Render Tutorial

[schlurbi]

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

compared to the past there are more and more People creating Art on these Forums. Mostly People doing Signatures and Banners, but that is still Art. We're on a Freelancer Forum and most of the Art is, guess what, about Freelancer and Art for Freelancer mostly requires Ships and/or Stations. With this Tutorial I'd like to introduce People into rendering Ships and Stations.

What you need

To render a Ship you will need two Programs. Both of them are fairly easy to get, but both of them are not for free, but both of them have a 30 Day Trial. I am talking about Milkshape and Autodesk 3ds. To tell you something about these Programs: Both were meant to be modelling Programs, to create Objects just like Ships, Creatures and other random Stuff. Milkshape is fairly old, it was meant for the first Half Life. Autodesk 3ds is almost like Photoshop updated every Year.

Milkshape
Autodesk 3ds

Install both Programs, mind you Autodesk is fairly heavy and will probably take a While to install. Also, you'll need a decent PC for that. I am not talking about a Super Heavy Ultra-Fast High End Machine, just don't expect to render a Ship using a Notebook.

Let's get it started - Milkshape

To explain what we're doing with Milkshape. We only need the Program to convert the Files of the Ship/Station you want to render. All Files are CMP Files and Autodesk 3ds can't read them. IMPORTANT: Even Milkshape won't read CMP Files. For that you will need to download the CMP Importer. The Importer is hard to find, even on the Internet, for that I have uploaded the File onto my Dropbox for everyone to download.

CMP Importer

Once you've downloaded the Zip File, unzip it and paste the File into your Milkshape Folder which should be C:\Programs\MilkShape 3D 1.8.4. Now you can open Milkshape.

Your Milkshape Window should look like this

Don't worry, there will be less Text now.

Go to File->Import and select Freelancer CMP Importer 2.7



Now another Window should open.



Before you click on "Model" to import the Ship's File, you'll have to go to Hardpoints and take the Tick out of "Import". Otherwise they would be imported and you can't remove them. The Files are easy to find, just go to C:\Programs\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\DATA\SHIPS. Here you can find all Files for the Ships. If you wish to render a Station choose STATIONS instead of SHIPS. For the Tutorial I will now take the Sabre as Example. You continue with going to BORDER_WORLDS then BW_VHEAVY_FIGHTER.

To import the Ship, choose the File ending with .cmp (careful now, this Folder contains two CMP Files, one of them should not be there). In this Case you should open the "bw_vheavy_fighter" Milkshape will automatically load the Model and all the Texture Files. NOTE: Don't be scared, it's fairly common that Milkshape could now crash or just die. Sometimes it will take Ages to load the Texture Files, sometimes it just closes without actually saying something.

Your Milkshape should now look like this



You'll see that your Sabre is having no Textures at all. No don't think you've made something wrong or that I am just telling Garbage with saying it will load the Textures by itself. Just right click on the Window where your Ship is in and select "Textured". Now you have a fully textured Sabre. You can also maximize the Window.



Before we export the Render you'll have to get rid of the Grid and the Axis. Otherwise you'd export these as well. Right click again and take out the Ticks.



To export the Ship, meaning to ready it up for Autodesk 3ds you'll go to Files -> Export and then select Wavefront OBJ. Now give your Files a Name (best would be using the Ship's name) and save them. Now you can close Milkshape, don't worry about saving it. We only need the OBJ File.



Next Part will be continued in the next Post.

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"Who is it doing this synthetic type of alpha beta psychedelic funkin'?"