CMP to SUR Conversion Tests

Um not to brust your bubbles but according to this site/topic. The project is DEAD, Due to math needed to make it work, as well as a TOTAL hard drive crash.

http://forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?53192-CMP-to-SUR-Converter

Please look at the date of the topic…

If you don’t see it, it’s 2008 So, as FF said, give LS some time. Thanks.

Oh lol, Silly me facepalms, but misses palm and facedesks instead

But on the side note, The beta 02 works perfectly and so far its not got a bad sur for my Eve-online mod. I’m going to create you for the Surs for my mod. Becasue without this cmp to sur conversion i’d have to mess around myself and make tons of mistakes.

Cheers
Lonestar

Good to see you Lancer!

Just as a reminder to all:

The beta is already fab for one-group models, and is absolutely fine for small ships.

This is because only one sur part is created by the beta, and that part covers the entire model in a tight-fitting convex shroud.

So if there are gaps between parts of the ship it really doesn’t matter when the ship is small, because hits will register on empty space but it is small space.

The utility Lancer is still working on is going to be great for large ships where the gaps between booms etc is huge, like the gap between the engines on the Enterprise 1701-A type for example, and shots that should pass through will be hitting the ship spaces instead.

This version will create one sur part per group, so it is important that the model is created (or modified) in sensible groups, for example for the Enteprise there should be the following MilkShape/.cmp groups:

1. Saucer
2. Main hull
3. Saucer Pylon
4. Left Engine
5. Left Engine Pylon
6. Right Engine
7. Right Engine Pylon

Each group of the ship will then have its own sur, so that there will be gaps in between the groups, and shots will pass through all the gaps instead of hitting.

In the .cmp each Group can (and should) have sub-parts for detail, but these should not be separate groups - you can determine this by placing each part under the main group that it belongs to in the MilkShape Groups list, and then in the .cmp exporter by setting the right Group Quantities (count of the parts plus the main Group itself) for each Group.

But you MUST make your ship in this way for this to be effective.

ST going into hybernation and long sulks after being told off by FF.

Let me know if you want me back.

<tearful sobs=“”></tearful>

StarTrader wrote:

LancerSolurus wrote:

Something is missing in the understanding of the cmp model format. I have generated Cons-Fixed entries,

Errm… I hope you mean Cons-Fix ??

Not Cons-Fixed!!

P1p3r’s .cmp exporter also caused a Cons-Fixed problem, we have to rename those nodes as Cons-Fix.

LS - you didn’t reply to this and I don’t know if it’s a typo or if it really is Cons-Fixed, causing the problem you have?

LancerSolurus wrote:
… this will be my last major project for FL, I am itching to get back on my game engine and get it completed since most of the basic functionality is built and working.

An offer though, I will release the code to somebody who is competent to finish this project, only thing is you can’t release the code. I’ve spent 12 years building my library and I don’t want it in the public domain…

Since nobody else seemed interested, I volunteered to help maintain this project. I am not a modeler, so I may need help from you guys to know when the SUR builder creates an incorrect SUR.

I did fix a couple of bugs and tried to make the user interface and documentation a little easier for new users to understand.

I still have a list of improvements to work on, so this is still an interim release:

• Creates single-part (bubble) SURs consistently.

• Creates multi-part (close-fitting) SURs if the CMP has one part per mesh.

• Sometimes can create a multi-part CMP from a single part CMP (still buggy).

Well done Bullwinkle. I’ve been waiting for progress on this for many months, and even got bo*****ed by FF for prompting LS too often!

Does this mean you are “da man” for this project now?

Should I expect it to do OK if there are no subgroups you mean? And not OK if there are any subgroups to a main group? I can handle that with some cmp juggling I think.

I’ll try v3 on my multi-part cmp’s and report back in a couple of days.

Thanks pal.

Oops!! First problem -

Error message on double-clicking the builder for th first time:-
“The paging file is too small for this operation to complete”.

This happened in the previous version too, but I have allocated 1.5GB page file!

I had to delete my paging file to get v2 to work. I’ll try the same now but it’s a problem…

How much does it need?

Help please Bullwinkle!

Error message on startup,

“This application has failed to start because d3dx9_42.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem”

StarTrader wrote:
Does this mean you are “da man” for this project now?

Should I expect it to do OK if there are no subgroups you mean?

Well, I am no Lancer Solurus. That guy has a depth of knowledge about Freelancer data formats that is well beyond my own.

But I am the current maintainer of the project, yes.

So I may ask as many questions as you do but, with the help of the rest of the community, I hope to be able to get the code to do what it is supposed to do!

For example… what’s a subgroup?

Is there any reference material that will help me to understand what a SUR is supposed to look like on the inside?

I understand what a SUR does, and I can see whether HardCMP 1.0.0.23 will display it, but I still don’t really understand what I am looking at when I see the data itself.

StarTrader wrote:

How much does it need?

1.7 GB… in addition to the 1GB or so that you probably need to run Windows XP effectively. I cannot imagine running this with less than 3-4 GB of RAM… sorry!

Yes, it is huge. I don’t really know whether any of that can be trimmed, but I will watch for opportunities to do so.

Gibbon wrote:
“This application has failed to start because d3dx9_42.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem”

Hmmm… well, I am pretty sure that you have DirectX installed, Gibbon, so it’s not that.

Try this update to the DirectX redistributable files.

If that works, then I will include the redistributable files with the next update.

Thank you for the report!

What !!!

We’re talking about pagefile size, not RAM.

What makes it take so much RAM anyway? Nothing else I run causes this problem, not 3DSMAX, not PhotoShop, not Access with a huge database, and not when I run them all together!

I have 1GB on this laptop and its fine for everything except this proggie - so no way, Jose. I’m not running a mainframe for a utility, come on guys, do me a favour.

Careful frugal progging is needed, not loading in huge libraries that may not be used.

Gibbon: You need to install LS’s runtime Library. I already did that.

StarTrader wrote:
We’re talking about pagefile size, not RAM.

The program reserves 1.7GB of RAM. Windows will page out memory that is reserved but not currently in use, which is why you get an error about the page file.

As I said, I know that it is huge and I will try to make it smaller if I can. However, one of the goals of this program is to build SURs for large and complex CMPs, such as stations.

Try a 3-4GB swap file and let me know whether it will run. It will probably take a while to load in 1GB of RAM, no matter what you do with your page file.

As for “why?”, I cannot answer questions about design decisions. All I can do is to try to improve the code that I have in front of me. It is complex and the programmer’s documentation is minimal… which may be why nobody else volunteered.

Thanks for taking on the task, Bullwinkle. It’s much appreciated by us all.

Right.

I should point out that Lancer has helped me quite a bit to get this far. I would not have a chance without him. Thanks, LS!

@Sushi: You are welcome!

@All: I have a model that does not seem to produce a working SUR, and I need some help in figuring out what is wrong with the SUR and/or the model. This is the first model that I have found that does not produce a working single-part SUR in the builder, so it has me curious – what is special about this model? And what is incorrect about the SURs created by the builder?

From the .3dbs and hitboxes thread:

Model:
http://www.mediafire.com/?czmzdmd5jmn

SURs – Single- and Multi-Part, with surdump output text files:
http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/dl_attachment.php?attachid=1274135985&post_id=29006

.

I put in the model back into milkshape and reexported it. It works now. Attached are the .3db, .cmp, .mat and .sur