Freelancer UTF Editor question
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Ah, had a feeling you were referring to that. A lot of the game type modeling programs only support limited texture types. For Freelancer it should be a basic Diffuse texture, but the engine also supports Opacity and Emissive . Those are best just done in your image editing software and then imported with a UTF editor (imported into the .mat file, or if you’ve included mats in the .cmp file).
I haven’t screwed around with this area, but if I recall, you should be able to render a snapshot of the material to texture and use that as basic Diffuse.You’ll definitely want to get friendly with the UTF editor(s -once LS gets his finished). With that you can dig into all the .mat and .txm files to see how FL handles materials. Definitely worth checking the tutorials out as well though, before I’d dug into them I would not have known for a while that Freelancer uses flipped TGA, or non-flipped DDS images.
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well this is a replacement model, it has none of the same maps or coordinates as the old one, and the old model was too processor heavy. too many pieces. you can guess all that stuff moving around at the same time caused havoc in the mod. so i simplified it a bit and then increased the detail. i think they were trying to make it ultra destructable. but it just got in the way of fun, so the new model is more or less just nine pieces (its a space station) and the mapping is done. the old textures were really retarded looking so i replaced them all the way. im just trying to get it into a .CMP, and then a .SUR and .MAT. but i want to make sure the textures made it to milkshape by looking at it there first. they are .dds and .tga respectively.
.dds for the diffuse, and .tga for all glowmaps. some are done by others, but a few i made custom just for this model
i know its going to be converted to “tri’s” as soon as i export it, but thats not a problem because the stats are the same and its still under the freelancer limit, its about half of the limit… so its good to go until i take it to milkshape. then its kinda weird how no material shows up. i have had this problem with other apps and it goes away in time, like for a while my .dds plugin didnt work in photoshop. now it does. im not sure if its too many things in memory or that im using an older version of MS3d. thats why i asked if backwards compatability was an issue, because if its not then i can just open it in the newer version and save it as an ms3d file. then try it out by opening that file in the old version of ms3d. either its a machine issue or its an exe issue.
im still toying around.
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Have that happen often myself (no textures visible in MS3d). As long as the mat is present in the mat list you can export and fiddle with it in UTF ed afterwards.
Of course that doesn’t exactly help when re-checking map alignment
Would be great if there was just a CMP / SUR / MAT / 3DB import / export plugin for Max, but methinks the price issue kinda prevents that in the player community =( -
price as far as max goes, probably. but im thinking that nobody seriousy thought about making a plugin for max. and its a shame, cause it would be really cool. that and there are less restricitons to milkshape because its open source and probably easier to code a plugin for it than it is for max. and there you have it. the plugin would probably be outrageous because it would be in demand. but nobody would buy it really. i guess i will just have to see how everything turns out.
im also going to make sure all textures are really .dds format before i get too excited. i just remembered a lot of them are not originally .dds, so im going to check to be sure. that may take a while, but i will post my results as soon as i get it all sorted out and get this thing into a CMP.
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Couldn’t a plugin be made for GMax, which is free and was designed to work with games?
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but methinks the price issue kinda prevents that in the player community =(
Nope it’s the amount of calculations required to convert the vertex, normal & UV coordinates from MAX’s vertical Z axis setup to the standard game setup of a vertical Y axis, this is why so many game moding communities use Milkshape, as unlike MAX (and the other CAD apps) it was built for game modelling and uses the vertical Y axis setup, plus there’s a free SDK available to help make plugins ;).
Stick with DDS for all of your textures, even the glowmaps, as only people still living in the stone age use TGA with Freelancer.
Use one texture per material assignment as iirc those formats & milkshape can’t handle multi textures, now as for exporting from MAX to Milkshape you should be using the MAX2MS3D plugin that’s in the downloads. It works with MAX 8 so it might work with 9, once you start to export with it leave you PC alone as the calculations can take a while depending on the poly count, and the slightest interuption can cause MAX to hang.
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ok that makes things a little better. i dont mind the wait, expecially if it means a better view in MS3D
its the same thing when i export ships to X3, it just takes a minute, i can always find something to do between time.
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I’ve done all my modeling in Gmax then export the model without UV maps to .3DS. Then I do all skinning and hardpoints in Milkshape.
After I mod the ship into the game I see what is ‘wrong’ with the ship. Because the CMP exporter almost always has problems with orientations on the models I’ve done unless it’s almost a box in shape. Then I use the UTF editor to fix any orientation problems and tweak hardpoint placements if I don’t like where something is at once I see the stuff mounted in game.
It’s the 5th time I’ve modded a ship, so the process is pretty streamlined for me now. However, I’m not sure if you know this, but if you click on ‘windows’ then ‘texture coordinate editor’ you can adjust the map of your textures. For some reason Milkshape has the maps at a very tiny point and somethings ‘looks’ like you didn’t add a texture. you pick a perspective you want , say from top, if you are skining the top portion of your object then click ‘remap’. From there you can adjust the mesh outline of your object over the texture until you are happy with it.
This is my 4th model, an Alpha Fighter from Robotech http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y105/WNxAcidstorm/screen34.jpg This wasn’t an exact representation of the textures of the original design, but I wanted to do my own skins. That was my first custom texture job. They are rather simplistic cuz I’m not so handy with paint shop pro, but I’m working on it.
I’ve only been doing this for about a month and learned from a tutorial. And I used .TGA
guess I’m still in the stone age… or rather the tutorial was written years ago and didn’t mention much of anything in DDS format. Guess I’ll have to mess around with that and see if the textures look any better using that format.EDIT: oh yeah, forgot to mention I did some tweaking to 3 of the hardpoints on the top of the ship. Hidden in the ‘missle pods’ are cluster rockets and they do not pivot when the mouse is moved. So when I fire missles it looks like it’s launching right out of the pods.http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y105/WNxAcidstorm/screen30.jpg
I’m also using an older version of Milkshape because the plugins I have for the exporters make the newer versions crash for some reason. I’m using 1.7.0. I guess I could use a newer version to do the modeling in then open it up for exporting the the older program… but not sure if the older one would read the data the same. I’m pretty sure it would, so I might have to take a look into that as well… if it has any advantage that is.
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I had the same issues up till 1.8.3 or 4, but all of the plug-ins are working fine for me now.
As to texture type, TGA is the more precise and polished. DDS compresses the image, so you lose quality to bring the size down. But, we’re not playing with an advanced engine that makes the difference a glaring eyesore -unless maybe you use a 256 on a cap ship o.0 The main reason for DDS is it shrinks a mod by a heap, compare a 512 between the two formats and you can imagine how the download swells quickly.
Texturing always takes me muuuuch longer than the modeling, except the SUR of course. Especially doing a proper unwrap and fine tuning things, that can be a royal pain in the toosh just unwrapping efficiently. Har, at least I know I’m not alone in this, in fact pretty much any project you run across, a texture artist is in high demand. Does get easier once you get comfy with all the tools available, but still time consuming -for me at least.
For your missile pods, you also hid them from the equipment mount screen as well? Looks proper from here m8, keep it up
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It’s also worth noting that since DDS is smaller on disk, it’s also faster to load and takes up less memory, therefore increasing performance across the board for a very small drop in quality. This is especially important for older machines with little amount of GPU RAM.
