creating shipsets

zircher · #1 October 8th, 2005, 05:21 PM

One of the interesting perks to L2 and L3 is that while they are shareware, only the movie rendering feature is disabled. For ship set makers and model designers, the programs are fully functional. So, DoGA is essentially a freebie for our needs.

If you're new, I suggest downloading L2 and getting a feel for that before moving on to L3. I have written a translation of the L3 Parts Assembler help files on my DoGA support page, you can also find a tutorial on designing game meshes with DoGA for SEV, and a slew of parts.

http://zircher.iwarp.com/doga

Ed, weren't you working on a SUF export plugin for Wings3D? If so, what the progress on that?
--
TAZ

Ed Kolis · #2 October 8th, 2005, 05:54 PM

Yeah, I think I was a while back... never quite got the hang of Erlang...

Though what would be more useful with SE5 is an .X exporter

Hugh Manatee · #3 October 9th, 2005, 06:14 PM

Most of blenders interface woes can be fixed with 2 things, #1, dont eff with it unless you know what it does, you can find out what it does on the blender.org sites or the elYsiun forums. #2 1 hand on the mouse, 1 hand on the keyboard, and have a hotkey list available. Mouse id for moving things around and clicking number sliders mostly, keyboard is where about 80% of your commands are.

The only thing I haven't nailed down in blender is texturing... but then that is my weak point in many 3D programs......

Ed Kolis · #4 October 10th, 2005, 09:35 PM

OK, I said I used to be working on a .X exporter for Wings...
Well here's a preliminary version - can't export textures yet (all objects are gray), and I haven't done much testing, but it does create valid DirectX files

http://kolis.dyndns.org/ed/prog/wpc_x/wpc_x.beam

Source (in case you're interested):

http://kolis.dyndns.org/ed/prog/wpc_x/wpc_x.erl

Instructions: When you installed Wings you should have got a plugins shortcut under your wings directory. Go to that shortcut, then to the import_export directory. Place the beam file there and restart Wings. Use the new "DirectX (.x)" menu items under File|Export and File|Export-Selected.

narf poit chez BOOM · #5 October 10th, 2005, 11:35 PM

Woot!

Ed Kolis · #6 October 16th, 2005, 04:13 AM

The .X exporter now supports textures!

narf poit chez BOOM · #7 October 17th, 2005, 12:21 PM

Yaay!

Strategia_In_Ultima · #8 October 24th, 2005, 03:07 PM

Quote:

zircher said:If you're new, I suggest downloading L2 and getting a feel for that before moving on to L3.

I don't know as much about DoGA as Zircher does, but I can tell you one thing; I never ever touched any 3D modeler in my life before, but less than 15 minutes after I downloaded L3, I was happily making stuff that wouldn't look bad in a shipset (in fact, some of it actually got into my Bartelian shipset) so I would say jump into L3 rightaway. Like I said, you learn the basics in a few minutes; the palette designer, not much more than five to fifteen to get a basic feel for it. If you learn L2 before you start with L3, it's your own decision, but for my own part I found L3's interface to be rather self-explanatory and I would recommend to start using L3 rightaway.

narf poit chez BOOM · #9 October 24th, 2005, 05:03 PM

Wings3d isn't much harder, and will likely be easier to use for SEV.

Cipher7071 · #10 October 25th, 2005, 04:00 PM

I finally got curious about these graphics programs, so about a week ago I downloaded Blender (free). The interface is a monster, but the Blender web sites assure me that once I get the hang of it, the journey will be worth the trouble. We'll see.

I seem to remember that it took a while to get the hang of playing SEIV too. That journey was worth it. Now I just have to worry about those pesky human players.