OXP howto model

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Revision as of 12:44, 14 November 2009 by Kaks (talk | contribs) (Export the model)

Create your model

in Wings3D or a similar program. How you do this is up to your creativity, but following a few tutorials for Wings3D and Meshwork and the 'brickship tutorial' or 'Oogie ship' by Aegidian are highly recommended if you are not familiar with 3D modeling.

Export the model

to obj( mtl texture) and convert to *.dat format. all the converter tools are kept in the following repository:

http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/oolite-linux/trunk/tools/meshConverters/

There's a cross platform command line script, Obj2DatTex.py that needs python.org's python 2.6.x language installed in order to run.

Ensure you've got a copy of Obj2DatTex.py inside the same directory as the files you want to convert, then, using your computer command line:

cd <the directory/folder where the .obj file is> Obj2DatTex <name of the .obj file to convert>

you should get a new .dat file that can be used, together with its texture's .png file(s) - and a corresponding shipdata.plist - to put your newly created ship inside Oolite!

Edit shipdata.plist

Supply the in-game values relevant to your model.

Subentities

Entities can have sub-entities, which are defined by quaternions. There are several types of SE:

  • Model Entities: can be any model, with any properties.
  • Turrets: are a specialised model entity.
  • Flashers: blinking lights
  • Exhausts: although they are defined seperate from subentities, they can be regarded as subentities.

One important thing to remember about subentities is that they cannot have sub-sub-entities. The other is that frangibility is defined for the main entity, not seperately for every SE.