Making LuxRender Versions of Base Game Ships

I doubt it's a legal issue so long as you don't try to sell the art work. However, the only tool we have to convert Sins models imports them into 3DS Max, not Blender. You could easily then save it in a format that Blender can work with, but you'll still need access to 3DS Max to do this.

I'm not planning on selling anything, so that's not a problem. However, I don't have the funds to get myself a copy of 3DS Max. On the other hand, I have found a way to get the models into Blender.

I have the free version of the 3D Object Converter which can read .mesh files fine, so I put the file through that and, because of the limitations with this version and some of the formats, I'll export them as RAW Triangle meshes so that I can preserve all of the geometry. Next, and I have an idea that might work with this, I'll get another version of the model through in say the Wavefront or X3D format (which subsequently has every 5th face removed for whatever reason :/) and try to match up the UV maps from that one to the raw one and work from there. I'm doing some research into a way to accomplish this, and as far as the texture files go, I got the DDS plugin for GIMP 2.0 (which works like a charm) and I'm converting those to .png after adjusting the colors. Works great - I already did a texture test with the Wavefront version of the Kortul Devastator capital ship that I exported and the UV works as it should - for the pieces that exist. However, I'm running into the snag of having to repair the mesh, which is why I'm doing the .raw format. It's a bit tedious but it's working for what I want to accomplish.

Hopefully this works out well, it looks promising.

I have a registered version if you need some converted to a certain format.

No need. The UVs are throwing me for a loop, so I'm doing the noble task of trying to see where I should put some seams and make this come out close to right on the .raw mesh. I do have the image texture as a reference guide.

The only thing is.. how do seams actually work? Looks like I'll be doing some trial and error. You know how it goes: if you want it done right, you do it yourself.

Couple of questions:

Firstly, in regards to the 3ds Max route (as a back up) I have no real way of obtaining an older version of the trial (2012 for instance) so what's the newest version that the mesh import script can work on? Now they're up to 3ds Max 2016 for the trial version (time flies lol).

Secondly, I found that a couple of the ship meshes in both the reference files from the ForgeTools 3 download and the actual game install from my disc don't open in 3D Object Converter, despite being the same format as the rest. I found that odd, so I wonder if they're corrupted in some way, and would a simple reinstall work? I did recently upgrade to the latest version of Sins so I wonder if somehow that messed things up.

One of the meshes is the CapitalShip_PsiColony.mesh file (the Progenitor Mothership)

Alright, I've successfully managed to recreate the Vasari Fighter. Here's a step-by-step:

1. I first opened the .mesh version of the fighter in my free version of 3D Object Converter and converted it to .obj, removing every 5th polygon in the process; remember to unwrap the UV map for it and save it as a .bmp for a reference.
2. Using MeshLab, I opened the newly converted .obj model and activated both the UV map guide and the texture seams - even though the model may have holes, if you study the seam patterns long enough you will be able to determine where they go, and filling in the holes doesn't fix the seams, I've tried.
3. Having already set up my .raw and complete version of the fighter in Blender, I then proceeded to painstakingly recreate the seams given by the references provided by MeshLab; after two days of trial and error (plus some breaks, naturally) I successfully created the UV map.
4. Then, using LuxRender's material settings, I applied a "car-paint" material to the model with its default settings except for the textures - LuxRender has a texture option called Add that lets you combine two or more textures together in such a way as such that they "stack" together - they don't combine or blend colors together like a gradient; I combined the main body color and the team color textures into one and attached it to the car paint's Diffuse Color control, and applied the bump map to the Bump control.

Before rendering, I had set it up so that the background would be transparent in the render, leaving only the ship visible. After about 12 minutes of rendering, I got this image below. So, what do you guys think?

I recently made a nice background image using the GIMP to go along with these, as well as got the Vasari Bomber and the Ravastra Skirmisher done. The background is also set as the light using a "Distant" lamp - a sun lamp with the preset set to Distant.

The Fighter and the Bomber were done again, using a variant of the background image (I simply changed the opacity of the nebula layer to 0)

The Ravastra Skirmisher is using the updated background image that includes the nebula layer, so be prepared for some colorful highlights

Probably not the greatest things in the world, but it's something. lol