CMP to SUR Conversion Tests
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Yes, sadly the authors have tended to depart before completing the plugins, so we are starting from scratch each time some kind Knight takes it on.
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@Schmackbolzen: SurDump reads sur files no problem; source is text, so just look at that. I had thought of adding sur to the XML Project, but I feel the format doesn’t lend itself to easy manual editing.
I shall be updating the sur exporter, soonish. The “Problem - IDS?” topic inspired me to work on a better infocard maker. For example, you give it “Battleship \i{Osiris}.\n” and it will give you (compiled into a DLL) “<rdl><push><text>Battleship</text> <tra italic=“true”><text>Osiris</text><tra italic=“false”><text>.</text><para></para></tra></tra></push></rdl>”.
That ConvexHull tool is pretty much what I was going to make from the shrink-wrap option of the current sur exporter. No source, though (for the plugin; the actual generator has source), so I still will, so I can choose my own names and create a single convex mesh for a group of meshes.
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@ST: If you have a look at the california minor planetscape (landing sequence), you can see brown pyramid-like structures. I referred to them as terraforming generators. The sur builder has built a very good sur for them, and they are completely scenery objects. Conclusion is that the sur builder can create good surs for scenery objects as well.
The other files that I have attached in my previous posts (a simple hill and a terrain) all have this problem mentioned earlier: some meshes don’t get built. -
@adoxa: Well the one thing missing is, how to calculate the opposite offset of each vertex in the triangle list. Any hints?
Edit: Never mind, got it from the ms sur exporter
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I did a bit more testing last night and found one of my small fighters got a bad sur made by sur-builder with missing sur parts over the left wing.
I looked at the cmp and found it had both the wings made as tops and bottoms, not complete. Can’t think why I had done that. But the right wing surs were gen’d fine.
Anyway, going to regroup it and try again and will report back.
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Good report, thank you.
FWIW, the SUR Builder cannot seem to make a correct SUR for a vanilla Titan, either. The builder’s SUR is assymetrical, with what looks almost like an “extra” fin. There is no need to make a SUR for the Titan because the vanilla SUR is fine, but it was one of my test models.
Some models confuse the SUR Builder. So far, it seems to be mostly due to some small problem with the CMP.
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Has anyone figured out yet, how the tree structure in the Bits Sections works? That seems to only thing missing, even the ms sur exporter seems to have errors concerning this part and I could not figure out yet how it constructs such a tree.
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Well the problem is, that I don’t get the purpose of the siblings (except of the root bound, that is perfectly clear). When I look at original vanilla surs, the siblings all have different centers and radiuses, which don’t seem to have anything to do with the other siblings or triangle groups. So I am asking, is this some sort of serialized tree? If so, is it pre-order, in-order, etc.?
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The center of each sibling with a Tri (using SurDump’s output) is the center of that group. For example, looking at bw_fighter.sur.txt, you’ll see that Num 5 points to Tri 5, which is HpTorpedo01. Look at the vertices that have HpTorpedo01 and you’ll see that they match the center and scaled radii. Try looking at the log of the latest sur importer, it actually calculates each radius (I’ll add it to SurDump sometime).
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Well I have developed my own theory and it seems I was correct. I was able to create basic vanilla like sur files. Importing vanilla surs (without hardpoints, just the meshes) and converting them again worked.
I now have extended my .obj->.sur converter to work without convex hull meshes.
I appended a demonstration for the industrial_dock.cmp of the aldebaran modular station pack II. You will see that it is 1:1 geometry and it does work in the game. The big box around it is just the shrink wrapped hull, which I don’t automatically generate yet and so I chose a simple box.If any one wants to have some .cmps tested you can give me a link or attach a file and I can try to convert them. All groups will be converted to the main root group, though.
There still is much work to be done. Sorting of the tree in the bits section is not ideal yet for example. Multiple groups are still not implemented. The list goes on
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Well, the two cmp files I had problems with and attached here just a few posts ago are good candidates. They are solars, so it’s no problem if the sur is converted down to the root; the terrain file is huge in size and the hill has overlapping groups, both interesting in the case of a sur.
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I have attached both surs. They seem to work pretty good, although the data structure is not yet optimal. For example, milkshape tends to clone every vertex used by a different group when exporting to .obj and I don’t filter that yet.
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I now have extended my .obj->.sur converter to work without convex hull meshes.
I appended a demonstration for the industrial_dock.cmp of the aldebaran modular station pack II. You will see that it is 1:1 geometry and it does work in the game. The big box around it is just the shrink wrapped hull, which I don’t automatically generate yet and so I chose a simple box.Does that mean you figured out how to do vanilla-like surs?
All the geometry in one group without having to make XXX convex-hull parts and then splice them together? -
Yes, that is correct. I can convert any geometry you like to a .sur file
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So - what is exactly the difference between your converter and the sur builder?
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Well the .sur builder tries to build one convex hull around each mesh group, whereas my converter just converts the whole geometry without any changes. Meaning that you have to do optimizing of the geometry yourself (well it will work without, too. But then there is more calculation for collision needed). The advantage is, that you get exact fitting .sur files of any geometry you can come up with.
The easiest thing to do is just a polygon reduction so that you get a geometry which is close enough to the original, but has as few polygons as possible. Nearly all modeling tools can do that.
If you have a real complex mesh and want to simplify collision calculations you can just build your own collision mesh out of simple boxes and spheres and convert it.
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and is it, that this mesh will be compatible with any visual geometry? cuz we heard something of “sur to model attachment” and stuff like that. although the flmodeltool made every vanilla sur compatible with any custom mesh. does it work somehow similar in this point?
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That depends on how the .sur file is generated. You can attach certain groups in the .sur to corresponding groups/nodes in a .cmp file. The ones I create for now are all attached to the root node, which every .cmp file should have. But it is possible to change all that.
w0dk4 wrote:
Thats awesome! The real breakthrough regarding .surs IMHOKeep it up
Thanks, I will
