CMP to SUR Conversion Tests
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Thanks Mirkha.
Guys, I feel I need to put down my outlook here for you all to understand what I am looking for in this projectā¦
I am familiar with making surs by hand. Probably more than many of the greater modders. I have spent many months making bad ones and eventually succeeding, and even when I succeeded, not even being able to see why a certain one succeeded when its predecessors failed, since the model and method was identical in many cases.
I have manually made convex shrouds for sur-splicer, and later when we found they existed, I have used 3DS Max with Havoc tools and got very good results. Yes some missed welds did cause problems, but other times I needed to reshape a ship part entirely, or turn some face edges, but itās obvious when a shape is not right and it needs fixing, so not problem. Now we have the Convex tool for MilkShape and that is pretty good although not 100%. Note there are two of them, one is not quite as reliable as the other.
Then Sur Builder comes along and it is capable of making convex shrouds for individual cmp groups. WOW!!! FAB1!
I can split my own models very well and very easily.
So I figure, if Sur Builder can make a convex shroud for each cmp group in a cmp file, then I can make all the cmp groups that I need in the right place,the right size and the right shape, including the weapon hardpoints, equipment hardpoints, weapon+wings, and so on.
And then, if Sur Builder does its bit, all it has to do is locate each cmp group, shroud it, and save it, move on to the next, until all the cmp groups have a shroud (sur part). FAB2!
And last of all, wouldnāt it be FAB3 if Sur Builder had a button that said: āShield Bubbleā!? All that has to do is take a sphere, and very simply squash it to the size of the whole modelās maximum diameters+1metre in each axis X, Y, Z. Or +2 metres so we can have 1m above & below, sideways & fore-and-aft!
Done!
We wouldnāt need any magic, only these functions.
Then we wonāt need more work on an exporter or other, since the tool can be as beginner or as complex as the user wants it. For me, I will use it to add HpWeapon hardpoints and so on to make as close to a vanilla sur as I can. Just because I can, and because it is so quick!
Others will make a simpler 3-group model or a 1-group model with shield bubble and will be so happy with it too!
And for my dreadnoughts of 2,000 to 3,000 metres with claws, booms and beams and extended hulls, it will make hull-following surs without blinking - all I will have to do is break my model into sensible parts and the sur shapes will follow them!
My Crab will have sur parts following its booms, not filling in the gaps.
So the tool is not only for beginners, is it. All of us need it, perhaps more now that I have explained how I will use it.
Unless you want to call me a beginner too - Iāve been called worse!
So - Iām trying to find out which shapes the builder doesnāt like. But sadly, so far itās not only my modelās right wing tip (actually it is not the model since the identical left tip generated fine!) but also boxes, and spheres, and fat triangles (like Pizza slices, triangles with thickness).
The more I investigate the more basic shapes are failing.
That is what I am trying to isolate but since itās more than one shape it must be a fundamental problem.
Complex, nook-and-cranny ones like the hull and the wing roots generated fine, even when they were NOT WELDED, and even with gaps between vertices that were supposed to be one!
So - the weld theory is blown out of the water too, Sur Builder deals with that exceedingly well and no fix is needed for that at all!
All we need it to do is to stop skipping some cmp groups.
It MUST be easy to find the cause once we know what to look for and what model will reproduce it - now we do know!
From LSās comment it could be the Duplicate Radius, but I doubt it, I tried values of 0.01, 0.1, 1, 2, 5, and 10. The bigger the number the more obvious was the effect of combining vertices, below 1 it didnāt show much difference so I left it at 1 for the remaining tests.
By the way, is sur builderās ā1ā the same as a MilkShape ā1ā unit, approximately 1 metre scale for FL ships?
Iāll be back!
BW: you need to get MilkShape and the importers and exporters please, so you can make some simple shapes and help us to help you to troubleshoot. Itās really not hard and is compulsory to fix this problem.
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StarTrader wrote:
BW: you need to get MilkShape and the importers and exporters please, so you can make some simple shapes and help us to help you to troubleshoot. Itās really not hard and is compulsory to fix this problem.As I read through your last two posts, ST, I began to think that you and I should sit down over a pint and have you show me how to do some of these things so that I could run my own tests.
Great minds think alike, eh?
Now that is a scary thought!
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adoxa wrote:
@Bejaymac: Unless you have the source to 1.1, I have little choice (I think itād still be better to use 1.2 than start from scratch).I found two posts from Louva-Deus that suggest that the 1.2 code is a failed experiment, but the eoa.seriouszone.com main page is not working right now, so I could not investigate further:
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Iāve made a request to Louva for the v1.1 source, hopefully heāll see it soon and say yes.
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guess what, it would be great, if all of these gods out there from good old times were reunited here, on the starport. not the only one but the very freelancer community it shall become. donāt you think weād be a lot faster if all together?
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i think i have the 1.1 sources
here : msSurimporter1.1
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Well done Mirkha.
Gisteron: Are you sure you want them here? Donāt forget they are all older and grumpier tooā¦!
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That is the **Im**porter. But nice try.
ST: Any chance you can get the FLMM source while you are at it?
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oh ?
sorry -__-/me go out
edit :
@ ST :
all here
iāve done several tests
so, 2 sphere and a box, no way to generate a entire sur
the more i can do is a sphere + the box, or 2 spheresand itās weird because the sur builder seems to generate all the 3 shapes but itās not show in hardcmp ā¦
for example, Type1 general allways the box and not the spheres
here the best result with Type2 :
as you can see the second sphere is generated in the sur builder but not seen in hardcmp
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Bullwinkle wrote:
ST: Any chance you can get the FLMM source while you are at it?
Iāll ask, I think itās Matthew Leiderās? Donāt know if he was in EOA?
Mirkha wrote:
ā¦ as you can see the second sphere is generated in the sur builder but not seen in hardcmp
Good work, Mirkha, many thanks. I import the surs into MilkShape because the HardCMP display is not always clear.
In your file the shapes that are generated are there - itās just the red colour you chose for the material, it obscures the sur wires, but in my HardCMP v1.8 it shows as pink, see belowā¦
Well I too have noticed that the outer shroud in the sur builder display seems to always cover the whole model, but we canāt see if the missing parts are being generated and not saved perhaps -
BW, is it fairly easy to put a line in that prints the name of each cmp group as soon as it is found? Or even just a counter that is printed, if we see the cmp groups are all being found, (or not) it will give us a good starting point.
Thanks.
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the first screen shows that although the surbuilder have ādrawā the two spheres and the box, the result is only one sphere and the box
as shown on the milkshape importitās like the sur builder make the second sphere but donāt export it ā¦
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StarTrader wrote:
Iāll ask, I think itās Matthew Leiderās? Donāt know if he was in EOA?Yes. I sent Matt an email but got no response. Apparently he has left the scene. Somebody that I spoke with mentioned that Louva Deus might have a copy, and I have not gotten around to asking because I have my hands full with other stuff.
However, since you already initiated a conversation with Louva, FLMM is in seriously need of an overhaul. The SUR Builder is the kind of thing that a few modders will use a few times, but everybody uses FLMM. And most have trouble with it in one way or another.
BW, is it fairly easy to put a line in that prints the name of each cmp group as soon as it is found? Or even just a counter that is printed, if we see the cmp groups are all being found, (or not) it will give us a good starting point.
Why an immediate display? No matterā¦ the main request is for a result report, and I will put that on the list to investigate.
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Doesnāt need to be, could be in a log file or whatever is easiest as a tracing tool.
Actually I meant programmatically speaking, as in the next line of code! lol
Thinking about it a log may be best if we need more tracking output later to get closer to the problem.
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Not sure if LD will have the the source for 1.1 as that was Colinās project, but you never know.
As for FLMM LD does have the source for it, as itās now an ongoing EOA project, Matt dropped the whole lot in his lap a couple of years ago, Crazy released FLMM 1.5 last year as part of that project.
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yea, ST, i think it is sensible if they get up here. ofc, we are kinda new generation, many of us are either teenagers or at least under 30 but moralic standards are irrelevant for technical work. what we need is knowledge, the ability to explain and the wish to keep the game alive. it is unimportant whether we like each other as long as we keep rationalic (sounds vulcanic, donāt you think?
). even to mention \v\ again: yes, we troll each other, which is most stupid time consumption ever invented. in end effect, you wonāt disagree, that even such a project does its, even if tiny, but however is being a part of the initiative.
now, sorry, for offtopicā¦
isnāt it, that this v1.5 FLMM is even more buggy than 1.31? fortunately they call it a beta, so clean work is not to expect but once i tried out 1.4 and 1.5 me, and many others got back to 1.31, didnāt you?
