StCobalt

i use to fool around with 3ds max 9 around 2 years ago, i have to wonder if it will be easy to get back into the swing of things. a lot has changed since back then. i might be biting off more than i can chew on this particular ship, but no better way to learn than to dive in head first. but as i said, theres a lot of things needing to be modifyed before it will look proper in sins (ill leave the texturing part out until i can actually properly model, got several ideas of what i want to do, wh

so performance wise, whats the number you want to shoot for (for people not running high end computers). im thinking about the average cap ship (thinking about modifying a free model i found on a site a few years back, its 37784 tri with 41477 poly. as it stands it cant be put into sins with the way it is. there are a lot of things that need to be fixed on the model itself (including the removal of a lot of its weapons and have some parts of the model fixed).

whats the max poly/vert count for a capital ship anyhow (or it least what does sins average)?

only question i have for you is are your weapons on the right side of the ship riged to face/fire to the right (because if you point the rig in the wrong direction it wont fire as you would want)

if i remember correctly, and dont hold be to this, its been a LONG time since i modded sins, they are going verticle and not out of the gav well (although it appears like this due to how the view is). it least thats a few problems i use to have.

well for one, i do believe you got to buy the program to use it and two, dont believe theres a way to convert to mesh in it.

well i do believe space elevators are hardcoaded but i could be wrong. you try searching the mexh foldure for any hints? id look for stuf like PlanetElevator-Psi-Bunker.mesh (because i simply dont have a clue what building that would be) and open it in 3ds max if you have the plug in for it and whatnot.

nulls are dummy points in 3ds max. Here is a tutorial that should be on a sticky IMO

kinda surprised that even the good tutorials get burried after a while though. its a pitty really since people look for em and its usualy rather heard to find unless you sort through like 70 pages of post.

[quote who="cszolee" reply="2" id="2374692"]Is the version of the mod files correct? (I mean, do you use 1.03 ref data as a base with the 1.03 Entrenchment?) If you run the developer exe, it should tell you what the exact problems are. But no, Sins does not make lockups when enabling "broken" mods, or anyway else. If there's a problem, you get a minidump. Also, large mods (like Soa, DS, etc) can take a while to load, you can't press any buttons until then. Alt

as far as textures go as to 1, no clue, as to 2 you load the textures from the sins directory under textures. search the forums. Here is one of them Here is another, although its more towards making meshes and texturing them in 3ds max. i use photoshop myself so i cant tell you exactly how to export it.

you could also change the color in the actual ship file itself under weapon color. been a while since i looked at em so i cant give you a direct format but under the weapon it does have a color area where you can use a hex color code to change color (keep in mind you need to skip the first two digits)

the models are sweet looking. only thing i find bad about the largest ship is the nose on it. it really does not fit well with the rest of the ship. id make it either come out to a few points or make it either longer coming down to a point or depending on what weapons the ship will have as well as class of weapons you could even put a hanger or some other type of weapon on the nose. although the ship lacks turrets in general (be it for missiles or other weapons). thisi s my personal opinion t

ya. the real headach is modeling and creating uv maps really. but even that gets easyer after you sink a few hundred hours getting confortable and familier with the program you use for it.

not really. texturing in general is reall basic. although the more time you put into it, the better it will look. you will have to learn a bit about UV maps or use the texture outlines already provided. it really depends on how detailed you want it. there are some great tutorials for making things like ship armor pannels and whatnot. just one thing to keep in mind is that you should not expect to get the same result as someone who spent a number of years doing it when your first start out.</p

how does having researched weapon upgrades on ships tie into cloaking? (someone posted on one of my old topics about it being "the same") but meh.

you are using the 1.1 version of the export tool right? the 1.2 is really flawed and since there is no updates. i use 3ds max 9 with 1.1 and it only takes a few min at max.

because forge tools is outdated. you have to converty files yourself using the ConvertData.exe found in the sins install directory. there is several graphical user interface's on the forums that makes this a LOT easier.

lol. well no you dont need the gui;s you just did not read how your suppose to use them. however the GUI's make it 900%+ faster than doing it file by file.

use the convertdata.exe in the sins install directory. to make converting easier, download one of the two GUI(graphical user interface) on this forum.

coding is not really that hard :p just something that requires a lot of trial and error. i suppose not all of us take particular interest in it though. it would be kinda helpfull if you mentioned what exactly you wanted coaded though.

3ds max 9 (30 day trial) or softimage XSI which has a free demo version, although its really limited.

but the tool included in Forge Tools 3 doesn't work well it would not since that tool was ment for 1.1 and 1.5 i believe. the convert data you need to use is in your sins install directory.

well really if you have 30 weapons and still do the same damage as a ship with 5. keep in mind the damage is spread out over banks and not a per weapon point basis. so you could have 1 weapon do 70 damage or you could split it so that 10 do 70 damage. its it also depends on what he wants to use the ship for. ive made ships with 30 weapon points that was actualy weaker than the standard capital ship.

ah. my bad.