hey folks, ive been trying for a while to figure out how to make my own ships for FSII, and im having one heck of a time doing it.i have TS 3.2 and all that stuff, and have tryed, but i cant get it to work for me... if someone would just post all of the steps to making a ship, scaling it to the right size, etc., and maybe the file(s) to your first ship showing how you made it n such. thanks a lot

If the tutorials in my FAQ haven't given you enough information I suggest you ask some specific questions cause basically you're asking for another one and I don't think anyone has the time.

So what specifically is giving you problems?

well.... making the models look good for one... how do you get all of the curvature and things in TS3.2? ive just been messin around w/ it, and ive found the thing where you deform the objects, so i was useing that to make the curvature, but that didnt work. another thing is how do you change the size of something w/o just rescaling it and hoping you dont distort it?one other thing is how do you get the files from TS3.2 into useable FS2 files? and finnaly how do you do texturing? thnx alot

I am acctually going to get AutoCad2007 within a week if you think it would be easier/better to use that.

ok... here's what im trying to do... is anyone familiar with the cancelled american cartoon show Invader Zim??? i am trying to make the armada from that show... every one of the different types of ships on it (there are only like 6 or 7) but i am very inexperianced with modding and i am having some troubles... if someone would be so incredibly kind as to walk me through the construction of any one of the ships, that would be greatly greatly appreciated. thanks a lot

I'd suggest you try some of the more specific modelling sites like 3d palace, 3d cafe, 3d total etc. They have loads of video and written tuts catering for most 3d packages. I would upload one or two but I've busted to dial up and so would have no chance.

ok, thanks. i have made a rather poor first attempt, but an attepmt just the same... it transfered into a POF like i wanted, but it still wont let me use the bloody thing or put it into FS2. i used the metaball tool on this one b/c the deformations stay the way they should unlike the regular deformations. i have not texured it, and i believe that could be why it doesnt work... can i use the texturing from a different ship just for testing purposes so i can fly this thing? if so how? thanks

If you're after modeling program suggestions, I would very highly recommend Blender ands/or 3DS Max.
Max is the industry standard of sorts, and with practice you'll be able to do just about anything you could want with it, but unless you can.... *ahem* acquire.... it for free, it's rather expensive. :\

Blender however is completely free. Here: http://blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html
It has enormous power of its own, but it's a bit hard to learn due to how it's pretty much entirely operated through keyboard shortcuts.
The tutorial I was started off on (here: http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/fs2/ ... ghterguide ) with gives a great intro to those shortcuts though, and once you have the shortcuts down, what you can do with it is pretty incredible.
In fact, I'd go as far as saying that its raw mesh editing capabilities go above and beyond Max's.

Also, though it won't help much if/until you get the basic drift of Blender's interface, here's some tips I wrote up for a member over at HLP:

While Blender is much more powerful than it appears, there are some things I _really_ wish I'd found out about sooner:

• The new (open source) versions added a mirror tool. To use it in edit mode, select the verticies you want to mirror and press 'm' to bring up the mirror menu. To flip a whole model while out of edit mode, it's ctrl+m.
• When moving, scaling or rotating, you can hold ctrl to move/scale/rotate in set increments to allow for precise manipulation.
• Holding shift in the same situation will move/scale/rotate with much more precision, and ctrl+shift will do the same using small increments.
• Once having pressed the move/scale/rotate key, you can then press x, y or z to constrain the action to that particular axis. (Ie, if you want to move something straight up from a weird camera angle, you'd select it, tap g and then z. Then you'd only be able to move the object straight up or down, which can then be combined with the afore-mentioned shift or ctrl functions to move it in whatever way you want straight up.)
• Having selected one/many verticies of an object, pressing ctrl+'+' will select all verts directly connected to those selected verts. This is great for quickly checking if one chunk of geometry is actually connected to another.
• Middle-clicking & moving the mouse will free-rotate the whole view of the model around the centre.
• Shift-middle-clicking will transverse the view along the camera's plane.
• There's a sub-divide button in the edit control pannel down the bottom (top-middle of the mesh tools while in edit mode. To get the edit menu tools to appear press F9.) Pressing it while 2 verts (with an edge between them) will split the edge in half, and pressing it when you have a face selected will quater the face.
• You can make a dynamic copy of an object by pressing alt+d while not in edit mode. This second copy will mimmic all edits performed on the original (and vice-versa actually) while in edit mode. Combine this with the ctrl+m thing to do mirror modeling with however many copies you like)
• Pressing f when you have 2-4 verts selected will create an face or an edge between them - whichever is appropriate. You can use this to pretty much sculpt a ship from scratch, instead of growing it out of a primitive.
• If you want to create a tapered point, you can weld verts together by sizing them down until they look like a point, and then pressing the 'Rem Double' button (also in the mesh tools - 3rd button below the subdivide one).

In addition to that, you have this: http://www.blender.org/modules/documentation/htmlI/ which documents the many varied (and sometimes rather...odd) functions of blender.
Good luck. :yes:

Keep practicing and soon enough you'll find yourself half-way through building way overdetailed monstrosities like this wondering what in the world you were thinking when you began.