[Hades]

Does any know were i can get a 3DS thing that lets me convert 3DS files to pof files?

[Dysko]

In the sticky at the top of this board

[Hades]

In the sticky at the top of this board

Oh...AWW CRAP....now Carl is gonna get me.  

EDIT:I barly made it from Carl he ate my leg .And i need 3DS?Crap.

[takashi]

actualy, its .max files.

[Vengence]

In the sticky at the top of this board

Oh...AWW CRAP....now Carl is gonna get me.  

EDIT:I barly made it from Carl he ate my leg .And i need 3DS?Crap.

You know that is quite redundant. You more or less need 3ds to even use it at all and the exporter is for 3ds max in the first place.

[takashi]

PCS does a better job converting. although you do get smoothing values with 3ds max....

[Nuke]

dont get me started on the ****ty ness of the .3ds format. it has too many versions, and very poor implementation in all of the programs which support it. what we need is open 3d formats (no not blender, blender sucks) which are documented up the wazoo and are very easy to convert. of course in the end, it would just me another 3d format which gets a piss poor implementation in comercial modeling apps.

[Vasudan Admiral]

(no not blender, blender sucks)

Err, no. Blender is very powerful IF you actually learn it.
I remember how you gave it a quick go and gave up in a day or so - which is just silly. Not being able to model exceptionally well in a program within a few hours of starting from scratch in it is just not grounds to say it sucks.

In fact the 3rd party cob exporter python script comes within a hair of meaning Blender could be the only modeling app needed for FS modding - and that TS can be cut out of the POF conversion loop alltogether.

[Unknown Target]

*Leaps into thread* Sketchup! *runs away*

[Vasudan Admiral]

I don't know how Sketchup does it, but I find it very impressive how people who have had little to no experience in 3d modeling can just dive into it and produce relatively complex models quite quickly.
Out of interest: can it do UV maps, and if so how well? (And can it export them?)

We have far too many new modelers around here who are just stuck in the mud that is TS 3.2 simply because it's free. All the while a number of vastly-superior-yet-still-free proggies are just lying around used only by a few. :\

[jr2]

All the while a number of vastly-superior-yet-still-free proggies are just lying around used only by a few. :\

Such as?  (List all you can think of, plz)

[Vasudan Admiral]

I've only used Blender (which is open source) and tried Gmax myself, but I know that the aforementioned Sketchup is very powerful - as is Wings 3d. There's also the CAD software Alibre Design Express, and I guess IF and only IF it can be used correctly, even DOGA could potentially be used. Milkshape is cheap I think, though it's nearly as limiting as TS 3.2 anyway, but not even counting that you have 6 possible non-TS 3.2 routes to look into. All of which are free.

But the point is that it's a total misconception that you need one of the big 3d software packages to be able to model. The Loki, Zeus and uglies for example were done entirely in Blender - I only used TS to organise the heirarchy and save the final cob file.

I'm still currently writing up a Blender -> FSO tutorial that I'm hoping will help squish that misconception, break the ice that is the daunting-looking interface and get more people seriously using Blender.
(At this stage I'm planning to go the whole way - interface guide, modeling, UVing, texturing (including drawing them, along with glow/shine maps), heirarchy, conversion, pof editing and tabling. Basically a comprehensive shipbuilding tutorial. )

[Unknown Target]

I don't know how Sketchup does it, but I find it very impressive how people who have had little to no experience in 3d modeling can just dive into it and produce relatively complex models quite quickly.
Out of interest: can it do UV maps, and if so how well? (And can it export them?)

We have far too many new modelers around here who are just stuck in the mud that is TS 3.2 simply because it's free. All the while a number of vastly-superior-yet-still-free proggies are just lying around used only by a few. :\

That's Sketchup's only huge weakness - it has very minimal UV mapping capability. It can do tiled textures extremely well, but anything other than that and you're better off using a different program (you can still do it, it's just harder). Lithunwrap is free, though.

You can download the free version of Sketchup at www.sketchup.com and give it a try if you want. The only limit is that you can't save as anything other than the progs proprietary .skp format, and Google Earth's model format.
Of course, Sketchup has Ruby scripting, so if someone who knew it wanted to write a .POF exporter...

---


But I agree. I've been raving about Sketchup as an alternative, but really I'd prefer any 3D prog besides one of the big packages or Truespace. The problem is that no one wants to write a new converter program/plugin to make any other program useful. I mean why are we using .cob and .3ds (and not even .3ds - you have to open the model in Max anyway, so it's basically a .max converter)? Why not .OBJ, .x or even a Max-independent .3ds converter? There's dozens of other formats out there that are just as good, and more widely supported.

[Vengence]

Indeed. It is very disturbing how a very powerful software such as 3DS Max has a terrible 3ds export format. I never tried some other modeling programs, the only ones I used are Maya, Gmax, 3ds Max, and vertex modifying in Milkshape. Though Gmax is outdated and nothing compared to 3DS Max 7-9, the ease of modeling would have been very useful if a pof exporter could have been made for it (though I heard that it couldn't be done).

[Nuke]

(no not blender, blender sucks)

Err, no. Blender is very powerful IF you actually learn it.
I remember how you gave it a quick go and gave up in a day or so - which is just silly. Not being able to model exceptionally well in a program within a few hours of starting from scratch in it is just not grounds to say it sucks.

In fact the 3rd party cob exporter python script comes within a hair of meaning Blender could be the only modeling app needed for FS modding - and that TS can be cut out of the POF conversion loop alltogether.

i dont mean to insult blender users at all. but once youve been deflowered by the max demon, you can never go back. had i started with blender rather than ts i would probibly have better things to say about it. what concerned me about blender was no matter how many formats it can supposidly work with. theres still the matter of what percentage of the format features are implemented in the input/output code. if it cant load all my cob/scn files that 95% of my models are stored in then it simply wont cut it for my needs. i dont want to have any duplicated effort by recreating data that should have never been lost in the first place. thanks to deep explorstion my scns can be converted to max files without any data loss other than maybe object names. and sence max already has an output plugin, and is really really powerfull, it seems my best choice.

back to 3ds i wouldnt say max's implementation of the format is bad. but rather that when you use it youre stuck with that version. its spmewhqt forward compatable, so if you update max you can load your 3ds files without any loss. it was created so that pro max users could create libraries of their own meshes to use as "props" in setting up animation scenes. its just a very poor transfer format and is useless for transfering model data from one program to another. fortionately we have progs like deep exploration for converting stuff. then again format hopping is really bad for your models regaurdless of how good your converters are.

i thought about a pof exporter done with lua, but i could never figure out how to go about outputting specifically typed data in a language with dynamic typing. not sure if ruby has that problem but if you know how to do it, making more converters will definately help the modding community.

[Kazan]

PCS 1.x can do smoothing....
oh.. and Blender is officially anti-supported by PCS because of the problems it causes  (it exports bad geometry constantly)

[Vasudan Admiral]

PCS 1.x can do smoothing....
oh.. and Blender is officially anti-supported by PCS because of the problems it causes  (it exports bad geometry constantly)

No it doesn't. Not anymore. I've explained this to you before Kaz.

One of the early versions of Blender had a problem with the dxf export format. Back then that was all it could effectively export, and this caused a number of problems all over the place, not just with PCS. That issue has long since been fixed, and besides which it can now effectively export many other formats.

Out of all the ships I've built over the years, I've only had PCS choke on a couple - and the problem was always caused by TS. I can say with complete confidence that if you put a bit of effort in, PCS is perfectly happy with Blender exported models.

(Also, remember that it's now open source. What would you think of someone if they began ranting about how PCS 1.0 used to create some bad collision data? You'd tell them to use a newer one. Same deal here I should think.)


Nuke: See, that reason is fair enough - Blender's imports are not great, so it doesn't suit your needs. No reason at all to say it sucks.
All those format importers/exporters were written by various users over the years, and annoyingly enough, the cob import/export appears to be the least complete of all of them. That said, you will almost definitely lose heirarchy no matter what format you use.

[Unknown Target]

I never liked Blender's uber-right click. I prefer having all my options on a sidebar or something.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Errm, Blenders right click does 2 main things - cancel the current operation (eg, a grab, rotate or scale operation), and select the nearest object/vertex/edge/whatever the context is.

This is why I wanna get this tutorial done, so I can squish at least some of these bizzare impressions people are getting of it.

[jr2]

Make sure you put your tutorial in the FS Wiki.