Anyone know how to do hard points in blender?

[Clavin12]

So which way is forward? X, Y, or Z?

[Warfreak]

Forward is when the direction is towards the negative end of the y axis in 3DS Max and apparently in other model makers too..

I ASSUME it is the same in blender.

[Clavin12]

When I have the ship upright in bz2 it goes sideways instead of forward and then when i rotate it the seeming right way it tilts forward instead of turning correctly

[Clavin12]

Ok i've got that right but now, no matter where i rotate the eyepoint to, i'm always either looking at the ground or the sky and i'm getting frustrated.

[Warfreak]

rotating the physical model is USELESS. You MUST rotate only the pivot.

It looks like BNG is on the right track.

[Clavin12]

How do you mean?

[Warfreak]

O-o, just tried to do everything in blender and:

1. can't figure out how the hell you guys got the uv mapping working correctly
2. can't figure out how you guys got textures assigned.
3. can't find any way to edit pivots directly.

*easy when you learn... Yeah, ill take a crapload of nonfunctioning lists any time.

[Clavin12]

The thing is when i rotated the physical object the view did change.

[Dianoga4]

If you are wanting to see the axis of and object, you have to have the axis visible. By default they are not visible. Under the Object section (F7), there is a section that I outlined in the picture with red where you can make the axis visible as well as the objects name if you want. Once turned on you'll see the axis like in the picture. If you go into edit mode and rotate all the vertices, the axis will stay in place but everything else will change. Alt-R clears rotations. Hope that helps.

[Clavin12]

Know how to rotate pivots?

[Dianoga4]

So if you problem is that things are not showing up pointing the right way I guess there are a couple of things you can do. If it is just hardpoints, you can just rotate the mesh you used as the hardpoint to the way you need. For example, I just made a simple test ship to try a couple of things out. I added an eyepoint but when I got in the game, the eyepoint was facing backwards and upsidedown. Basically it was like you tilted your head waay back until you were looking behind you upsidedown. So since the eyepoint isn't visible in the game, I just rotated the mesh I used (a cube) around until it was facing the proper way. I went back in the game and it was facing properly.

For the ship itself, in Blender the ship was facing forward when I first made it, when I went into the game, the ship was flying forward but it was facing nose down at 90 degrees. So in order to fix this what I did was selected the body of the ship, went into edit mode and selected all the vertices. Since the ship was facing nose down in the game, I rotated the ship body with all the vertices selected nose up 90 degrees. So if I was looking at the left side of the ship, I would've rotated it 90 degrees clockwise. Then go out of edit mode and rotate the ship back to the original way. You'll probably have to re-center the ship to the pivot point  as well. There are a couple of ways of doing this but to get it to exactly where you want it to be, best bet is to put the 3d cursor (white and red circle) where you want the center point of the object to be and go into the Editing buttons(F9) and press "Center Cursor". You'll also probably have to move your hardpoints back to where you want them.

It's kind of a pain in the ass way to do it but it works for me so far. There probably is an easier way to just move the axis or pivot point but so far I haven't found one. I've only recently started dealing with the axis in Blender since trying to get the exporter OM made to work. If I find anything else, I'll let you know. Hope this helps somewhat anyways.

[Clavin12]

I have that exact problem except it won't go away.

[Dianoga4]

Actually now that I think of it....duh... I forgot that you were using another program to get it into the game. Whatever program you are using, looks like 3d exploration, you probably need to do something similar to that in there. I've never used that program so not sure what it's like.

[Clavin12]

I'm using OM's exporter.

[Dianoga4]

Hmm well why that wouldn't work then I don't know because I just did it before I typed that big post.