Introduction

There are lots of ways to introduce a custom ship model into X3. Among the most obvious are:

1. Simply apply X3 textures to a suitable mesh that someone else has created.
2. Modify an existing mesh and apply X3 textures.
3. Use some one's prior work as a "reference model" or template to build your own model (like using tracing paper over a picture of the Mona Lisa to sketch an outline, which you then paint for yourself).
4. Create an original work from scratch.

(Note: Obviously, whenever you use some one's work you should get permission if possible, and if not (say, for an older mesh you find on the web) you should at a minimum give credit to the original author. While it's not "written in stone", I believe you should do this regardless of the use you make of someone's work...even if it's only used as a "reference" model for a mesh you create yourself.)

OK...in the DDRS mod, I've done quite a few ships using method #2 and #3 above, as well as a few using #4. However, for this tutorial, I am going to step you through a fairly simple model of a TP-class ship, using the fourth method.

There are far too many ways to model things in 3dMax for me to begin to cover (even if I knew them all...which I don't). If you are keen to become an expert, there are heaps of tutorials available on the web, as well as numerous sources for more formal education on the topic.

In this tutorial, I will use a combination of "box modeling", and "spline modeling". I use the following tools during the tutorial:

1. 3dMax 8 (Autodesk)
2. Polygon Cruncher 7 (Mootools)
3. DBOX (MAXScript, by doubleshadow)
4. X2BC (by doubleshadow)

Also, unless otherwise specified, I generally use Editable Polygons. After I perform a series of operations on a mesh object (like applying the Slice Modifier followed by the Cap Holes Modifier), I typically click on “Convert to Editable Polygon” to collapse the stack.

It is, of course, your choice whether you like to work with Editable mesh, or Editable polygon…they both work, but for the purpose of this tutorial it will help to know what I am working with.

Now before we can build a ship, we need to know what is going to look like. For this purpose most good modelers use a set of highly-detailed ship plans…or if you’re like me, you can take a “short cut”, like:

Where to go for tools and information

The first place to look for information on how to modify X3 is the Scripts & Modding Forum, on the Egosoft web site. There are threads which are “locked” to the top of the forum, which contain numerous links to useful information, interesting tools, tutorials, and threads specifically about modding.

Also, you will not be able to use this tutorial until you pop over to doubleshadow’s site (…and yes, the “d” in doubleshadow is supposed to be lower-case). You can find it at: http://www.doubleshadow.wz.cz. Here you will find the DBOX MAXScript, which is essential to building X3 graphic objects. While you are there, grab the X3 Editor and X3 ModManager (if you don’t already have them), since you will need these tools to actually get your ship(s) flying in X3.

Another great place to get additional information on modifying X3 is the X-Wiki site – maintained by doubleshadow and myself (shameless plug). You can find it at: http://www.xwiki.chaos.net.nz. Feel free to drop by and check out the wealth of X3 modding information. Since it is a Wiki, you are encouraged to contribute, as well.

Step 1 – Build the Front Section of the Ship

OK, the first step is to create the mesh for the front section of the ship. Because I want nice “swoopy” lines and curves, I’ll be using splines and the surface modifier.

1. Fire up 3dMax, or if it is already running select FileèNew, tick "New All", and "OK"
2. Go to the Create panel, select Shapes, and click on Line.
3. You will want to set the Drag Type on the Creation Method rollout to Smooth.
4. Make the Left viewport your current focus, and draw the profile of the front section of your ship.

5. Right-click on the spline, select Properties, and on the General panel of the Display Properties pop-up, turn on Vertex Ticks.
6. Right-click again on the spline, and select Convert toèConvert to Editable Spline.
7. On the Modify panel, call your spline object something imaginative…like “front”.
8. Right-click anywhere in the top viewport to make it active, and on the Modify panel, go down to the Geometry rollout and click on Create Line.
9. Then in the top viewport, draw the profile for the left ship of the front section. Don’t worry too much about the shape, or connecting things at this point, as we will have plenty of opportunity to tweak things later. You should have something that looks like:

10. On the Modify panel, go to the Selection rollout and click on Vertex;

.

11. In the Front viewport (or Back, depending on how you set things up), select all the vertices on the left-side profile you just created, and then in the Left viewport, adjust the height for the sides of the front section. This will also be the widest point on the sides of the front section. You should now have something like:

12. Up on the toolbar (at the top), turn on the 3D Snap Toggle, as shown to the right.

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13. Then right-click on the 3D Snap Toggle to display the Grid & Snap Settings, and make sure that “Endpoint” is turned on, and that “Grin Points” is turned off. On the Options panel of the Settings dialog, make sure that Axis Constraints is turned off, and close the dialog box.
14. With Vertex still selected on the Modify panel, drag and snap the front of the left-side profile to the tip of the first spline you created. It should look like:

15. Do the same with the back of the left-side profile.

OK, now let’s start to refine the profile of the front section for our ship. (Oh, you are saving things as you go along, right?)

We are going to need to draw lines from the top of the profile, around the side, to the bottom of the profile. The lines will need to start at a vertex, go through a vertex on the side, and end at a vertex at the bottom. To do this, we will want to make sure we have the correct number of vertices, and that they are properly lined up.

1. Make sure that the spline is selected, Vertex is selected on the Modify panel, and that 3D Snap is turned off.

2. 

   
   Now click on Refine in the Geometry rollout, and start adding vertices.

3. You should only work in the Left viewport. When a vertex needs to be moved along the left-right axis, temporarily turn off Refine, move the vertex, turn Refine back on…and continue adding vertices. When you are done, the left-side view should look something like this, with all the vertices fairly well lined up:

4. Now turn the 3D Snap toggle back on, and click on Create Line on the Geometry rollout.
5. Start adding vertical lines connecting each of the three vertices. When you are done, your spline should look something like this:

6. OK…now for the tricky part. Turn off 3D Snap, and select all the vertices (CTRL-A).
7. Right-click on the spline, and then select Smooth for the corner type.
8. At this point, you need to be a bit creative. Start selecting the individual vertices, and move them around until you have a nice smooth shape. Pay attention when selecting vertices, as they are not welded (yet), so it is important to select both vertices in a given pair by dragging a box to select them.
9. Take your time, because this is the final shape that the front section of your ship will have. You should end up with something like:

10. When you are done moving things around, make sure that the spline is still selected, and that the vertex sub-object selection is turned off.
11. On the Modify panel, select the Surface Modifier from the Modifier rollout list, and then turn on Flip Normals and Remove Interior Patches.
12. The Perspective viewport should now show something that the following:

13. At this point, I like to covert the spline to an Editable Polygon, and apply a Mirror modifier to see what I have. I’m more concerned at this point with the basic shape. There will be way too many polygons for such a simple shape, but I will take care of those in a minute with Polygon Cruncher.
14. Here is what I have so far:

15. OK, this step is “optional”, but strongly recommended. The basic shape currently has 3,200 polygons…which is about twice as many as I can afford. I solve this little problem with a shareware tool called Polygon Cruncher from Mootools. After reducing the number of polygons using this tool, I now have a mesh that looks like:

Adding detail to the Front Section

The next step is to add some detail, like a bridge with windows, and maybe a small cut-out in the nose portion to locate a sensor array.

For this, I’ll use the Boolean Compound Object in 3dMax. Please note: you should be very cautious in your use of Boolean operations in 3dMax. It can be a bit flaky depending on the underlying mesh, so it is not always something you can count on.

Let’s try it.

First, the cut-out for the sensor array:

1. Using CreateèGeometry, select Extended Primitives from the pull-down menu, and then click on ChamferBox. On the Parameters rollout, set Width Segments to 3, Fillet Segments to 3, and leave the Length and Height Segments at 1.
2. Make sure the ChamferBox is deep enough, and to add a bit of detail, select the back-inner vertices and pull them back a bit. I ended up with something like:

3. Now select the front section, go to CreateèGeometry and select Compound Objects from the pull-down menu, and then click on Boolean.
4. Make sure that Subtraction (A-B) is ticked on the Parameters rollout, click on “Pick Operand B” under the Pick Boolean rollout, and then click on the ChamferBox you just created.
5. With the front section still selected, select Cap Holes from the Modifier list rollout on the Modify panel, and you should have something that looks like:

Note: If the Cap Holes modifier doesn’t work correctly, then “undo” it, convert the front section to an Editable Mesh, select the Polygon sub-object, and then use Create to connect the vertices into polygons.

6. OK, next let’s make a “quick & dirty” bridge, from which we can fly this thing. To do this, we’ll simply use “slice”. With the front section selected, apply the Slice Modifier from the Modifier list on the Modifier panel, and position it something like this:

7. Click on Remove Top, apply the Cap Holes modifier, an Edit Poly modifier, and then select the resulting polygon. It should now look like:

8. At this point, you can get a bit creative with simple Extrude and Inset actions from the Edit Polygons rollout. I did a series of Extrudes, Insets, and Uniform Scale operations to create something that looks like:

So I now have a mesh with 1,753 polygons that I can use for the front section of my ship. I’ll wait to texture it until I get the rest of the hull built.

Step 2 – Creating the Hull

OK, the first thing I want to do is create the “spine” that will run the length of the main hull. I build this using simple “Standard Primitives” off the CreateèGeometry menu.

If you look at the “sketch” I made, you will see that the center of the hull consists of a series of spherical “lumps” connected by cylinders.

Creating the “Spine” for the Hull

The main shape will be an elongated sphere…so start with basic 32-sided sphere and using the Scale tool, stretch and compress it into a shape you like. Then Shift Drag those using the Transform tool to clone it so you have something like:

You should take care to space the sphere objects at a uniform distance from each other.

Next, I built the connecting portions by using the Cylinder shape off of the Standard Primitives menu.

I used a cylinder with 18 sides, and 8 height segments. I positioned it so that it is centered on the spheres I just created (e.g. the same values for the x and z axis).

It is not necessary to be precise in sizing the cylinder, since we can always “push and pull” it into shape as we go along. For simplicity, I made the initial cylinder roughly the same height as the spheres.

You should now have something like:

I then use the Taper modifier, and uniform scale, to reshape the cylinder so that it looks like:

Note that the cylinder is exactly centered between two of the spheres, and that its diameter is now noticeably smaller than the height of the spheres.

Now again using scale, stretch the cylinder until all the edges are imbedded in the two spheres…like this:

OK, we will need two more of these cylinder objects to join the other spheres. I made two cloned/copies, and “hid” one of them. I then moved the remaining copy down between the last two spheres. Next, select the two spheres that are overlapping the original cylinder and attach them (click on one of the spheres, select Attach from the Edit Geometry rollout, and click on the other sphere).

We could also simply “attach” the cylinder, but that would leave extra polygons…yech! So, click on Attach again (to turn it off), and then go to the CreateèGeometry menu, select Compound Objects from the pull-down menu, and click on Boolean (the combined sphere object should still be selected). On the Parameters rollout, go down to the Operation section and select Union, and then click on Pick Operand B from the Pick Boolean rollout. Click on the cylinder (there are now two of them, but you are only selecting one), and you should have a single object that looks like:

Now we need to join the other two spheres. (Hopefully you remembered to space the spheres at a uniform distance from each other.)

There are two ways to proceed; you can clone/copy the combined sphere object you just built (from the two spheres and the cylinder), move it down to where is should be positioned, and delete the two “place holder” spheres that are currently there, or you can take the copy of the cylinder which you shifted down between the two separate spheres, and use the Boolean Union operation to join them…which ever you find easiest. Regardless of which way you choose to proceed, you should now have something that looks like:

Now all that is left is to join the two parts of the hull spine into a single object. Take the hidden copy of the cylinder object, position it in the exact center of the hull spine, and use the Boolean Union operation we went through previously to merge everything into a single mesh.

You should now have something that looks like:

Done!

Creating the “Cargo Pods”

Now I need to create the cargo pods. Since the ship will be symmetrical, I can work on a single side, and then “mirror” it to get the completed cargo pod section.

I started with a large cylinder (48 sides, 1 height segment), and centered it on the first “lump” of the hull-spine. It looked like this:

Then, using the Slice Modifier (and Cap Holes), I “cut it down to size” somewhat…until it looked like this:

I then created a simple cylinder to use as a “cut-out” (18 sides), and using the Boolean (Subtract A-B) operation ended up with an object that looks like:

Since I want some curvature on the top and bottom of the cargo pod, I need to add some polygons. There are many ways to do this in 3dMax, but the approach I took was to use the Edge selection to select one of the top Edges, and then on the Edit Edges rollout, click on Insert Vertex. I then added three vertices on each end of the top, like as shown here:

Next, I Connect each of the three vertex “pairs” I just created, and then (working in either the front or back viewport), I select vertex pairs, and move them around to achieve the shape I want for the top of the completed cargo pod It now looks like:

I could create a slightly different appearance to the bottom, but in the interest of simplicity, I’ll just use the Slice Modifier to “chop off” the bottom portion, and then use the Mirror Modifier to create the completed mesh.

Here is what it now looks like (note – I removed the extraneous horizontal edge that was left on the ends by the slice/mirror operation):

At this point, just to keep everything “nice and tight”, I converted the cargo pod to an Editable Mesh, selected all of the vertices, welded everything together (after bumping up the weld threshold slightly), and then converted it back to an Editable Polygon.

Finally, since a cargo pod should have some way to the wares in and out, I added a “hatch cover”. I did this by creating a ChamferBox, slicing off one end, and then cloning it so that I had a single object to use as a “cutout” in a Boolean operation. Here is what it looked like just prior to the Boolean Subtract A-B operation:

And after the Boolean operation, I had:

OK…the basic cargo pod is done! I then made a clone copy of it that I will use to further develop the remaining elements of the cargo pod.

However, before continuing, I like to see what the basic shape of the hull is going to look like, so I can make any adjustments necessary to the cargo pod. To do this, I will clone the cargo pod 3 more times, and position the copies along the spine…in line with the “lumps”.

In addition to the original, you should now have 5 copies of the cargo pod…the “reference copy and 4 individual cargo pod objects aligned down the spine. Attach the 4 individual cargo pods objects, and then after adjusting the x axis for the pivot, use mirror to create a copy on the other side. You should now have something that looks like:

Hmmm…not bad. OK, we’ve decided that we can live with it, so now it is time to go back and develop the “basic” cargo pod a bit further.

Finishing up the Cargo Pod

In order to simplify the final texturing, I have made the hull symmetrical. This way I can work with a single cargo pod, get the mesh fully constructed, apply the texturing I want, and then clone/mirror copy it to build the complete hull.

You can delete (or hide, if you prefer) the combined cargo pods we assembled in the previous step, since we will rebuild it later. For the next few steps, we will only work a single cargo pod, and a cloned copy of one of the “lumps” from the spine.

Select the “reference” copy of the cargo pod and the spine, and Hide Unselected. This is the view you should have in your Perspective viewport:

Now we can clone the spine (hiding the original), and then slice off the front “lump” and half of the first tapered cylinder. I used the Slice, Cap Holes, and Edit Poly modifiers again. The object we are creating is only going to be used ad a reference point, and we will delete once we are finished with the cargo pod. I could have just as easily used the entire hull spine, but my preference is to make copies of things. Anyway, I ended up with the front part of the spine as a reference point…like the following:

Clearly, the cargo pod needs to be attached in some way to the hull spine. I chose to use a couple of Torus objects from the Standard primitives menu. Here is what they looked like once I positioned them in the scene:

Go ahead and use the Boolean Union operation to merge the two torus objects into the cargo pod.

Now we will place some “machinery-like” objects and a few “connectors” between the cargo pods. (Remember, we will be using X3 DDS textures to create the actual “image” of machinery and pipes.)

A bit more “inter-pod” detail…

This step is pretty much “free form”, and is really based on my understanding of what is available in the X3 texture library. There are some pretty nice circular textures, plenty of technical detail, and a few gas tank textures. When I start modeling a ship, I already have decided on the basic texture set I will be using…and that decision has a significant impact on the shape of the objects I use to construct the actual ship.

Without going through all the detailed steps used to create the individual objects, here is what I put together for the “inter-pod” details:

The curved panels on the top and bottom will receive “see through” DDS textures, as will the rectangular cross-braces. As you can see, the top and bottom are again symmetrical, so I can create the top half, and then mirror it for the bottom.

Using symmetry wherever possible will reduce your workload by up to 50%. Clearly, it helps to plan ahead, and ensure that your ship design will let you take advantage of this capability.

Also, some of you may have noticed that the purple cylindrical object is shaped very much like one of the large “tanks” on the Teladi TL…that is because I cut of off of that model and put in an a “library” of shapes that I can reuse.

Our good friends at Egosoft have built some excellent models, and a smart modeler will not hesitate to chop off a few bits here and there and save them for re-use in your own work.

When I built the “inter-pod” part group, I made sure that it was exactly wide enough to fit between two cargo pods…as can be seen in the following screen shot:

Now for some “bad news”…this tutorial is not going to tell you how to texture the model…that is a major topic in itself, and is outside the scope of what I am doing here. However, once textured, here is what the “inter-pod” part grouping looks like in 3dMax (it looks much better in X3):

There are quite a few excellent tutorials on texturing that come with 3dMax, and I would encourage you to run through them to become familiar with the basic texturing tools. Also, spend some time going through the Egosoft-supplied texture library. If you know ahead of time that you can use a DDS texture to create the “detail” effect you are looking for, then you can avoid the need to create unnecessarily complex objects.

OK, we still have a couple of parts to go, but we now have enough to assemble the cargo-pod section of the hull. After texturing the cargo pod we built earlier, we can use clone/mirror operations to create something that looks like:

The next step is to build the parts that attach the front section to the hull spine and cargo pods. This can be fairly simple, since we will again be relying on DDS textures to make things look good in X3.

Since there was no real detailed plan for the ship before I started 9other than my “back of the envelope” sketch), I have to create the attachment object(s) “on the fly”. However, to keep things in proportion, I need to keep in mind the overall look and shape of the ship so far. If I un-hide everything, this is what I’ve got:

It seems to me that the simplest solution is to build an “arch” between the two halves of the hull which passes just behind the front section…and maybe some “pipes” running back to the spine.

There are many ways you could do this, but I chose to start with a simple ChamferBox:

Now I want to extend one side of the ChamferBox, and gradually curve it back to join up with the cargo pods. I only need to work with one side, since once I get it correctly built, I can simply slice the ChamferBox in the middle, and mirror the “good” half. Accordingly, I simply use Slice/Cap Holes to “square off” one side of the ChamferBox, and then stretch it out so that it looks like this:

Here is where it starts to get tricky again. I extrude the end slightly. Like:

…and then (leaving the polygon on the end selected), Rotate it 10°like this:

You can see that the bottom of the polygon I just rotated has crept up slightly…so I move it down like:

OK…now you know what needs to be done, and after a series of Extrude, Rotate, and shift down operations, I ended up with this:

After a Slice and Mirror operation on the arch, and the addition of a four narrow cylinders, I had this:

Hmmm…not bad, but it looks a bit “plain”, eh? Here is where you can really make up time. As I mentioned previously, the folks at Egosoft did some mighty fine modeling, and since I am going to be using their textures…why not grab a few parts off some of their ships to add the missing detail?

Since I am using a number of textures from the Teladi scheme, I’ll go and grab some pipes from the Teladi TL.

Here we are with the pipes applied…getting better?

Before I texture the hull spine, front section, arch, and connecting pipes, I’ll spruce up the front section by adding another part from the Teladi TL…like this:

So, next I texture the other parts, and then move on to building the thruster section. (Note, I also added some antennas from the Teladi TL once everything was finished, as can be seen from the screen shots.)

Before we get started on the thrusters, I’ll give you a view of the ship as it is currently textured. However, I would also like to point out that once you get a ship into X3, and actually get to see it in various light settings…you will almost certainly find elements that you want to tweak. For me, this most often involves texturing. At the risk of boring you with disclaimers…as I said at the beginning, I’m no artist!

Anyway, here is what I have so far:

Now…on to the thrusters!

Step 3 – Building the Thrusters

First, decide on the general configuration of the thruster. Unless you are following a specific design, I find it easier to wait until the rest of the ship is done…in hopes that I’ll be struck by an “inspiration”.

For whatever reason (possibly insanity), I decided to go with two main thruster bodies, one for each hull side, and to have three thruster nozzles in each body.

Since I wanted three nozzles, I chose to start with three-sided Gengon object I could have used a sphere, or even a box object, but I have had good luck with Gengon. (It is in CreateèGeometryèExtended Primitives.) Once I had the initial Gengon shape, I used a series of Extrude and Uniform Scale operations to create the basic thruster body. Once I had the right shape for the thruster body, I used three cylinders as my “cut-out for a Boolean Subtract A-B operation.

Here is what the Gengon and cut-out looked like before the Boolean operation:

Remember, Boolean operations can be a real pain. You may want to avoid them until you are comfortable working at the vertex level. Unless the A & B objects you are working with are very simple, you will almost certainly need to move, weld, remove, etc a number of vertices in order to get things looking “pretty”.

So after the Boolean operation (and a little “clean-up” on the vertices), here is what I ended up with for the completed thruster body:

I then applied a smoothing group to the outer polygons to get a more refined shape, like this:

Now to shape the nozzles, I started with a cylinder (18 sides, 10 height segments). It is easy to add height segments as you go along, but since I knew in advance that I would be using quite a few in order to create the ridges and curves that I had in mind, I started with 10.

Before starting in on shaping the nozzle, I made sure that the basic cylinder I was using fit nicely into the holes I had cut in the thruster body. Here is what I had at this point:

…and without going through all the “trial & error” involved in getting a pleasing shape for the thruster nozzle…here it is:

I have employed a fairly complicated internal structure, since I plan to use a number of self-lighting DDS textures. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have wasted the polygons.

Here is the nozzle after texturing. Remember, you can’t really see what it will look like until the X3 rendering engine gets a hold of it in-game.

Then, after hacking some textures onto the thruster body, and cloning two more nozzles, this is what I have in the way of a thruster assembly:

After doing a mirror/Copy to get a thruster on the other side, I can un-hide everything and (hopefully) have something that looks pretty much like an X3 TS class ship.

Let’s see how close I came:

To be honest, that is pretty much what I was hoping to end up with. Rest assured, that’s not always the case!

As I said previously, once you play around with a new ship in-game, you will always find a number of things that can be improved.

No, all we need are a few “finishing touches” like a cockpit, and a turret, and we are ready to export out new ship into X3!

Step 4 – Making it work in X3

At this stage of things, there is a fair bit of personal choice involved. If you are only going to make one or two ships, go ahead and do it in the easiest way possible.

However, if you end up doing very many ships, you will thank yourself if you establish some “conventions” right up front.

I won’t describe my entire development “workbench” (that’s another tutorial in itself!), but you should at least have some idea of how you want to store your work. Within my development environment, I have separate folders for each ship. Within the “root” folder for a ship, I keep the various versions of the 3dMax files, as well as the X3 scene file for the ship. In addition, if I am using a unique multi-texture for a given ship, then the text file with the X3 texture definitions is also kept here. In the root folder, there is a sub-folder called “/parts”. This is where I save the various parts for a ship when I use DBOX to export them.

Nothing says that you can’t simply lump everything together into a single mesh…Egosoft frequently does. However, I prefer to group the various 3dMax objects I create when building a ship into 2 or 3 (sometimes more) “parts”. It’s a personal preference thing, and you can do it however you like.

For this ship, I grouped the ship objects into three parts; front, hull, and thrusters. It looks like:

Before we can get going, we will need to make sure the ship is reasonably sized for a TS class ship. I do this by selecting and grouping all the parts of my ship, and then importing (using DBOX) an existing X3 ship that I know is the right size.

Here I have imported a large Paranid TS, and you can see that my model is too small!

Since I’ve already grouped the parts for my ship, I can use Uniform Scale to adjust the size.

Checking from the top viewport, things now look a bit better:

So I delete the Paranid model, and get ready to start exporting my ship. However, before I start, I need to add in a couple of “special” X3 objects, to complete the ship.

Using doubleshadow’s DBOX tool I imported:

• A copy of the Egosoft-supplied “cameradummy.bod” file from the unpacked X3 folder called “objects\ships\props”.
• A copy of my custom “d_turret_b91_dummy.bod” file (a dual-laser turret).
• A copy of the “fx_engine_emitter.bod” file from the unpacked X3 folder called “objects\effects\engines”.

The first step is to place the “cameradummy.bod” object just over and in front of where I want the viewpoint for the main cockpit to be. (There is another way of doing this, using an updated “components.txt” file…but I’ll keep it simple for now.)

Here is a view of where I positioned the “cameradummy” part:

Next, you must rename the “cameradummy” part to “ships\props\cameradummy_1”. This is essential, since without the “ship\props\” path information, X3 will not find the part, and without the “_1” suffix, X3 won’t know that this is your main cockpit viewpoint.

The second step is to position the turret. I rotated it 180°, and placed it on the top portion of the aft cross-brace.

Once positioned, it looks like:

We also need to rename this part “ships\props\d_turret_B91_dummy_2”. I always follow the Egosoft convention of keeping general use ship parts in the “ships\props” folder. The “_2” suffix tells X3 that this turret will be fired from the #2 cockpit…which we’ll add now.

Rather than importing another copy of “cameradummy”, I imply clone the one I already have, and rotate & position it as appropriate. (Remember, the turret has been rotated 180° so that it will be facing aft, so we need to rotate the “camerdummy” part in the same way.) This time, we rename the “camerdummy” part to “ships\props\cameradummy_2”, to let X3 know that it is the #2 cockpit.

I like to position the cockpit view above the turret, to get maximum visibility. Here is what I ended up with:

The final (and optional parts) that I will use is the “fx_engine_emitter”. To use this part, it must be rotated 180° (looking from the top), so that it faces aft. You will also need to rename the part to “effects\engines\fx_engine_emitter” so that X3 can find it. I clone it 5 times (so that I have six of them…all with the same name), and place them in the center of each thruster nozzle.

In the following screenshot, I have selected all six of them and then clicked on Pivot, so that you can see their position and orientation.

The final step before we can start exporting the parts and scene file, is to rename the custom parts of the ship. Just as was the case with the “cameradummy” part, X3 needs to know where we have put the parts in order to be able to render the ship in X3. In my case, the parts will go into a folder named “ships\Deadly\TP-Mk3\parts”. And the scene file will go into “ships\Deadly\TP-Mk3”

So I rename:

• “front” to “ships\Deadly\TP-Mk3\parts\front”
• “hull” to “ships\Deadly\TP-Mk3\parts\hull”
• “thrusters” to “ships\Deadly\TP-Mk3\parts\thrusters”

The steps required to export a part using DBOX is the same for all parts:

1. Select the part, and ensure that the pivot is centered (HierarchyèPivot, then click on Affect Pivot Only, followed by Center to Object)
2. From the Utilities menu, select Reset XForm, and then click on Reset Selected.
3. From the Utilities menu, select Collapse, and then click on Collapse Selected.
4. Carefully note (and write down, if needed) the x, y, and z coordinates of the part.
5. Set the x, y, and z coordinates to 0, 0, 0 (zero, zero, zero).
6. From the Utility menu, select MAXScript, and (assuming you have already enabled DBOX) go down to the Exporter rollout, make sure that Body is selected for the Filetype, and then click on Export Sel.
7. When prompted, locate the proper folder, and enter the name of the part…only the name…no path information! For example, the parts called “ships\Deadly\TP-Mk3\parts\front” gets saved as “front”.
8. Restore the x, y, and z coordinates to their original values.

Once all your custom parts have been exported, it is time to export the scene file for the ship. To do this, select all parts (including “cameradummy” the turret, and the engine effects parts), go down to the DBOX Exporter rollout again, and make sure that Scene is selected for the Filetype this time, then click on Export Sel. In my case, I move up one folder to save the scene file.

The scene and parts will load “as is”, however, they are in text format, and the textures won’t be right.

Cleaning up the files exported from DBOX

Somewhere on the Egosoft forums, I have written a brief tutorial on how to use X3 textures. At some point, I will find the time to track it down, clean it up, and post it on the X-Wiki site.

If you are not already familiar with the terms BOD and BOB…stop immediately…go to the X-Wiki site…and read the tutorials that double shadow has developed.

OK, you are an expert on BOD and BOB files, and know that DBOX has exported your custom ship parts in BOD format. This means that they can be read and edited in any standard text editor.

For now, let’s assume that I imported a stock Teladi ship (say the TL) and grabbed the associated textures to use on my model. (I didn’t, since I have a number of custom texture libraries that I’ve built over time…but it will do for the purposes of this tutorial.)

Note: Until I get around to writing an X3 Texturing Tutorial, go to the Scripts and Modding Forum on the Egosoft web site, and check the threads at the top of the page. Somewhere in there I describe how to do this in detail.

Since we are exporting data from our 3dMax scene into a proprietary format, and Egosoft has not yet published an X3 Modders Kit (as they did for X2), there is some information in the output produced by DBOX that occasionally needs to be modified.

Please note that this is only true for the ship I built in this tutorial because I chose to use the new “big” MATERIAL6 textures…which not only use the new DDS textures, but also employ the special graphic “shaders” as well. If I had chosen to use standard X3 textures, the output from DBOX could be used directly in the game.

That said, there are a number of steps required to get your ship flying around in the X3 universe:

1. Updating the MATERIAL6 texture information:
1. If you look at the “part” files exported by DBOX in a text editor, you will see a number of lines at the front of the file starting with the work “MATERIAL6”. Each of these lines describes an X3 texture.
2. If you then look at the stock Teladi ship used to grab the textures for your ship and compare the MATERAL6 entries, you will see that they are different.
3. So…the MATERIAL6 entries need to be the same.
4. The easiest way to do this is to simply fire up your favorite text editor, and copy the “good” entries from the Egosoft BOD file over the top of the “bad” entries in the BOD files for the custom parts for your ship.
2. Now that you have the correct MATERIAL6 information in your BOD file, you could use it “as is” in X3, and it would load correctly…if a bit (maybe a lot) slow. There is a reason the Egosoft’s ships are provided in BOB (actually, compressed as PBB files, but lets not confuse things any more than necessary). The same tool you would have used to convert the Teladi BOB file into a BOD file (so that you could import it with DBOX) can now be used to “compile” the edited BOD files (with corrected MATERIAL6 data) into BOB files.

(Oh my...I forgot, I don’t have to tell you this do I? Since you have already gone over to X-Wiki and become an expert on all that BOB/BOD stuff…right?)

Whoa…what could be easier, eh?

That’s it! You’re done! Simply fire up your trusty copy of X3Editor and add the necessary entries to the TShips file, and then use X3 ModManager to package it into a mod (all of which is covered in detail by tutorials on the X-Wiki site)

…and you will be looking at this in X3:

Looking down the “spine”…

Here is a view of the “core” of the hull, showing some of the detail on the spine…

…and finally, a view from the aft quarter, looking forward.

I know I have covered a huge amount of ground, and trying to pack all the necessary information into a single tutorial is sort of like forcing some one to take a drink from a fire hose, when all they really wanted was a sip of water. However, it was the best I could do (and much more work than I had planed).

Hopefully some of you will find the information useful in your own modding efforts.

Enjoy!

Jeff (Deadly) Hatch