Single Component Ship SURs….

Bejaymac

…. done entirely in milkshape.

As most of you already know getting a custom SUR to work is “problematic”, and has driven many people to dispair. This is down to the complexity of the task, either reworking CMP & SUR into multi component, or jumping in & out of modellers & FlModelTool.

This method only produces a shrinkwrap SUR rather than a skin tight one, thanks to FL requireing it’s ROOTs to be convex, because of this it’s best to only use this on more compact models, as something like a Galaxy class starship would have large empty areas that will register damage. While my method only uses Milkshape, it does require a little extra modelling work, which you will find out about as we progress.

Required plugins -

Step 1

Once you’ve decided on what ship your going to make a SUR for load it into ms3d with P1p3r’s importer (DO NOT USE ANY OF THE OTHER CMP IMPORTERS), set the importer so that it loads in the hardpoints as well (we need these for later). Save the model as an .ms3d file (for later), an then start deleteing the hardpoint groups, delete the materials and then regroup the mesh into one group, lastly weld the mesh that way you get rid of all of the “extra” vertices.

Step 2

Next we need to make the “wrap” that we’ll use for the SUR, you can do it by hand (if your a masachist (sp) ), but the easiest way to do this is with the SUR exporter.
Start up the Sur Exporter v1.1 and use these settings -

You can ignore the “Ship Mass” section as we wont be flying with this SUR ;), after you finish with the export you can clear the model (file>new) as we don’t need this mesh any more (select No when asked to save).
Now we use the SUR Importer and load in the SUR we just exported.

This is where that “extra modelling work” I mentioned comes in, as unfortunately the “shrinkwrap” adds extra polygons and other problems that will have to be fixed or removed, unless you like CTDing all the time :P.

The above picture shows 3 of the problems, that weird shaded area is actually overlapping polygons, as is the long horizontal circled area, the circled area to the right is actually a hole in the mesh.

In this one I’ve hidden the rear half of the mesh so we can look inside, as you can see there are a lot of polygons in there, these are extra polygons that the exporter has added.

To start with delete the “M1_Root” group as we don’t need it, then save as a new .ms3d, from now on it’s best to do a regular incremental(add 1) save, that way if you screw up you don’t have to start over.
Basically you need to work right through the mesh, hiding, regrouping & deleting until you get it clean, you might even have to replace polygons (I had to replace most of the circled areas in the second pic).
Once your happy with the mesh save it.

Note to those trying to get shrinkwrapped station SURs to work, now you know why they crash all of the time, the exporter does the mesh right, it just makes an effing mess of the wrap.

Step 3

You can use that mesh with the shieldbubble setting and get a so-so SUR, but to get it working properly you need to add something to it.

Using milkshapes “merge” option load in the .ms3d you made at the beginning, this time around you want to delete the ship & materials rather than the hardpoints. You should now have the mesh you’ve cleaned up at the top of the group list, with a pile of hardpoints below it. Most of these hardpoints will be useless to us, keep any that are in the following list & delete the rest -

These are the only small ship hardpoints the SUR exporter recognises, so anything else is a waste of time, try and have them ordered in the group list similar to how how they appear above.
2 things left to do before we make the SUR, 1 make sure the mesh (not hardpoints) is welded, and 2 save it as this is the finished mesh, keeping it in you archives means you don’t have to go through that again for that ship if you mess up and delete the SUR some time in the future.

Exporting the SUR - the settings are pretty much the same as when you created the wrap -

Just this time it’s the “shield bubble” option, and the “ship mass” is required this time, so whatever you have it set at in the INI you stick it in here to.

That’s it, export the SUR, stick it in the mod with it’s CMP and go fly it.

I’ve made & tested a couple of SURs useing this method so far, and they all work without problems, no CTD’s, no freezing and no SUR related errors in FlSpew

EDIT

You do have to watch the polycount on the model in the CMP when using this method, I’ve just tried to do a 6K poly model, it gave me a “wrap” of 1100 polygons, with atleast half of them being overlapping (ie a CTD), I found it easier to make the “wrap” by hand rather than pick my way through all 1100.

Tunicle

Thank you

JONG

After I follow the method above, have done a lot of test results are as follows:

Use above of SUR files, the game will freeze the screen, but the game did not crash.

I’m sure that, my mesh is welded, and no any issue.

I’m use MilkShape 3D 1.8.4 with above of DLL files.

And I find that, my SUR file always has 2 shield bubble, they are same size at same location (overlap with), but they has different names.

When I delete some hardpoints and make new SUR files, the game will normal operation, but I can through the SUR files.

I’m no idea to fix it.

StarTrader

Nice one BJ, thanks.

JONG

Find the issue and fix it myself, nice tutorials BJ. ;D

JONG

Seem like you can’t use this method to make station SURs to work.

Bejaymac

@JONG:

Seem like you can’t use this method to make station SURs to work.

Stations won’t work with a SUR that uses the ShieldBubble option, they need to be done with the Shrinkwrap option, but as I’ve pointed out the “wrap” is badly formed and almost always crashes FL, the closest I’ve come to a DA style station CMP & SUR is two-thirds detection on a single component CMP.
As it stands the SUR-splicer is the only way to do station SURs.