Discovery Gaming Community

The deep dark FL related sections of my mind from ears ago are telling me that Freelancer has an altered texture structure from normal.

Now, I know a I can just go ahead, make a single texture for my model (see the showcase) and just export that into a MAT file and be done with it, but for maximum optimisation and effect, I want to make use of all the tricks available to me, so could someone please give me brief out line of the most effective method of texturing a FL model.

In the mean time I'm just going to go ahead and make a single texture, also what's the best texture size to use, I'm guessing it'll be about 1024*1024.

If you want to make custom textures, create a UV map in your 3D modeling program. Export your UV map into a 2D painting program such as Photoshop. Create your texture. Place your texture onto your ship as a targa file. Save out an additional texture file in a DDS format. The plugin is available for photoshop at the Nvidia home page. This will allow you to create the correct texture files for Freelancer. Then Export your ship model from your 3D modeling program into milkshape. Change your targa file to the DDS file. The export the CMP ship model and MAT file. If you need to scale up your ship scale in milkshape. Finally you can view your finished ship in HardCMP which is available at Lancer's reactor.

I myself use textures i extracted from the game ( some are modified), and use a mix of unwrapping and simple uvw maps for me ships. (similar to how the vanilla ships are made methinks)