Freelancer ship creation

[LaWey]

Would be wonderful if there was a good up to date tutorial out there, AFAIK milkshape, with the specific plugin is the only way though

No. Milkshape should burn, model from this its just pain for everybody who will work with it after you. For real. Its break geometry worse than gods of chaos.

Right now we have Librelancer project (prise Ichiru, and maybe wapr will feed him by power to push it further). Its include Lanceredit, which allow convert .dae format in freelancers mesh, and redact UTF data and hardpoints. Would you like to know more?

Its just so good, like gods ambrosia, seriously.

Still you need read guides how freel store models, data, effects, and how it use texture. There is no complete guides about it, so i recommend you just read what already exist, look how made ready variants, and check all by yourselve (cos many of guides were written in dark time of freelancer modding colonisation, and sometimes those who wrote guides had no clues what they do). Tho on different resources you can find fragmented info which will help you to understand it faster with field testings on ready model. There is hint - freelancer load model right in work, so you can make changes and replace model right with working game, with just dock-undocking for uploading changed CMP.

Regarding guides, there was Swallow one in tutor section, its outdated as hell, but its will help you understand structures of freel data.

And there still no normal soft for hitboxing, if not count Treewyrm plugins for 3d max. So regarding hitbox old guides would be useful.