Milkshape & Plugins - Latest/Best versions and where to get them

I see it works with a d3dx9_42.dll inside ms3d folder.
Anyway i crashed once again freelancer with a sur made from a 32k poly mesh and sur size 1.7Mb .
How you guys make a sur for a high poly model for example .
Sushi how he succeded to make surs from his Freeworlds mod ?
Is it remade sur with a 3D program and export with ms3d all toghether, or maybe export one by one and splice, or export with Schmackbolzens tool and splice (this one i didnt succeded and i found out why), or lancers builder ? Really im curious .

Cata - you have to do some work to reduce the polycount first.

Make a copy of your model .ms3d to work on, make sure your original model is safe.

Select all groups and use Tools… ConvexTool (you need to have that plugin,and there are 2 versions - use the one that does not open a dialog).

Check the new groups one by one to see how they fit to the original groups, and if you are satisfied delete the original group for each one, and rename the new group to the original by removing the “_convex” suffix.

Save the new .ms3d as you go, each time you are happy with a new group is a good time.

When you are not happy with the fit you need to make changes to the original group and try again.

When you are happy with all the new groups, and you have deleted all the original groups in your work model, you will have a good low-poly model copy of the original model. Export this sur and hardpoints, and you should have a good-fitting sur.

Let us know how you get on, good luck.

adoxa wrote:
This was just supposed to be a quick update - I doubt I’ll be doing any more work on it (you all kept telling me how good 1.1 was, I guess those rose-colored glasses can come off now :)). …

adoxa - v1.1 is all we had, it generated good surs sometimes. Yes it has its limitations, and many people could not understand how to use it and got it wrong because they didn’t put in the time to learn it. And some times it produced bad surs and we could not see why.

For my part I am disappointed again, that you won’t do more development on this version 1.3, but in any case very many thanks for doing this part, it is already more useful.

If you relent (hint), for example to remove the 18 groups limit, I will be jumping for joy again, because we can get round the.cmp exporter 18-group limit by using the .cmp “grafting” process.

Well, this is a surprise.

I think I’m seeing things!

After importing my new test sur for the Brakiri Avioki, I thought I saw group names had been deciphered. Very nice!

But when I imported it again a while later, there were only hashcodes and not group names!

I retried several times but still got only hashcodes!

Luckily I had taken a screenshot of the first import or I would have doubted my sanity!

adoxa, can you explain please? I used your Sur importer for all imports.

Both screenshots are attached.

Found it - I had renamed the sur file. The .cmp file for the same ship was in the same folder, I renamed the .cmp to match the .sur and the group names came back.

I’ve not seen this nice feature of your sur exporter documented though?

It was added as part of v1.2. I snuck it into the readme:

NOTES

The NameCRC::GenerateName() function creates a mesh name based on the mesh number and CRC code. If the CRC code is not in the lookup table or related CMP file, the hex code will be used as the name - eg. S2_12345678.

Moonhead wrote:
I started this thread 9 months ago, but it’s only now I finally get into installing the program and all the plugins.

Which brings me to the question: there’s a 3db exporter, so shouldn’t we also need a 3db importer?

I believe the .cmp importers double as .3db importers.

Using Ms3d version 1.84, I have these plugins:

CMP Import 2.7
CMP Export 0.2
Edit: I have had issues w/CMP Export 0.3 which is why I use 0.2.
Mat Export 0.1
Convex Tool (whichever has the settings window for max verts and size)
Sur Importer Ver unknown
Since the objtosurconverter app came out, I have no need for the sur exporter, but I have it in one of my versions of ms3d (1.7.0 or 1.7.2, not 1.8.4)

All using XP w/SP3.

Fus

adoxa’s 1.3 SUR exporter works great! It even exports boxes around the hardpoints like Vanilla ships have (does 1.1 do that?). My only grip is that the angles of the hardpoints are sometimes off. For instance, I have a rear facing turret, but the exporter creates the turret hitbox facing forward.

Is adoxa still around? He hasn’t posted for a while now. If he is, I’m hoping he can fix that small thing. Other than that, though, it works great.

Hi, Could you reupload SUR Exporter 1.3, because Adoxa’s website is offline? Thank you

Sure, here it is. Hopefully it won’t be down for long.

MilkShape v1.8.5 beta 2 and its SDK are available at:

http://milkshape3d.com

And a Boolean operations tool for MilkShape here:

http://www.chumba.ch/chumbalum-soft/forum/showthread.php?t=19881

NOTE: To use the tools, they are under the Edit… menu.
You need to disable “Delete Operands” or it will cause a crash. All three functions work OK with two simple shapes (sphere and box).

Could someone please re-upload the 3db exporter, link on first page says “You do not have access to this forum” or words to that effect.

Thanks in advance

That post is in the senior area.
http://the-starport.net/freelancer/download/singlefile.php?cid=5&lid=1649

Brilliant, thanks alot

The link is to the EOA site, and it looks like it (the EOA site) has gone again.

Actually I believe he was referring to this link: http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/dl_attachment.php?attachid=1318086334&post_id=48251
It’s an attachment on a post by Thaddeus in the senior area.