and when will that be?

Well, that's kind of sad. I was hoping for a nice challenge

Argh.

It's painful enough to make fitting planet textures and changing .particle files already. And that are minor issues.

Now I don't want to mess with meshes too.

Well, so far I managed to find out how to add guns to all my ships, move around or add stuff like engine exhausts etc. It's pretty neat to see a cap ship fire away with twice the amount of fire points. No vertex data yet thought ;(.

I'm pretty sure the .fx files are just shader files.

Well, I found the vertices. Now it's only a question of time, looking at all the little missing bits to fully flesh out the file format.

Then the part that I like less comes, I whish I could farm it out to someone else . I have to actually write the app to convert mesh to the sins format and make an editor to fiddle with sins specific attributes. It's not that it's hard, it's just time consuming and there's no more puzzle heh.

Anyone feels like helping?

Btw, I'm not too sure which format would be best to import to sins since I'm not an artist. Anyone with preferences?

autocad

3ds is pretty universal, alot of different modelling programs can use that format to import/export. There's also other programs that can convert 3ds into just about any other format, even autocad.

Well, I can import the models now in milkshape 3d. I just need to make it work the other way around now .



To be honest it would in theory work but there's a bunch of value I'm unsure of their use for now. Makes me think it probably won't work all that smoothly.

Milkshape 3d is a very good beginner tool, but it is also very limited. You cant multi texture with MS3D (use more than 1 texture per group, as it will only read 1 texture in that group. Open a multi-textured model in ms3d, and you will see). I dont believe ms3d supports shaders the way sins uses them being as it is a basic modeler. In any case i still use it. Even if only to convert between file formats, or to mirror components which 3dsmax screws up sometimes. It is well worth the price Mete Ciragan is asking.

Good job on the MS3D importing! Those extra values are probably the shader references, and hardpoint locations of the model

As Darkshimmer said .3ds is the most common 3d file format, and almost every modeling program can support 3ds in some way. Obj is the 2nd most common, and like with 3ds most programs can support it. There are some differences between obj, and 3ds. Which you will see when you convert between formats.

I prefer 3ds mainly because 3dsmax is my tool of choice.

My question is can you use a "non-solid" mesh in sins (a "solid" mesh is a mesh that is completely sealed with no intersecting triangles like what is used in SFC3, and Bridge Commander)

Well, the extra values are not the hardpoints, I got that working. I found one, it was the distance at which it was switching from the 3d model to the 2d icon. Who would've thought this was in the model file .

As for the shaders, maybe, maybe not. There might be parameters for them, I don't know. The bulk of the unknown data that I worry about is vertex data. There's 17 float value per vertex. I identified 3 position values, 2 texture coordinate and the rest is a mystery. I would've said rgb and normals maybe but I don't think they would be using per vertex normals because of the bump mapping. I don't know, shaders really aren't my thing. I worked with them a bit just because I felt I had to know about them but that's it.

PS: tristangoodes I'm disapointed in your lack of faith, of course it would work

You could wait till the tools are released. BTW< I modeled the trade ship;) > Vasari were my babies