[Starfury]

Ok. FS2 is full patched, etc.  Blah blah, now that that's out of the way...

I've created a new model (obviously).  I have most of it done, I've added engine glows and turrets and a couple subsystems.  I want to see how all of this looks in game, so I added a table entry for it and changed everything accordingly, but when I try to create the ship in FRED, It gives me an invalid page fault.  So, somethings wrong... I did some poking around, cleaned up a bit.  However, FRED will still not take the model.  I'm out of ideas, so I'm turning to you guys.  Please help me!

[KARMA]

use the default table entries and change the name to fighter2t-05
(myrmiddon), if it is something related to model it will continue to don't work elseway its something related to the tbl.
check textures also...btw i think that in early development there is no point in testing a model with his own tbl entries... just call it as a original pof and see in fred if the model has problems

[Starfury]

Crap.  It's a model problem.  Oh well.

[an0n]

Probably just too many polys.

[Starfury]

Nah, less than 1200, no turrets.

[KARMA]

1200 may be too much...
you have a total poly limit of 5000(i think) but only 730->840 polylimit for single polygroup

[Starfury]

Per polygroup?  That means that the hulls of the original destroyers were less than 800 polys?  Oh lord, that's going to take a lot to wrap my mind around.

[Dranon]

Is there a way to check the poly's on a model outside of a modelling program?

[an0n]

Originally posted by Dranon
Is there a way to check the poly's on a model outside of a modelling program?

Getting millions of renders and counting each individual poly. :D:D

[KARMA]

u can use modelview to check polycount...obviously on the converted pof;)

[Starfury]

Anyways, back on topic.  Anybody know for certain what the poly counts need to be?

[Anaz]

woah...we have 'Dranon' and 'an0n'....

[Starfury]

I just can't get this right!   FRED will accept it now... but it's throwing polygons anywhere and everywhere.  Some are in the right place, some are just...   help?

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Starfury
I just can't get this right!   FRED will accept it now... but it's throwing polygons anywhere and everywhere.  Some are in the right place, some are just...   help?

That's the shards of death. You've still got a "sub object" with too many polys. Do a google search for my Freespace 2 ship creation guide. It's out of date and it's not great, but it should help a little.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Starfury
I just can't get this right!   FRED will accept it now... but it's throwing polygons anywhere and everywhere.  Some are in the right place, some are just...   help?

AS IP said - too many polys on it.  Try for under 800 on any sub-object (I think 846 is the max I've used, but best not to chance it).  Personally, all my ships are <400, so I can safely triangulate them.  If you have sub-objs, careful that the total number of polys isn't too high.  I think 2000~3000+ (LOD0) can work in FS2 (based on testing ...something....), but it's a pain in the neck to edit, as it won't show up in modelview.

Someone gave a good explanation for this - Eternal One I think - (correct me if I'm wrong) it's basically a stack overrun, where the poly co-ordinates are too many for the allocated memory space, and it's reading from unrelated data outside the allocated memory space - hence it's reading a bunch of random numbers and throwing out hugely different co-ordinates.

[Starfury]

Ahhhhh, well, that makes sense  So I get to break up ship up into several sub-objects.  Funnnnnn.  Oh well. Good learning experience.  Thanks everybody

[edit] aldo, you use blender, right?  How do you get around truespace screwing up normals when you import dxf's ?  it would help me because I'm having to break up the model more and more, but Blender says the normals are right.  

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Starfury

[edit] aldo, you use blender, right?  How do you get around truespace screwing up normals when you import dxf's ?  it would help me because I'm having to break up the model more and more, but Blender says the normals are right.  

This is sort of complex to describe, but anyway.

On the blender console, look for a little icon shaped like a box - when you click it, it changes tohe bootm menu.  On the roght-most side of the menu, there's a 'show double sided' buttom.  click this - black areas have correct normals. silver are flipped.  (note - if you're on double sided mode, all remians silver).

To flip the normals, slect the vertices, and use a button in that same menu - 'flip normals' , handily enough.

Neat tip - if you make a box, it starts with all the normals flipped.  So I normally start from a cube, flip the normals (all faces), and extrude from it - most, if not all, normals should be fine

[LAW ENFORCER]

I laugh in your general direction for using Blender... its 'Free'....
If you use a free program you are a idiot
If you use a comercial program (like MS3D) you are cool

So sayeth the wise Capitalist.....

[Starfury]

lol Aldo.  I'm guessing you mean the object properties button.  So all the faces should appear black, in NON- double sided mode?  If it helps, I can pretty well find whatever you're referring to, in case you know it as something else.

Originally posted by LAW ENFORCER
I laugh in your general direction for using Blender... its 'Free'....
If you use a free program you are a idiot
If you use a comercial program (like MS3D) you are cool

So sayeth the wise Capitalist.....

Don' mess with Blender.  

[Anaz]

I stopped using blender when I started using PCS