Exporting ships

ok heres what i want to do, load some ships into a 3d program, like vue d’esprit so i can make background images

ive got the “all ships.zip”
also various milkshape versions

how do i export the models WITH their textures as 1 3d model

in milk shape where do i find the correct material colour that are in game , cos the All ships.zip not the same ones, they grey textures, i.e. in discovery the bretonian gunboats are various colours

vue can load 3ds, obj, lwo and some other files

what are the steps needed to do this, please

oops forgot to mention when i export lwo or other files from milkshake the model is either black or no materials included

or is the prog that could load a ship model from the freelancer folder (i guess thats where the correct material colours are) and then export as 1 whole file, with materials

someone asked this in another part of the forum

“……a DETAILED tut for getting ships modeled in 3d max exported 2 3DS and imported into MS3D exported as CMP SUR and MAT working would be nice tho …”

i want the exact opposite i think

k it imports but exporting turns the object black no texture?
im exporting as 3ds, or lwo, but just comes out either grey or black with no textures

where is the

"just click on “Update MAT/CMP/3DB, choose 3DB or CMP (depends on what file is the exported model is) and it just puts the texture inside the model file without any seperated MAT file.”

bit

and now i cant import! just locks up worked once dont anymore!, been all day looking trying to get this to work

ok it works if i use the files in the freelancer game folder, 1st i copied to a different folder to work on and that just crashes milkshape

right doing me head in now

all i want is export from milkshape into vue desprit

or is there another prog that can load the ship models with textures and export to vue

i have vue desprit 5 and 8

this is what im seeing, when i export in either 3ds or lwo, id does say in both vue progs when loading blah blah.dds is not recognised do i wish to ignore, those must be textures so is there a way to make them part of the file not as seperate

in milkshape

thats vue 5

vue 8

what am i doing wrong or is it just milkshapes exporters just dont work properly

im getting confused here this is the direction i want to go

load milkshape > import model from freelancer folder (cmp file)

save as/export as ….lwo/3ds including textures

file created ###.lwo or ####.3ds

load vue, click load object, select lwo or 3ds file

endup with black object texture less

im not changing/editing anything in milkshape just trying to use it to change file format

is there another prog that will do that inc the textures

as you can guess im new to this, so please be patient

yep 99 % sorted there

ive mnaged to work out obj files after a lot of searching, i found out why no textures, basically its all in the mtl fil

if you check an mtl file it has the location for the images/files it uses for the texture, this is where it can all go wrong, in my mtl files it included the dds files (mats) which vue and some others dont understand

so

i converted all the dds files (theres only 13) for ships into jpg, but kept them in same folder as the dds

exported obj file from milkshape, created obj and mtl file

edit the mtl file with basic windows text edit, and replaces just the dds part of the line with jpg (you can replace all, very quick), as you want to keep the location etc, becuase thats where you converted to jpg, saves having to type out whole line and replacing etc etc

resaved mtl file

import into vue and VOILA textures included

now the only thing i have to work out now is the “underneath” colours, as the obj file main body colour under the textures “tint” the materiel, which vue seems to ignore, the colours are defo there as when i import the obj back into milkshape or poseray and check the materials it shows them

as i say nearly there

only slight gripe now is, sometimes when i click “import freelancer cmp” in milkshape and select a ship or whatever , most of time it exits out milkshape im lucky if it atucally loads once it has then its obj time

done figured it out why colours not working

becuase i converted the dds files to jpg. the jpg files are not possible to be a little transparent

pngs are

so this is how you convert the ships etc to obj to import to anywhere

1. convert all dds files in the texture folder of freelancer to png files

2. import to milkshape the cmp’s

3. export as obj’s

4. edit the obj mtl file to point to png files, exactly same line as before but change from .dds to .png in the material line (youll see it)

5. import obj into whatever 3d render you have

thats it after 3 days worked it out

then you can do same with the weapons etc