Custom SURs

Bejaymac, does the concave problem apply outside of the ‘Root’ sur?

Amateur question:
Does the number of objects in the SUR have to match the number of objects in the CMP?
For example, if I am not going for destructible components, but simply a close-fitting SUR; I have the model exported as a single-object CMP, but if I design the SUR to be single-component, it either ends up concave, or, not quite close-fitting.

I mean, is it ok to have #ofCMPcomponents < #ofSURcomponents?

This might be of interest to you…
When DA/MS built FL they used Havok for the physics and collision. I posted about this on Lancers some years back after having a conversation with one of their programmers. Unfortunately nobody was able to do anything with it as they needed a commercial Havok licence to get at the source and Havok couldnt provide a plugin for us due to workloads.

Last week Havok finally released their physics and collision as “free” for download for non commercial use on PC’s only.

For those who have the time, there are two downloads, one to use with modelling (a plugin for max etc) and the source for programming physics.

People with a level of knowledge on surs already, might be able to use this and map the collision data to a point where its possible to be used. Or god forbid, the plugin actually might help solve the sur files issue.

Heres the links - you need to reg. to get the downloads, but its free. Either way I would have thought that this should be usefull.

http://tryhavok.intel.com/

im gunna have a butchers when i get back from work

MK after more than two years of working on SURs I’ve seen almost everything, including what you’ve posted about, the reality of the situation is that anything is possible.

(by “you” I mean everybody that reads this post) What you want to achieve depends entirely on you & your abilities, and the app you use (looks at CoT ). I don’t just mean your modeling ability, but your ability to understand what’s required, and to “see” what you need to do to get the CMP & SUR to work together, I only figured out this part after spending about a month studying the meshes I’d pulled out of DA’s CMPs & SURs. Even after two years I’m no expert as I still get caught out, take the hellhound (the model mknote is working on), it’s an awkward shape and at first I thought it only needed to be done as 9 components, so that’s what I made the CMP, last night I was half way through the SUR when I realised that the bloody cockpit would knacker the “Root”, so the cockpit became the tenth component, which meant I had to alter the model for the CMP and export a new CMP.

@ Lancer Solurus, yes, it’s only the “Root” you need to worry about, components can be concave without problems.

@ BBalazs, you might find this link useful, if you don’t want to go through the “hassle” of multi-component CMP & SURs, iirc it’s what OPR8R uses for his CF ships, it still takes a bit of work & modelling knowledge, but is (just) better than a resized vanilla SUR.

not 100% what i use but the basics are the same
ive tried several methods creating surs but this one has turned out to be the best considering that the others cause lag on the servers

**Thanks Bejaymac, thats what I needed to know.

If anyone is interested, there is a site with some info about the Havok engine. Go to google and do a search on

IVP_Controller_Phantom

that is found in Common.dll. You will see what I mean
There should only be 3 items found, look at the first or second one. Many of the nicknames dealing with sur collisions found in the Common.dll can be found on this site….

If you find out this is pirated info, let me know and I will remove this part of my post.**

Hey, first post.

I’m Sov, hitbox dude over from Freeworlds.

I’ve got the same problems everyone has, exact same as you mknote. I’ve got the chance to extensively test all the ships I’m working on as static objects, some are headaches to say the least. I’ve gotten several ships with completely custom boxes done and 100% functional, where others give me all sorts of bizarre problems no matter how much redesign work I do.

I think this is a nearly hopeless art, but perhaps someday someone will come through with an answer. In the meantime if you have a troublesome ship, the simpler the box, the better chance it will work it seems. Often enough no matter what shape the box, simply the location on the ship effects it. I have an area on one of our capital ships I’m working on right now that consistently fails to function, I can fly and shoot right through it no matter what shape I cover it with in MS3D.

Im getting the same issue, problem is, no matter how many times i export from milkshape, the sur NEVER gets past the ROOT sur. ever. it worked ONCE, then it just decided to give me the finger and run off

TBH if it doesn’t fit inside a dreadnoughts docking bay then don’t waste your time with the shield bubble setting, stick to shrinkwrap and the splicer for larger objects. FL only uses the bubble format with the [Ship] FIGHTER & FREIGHTER types, used with any other type and only the Root will register.

Ditto that, I splice every single ship & object I do, and we’ve ditched shield bubbles all together shrinkwrapping everything. I never had much luck exporting the entire box at once, HardCMP would often see the box correctly but it would remain completely non-functional.

Check this out guys…

I’m Very Sad it did not emerge until now that this is possible, it saves HOURS of work making sur parts convex.

http://forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?t=56348

ROFLMFAO ;D ;D ;D That’s how I used to make my Root’s, I stopped using it so I could do really skin tight SURs.

EDIT
There are a couple of things you need to watch out for with this, high poly models can give you overlapping polygons in the shrinkwrap (very bad news), there are also instances when the shrinkwrap isn’t properly formed around your mesh.

PS. I still use this for my damage cap SURs, export the damage mesh to get it “wrapped”, import the SUR & delete the Root group, weld it and then export the SUR again, strip the new “wrap” with the splicer, change the SUR type with FlModelTool, and because proper 3DB’s don’t have “Roots” I then hex edit it to change the Root ID tag.

I had a couple of shapes the plugin would not make proper condoms for, it would leave part of the shape uncovered.

So I finally had to revert back to Havok and 3DS Max for help, increased the vert count to 640 (why? cos it’s quick to stick a ‘0’ after the default 64!) then it worked.

What your doing MK is changing the hex code for Root to 00000000, so you need to do a find and replace with 2D8F6812 & 00000000.

Open the unedited SUR in FLModelTool and find the line-

TriangleID : 0x12688F2D - “Root”

This is the component ID tag, by editing it your changing it to this-

TriangleID : 0x00000000 - “Unknown_Mesh_00000000”

This is how DA dealt with almost all of their 3db SURs, a universal code for all, and it’s probably why we don’t have to designate which SUR goes where, unlike CMPs,3DBs & MATs.

Now for the rest it depends on how many polygons are in the component as to how many 2D8F6812 you have to change. At least 1 for the tag and 1 for each entry in the “Vertex List”.

Vertex list :
No Vertex X Vertex Y Vertex Z Mesh ID
23.683247 16.516876 -559.246155 Root
-0.000805 -16.521967 -559.246338 Root
-0.000805 16.516701 -559.246338 Root
23.683247 -16.522165 -559.246155 Root
-23.684851 -16.488482 -559.245728 Root
-23.684851 16.516876 -559.245728 Root

After you’ve edited it you’ll get something like this-

Vertex list :
No Vertex X Vertex Y Vertex Z Mesh ID
23.683247 16.516876 -559.246155 Unknown_Mesh_00000000
-0.000805 -16.521967 -559.246338 Unknown_Mesh_00000000
-0.000805 16.516701 -559.246338 Unknown_Mesh_00000000
23.683247 -16.522165 -559.246155 Unknown_Mesh_00000000
-23.684851 -16.488482 -559.245728 Unknown_Mesh_00000000
-23.684851 16.516876 -559.245728 Unknown_Mesh_00000000

Using this method I had several ships flying around with custom shield bubbles & damage cap SURs.

Hi guys… um got a Q for you all as you seem to be the .sur file gods hehe

I’ve got around 200 ships to (hehe) “condom” (lol) some of them are quite wierd shaped and not normal at all…
Is there a repository of .sur files anywere?? (besides the vannila ones)… would save alot of time as im a total n00b when it comes to modeling (yeah i admit my failures… from time to time hehe) and all this stuff makes my brain hurt lol

oh and i can use the model tool and ms3d fine… (BTW there’s a model tool that works… and one that dont… the one that “works” gives u the option of resizing the sur… the one that dont just trys to wrap it around the ship automaticly and most of the time fails)… Im just new to all the “new” ways of doing things… still stuck in 2007 (lmao) when i fell offline…

also if i have to “custom” .sur all the new models… I’ll be here till this time next year… just “primitives” would be great for now untill i have the time to play a little more with them…

Cheers.

MK you probably want “FLModelTool v1.0a Beta 6” I’ve used this version since the day Anton released it without any problems.

@ Xarian_Prime CLICK ME, the method described in the link is probably your best bet.