[Asmadi]

Hello all,
I've been a FS fan since release and always wanted to make my own ships. I'm now pretty good with 3ds max and I've done a lot of reading here but I have to admit I'm confused as hell. I got the latest version of PCS2 and I followed some tuts I found here to try and make sure my model fit the requirements as far as how to link up firing points and all that good stuff. I'm using max 2011 which has a DAE export option built in and PCS2 will load the file but shows my model dimensions as 0 and shows no model. I'm also a bit confused on why the tuts I found dont mention collapsing xforms before exporting. There are many other questions I have but Im hoping someone can direct me to some more concise and up to date info/steps on modeling from 3ds max to PCS2 or perhaps point out where I might be going wrong. At this point I can't get a model from 3d max to PCS2 that works let alone progressing on to actually adding a ship to the tables and all that mess. I'd greatly appreciate any help I can get


[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Asmadi]

Some other questions that have arisen for me up to this point which I haven't been able to find solid answers for:

1) I know my ship "hull" has to be all one object but do all vertices have to be connected or can it consist of multiple elements attached together as one object?
2) If I have a ship (like in the picture in my above post) with 3 gun points and 3 missile points and I want it to be able to load out 3 guns and 3 missiles, should I have 3 gunbank helpers and 3 missilebank helpers each with one firepoint assigned or simply one of each bank helper with all 3 respective firepoints assigned to each?
3) Even though PCS2 won't show my model, it does give me a message saying it found no location for my shield. None of the tuts I found here said anything about the shield needing a helper so I dunno whats up with that unless I just messed up the mesh.
4) is it ok to scale my model in 3d max using meters as units?
5) With today's computers, have the polygon and texture size limits come up a bit now with the latest engine build?

[Droid803]

You can't use autodesk dae. It doesn't work - for reference, try importing a freespace model DAE using that...errr plugin, won't work.
You need to get OpenCollada, and select that as the import/export option.

At least that was the case for 3dsmax2009 (the version I use).

That, or it may be working and you just didn't name your subobjects properly.
LOD0 must be called detail0 and whatnot.

regarding questions:

1) WRONG. Hull can be more than one object. In fact sometimes it has to be if too high poly - sub-parts should be parented to the main part and can be called anything you want. Ref: UED Solaris. Verticies do not need to be connected, you can have open faces. Open-manifold is fine etc. Ref: All my models ever. Just do whatever is most convienient for uvmapping while does not generate smooth/lighting errors.
2) No ****ing clue. Just add pof data in PCS2 IMO, quicker and easier than remembering/setting up half a billion helpers and have them not import lol.
3) Shield subobject should just be called "shield" and be a top level
4) Yes. Scaling a model is also trivial in PCS2 so don't even worry about it.
5) Looks like a fighter, so keep it easy on the polycount. (say, 20k tops?) Texture should be 1024^2 oe 2048^2. 4096 can be used by some/most pepople but its stupid overkill for a fighter. FSO eats polies for breakfast (observe the case that under certain circumstances, the 63mb POF for the HTL Sathanas - with 200,000 polies, outperforms the retail model because it uses fewer textures), max texture size is limited by people's gfx cards, not by anything engine side. Basically, performance is basically dependent on number of textures, then number of textures, then number of textures. You get it now? Number of textures. Ideally one. But still don't go overzealous on the number of polies - no sense wasting polies, seeing as they still cost performance in collision detection checks or something.

ya

[Arpit]

FSO eats polies for breakfast (observe the case that under certain circumstances, the 63mb POF for the HTL Sathanas - with 200,000 polies, outperforms the retail model because it uses fewer textures).

 

[headdie]

the key is not to go overkill on either textures or pollys, 2048^2 is probably overkill for a fighter but if you can create the detail to justify it then by all means provide that version for those who want to use it.

also with fighters remember that while most missions will only have a small number of cap ships often single digits per class with fighters you can easily be dealing with 4-8 times that number per class so just keep it sain.  on pollys think "is it likely to be noticed at 100m/s from 50 meters?" if not then it is probably better found on the normal map if you can

[Luis Dias]

Fighters can have some good 10k 20k polies. What matters in terms of polies in fighters is having good LODs going down pretty fast in terms of polycount. So LOD0 with 15K , then LOD1 should have like 2K, LOD2 should have like 800, LOD3 100, etc.

Most of the time when fighters are on-screen they won't be in LOD0 mode, so you will never get your FSO rendering ten times 15k polys of fighters for example.

[Asmadi]

Thanks for the responses. I got the opencollada plugin for Max and will see if that works for me later when time permits. The outdated tutorial I found gave me a poly limit of 6,000 for fighters so it seems I have some room to work since I built my fighter at like 2100 polys. Maybe now I can even get away with using a mesh smooth.

I may have some issues with my texture since I used a multi-sub object texture that utilizes a couple of actual image textures with the remainder being just diffuse colors with specular or glows.  Will this work or do I need to simply just have a single bitmap texture with a uvw map?

Based on above comments, should I just do all the firepoint, weapons bank etc. setup in PCS2 and not even mess with it in Max?

Also, is there an updated walkthrough for the process of ship modeling through to adding a ship to the game? I'm just trying to clear a path through all the conflicting information I've gotten from tutorial searches.

[headdie]

generally mesh and texture mapping need to be done in the Modeling program (though PCS2 can import objects from other DAE/POF files) everything else PCS2 is best once you get the hang of it.

edit
wording

[Lepanto]

Here's a tutorial with PCS2 information: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84335.msg1684292#msg1684293

It's mostly for Blender, but after you've added the ship to PCS2, it should tell you how to go from there to putting it in-game.

[Asmadi]

Thanks again for all the great info! I am moving along pretty well now but have run into a new issue. I cannot get textures to load in PCS2. I went to preferences and added a path to my folder where my images live after exporting from max as a .DAE. PCS2 shows my texture in the list but no matter what I do I cannot get it to display.

Does it need to be a specific file format or in some specific location?

Here's what I've got...


[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Droid803]

You probably need to get rid of the 0_ in front of it, just go into the textbox and delete it. I'm assuming you applied testUV1.[whatever] in max.
The name in PCS2 has to be the exact texture name (without the extension).

Its' some stupid **** that the new exporter does.

[Asmadi]

You're right about the file name. I did try changing it to what the actual file name is but that doesn't work either. ie: I put "testUV1" in the select and texture fields which caused the name to change in the left hand window and hit reload. Also tried adding the file extension, in this case, .tga.
Not grasping what it is I'm missing here

[Droid803]

Okay then, just select the root mod folder (that contains the folder called 'data')

[Apollo]

FSO eats polies for breakfast (observe the case that under certain circumstances, the 63mb POF for the HTL Sathanas - with 200,000 polies, outperforms the retail model because it uses fewer textures).

I guess that explains why the HTL Chimera is easier on my system than the Mediavps Orion.

[Arpit]

FSO eats polies for breakfast (observe the case that under certain circumstances, the 63mb POF for the HTL Sathanas - with 200,000 polies, outperforms the retail model because it uses fewer textures).

I guess that explains why the HTL Chimera is easier on my system than the Mediavps Orion.

Play with integrated graphics and see how the situation changes.

[z64555]

2) If I have a ship (like in the picture in my above post) with 3 gun points and 3 missile points and I want it to be able to load out 3 guns and 3 missiles, should I have 3 gunbank helpers and 3 missilebank helpers each with one firepoint assigned or simply one of each bank helper with all 3 respective firepoints assigned to each?

4) is it ok to scale my model in 3d max using meters as units?

2) Depends on what you are going for, having the 3 gunbanks and 3 missile banks will mean the player will be able to equip a maximum of 3 different gun types and 3 different missile types, each with one firepoint each. The latter choice, having 1 gunbank and 1 missile bank, will mean that the player will having only 1 available gun type and 1 available missile type to equip, but with 3 firepoints each. If you are making a craft for the FSO universe, then go by the general number of available weapons per playable craft.

4) FSO's distance units are, by default, meters. Just keep in mind that a lot of objects in FSO are much larger than they appear on-screen.

[Apollo]

FSO eats polies for breakfast (observe the case that under certain circumstances, the 63mb POF for the HTL Sathanas - with 200,000 polies, outperforms the retail model because it uses fewer textures).

I guess that explains why the HTL Chimera is easier on my system than the Mediavps Orion.

Play with integrated graphics and see how the situation changes.

I can't. My system doesn't support adding graphics cards (please don't ask).