• Hello and welcome to MSFC. We are a small and close knitted community who specialises in modding the game Star Trek Armada 2 and the Fleet Operations modification, however we have an open field for discussing a number of topics including movies, real life events and everything in-between.

    Being such a close community, we do have some restrictions, including all users required to be registered before being able to post as well as all members requiring to have participated in the community for sometime before being able to download our modding files to name the main ones. This is done for both the protection of our members and to encourage new members to get involved with the community. We also require all new registrations to first be authorised by an Administrator and to also have an active and confirmed email account.

    We have a policy of fairness and a non harassment environment, with the staff quick to act on the rare occasion of when this policy is breached. Feel free to register and join our community.

Exporting Tutorial for Sins of a Solar Empire -- 3DS Max

Epytron_Omega

Cadet Sophomore
Joined
31 May 2011
Messages
39
Hello everyone,

Here is a tutorial for all of those who want to learn how to convert models into the sins format. I might do a little tutorial later on for creating the textures for the game, but for now, lets just stick with the modeling side.

Firstly, lets start with the basics, Center, Above and Aura points. For this we use the Dummy system provided in Max.

Pic1.jpg

Now onto the weapons part. Sins only allows for a ship to have 3 weapons, Weapon-0, Weapon-1, and Weapon-2. anything else has to be set up as an ability, and that is something for another time. Again, using the dummy system in Max, create the points and place them on the model where you want them to be.
Pic2.jpg

Now we move onto all the other points. This being Ability, Exhaust, Hangar and the seldom used Particles. Same with placing the other points, use the dummy tool to place these points.
Pic3.jpg

Now Specifically for the Particle, I do not have any idea how it works with just putting it in. I have not played with that. Now we move onto linking the dummy points to the mesh for export. Go to graph editors, create new schematic view and link the points to the mesh like such.
Pic4.jpg

Now for the textures. In sins the ships use 3 textures, a CL which is the standard map, a NM which is the Nividia bump map, and DA which is the Alpha map. I will not go into detail here about these, but lets just say you need all 3 for things to look good. you do not actually map the textures to the ship and export, you use the name of the file, for instance fed-Sov-Cl.dds as the bitmap name. Demonstrated below is where you place each bitmap name in the materials section.
Pic5.jpg

Lastly is the exporting. Make sure everything is checked and then export.
Pic6.jpg

I attached the tool for everyone to use. have atcha
 

Attachments

  • SOASE.rar
    25.7 KB · Views: 1

Hellkite

Lord of Death
Staff member
Administrator
Seraphim Build Team
Star Fighter
Joined
23 Apr 2006
Messages
7,636
Thanks for the help :thumbsup:

What I'm trying to do is get this MSFC in to Sins.

It the Seraphim Class she just a little to big for Armada 2 as I'm told that and the fact I no longer have a copy of Armada 2 this fact alone makes me want to get it in to Sins because I do have Sins
 
Last edited:

Hellkite

Lord of Death
Staff member
Administrator
Seraphim Build Team
Star Fighter
Joined
23 Apr 2006
Messages
7,636
Nope could not get to work it keep crashing the game each time it try it :(
It got so bad I even uninstalled the game
 

Epytron_Omega

Cadet Sophomore
Joined
31 May 2011
Messages
39
hmm so it was dumping errors? did you link the dummy points like I explained? if you would like, I can give it a shot.
 

Hellkite

Lord of Death
Staff member
Administrator
Seraphim Build Team
Star Fighter
Joined
23 Apr 2006
Messages
7,636
Yep I did what you instructed to the letter and still no joy :(

Fell free to give it a shot
 
Top