CMP to SUR Conversion Tests

I spent most of this afternoon trying to get it to make a usable multi part SUR without any luck. I used several of my own CMPs as well as a couple of vanilla ones, I made several SURs for each CMP trying to find a setting that would work, every single one of them was a fail of some sort, the Root was the only part to be done properly, of the parts that it actually made a hitbox for most didn’t cover all of the part, and depending on the setting it does miss out parts.

After reading the first couple of pages of this thread it’s become clear what LS’s intentions were when he made this, it was to save him having to make SURs for all of his single part CMPs, an automated tool to make a simple “wrap” SUR for his CMPs, and IMHO that is exactly what is should be used for as it does that beautifully.

Now what’s this about the SUR exporter being unreliable, the “shield bubble” never put a foot wrong for me when I was making ships, and the “shrinkwrap” did what it needed to do when I needed to use the splicer, it just took me 2 years to figure out how to get it to work
People have a pre conceived idea that the exporter is broken, which is based on thier & other peoples crappy no-brainer attempts, believe it or not but Colin came within a fraction of creating the perfect “shield bubble” SUR with v1.1, it can create a SUR just like one of DA’s, only the “wraps” covering parts with equipment hitboxes stop it from working like one of DA’s, it’s the “shrinkwrap” that has the problems.
Gibbon also hit the nail on the head with his “time & inclination” comment, for most the idea of spending the best part of a working day to do one simple ship is to much, and that’s when you know what your doing, so the idea of possibly spending weeks learning how to get a CMP & SUR to work right is a non starter for most.

Which is why ppl like ST are desperate for a one click automated app that can do it all for them, never likely to happen, but that doesn’t stop them wanting one.

Bejaymac wrote:
so the idea of possibly spending weeks learning how to get a CMP & SUR to work right is a non starter for most.

Oooh. That explains my experience.

So, now that you have completed your two years of learning how to make good SURs, Bejay… is it possible to explain in a tutorial? Or is it like asking a hacker how to hack (impossible to teach)?

Roger Bullwinkle

I hope you can put into words what you want to say. And i hope that my post didn’t rub someone the worng way, but I see Startrader, NOT Startracker trying hard to address a problem and doing it well. And then getting told he is fooling the program kinda boils my blood. It took me quite some time to make that post, and many times starting over as it was too harsh, not saying what i wanted to say HOW i wanted it too.

But meh, Its over, and well not much I can say except sorry if that post i did offended you. Its a full moon and my ADHD goes crazy durning fullmoons, Also must be the wolf inside me too.

Hooooooooowwwwwllllll !

Lonestar out

now, problem is, there is no way to make a hand-made sur working properly in all cases. even if you follow any advices about convexity, part numbers, yes, me even used Sushi’s video tut on custom hitboxes - even than the sur you get is just rubbish, not working properly. me understand ST, who wants a tool that makes it well, because there is none such. we all use tools for surs, whether we model them ourselves or use the builder, we do not write the sur file by hand and if we won’t get a tool or plugin or whatever program, that does it job as it is supposed to, we won’t get a proper sur, regardless, how accurate it is. that single part surs are possible now, is great but a modder who is happy with single part surs only is yet to find.

lol Bullwinkle, it’s your lucky day
you have two server to satisfy you :p, an Us and a French ^^
and if you like this tie, you will be mad at the Actis XD

anyway it seems that preparing the cmp is very important, i mean the structure of the file, not the 3D apparently …
therefore include the way to make cmp is a good thing

on a side note, keep in mind that it’s very very very very very very very difficult to express on a forum, it lacks tone, facial expressions, gestures, ect ect. everything that informs the caller about the true meaning of what they say and especially the intensity …
Here all the information are raw, if i can say, and something that we had not meant nastily, immediately seems very aggressive

@ Gisteron,
i’m very surprise you didn’t succeed,
i follow the same tutorial and don’t have find any model who doesn’t work
i recognize that the tutorial is not very … didactic
i have allready make another, but in french,
is someone know how to build subtittle ^^ …

I will be updating the SUR exporter, but I’m finishing off the Freelancer Resource Compiler now and I’ll be updating JFLP next (had a critical bug report, otherwise it would’ve waited).

mirkha, it depends on what you call success. it lacks on collision detection with both, OP’s method and splicing method (while splicing method is far better in terms of shot hit detection) and it is definately not a question of ability rather than of knowledge of the sur. all those custom sur methods except for the resizing are outdated, old, messy. thank you, adoxa, that you promise to get on it, it likely will help a lot of us, but so long, with what we have now, making custom surs that work always right is almost impossible. oh and, no, modern tutorials on splicing method and OP’s method seem to be just fine and work in many cases but as long as the exporter codec is messy, you can put your files together as much as you want and in any order you want, it just won’t work perfectly. that’s a fact and that’s the problem and reason why were discussing it. we won’t talk or work deeper into it, if all was perfect.

well, i call it success when each surface register hits and collision properly
so for me the sur splicing method is very good
if i take a look on the sur builder tool is because he can save a huge amount of time

anyway a new/better exporter will be fantastic ! ^^

Bullwinkle wrote:

Bejaymac wrote:
so the idea of possibly spending weeks learning how to get a CMP & SUR to work right is a non starter for most.

Oooh. That explains my experience.

So, now that you have completed your two years of learning how to make good SURs, Bejay… is it possible to explain in a tutorial? Or is it like asking a hacker how to hack (impossible to teach)?

It was on the old Lancers Reactor, so it should be in the archive, it might even be on here as I can’t remember if I posted it here after the site went live (that gives some idea just how long I’ve been making SURs ;)). You are correct in that I can teach how it’s done, just not how to apply it to each mesh, that’s trial & error even for me. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve regrouped a mesh then exported it into a CMP, only to find when building the mesh for the SUR that the grouping wouldn’t work, and end up scrapping the CMP and redoing it with the new grouping.

@ adoxa, please don’t use the source code for V1.2 as even Colin will tell you it’s crap, it has a lot of bugs that just weren’t there in the v1.1, biggest one being it doesn’t make hitboxes properly.

Well…

I moved on from testing boxes to testing spheres since in the last test one of two spheres was missed. (The second was a Geosphere and was sur’d OK though).

This is a TOTAL failure:-

In a 2-sphere, 1-cylinder model only the cylinder is sur’d.

Somehow it seems the builder has either missed both spheres completely, or it has decided the shape is already done but has not saved it…

Here’s the screen shot below.

Please: someone else do this test and give us your findings:-

Make the two spheres and one cylinder, add a material, export the cmp, and make the surs with sur builder, and import them back into Milkshape, select the surs only and print your screen.

Then please remove the surs, add two Geospheres, export and gen the surs again with sur builder, mport, select the surs only, print your screen.

It only takes 10 minutes to do all of this.

Let us see your results please.

Thanks.

i can do it tonight

Thanks Mirkha.

Guys, I feel I need to put down my outlook here for you all to understand what I am looking for in this project…

I am familiar with making surs by hand. Probably more than many of the greater modders. I have spent many months making bad ones and eventually succeeding, and even when I succeeded, not even being able to see why a certain one succeeded when its predecessors failed, since the model and method was identical in many cases.

I have manually made convex shrouds for sur-splicer, and later when we found they existed, I have used 3DS Max with Havoc tools and got very good results. Yes some missed welds did cause problems, but other times I needed to reshape a ship part entirely, or turn some face edges, but it’s obvious when a shape is not right and it needs fixing, so not problem. Now we have the Convex tool for MilkShape and that is pretty good although not 100%. Note there are two of them, one is not quite as reliable as the other.

Then Sur Builder comes along and it is capable of making convex shrouds for individual cmp groups. WOW!!! FAB1!

I can split my own models very well and very easily.

So I figure, if Sur Builder can make a convex shroud for each cmp group in a cmp file, then I can make all the cmp groups that I need in the right place,the right size and the right shape, including the weapon hardpoints, equipment hardpoints, weapon+wings, and so on.

And then, if Sur Builder does its bit, all it has to do is locate each cmp group, shroud it, and save it, move on to the next, until all the cmp groups have a shroud (sur part). FAB2!

And last of all, wouldn’t it be FAB3 if Sur Builder had a button that said: “Shield Bubble”!? All that has to do is take a sphere, and very simply squash it to the size of the whole model’s maximum diameters+1metre in each axis X, Y, Z. Or +2 metres so we can have 1m above & below, sideways & fore-and-aft!

Done!

We wouldn’t need any magic, only these functions.

Then we won’t need more work on an exporter or other, since the tool can be as beginner or as complex as the user wants it. For me, I will use it to add HpWeapon hardpoints and so on to make as close to a vanilla sur as I can. Just because I can, and because it is so quick!

Others will make a simpler 3-group model or a 1-group model with shield bubble and will be so happy with it too!

And for my dreadnoughts of 2,000 to 3,000 metres with claws, booms and beams and extended hulls, it will make hull-following surs without blinking - all I will have to do is break my model into sensible parts and the sur shapes will follow them!

My Crab will have sur parts following its booms, not filling in the gaps.

So the tool is not only for beginners, is it. All of us need it, perhaps more now that I have explained how I will use it.

Unless you want to call me a beginner too - I’ve been called worse!

So - I’m trying to find out which shapes the builder doesn’t like. But sadly, so far it’s not only my model’s right wing tip (actually it is not the model since the identical left tip generated fine!) but also boxes, and spheres, and fat triangles (like Pizza slices, triangles with thickness).

The more I investigate the more basic shapes are failing.

That is what I am trying to isolate but since it’s more than one shape it must be a fundamental problem.

Complex, nook-and-cranny ones like the hull and the wing roots generated fine, even when they were NOT WELDED, and even with gaps between vertices that were supposed to be one!

So - the weld theory is blown out of the water too, Sur Builder deals with that exceedingly well and no fix is needed for that at all!

All we need it to do is to stop skipping some cmp groups.

It MUST be easy to find the cause once we know what to look for and what model will reproduce it - now we do know!

From LS’s comment it could be the Duplicate Radius, but I doubt it, I tried values of 0.01, 0.1, 1, 2, 5, and 10. The bigger the number the more obvious was the effect of combining vertices, below 1 it didn’t show much difference so I left it at 1 for the remaining tests.

By the way, is sur builder’s “1” the same as a MilkShape “1” unit, approximately 1 metre scale for FL ships?

I’ll be back!

BW: you need to get MilkShape and the importers and exporters please, so you can make some simple shapes and help us to help you to troubleshoot. It’s really not hard and is compulsory to fix this problem.

StarTrader wrote:
BW: you need to get MilkShape and the importers and exporters please, so you can make some simple shapes and help us to help you to troubleshoot. It’s really not hard and is compulsory to fix this problem.

As I read through your last two posts, ST, I began to think that you and I should sit down over a pint and have you show me how to do some of these things so that I could run my own tests.

Great minds think alike, eh?

Now that is a scary thought!

hm, milkshape is a primitive modeling tool. most actions are very obvious and to do even quicker than with many other programs, although not nearly as accurate.

oh yes … milkshape is a very simple tools but maybe not really easy to “take in hands” because the interface is awfull ; my opinion ^^

but i think in maybe 10 min ST can teach you all you need to know in order to make simples cmp

@Bejaymac: Unless you have the source to 1.1, I have little choice (I think it’d still be better to use 1.2 than start from scratch).

can’t you decompile the plug-in to a programming language? or even use your assembly magic?

adoxa wrote:
@Bejaymac: Unless you have the source to 1.1, I have little choice (I think it’d still be better to use 1.2 than start from scratch).

I found two posts from Louva-Deus that suggest that the 1.2 code is a failed experiment, but the eoa.seriouszone.com main page is not working right now, so I could not investigate further:

I really should take down the 1.2 version files, they don’t create valid SUR files anyway. You should stick to 1.1. The new version in the works is based on 1.1.

It is the plugin. 1.1 and 1.2 use two different methods of creating the SUR file. This was an experiment Colin did.

I’ve made a request to Louva for the v1.1 source, hopefully he’ll see it soon and say yes.

http://forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?53423