Question Hand holding guide to addons?

[ahunn]

Hello all, I am really keen to create a ship for orbiter, I have good modelling skills in Maya/Max, and can texture too, I am not a programmer, so I was wondering if there are any step by step guides to the process of modelling, texturing, and creating configs or whatever I need to do to see and fly my ship in orbiter. The kind of thing I am looking for is texture size limits, the types of displacement supported by orbiter, bump/tangent space normal etc, I know that there are converters to go from 3ds files to orbiter, I will be using Maya to model but can export to 3ds and then from 3ds to orbiter..

any hints or links to tutorials, other than the sdk docs, would be greatly appreciated...

 

[orb]

Links:

• Tutorials (Tutorials for Addon Developers section)
• Add-on Development Resources
• Answers to some questions you asked can be found by searching forums

I successfully used 4096x4096 texture in Orbiter on Windows XP. If you have Windows Vista or 7, you can try 8192x8192 or 16384x16384 px textures, if your card supports them (or just to check if they are supported), but for releases, standard textures shouldn't be larger than 1024x1024 pixels (for compatibility with older graphics cards).

 

[ahunn]

Links:

• Tutorials (Tutorials for Addon Developers section)
• Add-on Development Resources
• Answers to some questions you asked can be found by searching forums

I successfully used 4096x4096 texture in Orbiter on Windows XP. If you have Windows Vista or 7, you can try 8192x8192 or 16384x16384 px textures, if your card supports them (or just to check if they are supported), but for releases, standard textures shouldn't be larger than 1024x1024 pixels (for compatibility with older graphics cards).

Thanks for the reply, I have looked through the developer tutorials, but couldnt find what I was looking for, I also read through the developers section but still couldnt find what I am looking for, and my forum search didnt turn up that one post or document which is why I posted. I guess I want a high level overview of the process and high points of the entire add-on development pipeline, aimed at total novice considering orbiter add-on as a possible project.

Thanks for the texture size info, I will keep that in mind.

 

[tomthenose]

if you can export 3ds then either '3ds to mesh' or the blender script for orbiter mesh export (only works on older blender and only useful if you can import a good model from 3ds) are the two commonest routes to mesh conversion. like you i am also not a programmer so i've been using orbiter shipyard which seems pretty solid but is only in alpha stage (update looming sometime sooish apparently). with shipyard you can import your mesh and configure stuff like docking ports and thrusters visually and easily before exporting it all to a handy zip that will add your ship into orbiter with its own starter scenarios. As yet ive not been able to get things like thrust particle streams and animations to respond so i don't think they're done yet. nether the less even with limited functionality this program has been a godsend to me for setting up meshes to work in orbiter so i'd recommend it. hope this helps ;-)