Jefferson's 3D Modeling Tips for Freelancer
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The bigger picture is that you’re freaking out over a 1.5k poly bridge when the typical scene budget for a game these days is over 1M polygons. An entire FL scene is less than a modern character.
It’s basically utterly irrelevant to do any optimization on these.
Oh, and it wouldn’t surprise me if FL used per-vertex lighting for some things, in which case having denser geometry actually increases lighting quality. The more you know, eh?
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Which is why I’m scrounging polys. The old scene had X and I’ve blown out this particular scene one before trying to do back then what was just adding pads and trying to upgrade the terrain. This time my goal is to add lots more, but until I know how how much of the important thing -the terrain upgrade - costs I won’t know how much I have left over for that. Now all the new pads, catwalks, accoutrements are just a tad over the original’s were three pads and all. Plus it would be nice to leave a nicer looking Toledo without all my mods put in too. I mean who hasn’t trucked into Omicron Minor to swat a few nomads?
The more I save here I can put there.
The question is (in my mind at least) is how much can I add?
Edit: I’d kill for vertex lighting! I suppose HDRI is out?
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just put it into the actual game and we will see what it really looks like
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Workin’ on it.
Right now I’m headed to audition for….
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I might be shooting myself in the foot posting on this topic again, but after 2 days of plugging away at the height map from the old terrain my terrain generator kicked out the new terrain and a texture I was really surprised at. I set it to render granite and only told it to change the mesh from quad based to triangles and the texture sizes to 1024 x 1024 .tga (It doesn’t speak .dds) and as I suppose to please my mother the geologist a rock strata band up there at the top of the cliffs. (Does that by UV manipulation.) I don’t think you can ask for much better and I’m happy.
Yes comments got me thinking “Why settle for all that rust when I’m setting on gigs of material libraries?” Then I thought that since I know what not to mess with (Thought I’ve moved around and added ship seller type hp’s before those keypoints for the cutscene there has me edgy) I’d like to change the flyover path too but that’s arcana I can leave for later or shout HELP! Thinking of new pads and catwalks now that that terrain is done.
As for now I’m giving away my ship models I don’t have the time to complete over at the ship showcase forum.
Come and get you free .obj format models!
(Have to clean out my closet sometime don’t you know?)
Used to give them out like this on Lancers Reactor in “days of yore”. And those who mod might not model.
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Sorry, my joke video had to get pulled off my cloud drive. Google changed polices and now you have to approve everyone via email.
Sorry.
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Jefferson001 wrote:
Might Give Mod Developers: insomnia, hives, sudden irate behavior, pimples, spasms, burning itch, rash, simultaneous diarrhea and constipation¯_(ツ)_/¯
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Somewhere along the process of import-export the mesh update got rejected in the .vms. Should have backed up meshes that worked. Didn’t. Got burnt for it. However with the old terrain mesh the new texture in my final version looks good (I think, but I might be a tad biased ) yes it repeats, that’s old meshes UV’s.
Working on new hardware next.Edit: Look at next post for link to this .cmp to add to even vanilla Freelancer and workfiles so you might get new mesh to work.
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Okay I admit it I goofed somewhere and don’t have time to start again. So I’m handing what I’ve got up to now over. At the least you’ll get a new looking Toledo. If someone gets the terrain mesh into the cmp successfully please let me know. By the way. The new UTF editor you can get on the site is four star. Bravo to the team.
Link to zip:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kJYlxz1CDpeUictxJ–E3tR1EMUhyqyu/view?usp=drivesdk
Jefferson here is still monitoring, but up to my neck in another project.
-Cheers-
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While working on another project group in another modding community has packed 22mb of 3ds and gmax import - export scripts and plugins into one zip.
Don’t have to be a member to download at this link:
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/other/gmax12-3dsmax4-importexport-plugin-script-collection
Know these work with gmax 1.2 and Max 7. Haven’t tried on newer builds.
Edit: Heads together with post docs around the tent pitched to heat the monitor from freezing that’s attached to the telescope out in cold I mentioned my woes with a terrain mesh. Don’t laugh, one’s an Elven Ranger, another a Red Wizard, then a Barbarian and the last a Druid. Me? Admin. I roll dice behind a screen. So one mumbles, “used gw didn’t you? Bad move.” By response was “Huh?” “You said you had to drop back to Max 7? Uses Wavefront. Said (He mumbles) you’re using Design, couldn’t get some exporter to work dat made fer regular Max.” “And?” I prompted the Barbarian. “After 7 or so the switched to gw and booted Wavefront. Gotta big mesh one exported in gw, load into a program what only speaks wavefront, bang, big chunk of your mesh is going to flip vectors. Go try it. Bet ya!”. Four hours later back from counting stars I found out he was right. The center of my terrain up and vanished in Wavefront .obj and appeared perfect imported back into Design with gw .obj. So I trimmed more polygons until it reappeared in wavefront. Already cursing that the CMP exporter returns “version conflict” in 2010 Design because it’s made for regular 2010. Welcome to 3DS Max. About as friendly as a bobcat with a sore paw. So “Wait till we see it in the engine.” Soon. Very soon. Only one little problem now. What happens to that other planet that uses the mesh calling new hp’s and textures through thorn scripts? Why? Because it’s used in the long flyover scene and down the rabbit hole and you never are back in the cockpit until the Rhineland Nomads blow up the docking ring. Sprague. That long fly over is the left of the terrain, the flying landing of Toledo is right. A dimple an a mesa on the left is the rabbit hole entrance. There is no cmp for Sprague. The changes are are all scripted.
So it’s get the cmp for toledo right, then tackle Sprague by taking out it’s texture calls. Job done.All I have to say is, “Out of the mouths of barbarians.”
Vox Barberi!
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Well after finding 2011 version 3DS Max user that let me load up CMP and finding out it too loads a CMP with the same Wavefront - gw obj vertex order glitch had me ready to toss the project. Hunting down the glitches in 22k+ verts one at a time isn’t a job I want. I tried flipping the 400+ inverted polygons in the terrain model only to find they flip right back on export because the vertex ordering is the problem. GW obj in 3DS Max does it right, Wavefront reads it wrong and it seems Freelancer’s got the same problem as wavefront obj. Too old to accept newer software’s ordering of high poly models. So I’ve versed myself on what the problem is I’m trying a software solution. I’ve gone quiet because it’s one wicked problem and it’s being battled by coders for other reasons mostly beccause it causes problems cross platforming architectural models. Same problem, different applications. Same roadblock in place that kept me from just splitting the inverts off and inverting them. Poof, there goes the UV’s not only of the new group but on the boarders of the group you split off from because it’s not polygons it’s a glitch in vertex orders. While experimenting I’ve found this happens even with <10k poly models in old Milkshape and there if it doesn’t flip polys it causes Milkshape to break off polys into discreet groups. Looking for a program that gets the ordering right and it’s deving into pure math.
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Vertex reorder got the terrain into MS3D correctly, but another problem cropped up and I’m just going to put this off until can grad new 3ds Max version and any export but Milkshape.
What did work in this project was the retexture.
That other problem was that even with terrain sorted the vertexes on the hardware started flipping for the same reasons. GW vs Wavefront. But the cmp for base didn’t care about importing new textures. So Jeff’s Used Starships will have to find somewhere else to set up shop. Wonder what the rent is on Planet Primus?
