other information
Trademarks and names of the ships and the game are property of Sierra Entertainment, Inc.
This tutorial is designed to guide you through the process of making a paper model of a ship from Homeworld. As an example ship i used Taiidan Defense Field Frigate, as it will hopefully show most problems you can come across while unfilding model, while being simple enough. Let's begin :)
Homeworld BIG Viewer - This is a free program. We'll use it to open and unpack files which store ship meshes.
3D Exploration - Alternative to Deep Exploration. It allows to view the models, and convert to more convenient formats. The trial version's funcionality is more than sufficent for us, and it has no time limit.
Lif 2 Psd - Free program that will convert textures to editable format.
Photoshop - The tial period lasts only 10 days unfortunatelly. Photoshop is also quite expensive, you may want to consider using Paint Shop Pro.
3D Studio Max - Don't even think of buying 3D Studio as it is VERY expensive. Fortunatelly you can use 30-day trial with full funcionality after filling a form. It is very useful for editing models.
DON'T FORGET TO SCAN DOWNLOADED FILES FOR VIRUSES!!!
Now we should see a tree of files which are stored in the file. Not all of them are ship models, in fact most of those files are of mo interest to us. We are interested in folders p1, p2, p3, r1, r2 and derelicts which contain meshes of ships. R1 is Kushan Fleet, r2 is Taiidan fleet and p1, p2 and p3 are Turanic Raiders, Kadeshi and other ships. As i stated earlier we'll be unfolding Taiidan DFF so we need to open r2 folder. Click dfgfrigate folder (3) and from File Menu choose "Save Files (Recursive)" (4). All ship files shoud appear in game folder (usually C:\Sierra\Homeworld). Alternatively you can extract whole file by clicking on the top of the file tree and then selecting recursive file save.
We can close Big Viewer now.
It's time to open 3D Exploration. Navigate into lod0 folder and open dfgfrigate.peo file. Model should appear in preview window (5). As we can see there are few problems, namely the ship lacks few textures and ones that are there are gray.
To fix missing textures double-click on the ship, a window should appear. Choose Materials tab (6). Compare the list of used textures with those that are in the folder (7). You need to find missing textures withing homeworld.big file, extract them and copy them to dfgfrigate/rl0/lod0 folder.
Now our model should have all textures in place. It's time to convert the mesh into 3ds format. To do so click "Save as..." (8) from File menu and choose 3ds (9).
New window will appear (10), if all settings look like in the picture, just click "OK" (11).
.3ds file should be created, remember where you keep it as we'll be working on it later on. Close 3D Exploration
From selection panel choose edges (19). Select edges through which you want to divide model. It's best to pick those edges that are aligned on a single surface, so that after cutting there will be only 1, but for field bulb in this preview i made an exception from this rule.
Press "Split" (23). Now choose mesh selection (22), and select one of the ship's fragments. Press move button (25) and drag the part in one of the viewports (24), move it only a little.
Click verticle selection (18) and select whole mesh. Press "Remove isolated verticles" (26)
Right click on the mesh and convert it into editable mesh (16). Make sure whole mesh is selected, search for weld section in right toolbar, press "Selected" (27).
Convert ship back to editable poly (17). Choose border selection (20) and click on border of opening created by cutting the mesh. It should look like following picture.
Press "Cap" button (28).
The opening should close. Newly created surface will be wildly textured. You can create new material by pressing "m" on your keyboard. Pick surface selection (21), select the surface and drag the material onto it. Choose "apply to selection". Export the model (14) into 3ds format, you can select new name for the model, it's iimportant that it's in the same folder as the textures, though. Close 3D Studio.
Model should looke like this now.
From the toolbar select knife tool.
Select edges through which you want the model to be cut. Flaps will be created between the edges automatically. If flap is created not on the side of cut you want to to be press Ctrl+F and click on it, it will move to opposide edge. Let's finish our work by cutting whole ship. Fully cut model looks like this.
Press "Unfold" button and save.
Congratulations. We have just unfolded our first paper starship :). Finished pdo file is available here. Thank you for reading this :).
1. Programs you need to have
Before we create our first model we need to acquire few programs. Most of them can be used for set peroid of time without buying license. Here's a list with brief description. To go to the site from which you can download each program just click on it's name.DON'T FORGET TO SCAN DOWNLOADED FILES FOR VIRUSES!!!
2. Extracting mesh and texture files
First we need to open Big Viewer. Click on the button "Load Big File" (1) and choose a file which you want to open, since we're maing HW1 model here open homeworld.big file (2). It will take few seconds to load the file.Now we should see a tree of files which are stored in the file. Not all of them are ship models, in fact most of those files are of mo interest to us. We are interested in folders p1, p2, p3, r1, r2 and derelicts which contain meshes of ships. R1 is Kushan Fleet, r2 is Taiidan fleet and p1, p2 and p3 are Turanic Raiders, Kadeshi and other ships. As i stated earlier we'll be unfolding Taiidan DFF so we need to open r2 folder. Click dfgfrigate folder (3) and from File Menu choose "Save Files (Recursive)" (4). All ship files shoud appear in game folder (usually C:\Sierra\Homeworld). Alternatively you can extract whole file by clicking on the top of the file tree and then selecting recursive file save.
We can close Big Viewer now.
3. Converting the mesh
We now can take a look at the files we just extracted. In the r2 folder we can see dfgfrigate folder, if you extract other Taiidan ships, their respective folders will appear here. We can open dfgfrigate folder and rl0 one inside it. We see several lod[number] folders, each of them contain model with different detail level. It is a system that allows game to not to show to many verticles at the same time, thus conserving memory. Lod0 is folder with best details. Inside, there are several .lif files (textures), .mex file and .peo file.It's time to open 3D Exploration. Navigate into lod0 folder and open dfgfrigate.peo file. Model should appear in preview window (5). As we can see there are few problems, namely the ship lacks few textures and ones that are there are gray.
To fix missing textures double-click on the ship, a window should appear. Choose Materials tab (6). Compare the list of used textures with those that are in the folder (7). You need to find missing textures withing homeworld.big file, extract them and copy them to dfgfrigate/rl0/lod0 folder.
Now our model should have all textures in place. It's time to convert the mesh into 3ds format. To do so click "Save as..." (8) from File menu and choose 3ds (9).
New window will appear (10), if all settings look like in the picture, just click "OK" (11).
.3ds file should be created, remember where you keep it as we'll be working on it later on. Close 3D Exploration
4. Converting and coloring textures
The textures are now in lif format, which is unreadable by most of the programs. Open Lif2Psd. There are 2 buttons. Use left to open each lif file, and then right one to convert file into psd format. When you're done open each of the files in Photoshop. Pick two colors which will make scheme for the ship. I picked #febf00 for main color and #fe0000 for stripe color. When you open texture file you will notice there are 3 layers (12): COL1 is what you need to fill with main color, COL2 is to be filled with stripe color and TEX is not to be changed. To properly recolour texture select gray area of the texture with wand selection and unselected "Contiguous" field. Recolour all of the textures, and save them as BMP in the same folder that holds previously created 3ds file.5. Editing the mesh
The way the mesh is not would be rather hard to build when unfolded. We need to edit it a little bit to make things easier. It's time to run 3D Studio Max. From File menu choose "Import..." (13). Choose "Completely replace current scene" (15), and press "OK". Ship is now loaded into 3D Studio. There are no visible textures, but there's no worry, they will appear on finished model. Select the ship, right-click on it and convert it to editable poly (17).From selection panel choose edges (19). Select edges through which you want to divide model. It's best to pick those edges that are aligned on a single surface, so that after cutting there will be only 1, but for field bulb in this preview i made an exception from this rule.
Press "Split" (23). Now choose mesh selection (22), and select one of the ship's fragments. Press move button (25) and drag the part in one of the viewports (24), move it only a little.
Click verticle selection (18) and select whole mesh. Press "Remove isolated verticles" (26)
Right click on the mesh and convert it into editable mesh (16). Make sure whole mesh is selected, search for weld section in right toolbar, press "Selected" (27).
Convert ship back to editable poly (17). Choose border selection (20) and click on border of opening created by cutting the mesh. It should look like following picture.
Press "Cap" button (28).
The opening should close. Newly created surface will be wildly textured. You can create new material by pressing "m" on your keyboard. Pick surface selection (21), select the surface and drag the material onto it. Choose "apply to selection". Export the model (14) into 3ds format, you can select new name for the model, it's iimportant that it's in the same folder as the textures, though. Close 3D Studio.
6. Finishing the model
We're nearly done now :). Let's open Pepakura Designer. Open the 3ds file we just created. It should ask you if you want to flip textures. If you see textured ship choose "No Flip", if you don't click "Flip", if you clicked "Flip" and there are still no textures check if you did everything like i advised in the tutorial. In "Adjust model coordinates" window click "Finish". Pepakura Designer should ask you if you want to join isolated edges. If you look at the model there are many red lines, which mean open edge. We don't want them, so choose "Yes".Model should looke like this now.
From the toolbar select knife tool.
Select edges through which you want the model to be cut. Flaps will be created between the edges automatically. If flap is created not on the side of cut you want to to be press Ctrl+F and click on it, it will move to opposide edge. Let's finish our work by cutting whole ship. Fully cut model looks like this.
Press "Unfold" button and save.
Congratulations. We have just unfolded our first paper starship :). Finished pdo file is available here. Thank you for reading this :).