Custom sur

If you want to go the easy route, find Vanilla ships that are similar to your custom ones. Copy those surs over to each of your ship’s directories and then resize them, and rename them.

If you want a real custom sur that works though, it takes time. Basically you will be making very simple versions of your ships -but they all need to have Convex parts -no dents at all.

If you want the second option, I hope you have 3D Studio Max, Maya, or Softimage XSI. If you do, then you can use the Havok plug-in and make those convex parts very quickly, then export to Milkshape, organize them / make sure the names and order match your original ship.

So there really is no “easy” way to have a good custom sur, especially not 200+

f you want the second option, I hope you have 3D Studio Max, Maya, or Softimage XSI. If you do, then you can use the Havok plug-in and make those convex parts very quickly

Umm… OK now you got my attention, Mini_me…

Please explain how to use Havok?

Thanks in advance?

JONG:
Try My Way

http://forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?t=55837

Yes that is bad news for now, but don’t worry, Lancer always does his best to finish stuff.

For troubleshooting - if you have a crash when you try to launch, it might be a bad .mat file.

The fastest way may be to remove your new ships temporarily from faction_prop if you have them there, so they don’t spawn as NPCs, and make them sellable at Manhattan 3 at a time. Make a new character and give him 999,000,000 credits using Ioncrosss, then you can buy each ship quickly and launch to see which ones cause the crashes.

Speaking only for Max, the Havok plugin is pretty cake to use. You just select a mesh, click the Havok toolbar button for “Generate Convex Mesh” and yer done with 1 part. Most times the default setting gets you a nice shrink wrap of the part and you move on to the next one in seconds.
Just have to plan how you will get the tightest fit and know ahead how many groups you’re going to want in MS3D.
Thats my current prob with that habitat base I’m workin on; doing a hollow sphere, rings, and an entry tunnel ends up being a few too many parts =( well… quite a few. Still gotta get off my arse and see if having multiple SUR meshes with one name will work like DA’s do.

I think your groups problem is easily resolved - can’t you just import your station into MilkShape and make your groups there, it’s very easy and fast. Then you only need to export it into 3DS for finishing works.

Just don’t go for too much detail, watch your vertex count, we don’t all have super-duper graphics cards!

I wish I had known about the Havok plugin a lot earlier!

I wasted a day downloading the latest 3DS Max 2009 trial (900mb!!) but parts of the Havok plugin are not loading because it’s not written specifically for it. But I could read the function of the Convex Hull tool and it sounds like it will be a lot of help.

Care to do a short Tutorial with some pics?

Where do I get this Havok plugin?

@LS -  lol you nut, you’re the one that posted the link in the first place ;D  it’s http://tryhavok.intel.com/ – gotta register, but it’s not much effort for such a nice tool to have around. There are a few tools to DL after reging, oh and methinks one was an SDK.

@ST - The hollow sphere alone I think I got down to about 8 or 9 convex SUR pieces, then there’s the entry -perhaps 5 sur pieces, the main central rings -20 sur pieces, the side rings (2) -5 sur pieces each, and then the JumpGate components -12 sur pieces, along with their connecting structures -12 sur pieces. Oh and the Doors -A, B, C01 - C04 -6 sur parts. Last part would be the Matron’s harness / transducer / rear main turret mount -5 sur pieces.
If I want accurate collision on the rings (all rotate) then 5 each on the Side ones and 20 on the Central is as low as I can go, any lower and they interfere with the hollow inside of the base.
All this means either making dummy groups to mount these extra SUR pieces to, or (I haven’t tried this yet) naming the sur parts for each of these cmp groups with the same name -as DA did. The latter would definitely be ideal, but I’ve been tied up with schoolwork and Steven Erikson’s new book “Toll the Hounds”, oh and Spore lol just reached the center of the galaxy early yesterday so pretty much done there with necessities.

The CMP isn’t too complex really, around 5674 faces -which for a base this large is pretty nice I tried to keep it in the spirit of Nomad organic structures -rock, membranes, transparent bone / spine. Of course it’ll have the Matron docked with it, which adds another 5k or so, then the weapons 500-1k each with 11 or 13 of those.

Anyways, sorry JONG for hijacking the thread =( 200 ships is a ton of SURs no matter what you do.

hmm…yea i NEARLY reached the center of the galaxy and suddenly Grox (some evilbastards) decided 2 strike my little ship

sry for hijacking the thread

@ JONG, Because your ships are not multi component you really only have 2 choices regarding SURs.

1. resize vanilla SURs with FlModelTool.
2. use my tutorial and resize shield bubbles to fit your ships.

Even the CMP to SUR app that LS is making won’t give you anything different, as a CMP with one component = a SUR with one convex component (think bubble shaped), even DA had to stick with this.

As for custom SURs for 200+ ships, forget it, it would take me half a year to convert the models and to make new CMPs & SURs from them, and I know what I’m doing.

Still gotta get off my arse and see if having multiple SUR meshes with one name will work like DA’s do.

Sorry Mini_Me but it doesn’t, I’ve tried it so many different ways, I can create a SUR using milkshape that (as far as I can tell) has the same internal stucture as a vanilla station SUR, I just cannot get the damned thing to register, at least they don’t CTD me any more :P. I even tried it with the splicer, FL aborted the other components and gave me a nice list in spew for my troubles :P.
I’m not sure but I think it may be the shrink wrap mesh itself that’s causing my problem, just wish I could code as I’d create something to strip that mesh out so I could test my theory.

Some good news guys.

Check this out, I don’t want to clag up this thread any more…

http://forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?t=56306

Enjoy and report back.

Looks good ST
Though I prefer .OBJ format, that way if you have a name longer than 8 chars it does not get cut off when importing between the two.

Usually I also export all the SUR meshes in one file. Then open in MS3D, weld each mesh separately, save as modelname_sur.ms3d. Next I go through the group list one by one, double-clicking to select the group, hit CTRL+i to select all but that one, delete those, export the sur mesh that’s left, and lastly hit CTRL+Z for undo, rinse and repeat (if I’m using the SUR splicer).
But naming the SUR parts correctly (partname_lod1, except Root) should negate the need for using splicer. Plus there are a couple parts in a SUR file that a spliced version won’t include entirely -like the tri-strip section if memory serves me right.

Try using the max2ms3d plugin instead of .OBJ or .3DS, it even swaps the Y & Z axis for you so your model sit’s the right way up in milkshape, it should be in the download archive here on the starport.

LOL i got the havok sdk and stuff ages but never looked into it, awesome-O find ST ^^

Good tip about the shortcuts, guys.

The problem I had with the wing not generating a good convex shape was due to some of the verts not being welded. The Weld function in MilkShape is not working perfectly, I did it several times to no avail. So I had to weld them all individually and manually - took ages, should have made a new sur part for it by hand. Anyway, now you guys know too.

msSURExporterV1_1.dll

Where can I get version 1.2 guys?