the other entries in ships.tbl to get a better idea; I can't remember the settings offhand.

[Col. Fishguts]

GAHHHHH.....for fracks sake...don't post bmp files !

[FireCrack]

Originally posted by Col. Fishguts
GAHHHHH.....for fracks sake...don't post bmp files !

damn, i've never tried to spell out 'fracks' before. Struck me as odd.

[Col. Fishguts]

It is odd....but it goes past the word filter

[Pilot Of The US]

how come i cant post bmp files? I can remove it if it's really bugging you, all you need to do is ask.

Anyway ive got my subsystems rotating properly, even without that "$fov" thing. wut does that do?

[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by Pilot Of The US
how come i cant post bmp files? I can remove it if it's really bugging you, all you need to do is ask.
 

Yes, technically you can...but the picture you posted is 880kB....and rumor says that there are still people with 56k modems on tha intarweb. So be nice to them and convert your pics to jpg or png.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Pilot Of The US
how come i cant post bmp files? I can remove it if it's really bugging you, all you need to do is ask.

Anyway ive got my subsystems rotating properly, even without that "$fov" thing. wut does that do?

BMP files are uncompressed - i.e. they're sodding huge filesizes, which means it takes an age to DL them and view the piccy.  It also takes up more space wherever they are stored.  Other image types - notably jpg - use compression alogrithms which can give a vast reduction in filesize with little or not image quality loss

fov is 'field of view'.  In turrets, the fov is the angle (from the default turret firing position) at which the turret can turn to fire.  For example, a turret with 180 fov could fire at any ship which was level or above it.  A turret with a narrow fov could only fire at ships in a narrow range above it.

(where 'above' is where the turret points at by default; i.e. where the turret point lines go in modelview... imagine a sort of hemisphere around the turret, where the centre is that line and the bottom centre is the turret.  The fov would change the radius of that hemisphere... NB: 360 means a turret can fire at anything, even stuff behind it; this is not recommended by any means...)

[Pilot Of The US]

ok, i see. Anyway ive removed that pic. i dont think im going to need it anyway coz ive somwhow solved my problem, dont ask how, i just did.

The only thing now is to complete my model in max and try not to forget anything before i convert it to TS. then ive gotta set a a table (this shouldnt be too hard). Im currently working on making and placing turrets.

[Pilot Of The US]

Ok, i really need some help here. Ive got my model turreted and all, but when i try to import it into Modelview, it gives me the following error - "An Error Occurred. Error #20008: Import failed: Too many polygons".

And when i try to import it using PCS, it locks up.

Ive also tried the cob2pof program but it keep saying "Test exeeds memo capacity".

[karajorma]

Are you sure PCS has locked up? Leave it for 20 mins and then come back to it. High Poly models can sometimes take a while to convert.

Might be worth Kazan adding a little output window to PCS2 so that people can see that it's actually doing something (assuming that it still takes as long to convert)

[Pilot Of The US]

Well when i press ctrl+alt+delete it says that the model window is not responding. However the main program is just fine. Anyway ill try it.

Ok ive tried that, but im sure PCS does lockup. both windows are locked and the task manager says that they are "not responding".

[Anaz]

how long did you leave it for? Sometimes windows will tell you that it's not responding because it's busy doing something and doesn't respond to windows calls, and will be fixed up when it is all converted.

[Pilot Of The US]

Well im really not sure how long, but im pretty sure i left it long enough. Anyway ill try it again and ill time it. How's an hour sound?

Also i just wanted to know how do you check how manu polys you have in TS3? and should FS2open/PCS be able to handel a model with 77 turrets (9 multipart)?

[karajorma]

Click on the model and #faces in the object info box to see the number of polys. If you don't have the object info box open (and if not why not!) right click on the arrow/pointer icon to show it.

Your model sounds a little overpowered to me but PCS should be able to handle it.

[Pilot Of The US]

Well i really think i over did it with my model. my multipart turrets are about 4500, my single part turrets are about 6500 and my hull is about 3000. (the polygon values specified are the total number of polygons).

Modelview refuses to load my model coz it's limits arent high enough. I can import the hull and the multipart turrets but not the single ones.