Custom ship models - designating cores (help needed)

[donialduck]

Hello modders, I was hoping you could help me with a number of issues I encountered while trying to import my custom models into Stellaris. I am making a race with new ships but using the station models of mammalians.

When I put my ship into the game with the graphical culture having a fall back of mammalian_01 the mammalian science ship spawns at the center of my science ship. I found that removing the fall back simply leaves a cube with X Y Z on it (see image below). I think it is because my ship model is not defined anywhere as a core. Is there a way to set my science ship mesh as a middle section core and would this prevent the mammalian ship from spawning smack bang in the middle of my model?

I attempted to classify it as a core using the "section_templates" file in common but it replaced all the cores with mine even after naming it thefractured_science. txt in my mod file. It also caused all the ship cores on the “choose screen” to be replaced with my core flickering between the game specific cores and my core inside it or just my core on all selections. When I named it shiptest.txt it did the same, but a few remained the original cores when loading into the game while others just spawned my new core.

Thanks for any ideas and help you might have for me! I have included an image of my very overly bright ship (needs some tweaking is all).

 

[Elratie]

You need to replace the Science mesh Entite in your gfx\models\ships\your_race_culture then look for: your_race_name_ships_entities.asset file and in that file you scroll down to the Science Entite and switch the mesh name with the mesh name from your ship. No need to make a new section_template, best is, if you subscribe to existing Shippack mods and look what they did.

 

[donialduck]

Thankyou Elratie! I'll give that a try.

 

[donialduck]

So if anyone else is having this problem or similar it may be a tiny tiny piece of code that you may have missed. Elratie mentioned an important part about the names which was easy to fix, but the thing my code was missing was a small "_ship_" in the your_race_name_ships_entities.asset file. I found this in the base code of the mammalian ships and realized this was one of the only ways my code differed.

In the "_ships_meshes.gfx" file in "gfx\models\ships\your_race_culture" my little bit of code looked like this below. If you exported from maya your .gfx and .asset file might have the same name as your .mesh file. If so you can rename the .gfx file to whatever your graphical culture may be with _ships_meshes.gfx . You can also rename the .asset file to whatever your graphical culture is _ships_entities.asset . My graphical culture is thefractured_01, so my .gfx file is named thefractured_01_ships_meshes.gfx and my asset file is named thefractured_01_ships_entities.asset . You can also name these with a "_" in front of the graphical culture but I don't think it is necessary.

The code for my gfx file is as follows. Keep in mind my file names and file paths are different to what yours may be. I have left my names in as its a little easier to understand.
I also used PdxMeshTerra as it works best for my ship and the texture files I made. Other shaders may suit your ships better.

objectTypes = {
    pdxmesh = {
        name = "thefractured_01_science_mesh"
        file = "gfx/models/ships/thefractured_01/thefractured_01_science.mesh"
        scale = 1.0

        meshsettings = {
            name = "science_ship_shape"
            index = 0
            texture_diffuse = "science_ship_diffuse.dds"
            texture_normal = "science_ship_normal.dds"
            texture_specular = "science_ship_specular02.dds"
            shader = "PdxMeshTerra"
        }
    }
}

[ "science_ship_shape" just refers to the name I gave the shape in maya and doesn't actually matter what its named.]
The code for my .asset folder is (at the moment) a lot shorter. Inputting the following with your own entity names should get it working if you had the same issue as me.

entity = {
    name = "thefractured_01_science_ship_entity"
    pdxmesh = "thefractured_01_science_mesh"
}

Notice that the name is not "thefractured_01_science_entity" but rather "thefractured_01_science_ship_entity"

So far this is the only change I have found that has enabled my ship to be registered as the core and to show up correctly in the ship designer and in game. If I have any more issues with this code or find anything more out about this I'll post some more information here. The above code doesn't include any frame and I have so far only done the science ship, so its not a complete guide to putting stuff into the game, but maybe it'll help some of you get around this little annoying issue and save you some time.

Hopefully this helps some of you who are a bit stuck, I am going to go chuck in some more ships now!