Adding weapon positions to .unit files

Hey there,

I started building a mod with a new faction and ships. While creating the .unit file for my first ship I was wondering:

Do you have to define everything manually or is it enough to put the mesh_point in and the rest will get filled out automatically, when "building" the mod with peon from the sins2modtools or loading the mod in game for the first time?

I use the sins2modtools from GitHub - StardockCorp/sins2modtools: Official Modding tools for Sins of a Solar Empire II. Provided by Ironclad Games and Stardock Entertainment.

and the Blender Add-On for the Ships/.mesh: https://github.com/largeBIGsnooze/sins2-blender-extension?tab=readme-ov-file

Edit: Same with barrel and muzzle positions, why do you create named mesh points, when you have to put in the position/coordinates by hand?

weapon-position mesh-points sins ii modding

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Use Blender with the extension to add the hardpoints where the weapons will go, rotated properly how you want them aligned to the mesh.

Open the unit in SolarForge, it has functions to calculate the position info, "Sync Weapons to Mesh" under the Weapons tab.

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Thank you for the tip. I didn't know you could open .unit files in SolarForge.

I tested with the advent battleship to learn how it works. However, when I used one of the already finished ships from my mod, it showed an error saying it couldn't find the .unit_skin, even though the ship works fine in game.

Edit: I misread. It says "unit_skin_definition not found", so it's not the unit_skin missing, but another file that I didn't know of until now.
What is the unit_skin_definition? Or where can I read about it?

So far, I have used the Blender extension to set the hardpoints, exported to GLTF, and used MeshBuilder to convert to .mesh_json (and .mesh for the model itself). Then I copied the values from the .mesh_json over to .unit.

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