[Akalabeth Angel]

    I'm trying to get my model with some simple textures into Freespace2 just for fun . . . but when I try to import the .cob (converted from like.dxf into .cob with 3dexploration) it says in PCS "You forgot to group those objects!". So the wiki on PCS says:

   "it just means that you need to glue a local light to the main hull object in Truespace. (This usually only occurs when PCS encounters a piece of geometry not glued to anything, such as a test hull for conversion or a forgotten bit just lying about your workspace)"

    But my question is, what exactly is a local light? And how do I glue it? Do I glue the ship as the child to the light? Or the light as the child to the ship???

[Herra Tohtori]

On every submodel [group] you need a local light. Gluing simply means they need to be under the same group as far as a I know.

[Getter Robo G]

Open Trueview extension by clicking the lower right icon of teh electrical plug called 3D and then the plugin in the middle box that appears over your tool bar near bottom center and then click/hold on the camera button icon in the lower left area of the main interface. Then move up and click lightbulb. Go up into truespace and simply drag the light onto the hull and save model group.

It automatically glues it as one or the other I forget which (it works).

[edit] quickie tutorial for 3.2, too bad cursor doesn't show up but oh well...

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[Akalabeth Angel]

      Thanks, I managed to get it into PCS . . but now PCS is stumping me something fierce. PCS2 seems more user friendly but also more crash friendly (ie, I add a gunbank . .. then add a gunpoint and it crashes). Sigh . . .maybe should just go back to doing the textures.


     And man Truespace drives me nuts. You'd think a windows application would know what the ALT-TAB command meant. But no, I have to minimize it just to look at Mozilla or whatever else.

[Scooby_Doo]

On every submodel [group] you need a local light. Gluing simply means they need to be under the same group as far as a I know.

I don't think you need a light under every subgroup as long as there's more than one object in that group.  At least I've never had to.

[Akalabeth Angel]

    So what does it mean in MODView if you open up a file, and instead of showing textures or complaining that textures aren't available it shows the ships as bright red?

   I put some crap textures on my ship in Maya, saved it as a DXF file. Converted the DXF to a COB file with 3d exploration. Opened it up in Truespace, added a lightbulb. Opened it up in PCS2, saved as a POF file then opened it in MODView and it's bright red. I'm guessing that bright red means no textures assigned, which means somewhere along the line I did something wrong but I don't know what. Does a person have to reassign the textures at some point?

[Vasudan Admiral]

Converting to DXF will be the problem there - it doesn't support textures at all.
What formats can Maya export to? If you can give me a list I can tell you which ones would work best.

As for conversion, you should definitely be using PCS2 - only use PCS1 if you're checking up as to whether or not a bug appears in both.
As for the crash on adding a gunpoint, that's very odd. I can't replicate it on mine, so can you make sure you're using "PCS 2.0.1 Stable (Feb 11 2008 19:05:56)"? If that's not the one you have, delete it and install this one: (from Kaz's sig) http://downloads.sourceforge.net/alliance/PCS2_2.0.1_2008-02-11_Setup.exe?use_mirror=osdn

If it is that version that's crashing, can you make a bug report of it in PCS2's mantis? http://ferrium.org/mantis/

About the hierarchy stuff, it's actually fairly simple overall. PCS2 is not concerned with lights in particular or meshes in particular - it's after the object groups. In Herra's pic the object groups are the red wireframe cubes "LOD0" and "Hull". PCS2 will convert each object group into a separate object in FS.

Here's an example of what a healthy hierarchy might look roughly like: (This is with Truespace's Scene Editor thingie rather than the trueview plugin, which is why the icons look different)


NOTE: The NAMES of the mesh objects or the lights are not important (nor is capitalisation) - I've just used them as labels here to describe them a bit.

This hierarchy above will create a "Detail0" freespace object consisting of "Hull_Geometry" and "GlassCanopy_Geometry" (which will have been combined into one) and assign the object "CockpitInterior" to Detail0 as a child. This is how you'd do RADAR dishes and other objects that need to be kept separate from the main ship hull. The object group "Turret01" is also turned into a freespace subobject with Detail0 as its parent. Turret01 is a multi-part turret though, so it has it's own child object - "Turret01-Arm".

The object groups "Shield", "Detail#" and "Debris##" are special case subobjects due to their names. PCS2 will look for these names and turn them into shields, LODs and Debris chunks respectively.

Also note that not all of that is nessecary for a successful conversion. This is the bare minimum:


This hierarchy will just consist of a single object "Detail0" that will be assigned as LOD0.

Finally, here are some examples of different hierarchies and how PCS2 will interpret them object-wise. It may help in figuring out what PCS2 is looking for.



Edit: Oh, one more thing - it isn't lights in particular that are important, but you can't create an object group in Truespace with only one object.

Lights just tend to get used the most and are convenient since they are ignored by PCS2. Unfortunately they have the infuriating side effect of lighting up your scene all at once, meaning complex ships absolutely KILL Truespaz' performance to the point of being entirely useless. The stupid program will just try and render the cumulative effect of all the lights in the scene in realtime. Not only does it fail to do that correctly anyway, but it makes itself unusably slow.

[Akalabeth Angel]

    Wow that's a lot of information.
    Darn Maya . . I may have to wait for uh, Kazan's funky thing he's working on.

   
    Maya can export/save as:
    .ma (Maya Ascii)
    .mb (Maya Binary)
    .fbx
    .dxf (DXF_FBX)
    .dae (DAE_FBX)
    .mov (for animation?)

    I chose DXF because it was the only one of those formats that 3D Explorer would read.
    Maybe I can get a plugin or something to expand the number of files, I dunno . . .

[Vasudan Admiral]

That's it? 
Well that sucks.

Um... yeah definitely see if you can find plugins. Ideally you're looking for .obj, .X or .3ds in roughly that priority order. If you find others though let us know.

[Akalabeth Angel]

That's it? 
Well that sucks.

Um... yeah definitely see if you can find plugins. Ideally you're looking for .obj, .X or .3ds in roughly that priority order. If you find others though let us know.

       Oh wait, I can export as an OBJ file.
       Apparently I need to enable it in the plug-in manager.
       Why someone includes a feature with a program and has it turned off by default is beyond me.

[Flipside]

I was going to say I thought .obj was available through Maya...

That's certainly the best bet

[Akalabeth Angel]

      Well I've got it into PCS2 and it looks a lot better. The first time I had it in there, it was like everything was transparent unless it was on the other side sorta thing.

     Though for SOME reason, when I exported it as an object, some program decided to put it standing on it's tail instead of level. Sorta annoying for rotating it in PCS2 . . .dunno if it matters. I think the program was crashing before because my model was screwed up (being a DFX file or whatever)

     Oh wait, still crashing on the gunports thing. Hmmn, I'll mention it on the mantis thing-a-ma-gig

[Getter Robo G]

In the mean time why not post the .cob/textures?
I don't do turrets but a quick conversion try is no sweat...

[Akalabeth Angel]

In the mean time why not post the .cob/textures?
I don't do turrets but a quick conversion try is no sweat...

   Uh, my textures are ass. So . . . I'll maybe wait til I do some more work on it

   EDIT - Also I need to like, determine where the missile points are going. Once I know where the missiles are I could just make the POF and then update the textures thereafter. But without the missile exits a person kinda has to change the POF around later. Maybe a pain in the butt.

[Akalabeth Angel]

    Is there a way to like resize a model under freespace dimensions? Or . . . another way to solve the same problem, is there a way in Truespace to size a model and know what size it will be in Freespace?


    Or do most people just like bring in another model into truespace and scale accordingly? So for example if I were to compare my fighter to a Serapis, I might export the serapis pof to a cob, bring it into my scene and scale my fighter alongside it??

[Scooby_Doo]

Using 20 conversion units, 20 truespace units = 1 meter.

[Water]

Using PCS2
Options > Preferences > cob scaling factor

20 truespace units = 1 meter (but only if you want to)

This is probably because Truespace3 is crap at zooming right out or right in. For Blender users 1 to 1 in PCS2 would work fine, as you can zoom in on a vertex and zoom right out for a whole 5k ship.

So if you are stuck with Truespace, 20 would be a good place to start - just set PCS2 scale to 20. You can use any model scale you like, as long as you set PCS2 to that scale on import. You can use a different scales for fighters and cap ships if you want.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Using PCS2
Options > Preferences > cob scaling factor

20 truespace units = 1 meter (but only if you want to)

This is probably because Truespace3 is crap at zooming right out or right in. For Blender users 1 to 1 in PCS2 would work fine, as you can zoom in on a vertex and zoom right out for a whole 5k ship.

So if you are stuck with Truespace, 20 would be a good place to start - just set PCS2 scale to 20. You can use any model scale you like, as long as you set PCS2 to that scale on import. You can use a different scales for fighters and cap ships if you want.

    Okay, cool thanks guys.
    I noticed the 20:1 thing in PCS1 . . . but I'm not sure about "units" in Truespace. I'll have to look in the help files or somesuch.
    Maybe it's because I don't know the program but the TS GUI is so . . . aggravating. I mean in Maya, to zoom, or rotate around an object, or move perpendicular to your current view you just press and hold one of the three mouse buttons. TS seems you have to select something everytime. I mean, moving in Fred2 is easier than TS from what I've found. But who knows, probably just because I don't know it that well yet.

[Water]

    Maybe it's because I don't know the program but the TS GUI is so . . . aggravating. I mean in Maya, to zoom, or rotate around an object, or move perpendicular to your current view you just press and hold one of the three mouse buttons. TS seems you have to select something everytime. I mean, moving in Fred2 is easier than TS from what I've found. But who knows, probably just because I don't know it that well yet.

The TS3 GUI is crap because it is very OLD.  As a Blender user I only use TS3 for sorting the final stage heirarchy, which means I avoid the UI and just use the TrueView plugin. Use Maya for most of your stuff and TS3 for just heirarchy, if possible.