The Custom SUR

mknote · May 11th 2008

I'm not sure how many of you (if any besides OP) have followed my delving into ship stuff, but I'm reworking several of PantherX's ships for my mod and for the community as a whole. So far, I've completed only most of the Hellhound, specifically, I have destructable components and a custom wireframe. The only remaining obstacle is the creation of a custom SUR. Now, I have both SUR exporters, but I've been told 1.2 is s***, so I don't use it. I have my simple SUR model created, though I don't know if it's assembled correctly. Bejaymac was working on a large tutorial when TLR originally went down last year that dealt with custom SURs. I suppose that it's too much to ask if somebody nabbed it before the forums went down or if we have someone with eidetic memory who saw it, but if so, please share. Otherwise, I was hoping that some people here might know a thing or two on the topic. BJ is, at the moment, unreachable, though I continue to try to sway him back to Freelancer. (My, some of these smilies are violent) So, anybody able to shed some light on this?

MK

**SWAT_OP-R8R** · May 11th 2008

again i need to say that i am not a big fan of sur tutorials since again i believe the 3-4 tutorials i have seen so far are wrong

the best tutorial ive seen so far was from argh eventhough he made a small mistake which simply made the create a big more complicated than neccessary

the steps for the creation of a sur are pretty simple

1. create a sur model based on convex objects (boxes, cylinders, spheres)
the object does not have to fit the original ship 100% ... make it as simple as possible... it does not matter if the shapes do not fit 100% since in case of fighters the ships are too small to notice a difference between sur and cmp
also make sure that the objects dont get regrouped in ms3d
2. export the sur (to my knowledge both sur exporters are working fine)
make sure you export with size 1 (and if i remember right make sure it has a shield bubble -> i dont have ms3d installed atm but i remember that this is important)
3. now you can view the sur in hardcmp (press S) and can check if it really fits to your ship including the shield bubble
4. the ship has now a sur but ingame it wont work yet
open flmodeltool , open the cmp and open the sur
now resize the sur matching the size of the cmp (do that 2 times -> in some cases the resize does not work with the 1st try)
5. save the sur and play - coz now it is working

i created several hundred surs and the advantage of this method is that it is very fast (i need about 10-15mins to create a sur) and the sur file is very slim which reduces lag on the server
tutorials about complex surs and the sur splicer usually create surs which cause lag (argh did know that and we both did warn the other modders about that already but as usual most are not listening)

mknote · May 11th 2008

No dice, I'm not getting any collision detection. This would mean that I'm doing something wrong... but what?

MK

**SWAT_OP-R8R** · May 11th 2008

dunno but thats how i remember i have done the other surs for my mod
i better install ms3d again and re-check if the settings are ok this way when i have some more time

Fire_Wolf_br · May 11th 2008

*remembering about the Amazonian BS sur*

What was the prob with it OP? Can't remember right now =P

**SWAT_OP-R8R** · May 11th 2008

the prob you had with the amazonian ship was that you regrouped everything

Fire_Wolf_br · May 11th 2008

hmmm... but the bs just had the root, it didn't another collision group...

Forsaken · May 11th 2008

I tried giving your method a shot OP. I must be doing something wrong too.

When making the SUR parts in milkshape I left each primitive (box, cylinder, ect.) in its own group. And resized the SUR using FLmodel tool as you stated

I can get the SUR to show up in HardCMP... but ingame, like mknote, I have no collision or hit detection.

I tried different setting combinations with no luck. Hopefully you can refigure this out. I'd much prefer your method over my current method, b/c the SURSplicer method is too time consuming, tedious and basically a big pain in the rear. [7]

**SWAT_OP-R8R** · May 11th 2008

ill do some tests tomorrow and post the results
it wasnt complicated but i didnt do it for about 1 year meanwhile

Forsaken · May 11th 2008

great thanks. I'll keep playing around with it, and if I can get it to work, I'll let everyone know what the settings were.

**SWAT_OP-R8R** · May 12th 2008

ok i tried to build a new sur and noticed that i left out a few steps on the tutorial
now the ms3d model looks like it needs to look like before it can exported... so up to that point i got everything togeter
but after the exporting something needs to be done with the surs in order to get them work and i need find my notes about sur creation now

Gast · May 12th 2008

does this help at all its from resize mk2,I have the prog if you want it.

Quote

Readme for The .sur Resizer Mk. II, a utility created by Devast8or, Freelancer nerd extraordinairre.

Well, basically, this is just a little utility I threw together because I got really tired of using a hex editor to manually altering vertex information in .sur files so that they would better fit the models I was working with. The end result isn't what one would usually consider pretty, but it does get the job done, and very quickly.

For starters, you will be shooting in the dark if you don't have some means of viewing .sur files. If you look in the downloads section at Lancer's Reactor you should find an importer for Milkshape 3D that lets you look at .sur files; it's what I use, and probably 99% of all the other people who tinker with these things use it too. So, go get that and MS3D and you'll basically be set (you might want to grab the .cmp importer for MS3D while you're at it, since it's nice to be able to compare against the ship you're trying to match).

Ok, so, what does this utility do? Basically, you provide it some numbers and it will take the given .sur file and stretch and reposition the surface(s) in the .sur file as indicated. This is accomplished simply by changing the coordinates of all the vertices appropriately. Nothing fancy, so you might get some odd results if you give the program some wacky scaling numbers to work with. However, there shouldn't be anything to worry about unless you're actually trying to screw things up.

Anyway, the utility must be run from the command prompt and usually takes 8 parameters:

(directory the utility is in)>resize input_file output_file X_scale Y_scale Z_scale X_offset Y_offset Z_offset

It is **VERY IMPORTANT** that the input_file and output_file are not the same. The output_file need not exist beforehand, but again I stress that it cannot be the same as the input_file. I suggest placing the .sur file you want to alter in the same directory as the utility before doing anything else, since this will make for a lot less typing on your part. All input values after the file names are floating point numbers (though you need not use a decimal point; 1 and 1.0 are both considered the same). If x is the x coordinate of some vertex in the .sur file, then the new x coordinate of the vertex will equal (x * X_scale) + X_offset. Vertex y and z coordinates are altered in a similar manner. For reference, X_scale will alter the width of the ship, Y_scale will alter the height, and Z_scale will alter the length. However, I still suggest that you mess around with these values some and see what results you get when you import the new .sur file into MS3D; this way you will have a better idea of what values to try out when you want to match the new .sur file with an actual ship.

There is a second feature of the utility: if you provide any input beyond Z_offset (doesn't matter what, you could write a number, tell a story, the program doesn't particularly care), all of the separate components of the primary surface will become part of Root. So... if you're wondering what the #$&% that means, fear not, for it will be explained presently. As you should know from your own FL experience, many ships have breakable parts, be they wings, fins, whatever. There is a problem when you try to use the surface from any such ship with a custom ship; the hit boxes for the wings (or fins, or whatever) will not be detected. This is so because said hit boxes specifically correspond to certain parts of the model contained in the .cmp file; in particular, the names of the parts in the .cmp file exactly match the names of the corresponding parts in the .sur file. When the game sees that there are no parts in the .cmp file that match the name of some part in the .sur file, the hit box for that particular part will simply be ignored. Since most custom ships contain only a single part with the name Root, only those parts in the .sur file with the name Root will be recognized.

To solve this problem, the utility can rename all components to Root so that they will be recognized as belonging to the Root part of the custom ship. By all components, I mean all components that are not specified as belonging to certain hardpoints (or certain special components that are indicated as being such). The reason why hardpoints are ignored is to avoid ending up with a very bizarre, lumpy final hit box; all wings, fins, etc. WILL be renamed, which should be what you want the game to recognize in most circumstances.

Again, to get the program to do this, the command line shoud now look like:

(directory the utility is in)>resize input_file output_file X_scale Y_scale Z_scale X_offset Y_offset Z_offset EXTRA

All other inputs function the same as if the EXTRA part wasn't there.

And that's basically it. It does have its limitations since it can only resize and relocate surfaces, but so long as you aren't concerned with absolute perfection it should get the job done well enough. Oh, and if it breaks your machine, it's your bad, not mine.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at i_am_devast8or@hotmail.com

This is an improvement over the original version of the program in that it can now handle .sur files other than those for ships; because there are some similar (but not identical) formats for surfaces, the older program used to choke on many .sur files, particularly those for solar objects such as asteroids, debris, etc. This problem has been dealt with and the program should now correctly handle any .sur file.

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From the sound of your problem I think it may answer it.

**SWAT_OP-R8R** · May 12th 2008

nope the resizer is not worth anything if you want to create custom surs

Gast · May 12th 2008

I thought that this part may be relevant

Quote

There is a problem when you try to use the surface from any such ship with a custom ship; the hit boxes for the wings (or fins, or whatever) will not be detected. This is so because said hit boxes specifically correspond to certain parts of the model contained in the .cmp file; in particular, the names of the parts in the .cmp file exactly match the names of the corresponding parts in the .sur file. When the game sees that there are no parts in the .cmp file that match the name of some part in the .sur file, the hit box for that particular part will simply be ignored. Since most custom ships contain only a single part with the name Root, only those parts in the .sur file with the name Root will be recognized.

There may be some help here
http://forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?t=53423

Forsaken · May 13th 2008

I've toyed around with this method, but cant seem to get hit detection. I hope you remember the missing step. I'd very much like to use this method and be done with the SUR Splicer all together.

**SWAT_OP-R8R** · May 13th 2008

i have to remember the step... i still have 100 new ships for cf1.8 which need to be done lol

Gast · May 13th 2008

which version of SUR exporter are you using?

**SWAT_OP-R8R** · May 13th 2008

tried both
could be that the sur model ive used contained a concave part since i moved the vertices of a cylinder manually (at least this could be the error source - dunno yet)

i will need to re-do the model when ive a few mins

Gast · May 13th 2008

Some good info here on it
http://discoverygc.com/forums/…6f5f08c8a&showtopic=15539

**SWAT_OP-R8R** · May 13th 2008

then lets see what igis has to say

... well no thats the sur splicer tutorial...exactly what we dont want to do

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The Custom SUR

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