Star Trek Mod (Division of Labor?)

[Atrocities]

I would be happy to give you the models, but you must understand that DOGA has a high poly count and the models don't look all that good in the game.

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
I would be happy to give you the models, but you must understand that DOGA has a high poly count and the models don't look all that good in the game.

Probably so, but what the hey, how can you have a Star Trek Mod with no Klingon D-7's or Romulan Warbirds?

I'll be happy to take them, but you tell me - would you rather see a mod with somewhat befitting ST ships (even if they're a bit rough), or a mod that just renames the existing shipmodels?

I myself would prefer the ST ships...

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by Renegade 13 in "Modding in Starting Ships" thread:
Ok, this is starting to get a little frustrating. Modding SEIV wasn't much of a problem. Modding Starfury is many, MANY times more difficult.

You ain't kiddin'.

I'm plowing through coding in the star systems now. It should take just about as long as it took Cyrano Jones to pick up all those Tribbles...

Atrocities says he has some ST ship models - hopefully when Shrapnel gets around to fixing their upload function we can take a look at them.

Truth to tell, if I didn't like this Triangle campaign idea so much, and if I wasn't dying to try some of the new tricks I'm cooking up, I'd be tempted to throw in the towel. SEIV this ain't.

[Cleeve]

Originally posted by General Woundwort:
...Of course, if anybody wants to do some Star Trek models (HINT, HINT) I'd be happy to have them...

Howdy,

I'm Cleeve, the owner/operator/modeller of www.STARYARDS.com.

I've modded many ships for the Starfleet Command series of games. I use 3dsMAX primarily.

I might be willing to help out... I've got tons of high quality trek models. Is there an export plugin for 3d models for a Starfury format?

[Suicide Junkie]

http://www.i3dxtra.com/kb/read.asp?GID=7&AID=7

Looks like you can just "Save As..." a .X file
All you have to do then is make sure the textures work out.

[General Woundwort]

I am heartened by the interest expressed by all you guys in seeing ST ships in this mod. Just to give you guys an idea of what I'm looking for, this is my "ideal" as to how it would look...

PLAYER/NEUTRAL - the Terran DD from the base game would remain as the standard "Merchantman". It has about the right look to it IMO. Freighters would also remain the same. The Terran FG would be carried over as a neutral Gunboat/PT ship.

FEDERATION - approximating the Terran capital ships. The Terran CA ought to be the "Reliant"-class, the BC a ST:TMP era "Enterprise", and the BB the "Excelsior"s.

KLINGONS - FG's (Birds of Prey), and CA's (the ubiquitous and absolutely necessary D-7). Other models and ideas welcome.

ROMULANS - I actually think the Sithrak models would be pretty cool as Romulan ships, but if others have other ideas...

BTW, one intermediate step I have been thinking of is doing a "Beta" release just using stock Starfury models with new names and layouts. That way everyone can see how the game would work, and it would allow something to get out while any new ship models are being de-bugged.

[Drake113]

Here's what I did for the Galactica model (which was originally a SFC I MOD file). Before we start, I want to say that I am NOT a 3d modeler, and it's not only possible but very likely that there are much more efficient ways to do this. It's also possible that I'm leaving a step or two out, so anyone who does this on a regular basis, please check my math and correct me where I'm wrong:

Find the MOD file for the ship you want (try a google search for SFC mesh or SFC Mod if you're looking for stuff)
Download Milkshape 1.6.6 (NOT the 1.7 beta) from here.
To to http://www.starfleetuniverse.com and download the SFC plugin for Milkshape.
Get Lithunwrap from here: http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=198

Import the MOD file of the ship you want into Milkshape. Edit>Select all. Rotate X -90. Face>Reverse Vertex Order. Scale (I've found that anywhere between 6 and 12 is good). Save as: Autodesk .3ds.

Now, open the .3ds model in Lithunwrap, select the individual Groups, and move them around and scale them until all the Groups fit in the large gray box on your screen. Under the Materials tab, delete all but one (Starfury wants one texture map only). Model>Save>Save as Direct X (Text, uncheck Compression) in the X files directory of Starfury. Click Copy UV Map to Clipboard and then open up a new document in your trusty image editor (I use Photoshop myself) and paste the UV map there. Now, open up all the .bmp files that are associated with the model (They're the .bmp files that come with the model). Select all>copy>paste each of them onto the UV map, scaling and moving them so that they line up with the lines on the UV Map (I find that altering a layer's opacity helps). Flatten layers, resize to 256 x 256, save as a .bmp to the images directory of Starfury.

Now, back at LithUnwrap, click on the materials bar you left alone, rename it to the .bmp file you just saved, click properties, under Diffuse Map, choose Map: bitmap, then Properties, Change, and load the .bmp. Click View>Material and select the material; it should show up within the gray box now. Click Preview>Show Model and make sure everything is Ok. Save as .x to the XFiles directory. That should do it.

Now, it's just a matter of editing the SpaceObjects_XFiles.txt file to get your model in there.

You should be able to use more or less the same proceedure to import Bridge Commander models, Homeworld models, etc, although I haven't tried this yet. Good luck!

Oh, also, for ship layout files and shield layout files, you can't go wrong with a visit to http://www.shipschematics.net