Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Sagamore Hills, OH
Posts: 1

Greetings,

One of the most frustrating problems we have in creating modifications for our favorite game Freespace is the lack of a good 3d modeler to create custom ships and objects. A few utilities have been written that let you modify the POF files directly, and a few have been written to convert models made in Truespace to a format usable for Freespace, but not a fully integrated 3d model program that can produce POFs from scratch.

Using the utilities and after market programs does have disadvantages. Truespace has a lousy user interface, and it's extremely clumberson to create polygon models that we need. It's difficult to snap two small objects together to make a larger single object, and difficult to create sub-objects that can be individually modified. Texturing is also a problem with the earlier versions of TS, especially version 1 and the publicly available demo of version 2 that a lot of people have been using.

Some model makers have tried to use boolean operators, mesh surfaces, and other common modeling techniques to create those custom ships, but whether its in the save COB data file, or in the conversion programs, using these model steps has introduced problems in the converted POF output file that makes the model unstable. Sometime these techniques work, other times they don't, and it almost seems like pot-luck if you get the model to work correctly in the game. Another utility, FreespaceMissionManager, ver 2 can add dock points and weapons points to the model that no one has been able to do with Truespace, but this adds a third program into the conversion. With so many programs needed to create a working model for Freespace, I was surprised that no one has attempted to create a modeling program to replace the 3 or 4 programs that are needed now. Documentation on how to create a model has been very limited, and most of the users have created a model by trial and error, or finding out how to do and work around the modeling limitations by word of mouth. No FAQ has ever been written.

A few model programs were started, but the last one that might of been useful, freeDXF, has their pages closed at their web site on telefragged.com.

So I decided to look around the internet and see if there were any public domain 3d modelers available that might fit this need. I looked at Moray, a modeler for PovRay, and Ac3d, but finally came across the one that had the best chance of fitting our needs. And of all places, it was already available on the DescentDevelopersNetwork, called PolyTron32.


Here is a quote straight from the DecentDevelopersNetwork Polytron32 web page:

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The module POLYTRON is used to edit and create new polygon models of Descent 2, such as robots, laser/fusion shots, missiles, reactors and the player ship. To see what you can do with it, have a look at Entropy 2, a great single player collection featuring about 20 new polygon models! POLYTRON highly cooperates with Descent Manager HAXMEDIT32.

POLYTRON was originally developed by Luke Schneider and now taken over by Heiko Herrmann and Steve Klinger: After Luke has finished Entropy 2, Outrage has hired him for Descent 3 (read the full article). To not let Polytron die, I (=Heiko Herrmann) have taken over the development on this great polymodel-editor (same to Blocked). So Polytron will now be integrated in the Descent Manager Tools for Win32, which is only positive for the user: known look+feel, shared configuration (like the directories), and highly teamworking between Polytron and HAXMEDIT. The time for a new era has come: Descent Manager POLYTRON32!
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Take a look at the page. You'll see screen shot for a free full blown 3d modeling program !!! for creating objects for Descent.

If you look at the DescentDevelopersNetwork page, this program has all the possibilities to be modified for use with the Freespace POF type data file. At least half, maybe three-quarter of the coding would already be done, since the majority of it is in the data display, graphic routines and user interface. The only thing that would be needed is reading the POF data into the program, adapting the GUI stuff to modify that data, then a new routine to save the file out in native POF format. No more cob---> dxf or 3ds ----> cob ----> scn ----> pof type conversion for cleanup and conversion.

This program is one of the modules for Descent Manager, and with the About box in the program having all the credits for the DDN, the source code should be available to those same developers. If they would only take the time to look in to it.

And that's where the problem lays. I asked Heiko Herrman, the DescentDevelopersNetwork lead, about this program, and whether they could modify it, and INSTANTLY got the cold shoulder. No further communications has taken place from their end, and any e-mails that I have asked about the program or its capabilities have gone unanswered (although I did get a
response on how to get it up and running to make Descent2 robots).

This isn't the first time. I asked those same questions 4 months ago, and got the same non-response. I have offered my assistance to help, but have never received a reply, both times.

In the mean time, we did get ModelView32, though, which I'm thankful for.

It's one of the few times where I've seen a developers site that "the main thing we want are people that are willed to chat and talk. Exchange information, ideas, help each other out, etc." (a quote straight from the DDN FAQ), refuse any further communications about a project that would benefit us all.

I'm surprised that a developers network would be so unwilling to supply a utility that has been the one we've all been asking for since Freespace1 came out and the most sought after when they have the resources, ability and capability to do so.

Guess that's their choice.

If anyone knows the current e-mail address for Luke Schneider, the original author of the program, please let me know. I'd like to try to contact him direct, and see if we can get this sort of project started.

Otherwise, I'll try to modify the D3edit code that is freely available for use and adapt it for use with POF data files to create our models that way.

Robert 'Sparks' Delinsky

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: UK
Posts: 122

I have to say I am very suprised at the response (or lack thereof) from Heiko Herrmann, as it was only a couple of weeks ago that he asked the FDL what sort of FS model editing tool they would most like to see created.

Personally, I have got very little hope left that an all-encompassing POF editor for FS1&2 will ever see the light of day as it should have happened a long time ago (consider how long Starlancer has been available and already I have seen a shot of a working model of a whitestar created), I wish you the best of luck should you decide to go ahead with the alterations to D3edit, I have no programming skills to offer but if you should need any help with testing I'd be more than happy to lend a hand as I have several different models under way.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 105

You have to realize that Freespace and Descent are completely seperate entities. You're not going to be able to take a Descent utility and make it work with Freespace. Its just like saying "I'll take the Homeworld editor and make Final Fantasy VII characters with it". The two are completely non-related.

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Not at home!
Posts: 681

Actually, if you have the code for a program that creates and user interface for modelling, and stores all the data on any form of memory structure, then you have a program that can be modified to be used with Freespace.

All that we need is a program that creates 3D objects, and saves them as .POF files. If the program already enables you to create models, you only have to create the code to save this model into the apropriate format, nothing else. If you want to create format-specific elements, then you only have to add methods for adding this information to the memory structure used by the modeller. It's indeed that simple, but it takes a lot of work, and that also means a lot of time to spare.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 105

No, its not that simple. The .POF file format from D3 is completely different from that in Freespace, which in turn is also different from that in FS2.

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