YSFlight (VF-X Pack)

[Starscream]

Out of curiosity, since I know there are some crafty and resourceful members of this forum. Is there (known) a way to export the models from YSFlight (The VF-X model pack) into, say, 3DS or lwo or anything to use as a basis of creating High-End/High-Poly models? Just curious, since that's about the closest I have seen to a working VF-27 model

[SeminNV]

I am also curious. Just want to add I guess we will get more enthusiasts as soon as I show some stuff. I am currently working

[Starscream]

I am also curious. Just want to add I guess we will get more enthusiasts as soon as I show some stuff. I am currently working

Some of which I have seen and am impressed with.

[Ironside]

Yes it can be done, but it is tedious as all hell.

I'm writing this off the cuff, as I haven't bothered with this in months. If, after reading this you still want to have go, I'll try to reconstruct my method.

To make this work you have to understand a few things about how YSFlight VF-X models work. The geometry of the model itself is assigned to control points. The points were designed for gun turrets and landing gear and, for the ambitious, control surfaces. It's hard to understate the amount of effort that must have gone into re-purposing those points to act as the joints for a mecha. Given the difficult of the task, it's not surprising to find that there was a bit of cheating involved. I'll get to that in a bit.

These control points are key to understanding why the YSFlight models are such a pain to deal with. For any YSFlight model, there are several files. Some have to do with collision detection, while others are about the model's performance. Then there's the model itself, and the file that tells the program how all of the bits of geometry in the model go together, and how they move about their control points. This file is just as important for importing a model as the geometry is.

With out this file, all of the geometry will import in the center of the modeling space (at least in blender, my preferred program. And like it or not, you'll probably need blender for this. Will explain at the end.). So the object centers for every bit of the mecha are at 0,0,0. The models come in lots of pieces, so this is a real pain. Manually reassembling is right out, as not all of them are oriented correctly, and I for one, don't have infinite time. Also, there's that cheat I mentioned. We will get to that.

So here comes the first issue. The control file defaults to battroid mode. Worse, it's battroid, in flight, so the mecha is at an odd angle. In order to get the mecha in fighter mode, I hade to manual edit the control file. This file is ginourmous, but it is a text file. Once I reasoned out the format, (with help from a YSFlight community site) it boiled down to a find an replace (epic find and replace, but still).

Once that's done, the cheat becomes obvious. Rather than work out a way to rotate all of the control points to make the mecha work, the models have multiple copies of the same geometry, set in roughly the correct positions. When the legs are needed in GERWALK mode, the legs for fighter and battroid are set to altitude -9999. Finding the correct value (which is usually "0" in YFSlight data terms) to position the bits and then doing the epic find and replace, puts every one of the parts in fighter mode, all lying atop one another. And of course, there's no frame. The models have no rigging.

As fars as I've seen there's only one converter for the file format used by YSFlight, and that convert is a blender script. ( http://www.yspilots.netfirms.com/yspf/viewtopic.php?p=762&sid=d9f70f94f6baab5779925e14620d0903#p31518 ) that should lead directly to the relevant post, but if it doesn't go to the post sub-titled "Import SURF Objects to Blender". It should be the last, but on the odd chance that someone adds to the thred, it's the sixth.

[SeminNV]

thanks for the info. Basically I am already implementing same control points idea. I guess Starscream and me just need the meshes only. The rest I will try to do manually: adding collision mesh,riging and placing controls point. Also the models will need a set of textures.

@Starscreem

The project already has lots of more or less ready models: YF19, VF21, SV51, VF25/27, VF0S, VFA

Still WIP: VF4, VF11, VF0D, VF1S, VFB

So we definitely do not need all from the YFlight

PS. I already made movable ailerons, rudders and elevators. The script also supports brakes. I will add same for the nozzles later: orientation and shape:

Edited November 28, 2010 by SeminNV

[Ironside]

If all you need is the meshes, you can get that following the instructions on the first part of the thread. The model formats for YSFlight are text based coordinate files based on VRML, so it's pretty easy to pull that data. Again, everything will show up in jumble, but all the bits are there.

Got any screen caps of your 25/27? I'd be interested in seeing what you did there.