Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Massachusettes U.S.A
Posts: 193

adding turrets to capships w/TS5

for the life of me I can't figure how to make an exsisting part of a capship model-seperate it and reglue it as a child.Any hints on how to put or convert parts of a ship into turrets?????????

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Massachusettes U.S.A
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thanks for the help.in the mean time i've converted some 20 fighters (non-canon b5,starwars and startrek).if any body wants a brakiri fighter or dilgar fighter or one of 6 shadow fighters that i have just ask and i'll email them to you to test out.I have also done ship loadouts and tech ani's.I'm kinda stuck making the shield icons(yes i've even matched the palletes)and the briefing icons(the ones that you use to choose your ship).the icons came out better but I have a green field around my ship.Next mission is to add turrets to capships.My first serious attempt made a 450 poly 500m ship into a 1800+ poly 500m ship (It looked cool though).I think what happened was when i imported a turret i had created earlier i copied it over and over for easyness sake, i copied the entire scene and the poly count went thru the roof.


One more question, how the hell do people get ships to look so god damn real in truespace5???????????????????????????/it's hard.



confused as always


ps any body got an older copy of 3d exploration?????
I've got 1.833 and trying to get the code isn't easy.

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Last edited by whitestar55 on 11-14-2001 at 06:41 AM

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
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Actualy theres an option in TS5 wich allows you to slice parts of the ships off, I havent get the hang of it yet, go to help, and input the word "Slice", the slice option usualy is avaiable when you left click and then right click on the mesh, a series of face and vertice editor tools and other stuff will pop up, a simbol of a cut sphere is the separate tool, above it, its slice per plane. these 2 tools will pop up from the bottom of the screen. Use both of them.

However theres a simpler way to add turrets, create 3 cubes, one to be the base and two to be the barrels. and then to have it converted right put them like this:

Detail0
*---Hull
*---Turret01a-base
* *----base
* *----Local light1
* * *Turret01a-Barrell
* *----cube1
* *----cube2
* *----Local light2
*
ETC

you also can deform the shape of the base cube to look better and remenber, the barrels must be pointing up, to create turrets, start a new COB file and make shure the turret is centered at (0,0,0) then open the ships file next, it will add the ship to the turret file. All you gotta do now is moove the turret arround and copy-paste it over the model.

if you want the convertion tools to make subobject visible within FS2 you must put local light as childs of these objects like above,if you dont do this ,the subobject will be glued to parents when in POF and some times this will make it go over the poly limit for each subobject (about 750 polys), thus causing some visual anomalies and crash the game.

I clould help you out if you have the patience of waiting a few days I'm overloaded with work at college, if you can wait send me your capships to: contrabandolda@clix.pt

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Last edited by haderak on 11-14-2001 at 11:49 AM

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Something tells me that these things will be asked often in the future....and since haderak's way isn't exactly the right one, I'll put up a short acme-tutorial here. So I don't have to repeat it over and over again in the future

Basic concepts: an object refers to an invidual object without any kind of hierarchy, modeled either in ts or any other modeling prog. Different types of lights and cameras can be concidered objects, but "non-corporeal" type of objects. Subobject refers to something that is a part of fs2's hierarchy system. So these two words aren't synonyms even though some people think so.
Multiple objects together form a subobject. Subobject can be targetable, or not. Main hull, turrets, physical systems of a ship are subobjects.

The four golden rules of fs2 conversions: 1) Objects in the same hierarchy level are merged during conversion, forming a subobject. 2) Glueing order matters 3) Middle-range hierarchy doesn't require non-corporeal objects 4) Never breach the subobject limit.

The first rule is very simple, but still many people don't understand it. It means exactly what it says: if you create two cubes, glue them together and convert them, you will get a subobject. In trueview, shows like this:
|
|-+subobject-name
| |-object1-name
| |-object2-name

A single object can never be converted alone, not to form even a main hull (special case of this is used in cob2fs2; this is an exception), or any other kind of subobject. In singular objects, like in the object form of main hull, or turrets without barrels, this causes problems, since there's no multiple objects to glue together. That's why non-corporeal objects are used. In all cases any type of light is good. Even camera would be, but it's not very practical. Nevertheless, the trueview-view of a simple singular object that converts to a subobject is:
|
|-+subobject-name
| |-object1-name
| |-noncorporealobject-name

Now here comes what haderak told wrong: we don't need to use any lights when creating suobjects that consist of multiple objects. A barreled turret would simply be:
|
|-+turret-name
| |-turretobject1-name (in other words, turret base)
| |-+barrel-name
| | |-barrelobject1-name
| | |-barrelobject2-name

That concludes the first rule.

Second rule tells that order of glueing counts. Your trueview sorts hierarchy alphabetically, always remember that. It doesn't tell you anything about the order the pieces of the puzzle were glued together, which is essentially important when it comes to sensible subobject order, and lods. If you glue lods in wrong order, the order when converted won't be what you expected.

The third rules means that non-corporeal objects aren't needed nowhere besides in the "ends" of hierarchy trees (and sometimes not even there). They can be "in the middle"; but aren't needed nor preferred. Here's an example of a pseudo-ship's hierarchy:
|
|-+detail0
| |-detail0-hull (ships's first lod)
| |-+turret01a (non-barreled turret)
| | |-turret01a-geo (physical object)
| | |-turret01a-light (non-corporeal object)
| |-+turret02a (barreled turret)
| | |-turret02a-geo (physical object; base)
| | |-+turret02a-arm (barrel subobject)
| | | |-barrel01a-geo (physical object)
| | | |-barrel02a-geo (physical object)
| |-+detail1 (ship's second lod)
| | |-detail1-hull (physical object)
| | |-detail1-light (non-corporeal object)

The fourth rule is hard to describe....I'll just say that if your subobject goes over certain threshold in vertex and polygon counts, it won't work. In that case you'll need to either reduce the vertex/poly counts of that subobject, or split the subobject to two subobjects.

Last edited by Eternal One on 11-14-2001 at 05:28 PM

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Oh, I forgot; these are just the basics. There's a lot more around, but it'd take too much space to write it here.

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Registered: Feb 2001
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hmm what Eternal is absolutly right,hes got all the experience. what I described above his post is not exactly right as he has said but it will work anyway.
This knoelege came whe I tryed to convert the sunhawk model to run on Freespace2, in the first time I couldnt convert it with its turrets right and the game crashed, second time I added lights to the turrets, they made the turrets apear as avaiable subobjects for turret gun mounts, but LOD3 apeared first, tried to swich places in the COB hirarchy, after this 3 trials, I finaly made the POF with all turrets and correct order of LOD's, but I still have to figure out how to make turrets more resistent to enemy fire, they will blow up instantly when shot at, thus the ship gets defenseless after 1 or 2 enemy fighter passes.

ET1 define non-corporeal object.

This is the sunhawks present Hirarchy:

Detai0
*
*-Hull_0
*
*-Turret0Xa-base (x is a number from 1 to 7)
* **-Base
* **-turret0Xa-arms
* ***-barrels
* ***-Local light
*
*-Detail1
* **
* **-Hull1
* **-local light
*
*-Detail2
* **
* **-Hull2
* **-local light
*
*-Detail3
* **
* **-Hull3
* **-local light

Debris would come last:
*
*-debrisX (1...N)
* *-wreck
* *-local light

You can copy parts of the hull (providing it is made of more than 1 object) and rename them as debris like above.

This what I figured out so far.

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-Weep for us Na'toth, weep for us all, I've seen the darkness, you cannot do that and be the same again... [G'kar, in Revelations]

-No money, no wife, no car, NO PROBLEMS!!!!

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Last edited by haderak on 11-14-2001 at 06:21 PM

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quote:

---

Originally posted by haderak
...ET1 define non-corporeal object.....

---

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Registered: Jul 2001
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I can put up a textureless (well, they won't be in the D/L of it ) cob file with the hierarchy done if anyone wants to play about with it.

BTW, a link to KMN's tutorial is also handy for people - that's how i learnt to turret.

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http://members.aol.com/syrinx18/tutorial.html

enjoy

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If anyone has Kazans tools, it is possible to convert back to COB all the models that are present in the MOD, Do reverse engeneering, thats how I got it fugured out.
reverse engeneering is the best way to learn.

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-Weep for us Na'toth, weep for us all, I've seen the darkness, you cannot do that and be the same again... [G'kar, in Revelations]

-No money, no wife, no car, NO PROBLEMS!!!!

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Registered: Aug 2000
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wait until i put up the full conversion documentation with explainations of all the species features, wanna talk about a technical overload on your average new comer

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Because, Kazan obviously doesn't want to help anyone break into modding!
It's possible to write a complicated procedure in a way that is understandable to almost anyone, you know. Even if it's highly technical, it can still be read and understood...

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Alphakiller
Because, Kazan obviously doesn't want to help anyone break into modding!
It's possible to write a complicated procedure in a way that is understandable to almost anyone, you know. Even if it's highly technical, it can still be read and understood...

---

Just needs commenting & formatting - that normally does the trick

Only prob with converting back using PCS is that (in my version at least) all the lights and axes are centred in the centre of the ship -0,0,0 - rather than the centre of their sub-object.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by KillMeNow
http://members.aol.com/syrinx18/tutorial.html

enjoy

---

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Oh god... no TS1, TS4.1 at least, 4.2 or 5 is recommended.
Many of us have it... but do not request them here. No public warez talks here.

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check your PMs fury

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yeah ts 4.2 is the best bet - not sure where you can "buy" that one i not even sure if its possible with ts1 assuming it works the same way as ts 4 does however there is a nice shortcut with ts4

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quote:

---

Originally posted by KillMeNow
yeah ts 4.2 is the best bet - not sure where you can "buy" that one i not even sure if its possible with ts1 assuming it works the same way as ts 4 does however there is a nice shortcut with ts4

---

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Umm...have you been hiding under a rock on Mars?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Edwin


what are the registration codes for TS4?

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