Need help with modding ship (from homeworld)

[Mnich4250]

So... hi. I don't know if it's okay to post such topic here, but I think I gotta risk.

I've posted topic about my problem on lancers reactor too, but seeing how many topics don't get replies by years...

Ok, to the point. I want to make Homeworld ship flyable in freelancer - it's a taiidan skaal-tel class destroyer (btw my favorite ship of all games ^^):

...and of course I've ran into trouble.
I have already gone through the whole process of ripping the model and textures from Homeworld and importing them into Milkshape3D. I've also added hardpoints. The problem is, the CMP file seems to be broken after I export it. You see, I save the whole model as .CMP file and .MAT file, implement these into freelancer (with all those ini-works) and when I try to go into ship dealer on manhattan... the game crashes :/

Also when I try to reimport that CMP model back into milkshape... the milkshape crashes (runtime error) -_-

Could someone help me? From what I guess, either the exporter's broken or it's the model's fault, as "Failed to load archetype" (or something like that) in logs suggest it that way.

If it's necessary I can upload any screenshots, logs, scripts etc.

@EDIT: Fixed the problem with crashing milkshape after reimporting the cmp. In Drizzt4.0's author didn't have the courtesy to say that hardpoints should be ARROWS pointing the orientation... I simply used "plates" and that caused crash upon importing

[Taneru]

You have to remember that many Homeworld ships aren't solid models. They have moving parts. In this case, it's the Skaal-Tel's two turrets, as well as the barrels on both of them. I don't know ship modelling very well, but I suspect this likely makes it a bit harder to turn it into a CMP, and Milkshape will get confused when trying to work with the new CMP you've exported.

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Characters
Alan Markson: The Hellfire Legion's Lord Commander
The Perihelion: Freeport Four's guardian, and yet much more. Missing and assumed Lost with all hands.
Eric Dresmund: Junker, smuggler, thief. Last seen drunk on Beaumont
Vayrn Wyard: IMG Recon pilot turned Neo-Terran Captain. Last location unknown

[Mnich4250]

You have to remember that many Homeworld ships aren't solid models. They have moving parts. In this case, it's the Skaal-Tel's two turrets, as well as the barrels on both of them. I don't know ship modelling very well, but I suspect this likely makes it a bit harder to turn it into a CMP, and Milkshape will get confused when trying to work with the new CMP you've exported.

Yeah, I am aware of that. In my case, Skaal-tel's turrets were included in the ship's model, floating outside the hull (not in places they are should've been). I simply deleted them. Maybe I'll use them too in making mass driver turrets for my lovely destroyer nahahahah ^^

@EDIT: Naah it seems more complicated. The milkshape doesn't crash but ONLY if I won't use the mat file. Maybe that mat exporter is broken?

@EDIT2: Game crashes too -_- It seems that milkshape simply can't create working .MAT file, as .CMP file is ok. I even tested importers/exporters on the models already in Discovery. Man, I don't have a clue what am I doing wrong! Everything seems to be in order, even .TGA textures. Yet the .MAT file simply won't work :/

[The.Kingpin]

You do realise that ship would never be added to the Discovery mod?

You would have to implement it into your own custom mod.

[Mnich4250]

You do realise that ship would never be added to the Discovery mod?

You would have to implement it into your own custom mod.

And that's what I actually want to do. If I'll get succesful with this one I may attempt to add the other homeworld ships too, as some of them are really cool. Then I could remake homeworld weapons into freelancer (ion-beams will be pain...) and voila - Freelancer full homeworld mod.

If I only could have some advice from the one who brought the previous homeworld ships into freelancer...

[frozen]

What cmp exporter are you using, what version of the mat exporter are you using (i seriously recommend building mat libraries manually via utf editor if you know how to though), what ini's are you editing?

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[Mnich4250]

What cmp exporter are you using, what version of the mat exporter are you using (i seriously recommend building mat libraries manually via utf editor if you know how to though), what ini's are you editing?

Freelancer CMP V0.3, Freelancer MAT V0.1

I didn't try the UTF editor yet since it is a lot of hassle, as this model has about 20 texture files... Also interesting thing is that if I import any model from freelancer and export its mat file with milkshape, the newly created mat file DOES work. Only that destroyer's mat is crashing milkshape/game. I tried to tinker a bit with texture TGA's, like converting them to other formats. No, it didn't help either :/

I've edited all the ini's mentioned in Drizzt4.0's ship creating tutorial, in other words Shiparch.ini Goods.ini Market_ships.ini Engine_equip.ini and Misc_equip.ini (at least I think that's all of them).

If that helps, when the crash in milkshape happens, at the error's title it reads that it occured in Texture Coordinate Editor.

[Mnich4250]

OK I've done it! I fixed it!:D

Here's what caused that crash - models ripped from homeworld are blown into multiple groups, and some of these groups use the same texture. What I did was simply to turn groups that were using same texture into one group and that fixed the problem.