CMP to SUR Conversion Tests

guess what, it would be great, if all of these gods out there from good old times were reunited here, on the starport. not the only one but the very freelancer community it shall become. don’t you think we’d be a lot faster if all together?

i think i have the 1.1 sources

here : msSurimporter1.1

Well done Mirkha.

Gisteron: Are you sure you want them here? Don’t forget they are all older and grumpier too…!

That is the **Im**porter. But nice try.

ST: Any chance you can get the FLMM source while you are at it?

oh ?
sorry -__-

/me go out

edit :

@ ST :

all here

i’ve done several tests

so, 2 sphere and a box, no way to generate a entire sur
the more i can do is a sphere + the box, or 2 spheres

and it’s weird because the sur builder seems to generate all the 3 shapes but it’s not show in hardcmp …

for example, Type1 general allways the box and not the spheres

here the best result with Type2 :

as you can see the second sphere is generated in the sur builder but not seen in hardcmp

Bullwinkle wrote:

ST: Any chance you can get the FLMM source while you are at it?

I’ll ask, I think it’s Matthew Leider’s? Don’t know if he was in EOA?

Mirkha wrote:

… as you can see the second sphere is generated in the sur builder but not seen in hardcmp

Good work, Mirkha, many thanks. I import the surs into MilkShape because the HardCMP display is not always clear.

In your file the shapes that are generated are there - it’s just the red colour you chose for the material, it obscures the sur wires, but in my HardCMP v1.8 it shows as pink, see below…

Well I too have noticed that the outer shroud in the sur builder display seems to always cover the whole model, but we can’t see if the missing parts are being generated and not saved perhaps -

BW, is it fairly easy to put a line in that prints the name of each cmp group as soon as it is found? Or even just a counter that is printed, if we see the cmp groups are all being found, (or not) it will give us a good starting point.

Thanks.

the first screen shows that although the surbuilder have “draw” the two spheres and the box, the result is only one sphere and the box
as shown on the milkshape import

it’s like the sur builder make the second sphere but don’t export it …

StarTrader wrote:
I’ll ask, I think it’s Matthew Leider’s? Don’t know if he was in EOA?

Yes. I sent Matt an email but got no response. Apparently he has left the scene. Somebody that I spoke with mentioned that Louva Deus might have a copy, and I have not gotten around to asking because I have my hands full with other stuff.

However, since you already initiated a conversation with Louva, FLMM is in seriously need of an overhaul. The SUR Builder is the kind of thing that a few modders will use a few times, but everybody uses FLMM. And most have trouble with it in one way or another.

BW, is it fairly easy to put a line in that prints the name of each cmp group as soon as it is found? Or even just a counter that is printed, if we see the cmp groups are all being found, (or not) it will give us a good starting point.

Why an immediate display? No matter… the main request is for a result report, and I will put that on the list to investigate.

Doesn’t need to be, could be in a log file or whatever is easiest as a tracing tool.

Actually I meant programmatically speaking, as in the next line of code! lol

Thinking about it a log may be best if we need more tracking output later to get closer to the problem.

Not sure if LD will have the the source for 1.1 as that was Colin’s project, but you never know.

As for FLMM LD does have the source for it, as it’s now an ongoing EOA project, Matt dropped the whole lot in his lap a couple of years ago, Crazy released FLMM 1.5 last year as part of that project.

yea, ST, i think it is sensible if they get up here. ofc, we are kinda new generation, many of us are either teenagers or at least under 30 but moralic standards are irrelevant for technical work. what we need is knowledge, the ability to explain and the wish to keep the game alive. it is unimportant whether we like each other as long as we keep rationalic (sounds vulcanic, don’t you think?). even to mention \v\ again: yes, we troll each other, which is most stupid time consumption ever invented. in end effect, you won’t disagree, that even such a project does its, even if tiny, but however is being a part of the initiative.
now, sorry, for offtopic…
isn’t it, that this v1.5 FLMM is even more buggy than 1.31? fortunately they call it a beta, so clean work is not to expect but once i tried out 1.4 and 1.5 me, and many others got back to 1.31, didn’t you?

Update:

It’s taking me forever to isolate this…

OK, managed to get a 14-mixed-shape test file to generate complete sur parts as follows, but I know you won’t believe it!

What is not working?

1. Regular boxes (8 vertices, all 90 degree angles). One or more or even all always fail to be sur’d, no matter what the size. This is our problem.

2. Solid triangles (6 vertices) are frequently missed. When the length is close to 2 x width they can work but are unreliable,

3. The warning from LS & BW that minimum 5 vertices are needed for sur builder to work on a shape. So two faces with one common seam (4 vertices) will not work.

What is working?

Here are the shapes that do work correctly:

1. Sur Builder Settings: Sort: Type 2, No secondary sort, Duplicate Radius = 0.

2. We can have “boxes” made of 2-stack, 4-slice cylinders then they work fine - basically this is a double box, 12 vertices.

3. Thick triangles made using 1-stack 3-slice cylinders (8 vertices) are fine, even when one side is welded to make a knife-edge too (6 vertices).

4. Other shapes: spheres, geospheres, cylinders, “eggs” (stretched spheres) are OK.

5. Irregular-shaped boxes (looking down from above):

5a. Boxes MUST be tapered at the front or back, depending on their position and also depending on whether or not there is another shape beside it but further out from the centre line. This changes!

5b. If another shape is added the taper may need to be reversed!

I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.

One GREAT confirmation for all time: Parts do NOT need to be welded together to generate a good sur part in sur builder.

But Bejaymac is very possibly still right in that the sur may not work in-game, although his long and bad experience was not with surs made with sur builder.

On the other hand if the sur parts are all fine and present? So we need to test such a sur in-game to confirm. I don’t have time at the moment, please go ahead someone, make a ship with gaps and sur it and test it out. It WILL be fun seeing a rickety ship working in space!

How long did this proof take me? Don’t ask, my wife is so pissed with me you won’t believe. If we had a dog he’d be in the house and I’d be in his house for the next 2-3 weeks.

But this is how we avoid the box problem - now we found the cause, we have to get BW & LS to fix it.

Here’s the .ms3d file in a zip, it includes all the shapes, and the surs that were generated, so test it yourselves or make similar ones:

so ? too simple shape won’t work ?
like a cube or a rectangle ?

Gisteron wrote:
isn’t it, that this v1.5 FLMM is even more buggy than 1.31?

Yes.

Also, the most recent report on Crazy’s blog is that the 1.5 source is lost. There has not been an update to 1.5 in over a year.

Those are the reasons that I asked ST to look into the source for FLMM. It sounds as though perhaps Louva Deus avoided ST’s request without giving him a real answer?

EDIT: I do not know what is going on with seriouszone.com. Yesterday I could not reach EOA’s home page. Today I cannot reach the forum, either!

Mirkha wrote:
so ? too simple shape won’t work ?
like a cube or a rectangle ?

One of the known tips is to use enough polygons. Cursor found that tessellation fixed two CMPs that were not making complete SURs.

I’ve done some work on a simple FLMM clone, but I think this is definitely something that should go for another topic. Let’s concentrate on SURs here shall we?

yep, but just to say that i don’t understand why FLMM is yet used …
it’s very easy to have x freelancer folders ^^

ok BW, good to know, i’ll make another test tonight with a more complexe rectangle

Well in fact I was able to restore the FLMM 1.5 source code.
It’s buggy as it’s based on the FLMM 1.4 beta 4 source and not and the 1.31 source.

I’ve planned to start fixing it’s bugs when I got a bit more freetime.
I’ll readd the bugtracker so that you can report current FLMM bugs.

Crazy wrote:
Well in fact I was able to restore the FLMM 1.5 source code…
it’s based on the FLMM 1.4 beta 4 source and not and the 1.31 source.

Cool.

While I agree that FLMM is off-topic, Crazy, you’re the right guy… does the 1.31 source exist anymore? Is there any chance of putting FLMM on someplace like the Forge and making it a community project? I would be happy to help, and sometimes many hands makes light work (although too many cooks can spoil the broth, as well).

Same question for FriendlyFire regarding his FLMM clone.

And, yes, I would love to see a separate thread about a current FLMM project(s).

next try
and 1 success, type2 + no sort in secondary

here all the files

you have the cmp/mat (grey this time ^^)

• each .sur generated and the screenshot

the shapes were made in 3dsmax, one triangle is a duplicated mesh (for testing)

tomorow i’ll try with hole in the cmp

edit : for ST the sur import in milkshape

Mirkha wrote:
so ? too simple shape won’t work ?
like a cube or a rectangle ?

Correct.

This is the bug we need BW & LS to fix in sur builder, then it will be what we want it to be.

By the way if you use other sort settings than those I stated above in sur builder, the good shapes will also not all work.

I (and I am sure everybody else too) don’t want get-rounds, I am tired of so many other otherwise great utilities with “gotchas” in them.

We need this fixed please BW. It should be simple to troubleshoot by generating sur parts for a bunch of boxes while stepping through it.

I will be happy to help in any way I can and there are others that have more knowledge than I, but LS must remember his program well enough to spot it very quickly.

You have the faulty ms3d file and also the last ms3d file that has all the working shapes in it.

Thanks in advance, this is so important to all modders.

Gwumpy wabbit.