re
a question
for the export of the sur
you choose shrink wrapped or bubble ?

and i have test with the beacon model
when i import the sur in flmodeltools.exe, it’s crash.
waiting 10 min and the program still on the run  ;D
finally just close it with the task manager :s

i have test the bubble and the shrink and the two make crash flmodeltools …

in lithunwrap the optimize says :

maybe to much polygons ?

edit :
i have test with a ship made only with milkshape
the awing
all good
i have this
with you method on the left and mine on the right.
is it normal ? or have i made an error ?

^^
i have test the awing with the bubble …
and i have at the end a bubble
i have redo all 2 times to be sure …

anyway i don"t want you waste your time
i search a little and if i don"t find i do it with 3dsmax ^^

It should be stated that this doesn’t work with multi-component CMPs, and thus, is useless with said CMPs. Just wanted to throw that out there…. I’ll go back to my cave now.

MK

lol mknote

I’m find some issue, if you use this to make a sur file, when the NPC shot your ship, you will get damage even they not real hit your ship.

I mean that, if the gun ammo is fly close your ship (not missile) but do not real hit your ship, you will still get damege like they hit your ship.

Yes, shield bubble.

But if they hit the shield bubble, I should be see the hit effects, in fact I’m not see any hit effects, but still get damage in my ship.

My SUR shapes like your picture.

Another issue is this way can’t use on stations SUR, if your setting is SUR Type: Scenery.

Before your tutorial I make my SUR in this way:

1.go to the games \DATA\SHIP directory, get a ship what like you make of CMP ship, EX:bh_elite.cmp.

2.copy its shield SUR file to a temp directory, EX:surbh_elite_shield.sur, then rename it to your CMP ship name like “yourshipname.sur”.

3.use the FLModelTool, then In the “CMP” tab then open your CMP file.

4.click on “SUR” tab, then open the shield SUR file that you was rename it.

5.click resize and use the following settings:

Scale: To CMP (automatic)
SUR Type: Ship
Make all components apart of hull

That’s all, and it can be use on stations SUR or any you want.

Hi Forsaken,

Thanks for this one. OK, this is the way for a single-export SUR, with shield bubble, for small ships.

But…

Are you really sure you do mean this first …

26. Click Resize and use the following settings…

• Scale: To CMP (automatic)
• SUR Type: Ship
• Make all components apart of hull

and this one after…

30. Click Resize and use the following settings…

• Scale: To CMP (automatic)
• SUR Type: Scenery <----- IMPORTANT
• Make all components apart of hull

???

Or should it be the other way round?

@Forsaken:

Add me to your msn…… [email protected]

We can sort it out.  

Oh, I’m not use msn, does any other way ?

OK, that’s very odd, I have always done it the opposite way (scenery first, scale all by 1 not auto to cmp, then ship and auto to cmp) and it worked fine.

But I haven’t made a small ship sur recently. Guess I’ll try both ways when I have some free time.

Thanks.

A quick note here:

When you export the sur groups from MilkShape for import into LithUnwrap, using .3ds format will shorten the group names if they are longer than a certain number of characters (mine are usually too long) and they may get messed up. Export to Wavefront (.OBJ) format instead, LithUnwrap can import them fine, the group names will not be changed and the sur optimisation works fine still.

Just remember to NOT change anything in MilkShape after you bring it back in from LithUnwrap, or it won’t work, just use MilkShape to export the sur only.

I haven’t yet tested the reversing of the scenery / ship setting but I was pretty sure the sur must be type = ship in the final version. I’ll report back unless someone else has the time.

it doesnt matter which type as long you use scenery one time

@JONG:

I’m find some issue, if you use this to make a sur file, when the NPC shot your ship, you will get damage even they not real hit your ship.

I mean that, if the gun ammo is fly close your ship (not missile) but do not real hit your ship, you will still get damege like they hit your ship.

JONG I think the shield bubbles (there are 2) in the SUR are partially detecting hits, by changing the SUR type they are probably no longer completely ignored by FL.

@Bejaymac:

JONG I think the shield bubbles (there are 2) in the SUR are partially detecting hits, by changing the SUR type they are probably no longer completely ignored by FL.

Hi Bejaymac:

So I think use this way:

=================================================================
1.go to the games \DATA\SHIP directory, get a ship what like you make of CMP ship, EX:bh_elite.cmp.

2.copy its shield SUR file to a temp directory, EX:surbh_elite_shield.sur, then rename it to your CMP ship name like “yourshipname.sur”.

3.use the FLModelTool, then In the “CMP” tab then open your CMP file.

4.click on “SUR” tab, then open the shield SUR file that you was rename it.

5.click resize and use the following settings:

Scale: To CMP (automatic)
SUR Type: Ship
Make all components apart of hull

will be easy, right ?

@OPR8R:

it doesnt matter which type as long you use scenery one time

Aha, thanks Op.

Jong:

The way you are describing puts only a single bubble around the ship, I think.(No - I know it does!).

And there are no close-fitting sur parts for your ship parts for hit detection to the hull.

So what happens when your ship’s hit?

There is a difference in how the model detects hits with shields up and with shields down, between this and a proper sur file, so what are the differences?

For example, most people who make home-made surs (including me!) do not put in weapon hit boxes and so, unlike vanilla ships, the result is that weapons are not damaged or destroyed by gunfire.

The same applies when you don’t have a shield bubble in the sur.

Normally the shield_link bubble takes a hit when the shields are up. When they are down, the hull surs take the damage. But you have only one large bubble, no shield bubble.

What I am saying is this:

Since by doing your sur this way, there is no separate shield bubble in the ship sur, this single bubble is the ROOT sur and is not linked to the shield_link bubble, therefore it becomes the hit detection box for your ship’s hull. But it is a big bubble around the ship, not a close-fitting shape. It is supposed to detect hits on your shield when the shield is up, and should be taking hits off the blue line in your HUD display.

But by using the shield_link sur in this incorrect way, every time the single bubble takes a hit, it will transfer the damage to the ship hull, since there is only one hit detection box. And this will give hits to the hull, taking hits off the red line in your HUD display.

And as it is a rather large-sized bubble, it’s not hard to hit your ship. You will probably also find that it is the same size as the shield_link bubble you are using, or maybe even bigger, even after resizing!

The shield sur you used and resized is supposed to be used as the shield bubble only, defining the size of the shield around your ship, and is normally declared in the shield_link = nnnn, HpMount, HpShield01 line in shiparch.ini.
It is linked to the shield bubble that should exist inside the ship sur. (In fact if you look inside a proper small-ship sur, even one made by the exporter with shield-bubble checked, you will find two identically-shaped and -sized shield bubbles, one is named HpMount (see the shield_link = line) and the other I have not been able to decode the hex hashcode yet).

So unless this is what you want to happen, this is not the right way to make your sur for your ship. It is (probably) OK for objects that do not have shields.

So for this reason, in short… I would not do my ship surs in this way at all.

You now have at least two fast ways to make good surs - go use them!

Or to save time, just use existing proper vanilla ship surs and resize those to fit your ships, not just the ^&^ shield bubbles!