[Darkhill]

Found some help here about making them but they still aren't right.  On my model I have a turret01-base layer which is just a flat face and a burret01-arms layer which is a dome.  Then in Truespace I gave each a light and renamed the subojects turret01-base and turret01-arms.  Imported into POF CS and it makes the multipart turret but the info for the fov and other stuff is on the turret base object.  If I copy paste into the arms section then look at the model in Modelview it seems to rotate around the model itself and not the turret01-base object.  Any help on this?

[StratComm]

You have to position the pivot (Truespace refers to that as the axis of an object) at the point about which you want the turret to rotate.  If you placed the light at the center of your model and glued the geometry to it (the most common way of doing it) the group pivot, which is what gets used by PCS in conversion, will be at the location of the light.  There are several fixes for this, but the easiest is to unglue everything about that turret and use trueview to attach the light to the geometry rather than the other way around.  If you'd rather not mess with the heirarchy anymore, select the turretxx-arm group and press the "axis" button so that it moves freely.  Move it to the bottom of your dome.  Repeat this process for the base and you should be in business.

[Nuke]

i usually pregroup the turrets in another scn, then save em as cob and import them into the ship model. then i jus put them where they go and give them a new number. this prevents breaking the pivots.

[StratComm]

When starting from scratch, I completely agree.  That's the best way to do it if the turrets aren't already in position.  Once they are, though, you might as well take the time to fix the pivots as it'll take less hastle than recreating the turrets completely.

[Darkhill]

I've changed the position of the lights on both parts to be roughly where the base of the turret is and it still rotates around the middle of the ship.  Also when I import the cob the turret details on are on the base instead of the arm.

[StratComm]

I've never gotten the autogen stuff in PCS to work correctly, so you're on your own there.  However, even if you move the light within the group, the pivot is still where it was before.  Unlink the geometry and the light and regroup them after the light is moved, if nothing else.

[Darkhill]

What exactly is the piviot?  Is it just the location of the light in the subobject?

And when I load the model in Modelview it says the base suboject to the arm is the whole model, its supposed to be the base?

[StratComm]

yes, the base should be the base and the arm should be the barrel or rotational subobject, depending on what program you're using to look at it.

The pivot is the point about which the model is defined.  It isn't necessarily the light, but it is the same location as the light was in when you glued the thing up.  The geometry and the light can both be moved away from the pivot though without the pivot itself moving, which is what I suspect you've done.

[Darkhill]

I found the magical 'Center Axis on Object' button in TS and it fixed my problems.

[Nuke]

converting through too many formats does tend to screw things up unless you know what to expect. fortunately there are those magic fix things buttons.

[Darkhill]

I got a new question on this one.  For some reason when I click on the 'Move Axis to Center of Object' button it moves there but the bounding box for it is huge, I can't resize it either.  This worked for me yesterday as I had a rotating turret working right in Modelview.  But I screwed around with the cob and had to redo it and now I have this problem.

http://www.geocities.com/cobolt_dink/ts.jpg

[StratComm]

If the light isn't inside the object's bounding box that will happen.  You should be able to just move the light though and the bounding box will resize itself.  It's always normal to the pivot, so the easiest way to find the offending point or object is to look in the corner most opposite of the geometry.  I'm not sure that this will actually break the bounding box in the POF though.

Oh, and don't use Modelview as a hard guide for what works and what doesn't.  I've had models that work perfectly in Modelview go crazy in game, and vice versa.

[Darkhill]

For the arms part of the turret you need to set the light as the fire point and for the base give the light the x,y,z of the actual model before changing the axes?  That seems to have fixed my problem.

[StratComm]

Your confusing two things, though they aren't unrelated.  Changeing the axis will, to some small amount, look at the position of the light in addition to the position of the geometry.  The actual location of the light doesn't matter once the pivot is set, but that's a complication that you shouldn't worry with.  The one for the firepoint is also more or less  the same, except that you appear to be taking advantage of autogen.   I never did (easier to add my own data in the days when I was creating ships that could be edited in Modelview without it crashing for lack of memory, and I've never been terribly impressed with the results of autogen) but that shouldn't stop you.  If you're just using it for the location, it shouldn't matter though.

[Nuke]

autogen works perfectly for me on multipart turrets. on single part turrets theres of extra tweaking to make it look right. mind you you have to follow the directions to the letter, and you have to make sure your turrets all have different numbers in there names, or it will screw up the whole process.