Hitbox Mesh Complexity

Hidamari

hey all, I have a large ship i want to put into freelancer. I was wondering about the complexity of the hitbox and how many polys the hitbox should be total.

the ship has a total of 5828 polys, since with very small things like fighters, you can get away with having a much less accurate hitbox because their chance of being hit is less so than other things.

bit this ship is very large, so it will be very noticable if the hitbox is not top notch.

I was wondering if i could just use the model itself for its own hitbox. rather than creating a separate shape.

none of my ships have or will have shield bubbles so, it just needs the one.

your thoughts on this?

cata123

If you are lazy, like me, you can make the sur from the model itself, but you must check not to have any holes in the modes, cause the sur will get a little “heavy”.
Also you can reduce a little the polycount for that.
Use Schmackbolzen`s last sur tool.
Good luck.

Skotty

I always recommend to make your hitbox seperate. It will safe a lot of performance and maybe bugs.
Try to make shapes of the main components of your ship. Little details can be ignored.

Here is a tutorial how to use Schmackbolzens OBJ to SUR Converter:
http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?post_id=49524#forumpost49524

Bobthemanofsteel

Make a low poly version of the model, first.
That’s not a problem if you’re creating LODs already, you can just use a LOD for the sur.

AeternusDoleo

What’s the recommended limitations on hitboxes though? In DiscoveryGC we’ve got some issues with lag once we hit 150+ players and get a couple of groups fighting eachother - and I’m half wondering if the hitboxes are the issue.

Method used for creating hitboxes:

Import CMP into Milkshape
Reorganize the model into more or less convex shapes which follow the model skin.
Use ConvexTool to wrap a convex shape around each group. This ensures that every group in the hitbox is convex. Delete the original groups afterward
Export the entire model as OBJ.
Use Obj2Sur by SmackBolzen to convert it into a hitbox. The only hardpoint we list is the HpMount one for ships - for equipment, we use none.

This results in SURs of about 10-60 KB in size, with group counts ranging from 8 to 60. All groups are assigned to root, we don’t use destructable or moving components at this time. I have searched, but can find no recommended limits on SURs. Only “try to keep them as simple as possible”, which is not helpful.