Strat Wars - Scenario Editing

Probably the most important part of making a ship for the Ship Editor is actually building the 3D model. Currently, the Ship Editor only imports 3D Studio (.3ds) files, so you should ideally choose a modeling program that supports .3ds export. I personally like Alias Maya, but it has no .3ds export. (It does, however, have a *free* learning edition that you can play with if you're new to 3D modeling and want to try it out.)

A quick list of Macintosh modelers that support .3ds export (there's probably others, too - let us know!):

     Newtek Lightwave 3D - $995 - $1695
     Cheetah3D - $59 (!)
     Eovia Carrara Studio 3 - $379
     Maxon Cinema 4DXL - $695
     Wings 3D - Free - Opensource
     Blender - Free - Opensource

Most of you, if you're seriously considering modeling your own ship, probably already have a 3D modeler. If it's not one of the above and it doesn't export .3ds files, you might want to seriously consider either Cheetah3D for importing your native format and exporting .3ds. Also, there are several shareware and freeware applications for Windows that you could potentially run in Virtual PC or something. Unfortunately, no such all-purpose model converter exists for Macs (and is much needed - developers: hint, hint). We'll expand on the tools on the PC side when the Ship Editor gets ported.

.3ds files can have either their coloring done directly or with the use of texture maps. Texture maps must be saved in .jpg (without progressive compression), .bmp, or .png format.

Currently, the Ship Editor needs to have a pre-made ship already loaded to import your custom ship over. The Y.shp is recommended, due to its small size and the fact that all three of the ship views are already filled. It is highly recommended that you actually work with a copy of the Y.shp in case of accidentally saving over the original. (I've done this a zillion times!)

Once you have your Y.shp copy loaded, you can then select either the external model or the cockpit model and hit the Load Model button which will bring up a dialog in which you can select your .3ds model:

It is advisable to import the external model first. Selecting the Draw Solid option will help you see your model better and with its textures. Remember to save frequently! A good time to save is immediately after a successful .3ds import. The Ship Editor will save your .shp file and the converted texture file if the model has one. The converted texture file can still be edited independently of the Ship Editor.

Currently, the cockpit model will be imported the same length as your ship, making it near-impossible to make the cockpit view the correct scale. There will be an independent scale feature added in the future, but for now a workaround is to use a cube primitive placed behind the cockpit model so that the combined objects make up the ship's length. You can later go into the .shp file with a text editor and strip out the cube vertices (they will be the vertices with the negative X values - they should be on the other side of the X origin), although this is not *entirely* necessary if you use a simple cube - the 6 faces that make up the cube will have a negligible effect on the model and be out of range to appear in the cockpit view.

One last step to ensure your ship is facing the correct way: You will need to make sure that the model is pointing in the +X direction:

The axes above are colored in the same scheme as the Ship Editor (although the negative axes are not shown). You can display the axes along with your ship's model by turning on the Draw Axes option. Specifics on correctly aligning your ship model are detailed in the Misc. Panel page. Once you have correctly positioned your ship model is it advisable to go ahead and create the collision mesh for it by selecting the menu Advanced>Clone collision model from display. This will duplicate the ship's model into a collision mesh, letting the screensaver know where the ship exists so that it can calculate collisions and when weapons score a hit. It is also possible to import an entirely different collision mesh model. This is useful for complex models. An imported collision model that is "roughed out", composed of boxes defining the model in a much lesser poly count fashion is totally acceptable. As long as the imported collision mesh is close enough to the external model, the screensaver will run faster and no noticable differences will be seen.

If you don't want to have a cockpit model (in some cases, the ship's model view as seen from the cockpit is enough - like in the Colonial Viper), you can strip out the Y.shp's code with a text editor. Open up the .shp file in a text editor and remove all code between

//**********************************************Begin Cockpit Model and

END_MODEL
//**********************************************End Cockpit Model

Make sure to keep the END_MODEL tag or your ship will not work.