Problems with custom ships and textures

[Solstice_]

I'm struggling to get a model out of 3DS Max 9 and into X3 with custom textures.

I managed to get the ship working and showing up untextured (black), everything else working properly (scene-wise).
But when I tried to assign my custom textures, diff, spec, and normal, the whole thing fell over. The model turned invisible in-game, and the collision box was wrong (a small cube in the center).

Not sure what's going on, but I managed to get it to appear and could see the textures, however the ship was almost 90% transparent, using the argon.fx shader. It's completely invisible with standard_lighting and TX.
The textures paths and everything are all fine and good. They're all DXT1 no alpha (even the normal, which I will change later back to DXT5 when it's all working)
I'm turning it into a bob and packaging it as a ship with plugin manager package creator.

Would greatly appreciate help, thanks

[Solstice_]

Update: I can see the ship as light blue mostly transparent when I change shaders. Standard and XT don't show at all, but argon and split show the aforementioned ghost ship.

Anyone have any idea why that's happening? Is it my texture format or something? Not sure what I'm doing wrong exactly.

[linolafett]

No idea as i was not working on x3. But it might be helpful for others, if you give more information about your workflow.
Texture format, texture sizes. Any library entries made for the materials (no idea how it was handled in x3, but in xr/x4 we have to add entries to the material library).
Etc.

Maybe someone can then give better feedback.

[Solstice_]

I figured it out! I had done everything correct, it was just the properties settings inside the X3 material. Particularly a diffuse strength in my case.
Shout-out to the ship mod I dissected and butchered to figure out textures and fix this problem! And Cycrow and all the tools.

No idea as i was not working on x3. But it might be helpful for others, if you give more information about your workflow.
Texture format, texture sizes. Any library entries made for the materials (no idea how it was handled in x3, but in xr/x4 we have to add entries to the material library).
Etc.

Maybe someone can then give better feedback.

Good idea! I feel there's no singular clear and concise tutorial on the matter of getting models from 3ds Max into the game, and I wouldn't mind creating one when I figure out everything. Consolidating the 3 or so tutorials I learned from would be great.
Although I'm no 3D modeller by any means, I'm just porting a ship for personal use.

Thanks for your reply

[RoverTX]

Just curious what ya working on?

[Solstice_]

Just curious what ya working on?

Just learning how to get custom ships in game from 3ds. I noticed a lack of Stargate/Halo-themed ships, and REALLY want to fly a Paris-class in X3.
I don't know if I can release them since they're assets from Sins of a Solar Empire mods, but I haven't asked for permission yet.

What about you? Are you up to anything exciting?

[RoverTX]

I know there is an existing Halo mod if that would help you

https://www.moddb.com/mods/x3-halo-conlfict

[Solstice_]

I know there is an existing Halo mod if that would help you

https://www.moddb.com/mods/x3-halo-conlfict

That looks pretty good, but definitely dead. That's a shame. The author is insanely talented by the looks of things