[SUR Tutorial] Making SUR's without splicing

@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!

No, that’s not right.

I was use this way to make 300+ of ships sur file, and when the ship get hit, its first shield take the damage, until shield is down, then the hull take the damage.

If that like you say, all my mod player will be complaint this issue. ;D

In fact, my way is work fine in game include the stations.

My sur file not show in HardCMP, I don’t know why.

I was send it to your email, please check your mail box. ;D

Is your sur file in the same folder as the model, and does it have the same name?

Basic stuff to check, I know, but I make mistakes when I’m tired too!

Can some moderator or admin please make this sticky too, it’s a good guide for small ship surs with shield bubbles.

And I don’t want to blow my own trumpet by linking to my tutes! :))

I used this method provided by Forsaken and it seems to work quite well for small ships.

As instructed I used basic shapes to make a rudimentary model that covers the imported ship. Like most mods, we were resizing Vanilla and a few basic SURs for our ships, SURs made with this technique seem to work much better. We will be doing extensive testing in the next few weeks on the 15 or so I have completed so far. I have no modeling experience whatsoever other than just toying around with MS3D and LW in the past, I mean complete rookie, and Im spitting these out @ about 45 minutes to an hour per.

Thanks Tons!!

@StarTrader:

Is your sur file in the same folder as the model, and does it have the same name?

Yes, they in the same folder as the model, and it have the same name.

I was use this way to make 300+ ships in my mod and work fine. ;D

Great tutorial works so far but i got a small problem with the shield bubble.
When i use the exact tutorial the hit detection for shield hits is on the hull parts and not on the bubble.
So i resized it to ship (with the stated settings) and then to scenery with the stated settings and back to ship, with this way I have hull detection on the hull parts and shield hit detection on the shield bubble, but the collision detection doenst work very well.
I have only collision detection on the first box i made (oneil_sur1).

So i tryed another way cause op sayed:
@OPR8R:

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

So i resized it to scenery first and then to ship, sur works shield and hull detection is fine but the the collision detection still only works on the first created primitive.
Am I doing something wrong?

Edit: Someone sayed in this threat that this method doesnt work for stations but as far as i see it does, just use the sur splice once to remove the shield bubble from the sur, there is no real need to do so just resize it as scenery and u will have the same effect, but i personally prefer to remove the shieldbubble on models i use only for stations.

Edit2:
My sur in MS3d before the export.

And the same sur exported.

i tried this method on stations and got the same result like you have with your ship
once an object is too big only the first box works

dunno if and how that stuff with the sur splicer does work (what you just said above) and if it could fix the station probs

I’ve not tryed it yet i just noted that when i let it splice a single sur that it removes the shield bubble from the sur.
I might give it a try if that will fix the problem with the collision detection.
And the bug that only the first primitive has collision detection is not only on huge object, i’ve also noted that problem on small sur’s u just dont note it that fast. but i surely had the same problem on first and only figher sur.

I can only think that your problems are concave sur parts again.

Believe me they are very hard to spot, often it’s just a slight inward crease between two faces and reversing the edge will fix it. The surs I have made have worked for any object, small ships, big ships, big ships with big bays used as docks - both for hits and collisions. Even the Romulan Warbird, the huge one with a big hollow space between its top and bottom wings.

Don’t lose heart, keep it going.

But - bear in mind that this tutorial is only good for small ships with bubbles as per the standard game ships other than capital ships. You do need multi-part surs and sur-splicer for the big ships and dockable ships that I have described.

Of course I may have entirely misunderstood what you are trying to achieve, in which case ignore this.

no - i tried it with boxes only and have the same probs

Has anyone made some progress on this?
I still dont get the sur’s to work with this way doesnt matter if I use only boxes or only spheres, the ship to ship collision detection wont work.

Greetz
Mind