I was thinking about making some custom ship parts/jewelry in StudioMax. I have the Panda plugin, no luck with my exports yet, I'll keep working on it.
If you're really serious about providing 'alternate' parts & jewelry, you may want to consider the following before you even start;
- Total control over primary style models as individual parts (square, circle, rectangle, triangular, etc) available in two formats; 1)Trim and 2)Hull coloring schemas. Along with some key multiple sizes, thickness, etc.
- It would allow to produce a complete ship straight from scratch and assembling the structure based on simple shapes rather than pre-determined assets.
- This isn't far from Kryo's system which gives a 'blank hull block cube' to start with... but extends the number of structural components to permit HUGE variations in how a model gets assembled.
- The catch in such a 'system' would be to carefully place all hard-points so that any construction steps actually 'snap together' in a relatively obvious way and, ALSO, give certain control over every parts location or orientation -- without having to rely on the usual spindles or other tricks.
I didn't have any luck with some tryout tests a few months back (using Blender & their DirectX plugins) for such gimmicks... but if someone has both the experience & the will to tackle up the whole tasks (with better or working 3D software -- i simply CANNOT afford the real 3dStudioMax btw), i think it could be one of the most important modding features for this game as it could liberate us from having to use *ONLY* the current components.
Not to forget is the entire set of texturing for UV mapping files necessary too!
...please & good luck.
