CMP to SUR Conversion Tests

Well if it’s just that I would be interested in the code snippet that creates the tree of the Bitsection, so that I can compare it with my approach. Would that be possible?

StarTrader wrote:
Couple of days.

OK, Cool.

The goal of the SUR Builder is to quickly create decent SURs for most of your models. If you have an oddball model that requires a hand-crafted SUR, then that is outside the scope of the Builder. Why hold up development of your mod just for one model?

All other reports are either that the Builder works as expected, or the model was bad to begin with.

My understanding is that there are at least three other workable techniques:

• Resize vanilla SUR
• SUR-splice
• Hand-made SUR in a modeling program

If there is more to it, then teach me.

Oi!

Hold on a mo LS, stop running away - the sur builder is connecting vertices of two entirely separate cmp groups!!

That’s what is causing this problem on several of my models, not only one or two, and large and small ships alike. I am trying to investigate if it can be prevented by regrouping the model.

I have focussed on one model and completely regrouped the ship twice, and it still fails, producing the “Phantom of the Opera” sur! The left wing and nose are in separate cmp groups and sur builder is still connecting them. It should not do so, am I right?

I will post the model once I know it is not a model problem.

• I ain’t harassing, just want to get the builder to be better. As I said I appreciate BW’s work, I always do of anyone who puts so much effort into a spare-time no-earner project.

• No I don’t want your source code, but others who want to develop new releases or sur utilities or exporters will, or they will be starting from scratch every time, am I right?

And you will agree that the sur builder is the most problematic to create, so far? No-one has helped anyone else in this until now, hence we have 2 sur export plugins that don’t work reliably, and sur builder may be easily improvable once we define the problem better…

At least I am trying, and it’s not only for my own benefit.

I could give up, but it’s in everyone’s interest if I can find the cause - if it’s a group naming problem, then it could be an easy fix in the builder. If it’s the way the groups are structured, it will be good for everyone to know so they can fix their models.

So don’t get on my case so darned fast! Walking away is easy, don’t tempt me more.

Eeee-bloody-yaw!

It’s OK, no probs.

Just hang around a bit to help if needed bud.

I hope to find a way to regroup or rename the cmp groups that helps sur builder to make a good sur for the same ship, If I’m not successful then I’ll pass the model to BW, so you guys can try to find it. I’ve done the obvious - fuselage, left wing, right wing, fin - but as I said the sur is the same, bridging the left wing to the fuselage nose.

I’ll try to get the diagnosis completed asap.

Thanks.

If it’s reading a vertice from another component then it sounds like that vertice has been welded wrong, either in MS3D or by the CMP exporter.

has anyone tried out yet, how it behaves with duplicated model parts via the cons nodes?

Hi guys, here’s the diagnosis and findings…

I do have a problem with the sur built by the sur builder for the Goran, my test ship that had the “Phantom of the Opera” look.

It’s not making all of the sur parts for all of the Goran’s cmp groups, just as with Bbalazs’ terrain model.

The initial problem that I had was most likely due to some unwelded vertices and open cmp groups that I found on the ship model.

That is not happening now, I fixed those by removing all unnecessary model parts and regrouping until I have only 6 distinct and simple, welded cmp groups:- hull, left wing, left wing tip, right wing, right wing tip, and fin.

Then I ran sur builder and there are two problems in the generated sur file (I tried altering the Sort selections and Duplicate radius values and remaking the sur but the problem remains)…

1. The “right wing tip” sur part is missing entirely.
2. On the fin sur part, the front vertex at the base of the fin is missed, so the sur sweeps back to the next 2 vertces and the front part of the base of the “real” fin is exposed.

I attach a zip file with the ship model .cmp, the generated sur, and the ms3d model with both the ship groups and the imported sur parts using adoxa’s sur importer, and the sur importer log too.

Look closely at the fin with the fin sur part selected and you will see the problem with that.

Hope this helps to find the cause of these problems.

Thanks guys.

Does it work in-game?

ST even if they were created they wouldn’t register properly in FL, in my experience single vertice edges like your wing tips always act like a knife and cuts through every other sur, and would probably only be stopped from going clean through when the main body hit the other sur.

You need to split the “knife edge” on the sur model and move the top and bottom vertices apart, then fill in the holes with a couple of polys.

I haven’t used the sur builder and I probably won’t as I no longer mod, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it doesn’t like “knife edges” either.

@StarTrader:

I tried a bit on your model. I tweaked a bit on your model and got the SUR-Builder to do a proper sur.

I rebuild the model a bit on the front bottom cause it had there some strange poly´s, same on the cockpit. On the Fin i closed the object. On the tip´s of the wings i tessalate the poly´s to have a few more vertices and faces.

I attached for you a zip containing the .cmp, .sur, .ms3d so you can take a look for yourself.

Hope this helped.

cheers
CURSOR

Thank you very much guys, appreciated.

BW - its hard to tell on a fighter like this one. The problem will come on large ships where the missed part could be the size of a base.

So it is important to find out what is causing this problem - remember Bbalazs had it too.

If it is the knife edge then of course we can avoid this in a model, or if it can be done by the builder, to set a minimum sur thickness of 0.1 unit (10 cm) at any single-vertex point, then that would fix it every time for everyone.

Get LS back on his head one last time

Many thanks again guys.

If it works then there is nothing wrong with it.

When I make an automatic shed-building machine I won’t be happy if it leaves the door off, even if it is only now and then.

There are bits missing from the sur files, BW.

Not only from this model which is not important, but from BBalazs’ blooming great landscape. So it is a common problem, and the cause needs finding.

As I already said, in a small 5 metre ship it’s no deal.

BUT on a 3,000 metre dreadnought ship a missing hole 200m is a BIG problem.

Give me an ear here, I am not being pedantic just for myself - I know the use this is needed for, it is VERY important to FL modders, but it is not 100% done just yet.

Thanks for understanding, I realise you may not have the knowledge to find it, and like I said before many times I am not criticising, but on the contrary I am very grateful to you for your work.

But please talk to LS or others and try to make this perfect as possible, we have far too many 90% utilities where we need to know the “get-rounds” to avoid many hours lost.

Thanks.

I am not ignoring your report, StarTrader, but … I think that you are trying to do something that you should not.

The fact that you are able to make a CMP that fools the SUR Builder does not mean that there is anything wrong with the SUR Builder. It simply means that you should use another tool, such as splicing together some cylinders.

If the SUR works in-game, and is vaguely near the correct size, then it is “good”. A SUR is not supposed to look like the model.

You did not show a picture of your SUR, but it looks very much like the ship, which is above expectations for the SUR Builder:

Remember that a SUR is the computer’s view of the hit and collision area of a ship. In general, that should be a rough ellipsoid:

The fact that the SUR Builder is capable of making close-fitting SURs is great, but SURs should NOT look identical to the CMP. A SUR should look like a rough blob made up of a minimal number of polygons.

Ok, i also checked Bbalazs landscape. No bad geometry on first view, Fl-SurBuilder created 5 groups but left out the big plane. So the “error” must have been there. I tessalated a few more faces into it and “voila”, you have a proper sur. See the attached file.

So, yes, the surbuilder isnt perfect. But differently “not perfect”. It is building the sur on a part when the geometry is ok and enough polys are there. The bad thing is it just stops when it encounters a geometry on a part that it cannot handle and dont says nothing about. So you have to dig into it and look at all parts where no sur is build and find the reason behind. Bad thing about this is also that you dont know about the order it does that. So when it stops on a part which it cannot handle, you dont know which part that is and therefor also if the following parts are ok.

Basicly telling here, that it would be cool if the Sur-Builder would do at least a check if the amount of groups in the .cmp matches the amount of groups in the .sur and giveout a warning. Same on the order of building up the sur, if it tells you where it was on building up and it stumble, it makes it just way more easy to identifiy the part and fix it.

just my 2 cents

But again, THANK YOU Lancer & Bullwinkle for such an amazing tool, it just save a a hell of a lot time.

Slight hint : tell them that leaving out parts of the sur is a feature not a bug. M$ does the same.

cheers
CURSOR

cursor wrote:
it would be cool if the Sur-Builder would … check if the amount of groups in the .cmp matches the amount of groups in the .sur and giveout a warning. Same on the order of building up the sur, if it tells you where it was on building up and it stumble, it makes it just way more easy to identifiy the part and fix it.

Thank you for that report, Cursor, and for completing the answer to BBalaz’s question.

(also thank you to Schmackbolzen for giving BBalaz a working SUR)

I will look into the possibility of reporting mismatches in the number of groups. I am not sure whether it will be feasible to flag where a mismatch begins, because I am not sure the program will know that. But I will look into both for a future version.

Thanks!

i’m not sure to understand correctly so don’t hesite to correct me please

from now and if we want to use the sur builder, we have to redo a cmp with x groups ? right ?
so to use the sur builder we need a very good knowledge on the cmp format and uses of milkshape, import/export freelancer model, eventually in rebuilding a mat file also

so clearly it’s not a “noob tool” if i can say, no ?

understand me well, i spent, spend and will spend a loooooooooooot of hours making sur, the most perfect i can in 3dsmax
for who don’t know i’m working on TOW, overfiend and me have done the hitbox, so i know how it’s hard to deal with those devils

so i’m very gratefull for all the work you can do but in my mind the tool is in first, done for all who don’t want to take a loooong time to learn how the sur works

therefore ideally, noob wants to launch the tool, select the ship/base, choose betwen bubble or wrapped and clic “make a sur”

believe me, i really appreciate any initiative to put myself unemployed

thank you to enlighten me

Mirkha wrote:
ideally, noob wants to launch the tool, select the ship/base, choose betwen bubble or wrapped and clic “make a sur”

Good question, Mirkha!

Actually, the SUR Builder is very good for novices. It needs some work on the user interface so that it will be more obvious, but the default single-part SUR is a good approximation for most purposes.

The only time that you need to create your SUR in groups is when you want to make a multi-part SUR (shrink-wrap). And the most common case when you would want to do that is for a station. Or perhaps for BBalaz’s very cool terrain.

Sometimes there might be a purpose in a shrink-wrap SUR for a capital ship, but it would be the exception rather than the normal case.

Instead of creating a bubble-shaped SUR, the Builder wraps the outline of the model:

For most purposes the single-part SUR is an excellent compromise between bubble and shrink-wrap (multi-part). And it is the default, so just open your model and build the SUR. Two button clicks!

guess i have to disagree slightly with mirkha though it might have something to do with differences of experiences. fortunately gentlemen from TOW actually have figured out the cmp file structure and shared their knowledge. everyone who is used to basics of modding and usage of e.g. the utf editor and the model importers and exporters, can quickly deepen his knowledge of models in a way he can create qualities far above the expected possibilities of the old engine. i mean now models with hundreds of thousands of polys, LODs, wireframes and of course, surs. the sur builder is likely made for and nearly only good for small ships and solars as in many cases splicing a model into model parts is not worth the result. of course, such splicings could also be used for breakable parts and stuff like that but if we talk about efficiency, there is a safe way and it is called sur_splice. use a huge model and run the builder above it and you see what i mean. the amount of sur polygons is far too high and lets ignore that some pc’s get stuck for hours due to its resource consumption. yes, the splicing method has its issues and especially on large ships this might become very annoying while on small ships you can use the sur builder. maybe the splice codec has to be updated to the current knowledge of the sur file format. together with the sur builder these two would be the source of surs for every mod.
honestly, we won’t get a proper automatic sur creation tool. there will always be a model that will be surred differently than the artist wishes, if we talk about large models. we need a possibility to model surs ourselves making them working surs (isn’t it here in that topic, a geometry to sur converter in development?). the sur builder should be more a solution for minor unimportant works and/or lazy asses but not the main solution of sur creation.