CMP to SUR Conversion Tests

adoxa wrote:

1. importing the bw_fighter, bw_vheavy_fighter and bw_freighter as samples, the duplicate engine surs are named the same as the engine primary surs, e.g.

S2_bw_eng01_lod1
S2_bw_port_eng_lod1
S3_bw_star_eng_lod1.

Should these also be named as _Bounds?

They are just single objects, so they don’t have a bounds. You should also notice (since I forgot to mention it) that the bounds are just named with the prefix, e.g. S1_Bounds.

Yes, this is where I am struggling to understand still - the engines already have their surs, and then there are these separate additional sur parts too, as there are for the weapons.

Many questions in my head…
Do we yet know what is their function, (collision or hit or other)? (Then we might name them better, “Collision” or “Hit” or maybe plain “Secondary”).

Have you found where & how these are used in the game engine?

What would happen / not happen if we leave them out?

And of course the multi-million-dollar Question: do you now know enough to be able to generate a complete and identical sur to the vanilla one with the exporter or the sur builder from the .cmp model of the bw_fighter?

Very nice work Jason, many thanks, you’ve made an old and grey Trader very happy today, with a very nice, colourful and much easier to interpret sur importer!

Well… How is it possible to make SUR from CMP? It must be hard… :-?

TheDvDMan wrote:
How is it possible to make SUR from CMP?

There are several tutorials around for making SURs in MilkShape.

The easy way is to use the SUR Builder. Just be aware that some features are not fully functional yet.

SUR Builder 0.003

.

First - if it is a single-group model of a large ship, you should remodel it into several sensible groups in MilkShape before you attempt to make a sur for it.

If it is a small ship a single-group model is fine, just use SUR builder and it will make a perfectly acceptable sur.

Check out some of the tutorials, and see which one appeals to you.

Hey BW & adoxa,

Are we to expect any further development of sur builder/ a new MilkShape sur exporter? Gone very quiet here!

I’ve been humming and hawing about what to do. I’ve now decided to put it on hold and finish the UTF Editor. I’ll then create new cmp/3db importers/exporters, so everything works together. Is the source to the latest versions (CMP Importer V2.7, CMP Exporter v03) available at all?

I sent you the Importer 2.7+ and Exporter v2 author’s contact in a message.

StarTrader wrote:
Are we to expect any further development of sur builder

I will finish what I started, which includes some enhancements to the user interface, and making sure that HpMount is created under all circumstances.

As for new features, I need to understand the requests before I can implement them. I have been hoping that the discussions here would help that.

Glad you mentioned that, BW.

Please Don’t make the HpMount bubble every time, please make it an option button or check-box, because it must NOT exist in a large ship’s sur.

Only fighters have them, I never put them in gunboats upwards.

And we need this utility for large ships with form-hugging multi-part surs.

As for wish-lists? Well it’s a simple goal to state, but the hardest to achieve - we just need full collision and hit detection as per the original game.

For that, all we need is to be able to produce an identical sur for any standard FL ship, including the duplicate weapon, wing and engine surs and Type 5 surs, so that when we import it, it is exactly the same as the original sur for the same ship.

That way we will know that we have cracked it.

I don’t know if anyone has yet understood the precise function and effect of all of the sur parts (the duplicates and the Type 5s) but they have not explained it to my knowledge?

Finally - has anyone had any problems with any sur generated with the last version of the sur-builder?

On the other hand has anyone got any confirmations of good behaviour of the last version of the sur-builder?

StarTrader wrote:
please make [HpMount] an option button or check-box

Added to my list.

I have had no troubled with this cmp to sur program that I can reamber. Just some pc troubles the I caused by running it with milkshape open at the same time .

lonestar wrote:
I have had no troubled with this cmp to sur program that I can reamber. Just some pc troubles the I caused by running it with milkshape open at the same time .

Good, thank you for the report, lonestar.

The SUR Builder is big. It reserves 1.7GB of RAM. Depending on how much memory you have, it may not take much to make the PC do a lot of paging.

could you probably reduce this RAM requirement?

I only have 2 gig DDR3 memory, and a AMD phenom II X4 940 Processor running at 3 gig.

Yes its a quad core 3 gig cpu, I have room for more memory but I don’t have it in yet.

But the machine I use this on is an AMD Athlon Processor 3200+ 1.88gig cpu with 1.25 ram, maybe DDR2 memory.

That is the machine I use with this program and It DOES lag on load and model loading.

As you probably know, 2GB is light in a quad-core system. Memory is roughly divided among the processors.

I will try to reduce the memory requirement, but I cannot guarantee it.

Bullwinkle wrote:
As you probably know, 2GB is light in a quad-core system. Memory is roughly divided among the processors.

I will try to reduce the memory requirement, but I cannot guarantee it.

Yes I know that, but the thing is I can not aford more ram at this point in time, and I plan to get more soon.

Fact is that a) 4GB is mostly standard nowadays and b) you need a certain amount of pc power to calculate complex things.

Just for the record, I run it in 750MB on my 1.4MHz Centrino laptop.

I had to resize my pagefile to get it to run, and every 3-4 starts I haveto zero the pagefile again. But I can live with it as long as it starts, I have maybe 30 surs to produce then it will not be required regularly.

But reducing the requirement will help many.

Another quibble: 4GB standard? For a PC? You are loonies! Off your rockers! rofl

IBM Mainframes still run banks and airlines gaily on 64GB and less!

However as new PCs contain that amount, why not! Soon it will be 8GB anyway, then eventually 1TB. The factories cannot stop producing memory and Intel will not stop making faster cpus.

While you can afford it, fill your boots!

Dualcore 2.6g with 2g ram… shame about the vista though… lol

Now… not so much a request, but this is the type of thing i’d be looking at a formfitting sur for…

Eagle/Dagger .sur just aint gonna cut this one…

Xarian_Prime wrote:
this is the type of thing i’d be looking at a formfitting sur for…

Good example, Xarian. Thank you.

If you build your cmp in parts then the SUR Builder should follow the outline of the parts.

Philosophically, a simple shape around the spines seems more “correct”, to me, than a form-fitting SUR. The purpose of a SUR is to approximate the shape of the ship with a minimal number of polygons, in order to reduce the calculation burden on the engine.

A SUR that requires a lot of polys to enclose a complex shape defeats the purpose of the SUR.

For a station, or an enormous cap ship, a SUR that approximately follows some of the spines might make sense, so that a fighter could fly between the spines. But, for a fighter, a simple shape is more “correct”.

Also, if the ship has a shield, then the hit area should be more like a bubble than like a spiny shape. So making a form-fitting SUR is actually less realistic, in that case.

Have you tried the SUR Builder on that ship? I have a similar test model, but the cmp is made in a single part, so the SUR Builder makes a simple envelope around the tips of the spines (which is, from my POV, “correct” ).