Converting a ship from one version to another in Starfleet Command using

3d Studio Max

a tutorial by

Alec Theorhaven

Greetings, if you're reading this, chances are that you're looking at this document in hopes of learning the (currently) semi-mystical and definitely arcane art of converting a ship from one version of Starfleet Command to another.

Good news! It's not as difficult as you think! Unfortunately though, you'll need a program like 3dsMax, Milkshape, Lightwave, or some other modelling program that can read in a ship file.

Now that you have that (grin), let's begin.

note!

· The first thing that you need to know about converting a ship is how to get the ship into the format that your modelling program will handle. .3ds is a very common file format that is widely supported, and is .LWO (Lightwave). The Milkshape format (.MS3D) is not as widely used, and there's only a few programs that can read and write to its format, Milkshape being one of them. However, Milkshape is also easy to use, has a similar interface to 3ds Studio Max, and is $20 or so to register. A lot cheaper than the $3500 or so for 3dsMax. Also, Milkshape has plugins written for it (by chrisofborg of assimilation software) that allows import and export of the SFC .MOD ship format. All in all, a good deal.

I am going to use 3dsMax as the basis for the conversion process because that's what I use. (Helps to get a several thousand dollar program at an auction sale for $25 or so). :D

SFC 2 to SFC 3

I'm going to start here because, frankly.. this is where most of you will be starting. With the opposite conversion (SFC3 to SFC2) being next. To convert a ship from SFC 2 to SFC 3 involves a bit of work, namely access to a graphics program like Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop, or similar to start. Then access to a modelling program that can weld vertices and replace dummpy points. This is why I'm suggesting 3dsMax for this work, it can do all of this (except the graphics program stuff). And downloading and installing the Taldren model plugins for your version of 3dsMax (or the assimilation software plugins for Milkshape with that program.) Okay, let's start!

· Open your model in your modelling program, and delete all the hardpoints/damage points in your ship. Leave just the mesh itself. Then if you can import a similarly configured ship from SFC 3 into the same space without replacing everything, do so. Delete that ship's mesh, leaving only its hardpoints and damagepoints. This is the easiest way to get these setup.. the hp/dp naming conventions change between SFC 2 and SFC 3. Now, change the selection setups so that you can select all the vertices in the model. Select them all and then weld them using a maximum of 0.1 (if you can). You're now done all the meshwork for your main model... do a similar process for your break mod, selecting all vertices in each piece and welding them all seperately..

· Now, open up your graphics program and load up a main ships texture. This will become a damage texture.. one that will be revealed when the ship takes damage. I like to start on the saucer top, but that's just me. Now, here's where you get creative.. trash the surface of the texture. Go for the "Dawn of the Living Dead" look here, but remember that you'll want to probably duplicate what you're doing on the illumination texture, so remember what you do and how you do it. When you're done the first texture, save it as the same filename with the following change: add a D right before the .bmp extension.

ie: saucertop.bmp will be saved as saucertopD.bmp

· Now for the illumination texture.. this is the lit part of the ship that will "glow" when that part of the ship is dark and it takes damage. Again, load the illumination texture for your first texture and do the same kind of work on this one, using a light color like light grey, white, yellow/orange (whathaveyou).. something to indicate a hot area of the ship, or interior damage taking lighting, etc. It's named in the same fashion as the normal damage texture.

ie: saucertop_i.bmp will be saved as saucertop_iD.bmp

· Now that your damage textures are done, and your mesh work is done.. you're almost done. Your ship could be dropped right into SFC 3 if you replace a stock ship, and it will now show up. It'll be dark.. and it may look waxy.. but it'll be there. There's a few more things to do, two of which I know how to do, one of which I don't know all of. (Sorry). The first thing is relatively simple.. generate the picture files that will show up in the library, tactical, and beauty shot areas. You can actually do this with Print Screen, a program that can crop and resize the cropped area, and Taldren's Modviewer of all things.. or you can render your picture directly from your modelling program. The important thing here is the picture sizes, and picture names which are as follows:

Beautyshot:

dimensions: 304x241

filename is: *_BS.bmp

Tactical:

dimensions: 141x157

filename is: *_TI.bmp

Library:

dimensions: 598x365

filename is: *_VL.bmp

· Next, you need the SFC 3 modeltools from Taldren, these will allow you to "glow" your ship, plus recache your information to size your ship properly and generate the .X files that it needs. I'm not going to go too indepth with the glowtools, there's help files inside the program. The one trick that I've found to generate new glowfiles is to copy an old one into your ship directory with the same filename as your ship (ie: fca.gf for a ship named fca.mod) and then clear all glow groups and start glowing your ship. Just seems to work better for me. When you're done glowing the ship, save attributes and recache.

· The last thing to do is generate string files, and I can't help you here because I've never done them... however, your library descriptions are also done now and they're named shipname.txt and shipname R.txt with the classname at the end of one of these. Grab a SFC 3 ship for examples of everything here... it'll be a learning experience for you. After all this, you should be ready to fly in SFC 3!

SFC 3 to SFC 2

The hardest part of this conversion is simply going to be to get the mesh into a modelling program like 3dsMax and then to delete all the dummy points (usually named hardpoints and damagepoints) and then to import a set from a similar ship in SFC 2. Then save the ship with multiple LODs, delete all the damage textures in the directory, delete all the *D.bmp and *i_D.bmp files (see above), all the files in the \strings and \specs directories (if they exist), delete the *_BS, *.VL, and *.TI.BMP files, and then you should be ready to fly your ship in SFC 2.

SFC 2 to SFC 1

This is one of the more funky procedures, and took me a while to finally master. But to sum up the process, you *need* to remove any and all traces of illumination mapping from your ship. If any calls are made to a SFC 2 illumination map, it'll crash SFC 1 bigtime.. all the way back to the desktop. Deleting the illumination BMPs off the hard drive isn't simply enough, you also need to delete the references to them from the mesh itself. And here's how you do that. Open your ship up in 3dsMax and look at the materials.

Each material has a difuse bitmap and a self-illumination map. If you go into the self-illumination map (selectable by clicking the [M] button by the words "Self-Illumination", you'll see up near the picture of the BMP a big X and also a little farther over the word Bitmap in a box. The first thing that you need to do is to click the big X and it'll give you the option to delete the material from just the editor or editor and model.

You want to delete the material from the editor and model... and then click on the word Bitmap on the right side and change that to NONE. It should then kick you back out to the main panel of the material, and you're done with that material. Continue the process until you're out of materials. Then do the same with the break MOD using one piece of the MOD and you should be okay. If not, delete the break MOD and make a new one from the main ship MOD (there's a good video tutorial on this by J-O-K-E-R that I think is still up on Chris Jones site, check around for it, it's a good skill to know). The good news about it is that it uses the same basic UI from SFC 1 to SFC 2, and SFC 1 will actually use the .BMP files without conversion from SFC 2 (in my experience anyways).

SFC 1 to SFC 2

This is probably the easiest conversion of all as it involves generating self-illumination maps from the stock PCX or BMP files. Or it can be the hardest conversion of all. If you start with a PCX file you've got a bit more work as you have to convert the PCX file to a BMP file and then import the mesh into 3dsMax. And then hope that 3dsMax reads in the .BMP files. If this all goes well, then your ship will show up with textures. Hooray! That means that you have half the problem tackled. Now all that you have to do is add in the self-illumination maps. How do you generate these? It's pretty simple.. All you do is to go into a good paint program like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (my five of the two),

grayscale the texture, and then crank up the contrast and crank down the brightness.

Do this about three or four times, and then you'll start to have details like windows, bussard collectors, and similar turning really really white with everything else getting darker. Save this when you're happy with it (Save As, then use the original filename and add _i.bmp to it for conventions sake [ie: saucer_top.bmp would become saucer_top_i.bmp]), and then add this into the mesh via the Self Illumination map in the material you were working with in 3dsMax. Now do the same for all the rest. You should now have a SFC 2 capable model that has lit windows, nacelles and more.

SFC 3 to SFC 1

This one needs a bit of work, but is certainly doable. Start with the SFC 3 -> SFC 2 process, and then follow the SFC 2 -> SFC 1 process. You should now have a ship flying in SFC 1 that was once in SFC 3. *KEEP IN MIND* SFC 3 meshes are typically a lot higher poly than SFC 1 meshes! You may have some issues here with memory... but if it works, it'll be pretty. :)

SFC 1 to SFC 3

Again, follow the SFC 1 -> SFC 2 process.. then SFC 2 -> SFC 3 process. Expect a *LOT* of work here.. you'll have to generate damage textures, self illumination maps, glows and a lot more.

Hopefully, this will help to explain all the basic of Starfleet Command conversions, and with this guide and the Lightwave to Starfleet Command tutorial that I wrote at an earlier time, you should now be able to not only be able to import a ship from a Lightwave (or 3d Studio file), but now be able to convert that file to a SFC 2 format, and from there, to be able to convert it either up or down to either SFC 3 or SFC 1 formats. I hope that this tutorial is of help to you all, and Happy Modding!

April 4, 2003

Alec Theorhaven