can't afford 3dsmax, what can i do (i have already an idea), gimme a hint.

Unfortunately the Panda plugin for max3d is the only way to get new models into the game.

Have a look in the wip thread for the basic.

Pinback is there a way to model in Blender 3D or Wings 3D and then export your work as a 3dmax file format for importability into FFED3D?

Yes you can use Blender ect to build the model,save it as a 3dmax file.It then has to go through 3dmax as Panda is

the only way the model can be converted into a dirx file that FFE3D can use in the game.so far no found any other

way to do it

that's poor, basically it's a "x" port, yes? why don't use direct x sdk standarts?

the thing is you can't even load a exportet spline back in the game

ok, thread is modelling

here's a little help for landing gear anim with 3dsmax

http://www.spacesimcentral.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=229

keep in mind; landing gear animation is calculated internally by the game ❗

i hope it's useful for someone

i will post here sporadically some help files for me and others, who work on FFED3D models

potsmoke66

Nice one Potsmoker66,I can't use any 3D software at the monment.But will keep it in mind for

when I get back to it.

Do you know anything about how to set the pivot in 3ds?.

of course, easy job. 😕 there are two possibilities to do it. either you set them with (on the hierarchy tab) and adjust the pivot points by hand or use and (relaying on 3dsmax 9). 💡 best if you want to circulate or move an object around a certain axis, i.e. on top of an arm, use joints (create a sphere and use as ankle or joint, don't forget to center the spheres pivot to the sphere, in general it will be in center when you create it) use to link the "leg" to the joints movement (and vice versa) and so on. you can also specify a base object (not moving) and create helpers to your connected joints (i don't know if helpers get recognized by the game) 🙄 but for simple movements it's not useful to do so. 😉 . allways take care of what you do, and sadly when you mirror any object you do mirror the pivots axis alignment but NOT the animations movement and it ends up in a little mess 😡 , that's why i use instead of to save my animated model to ".X", else positions and movements of objects get confused . still if you reopen my models with "xporter" you can see that they are completly out of position and animation keys timing got lost 👿 , but it works in the game and i think that's important 😀 .

refer to this: http://www.3d-tutorial.com/rigging_without_bones-1062.html

very useful little tutorial and really timesaving. ❗

addendum

taking care means: save your work after every step to different savestates ("courier" got up to 16 files only for the "body") ❗

question: still there is only one material in FFED3D, but effect.fx can help, who can show me the right meaning of the expressions in it ❓ (tried to find out but i still could need some help on certain commands/expressions).

the same goes for tris.ini, you can use both for any model 😀 , and i want to know all commands working within it.

(i know forum search, but it takes such a long time to find the right article in it and my time in net is limited cause i'm just a freeloader (blind passenger, deadhead) 👿 )

piracy and murder is not allowed here!

to all the "heads" outside reading this, "Deadhead" means someone who has a free pass or a blind passenger. referring to websters dictionary from 1912.

other people seem to have problems with animations in 3dsmax as well

got this question from kwxport forum:

When I export an animated model sometimes, the mesh totally gets screwed up when I open the .x file. Most of the time it works fine, but at times, possibly one part, or the entire thing is just all scrambled and all over the place. What do you think I could do to solve this issue?

my answer:

i recognized that too in 3dsmax9, exporting X via PANDA or Xport.

but for my use in FFED3D they work even scrambled, when i check the option "matrix" instead of "position/rotation/transform" (in PANDA of course).

still if i reopen them, everything is scrambled (horrible)!

but if you set the pivots right (depending all to hierachy) and checked their alignment, that should not happen,

mostly it's their alignment, cause if you mirror objects (and i think you did as well) the alignment of objects pivots gets mirrored too, movement and placement relatively to world and mirrored object is negative (i.e. let's say in a box center is zero x,y,z, left lower front corner -x,-y,-z, right upper back corner +x,+y,+z, doesn't matter which way around, but in one model or world it has to follow the same rule), i discovered also it's hard to get the alignment back to normal.

as long as you playback the animation sequence on 3dsmax it works well (discreet correction, i think), but when you export to any other format, i.e. old 3ds or X, they don't know how you build up your model and everything is wrong positioned and movement is relaying on pivots position and alignment.

short: you should set pivots of the objects in your model all to center of world (not essencially) and align all pivots to worlds alignment,

then it has to work proper!

I can honestly say that you have total lost me there 😆 😀

May be if you have the time you can do tutorial with some pics on the subject. ❓

While Iam the subject of asking for thing,if theres any programmers out there who like to take a crack at doing

a mission editor for the game.I think it one of things a lot of people would like to see made for the game.

but I guess it a lot easier to say that,than do.

like for many of us, my 30 days trial period of 3dsmax is over, what can i do ❓

buy 3dsmax (about $3'500) 👿

use 3dsmax illegaly, possible but extremely dangerous if you wan't to publish your work and NOT recommendet 😈

use Blender,

yes it works!

➡ download following software:

Blender complete suite: http://graphicall.org/builds/builds/showbuild.php?action=show&id=1060 ,

Phyton 2.6.4: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.6.4/ (python windows installer x86 or AMD64)

MeshView (microsoft): http://files.wildspad.com/afecelis/irrlicht/files/MView.zip

with this software you are able to create proper models for FFED3D.

how: ❓

install python 2.6, when completed, install Blender 2.49a and you are ready to start, the version of Kai Kostack's Blender (complete suite) opens with a ready configured Blender Shell, lots of things will look more familiar than in common 2.49a. but everything is customizeable in Blender and you can set it up as you like. there are additional Plugins/Scripts to download, but most are implemented in "complete suite"

issues: 😕

the .x import script only imports a single ascii mesh and no animations

the .x export is only in ascii (text) format.

there exists some slightly different versions of the exporter script, but none of them is useful, i checked it out for you.

vital: ❗

additional you have to be shure to include at least one animated part, else no animations will be saved (even when anim. flag is set) and it can't get read by FFED3D, framerate dosen't matter for keyed animations, i think.

further you have to check your .x ascii files for misfitting terms produced when importing 3ds (others might too) and exporting to .x. open .x ascii file with notepad and "Material#" with "material" or "somewhat", because the # sign causes a halt when loading the file to many other programs (FFED3D).

you can check your work with MView or DirectXViewer (derictxviewer comes with directxsdk) if they get loadet in these viewers they should also work in the game (viewers loads even without animation). advantage; with MView you can convert your files from .x ascii to .x bin or .x bin compressed. 😎

Blender can look like this:

[attachment=76:blend01.jpg]

it's fully user configurable, therefore it's a beast to handle, but after a while you will find out that blender offers you a lot more than just modeling.

help: 😯

use this page to get started: http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/tutorial-folder/blender-user-interface-tutorial/

anims explained here: http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/animation/

additional tip: 💡 blender safes user cofigurations (windows, grids, path ect.) with each ".blend" file, use this to make presets.

let's guess a house with two floors is 6m high, 3m for each floor (without roof), then our little house in the game (FFED3D) must be about 6m high (two floors if you look close, 4 windows in quadratical arrangement on two sides of the building). to get a grid in "orthographic" view matching to this enter in "View/View Properties" click on the opened popup "Spacing:1.00" and enter the value 0.0115 it works, even if it shows 0.012 it's different. you have to do this with every window seperatly (like most actions/settings in Blender). additional for a "perspective" view (3D Window) you should multiply the value by 10 (1.15), else the grid get's to small. these proportions are really close, an adder i.e. is about 25m long, with this setup.

maybe not to professional, but still handy; Zanosa's Z Modeler, i still use V1.07, it's a quick to learn and easy to use 3d modelling program which covers the basics of modelling, only handicap you can't make no animations (zmodeler units for FFED3D = 1.147).

you can get it from here: http://www.zmodeler2.com/?mode=dl&ID=3

per aspera ad astra

cmdr potsmoke66

Excellent work Potsmoker66. 😎

Right if I understand rightly

1 you can make the model in Blender as normal.

2 save it out in Blenders x export script

3 load it into notepad,remove the "#" save it.(Does anything else need to done) Then

model will now load into FFE3D or.

4 Do you then need to load the x model into mview save it as a x bin/x bin compressed?.Then it can be used in FFE3D?

❗ Pinback, yes; no they can be loadet as .x ascii to FFED3D as long as they have at least one animated part (you can check your models with the viewer, if it gets loadet correctly it will work in FFED3D), they only get smaller as .x bin or compressed bin, but i think it doesn't matter to the game, cause rendering the model costs the same processing time, it depents on amount of polys and size of texture (texture is a framerate killer), but of course loading the ascii file needs a lot more time than a binary.

🙄 i fear these large textures of some models and i asked myself what would happen, if all models get that sized textures. sadly its not possible to have multiple textures for one model, cause this would save a lot of memory/processing time (like my small buildings which are originally designed for a race track, 1 window tex used 4 times, 1 wall tex used many times, makes the texture files in all much smaller then to have a big one, in other words; its easier to render many polys with the same texture then one poly with a large tex).

😉 i don't know if there are other issues with .x ascii files produced by Blender than the "# bug", but keep me informed and send a mail with the output (model.x) to me, or compare the output to 3dsmax created models yourself to find the differences between. gernot66@bluewin.ch

🙂 i will rework the script to avoid the "# bug", but give me time to do so

💡 maybe we could ask one of the script programmers on sourceforge.net to optimize the X in/output script for Blender.

nano, nano

cmdr potsmoke66

Great post Potsmoke... I have been wanting to get my Blender screen sectioned off link that in the screenshot and haven't been able to do that correctly. Thanks for the links.

sorry, i did something wrong with the measurement, i should have looked on elite games first. then i remembered there's a ruler in Frontier / FFE, wen't to look for a near spacestaion and....

[attachment=77:50m_s.jpg]

what a surprise, wrong scale! 😯

but i confirmed to stay with our russian friends, 100 meters for the hatch http://www.elite-games.ru/conference/viewtopic.php?p=2099607#2099607 .

➡ therefore the grid for Blender must be spaced 0.0115 (sorry) and for ZModeler units are 1.147.

or download this ruler (.OBJ) http://www.elite-games.ru/conference/viewtopic.php?p=2089495#2089495

💡 hack yourself the "//////50 METRES///////" to "//////100 METRES//////", the string is "readable" in the program (& instead of \).

direct x exporter

❗ like i promised, a slightly altered directx export script for Blender 🙂

it removes now the # from the object names. i think that should help a bit, especially when importing from .3ds to blender,

so you dont have to care about the names and change them all manually.

you can download the zipped python/blender script in the downloads section.

to install, copy/unzip it into your blender\.blender\scripts folder.

💡 if you open the script you can quickly see how it's done and add additional restrictions by yourself, if needet.

more blender stuff will be added soon, like; simple animations, tuning normals, texturing with blender, but first i have to finish my first blender model myself, it's an adder (exists already, i know), get a look at it's status quo

[attachment=87:p66 adder1.jpg] a "clean" adder 😉

yes darkone the english wiki for blender is a bit outdated and hard to find a way through, germans get away lucky, the german version is incomplete but more up to date, easier to understand and to navigate (for germans of course). 😕

anyway it's allways hard to maneuvre yourself through a tutorial or wiki, for such a large program, when you just look for a specific topic like modeling for FFED3D (i got a thousend buttons, but i only need 3 of 'em).

don't ask me about blender 2.5, i have no idea if or how. stuff described here, will be for 2.49b, so far.

Amazing work there Potsmoker keep it going. 😎 😎 😎

I just got Blender to work on the netbook.

➡ Blender basics

if you ever wondered where the preferences are;

💡 one helpful thing is to set in "view & controls" the button for "zoom to mouse position", so you don't have allways to pan the views by key input.

"around selection" let's you in 3d view allways rotate around the axis of the selectet object.

"emulate 3 button mouse" (if) and "middle mouse button" "rotate" for shure. 😎

i don't have to tell you that you can allways split/join windows (areas) by clicking with rmb on the frame (gap). 🙄

landing gear animation for FFED3D with blender

download zipped htm file here

for those who checked out the guide already, the pistons can be replaced by a single one joined with the base and animation can be done as vertex anim (transform), this will save some polys and it will look mainly the same in the end.

Excellent work there Potsmoker66. 😎

Quick question(ive not looked at the guide yet)

Do you still have to add an animation to the model.ie if I was to use an existing model would it have to have an animation added to it,before saving it with the scrip for FFE3D

unfortunatly yes, you do have to save a animation for all models that you export with blender for FFED3D. unlike the 3dsmax plugins it is not enough just to set the option in the export settings or just by entering a framerate, you have to set at least one key on one object on one frame.mark any object, enter "I" on the first frame in one of the views and select any kind of key, i.e. rot, thats all (i tested it with a building and a ship model). this also has to be done for unanimated models such as buildings.

i think i have to take a closer look at the script, maybe i can fix it, but i can't promise.

Outstanding works Potsmoker66,if any thing can be done with the script,it would make it a

lot easier to convert existing models into the game.