New Kusari Bomber

[El Nino]

This is awesome... now boost it's size up even some 5%, and we can start testing it... a proper heavy bomber, finaly something nice for Kusari, instead of those VHF's with SN..

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[tansytansey]

Ok, so I would like to officially submit this model, but I have a couple questions. I built it in 3ds Max. The textures are all *.tga files extracted from the original Kusari textures. I'm having endless trouble getting the model AND textures into MilkShape and then into HardCMP as I don't really know what I'm doing.

Wondering if anyone can give me some tips here or point me in the direction of a good tutorial?

So basically I have no idea what to do next and haven't been able to find a good tutorial:P

To get your file to Milkshape, you'll need to export it to 3DS format first. I also have a milkshape exporter for 3DS Max, but it's not required.

Once in Milkshape, import your ship and rotate it until the front of your ship is showing in the top left corner (use the input to rotate rather than manually, it's far more accurate)

After that, go to the Materials Tab, make a new Material and load the material files you used to texture your ship, and apply them to the appropriate groups. Your texture mapping from 3DS Max should have been preserved during the export.

After that, you need to export to CMP and MAT files. I assume you already have the plug ins for this. If not, download Frozens' Hitbox help package (which you'll need later anyway)It can be found in this tutorial.

http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?sh...=30770&st=1

First, export the CMP, and you should see this window.

Click the new button to select the save location and name, change the Orientation to 'back-to-front' and the scale to '1'. Change nothing else and click continue.

Now export the Mat file, but note that TGA files will be displayed upside down in game. I suggest you convert them to DDS. If you can't, flip the texture files upside down before exporting. Ideally textures should be linked to pre-existing vanilla textures, but during testing it's not so important and can be changed later I believe.

Now open up HardCMP and load your model and texture into it. When hardpointing your model, have the pre-existing KU Bomber in another HardCMP window and cross reference your hardpoints with it. You can add Hardpoints, but not remove them, so make sure everything that's on the existing model is on your new model.

Once you've done that you're ready for hit boxing. Follow Frozens tutorial for that, and then you're done. Link to the tutorial again.
http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?sh...=30770&st=1

EDIT: Also, if you export your ship as a CMP and find it appears very small in HardCMP, then it has been exported wrong. Go back to Milkshape, scale up your ship by 92, centre it (only usually neccisary to centre it if the ship is asymmetrical) then export the CMP again. This time don't change the scale factor, leave it at 92. I don't know why, but the exporter seems to do this to me sometimes, and I found this is the way to fix it.

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[Seth Karlo]

A point to note is that the CMP exporter will only scale it down if you save the settings and then load them again.

Also, my advice is to convert the textures to .dds format and then load them into MS3d. When they are in .tga format they need to be flipped and something else and it's all horrible and confusing.

.dds is much nicer.

If you need a plugin/any more help feel free to add me on skype: Sedrander

-Seth

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[Turkish]

All good advice, but one thing to add would be that reorienting your mesh before exporting to .3ds is a better idea. Its just a simple matter of rotating 90 degrees, simple but it streamlines just a little bit more.

Something else to keep in mind is that if you're having trouble creating hitboxes via scenery mode you can always create them with sur splice. The results aren't as professional, you'll lack a shield bubble and its a little trickier, but its still a viable alternative.

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[MarvinCZ]

I'd say don't get overexcited about TGA or DDS, just use what's in the vanilla MAT file. Do it as the folks advise you, but later it will need to change to use the vanilla Kusari MAT file anyway. I guess using the right texture format before that will make the change easier later, but as I said, I don't know the technicalities.

[frozen]

since you used vanilla textures for the mapping, this will be easy. all you have to do, once you export it as a cmp and hardpoint is, point in the ini files that your model uses "so and so" mat file.

for example, my kusari battlecruiser model uses Ku_capships, Ku_playerships, lib_capships, so i just link those three to my model, and voila, ingame you will see the ship correctly textured.

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[Jinx]

with the recent size comparison - i think it won t justify classification of a "heavy bomber" yet.

if you look at the side profile, even the current kusari bomber is larger - the front profile might be larger but all in all, the ship isn t bigger.

balancing that is a precious thing. but in order to make it a really HEAVY bomber, it would need to grow considerably.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Sasaki]

Ok, wow, thanks for all the help guys. Especially Nighthawk, great tutorial. I managed to get most of it done and figured out, except the hitbox, which will be done soon. I don't think that'll be a problem since I think I can build that in 3ds max too, which will be very easy, and then export that to milkshape, resize it to make sure it fits the bomber, and it's all good.

I've already done some testing in game without the hitbox and visually everything was good, so I think we're ok. But I will try to use the default Kusari textures instead of my own .mat file.

As for the size... I'm relatively new here compared to a lot of you, and I've only flown a couple bombers, specifically the Havok, Upholder, and Umibozu and the mini-gunboat Barghest. I have no idea how the balance should be or what role this bomber should fit. I'll go ahead and scale it up a bit more so that it fits the size better, then I'll let the dev team decide how to spec if;)

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[Dusty Lens]

It's interesting that many of the voices here condemn the bomber as being too small for its suggested heavy power, when in fact discovery's heavy bombers are usually the smallest. See the Snub, Praetorian and Taiidan/Whatever it's called now.

The "swifter" bombers are generally the larger, such as the GC, Civilian, Upholder, Broadsword and so on. The only point where bombers become very large with power is in the super heavy classes, such as the Fafnir, Warran and Barghest, or the Recycler/Mjolnir, though the latter two are technically Super Heavy Fighters and fall within their own category.

If the craft was intended to be heavy it would simply fall under the same criteria of balance as the Taiidan/Snub, not requiring a resize.

[McNeo]

^Agrees with Dusty Lens 100%

But then, I would, having a vested interest in Kusari...

I removed the blue from your bit about agreeing with me McNeo, some people were asking why I edited your post to agree with me, furthering the great moderator |-|4>< conspiracy -DL

EDIT: >_<