Scaling Tutorial
by Dolpheonix
Page 2 of 2
I decided to use the SoA BoP (Bird of Prey). As you can see the Akira no longer appears textured, and is ALOT smaller than the BoP, and facing a different direction. So now I make sure I have the mesh I wish to orientate selected (it is, in red). Now I goto the Rotate dialog.
Use 90 degree
increments and rotate one AXIS at a time until the ship is oriented correctly.
*EXPERIENCE TALKING HERE : RARELY WILL YOU HAVE TO ROTATE THE Z AXIS.*
Ok, hopefully you got that done and your ship is now facing the correct direction. Time to scale it properly. First, go ahead and delete the extra mesh (BoP in this example).
SoA scaling
is based loosely on original Homeworld scales. to put it simply, every
square of the grid in Milkshape = 10 meters.
Ok, now comes the magic. Scale the ship the front tip and back tip both touch a grid line.
3
grid squares = 30 meters (3x10 = 30.. isn't math fun?)
Now then, my scale chart says the Akira is 454 meters long. So now it's
time for advanced mathematics to come up with the scale factor.
Scale Factor
= ( Correct Length / Current Length).... in this case Scale Factor = 454
meters divided by 30 meters which is 15.13333. ( I try to use the factor
at least to 4th or 5th decimal place for accuracy.
Now Scale your ship by the Scale Factor, and VIOLA!!! You now have
a ship scaled and oriented correctly for Homeworld!
Now then let's assume you're putting a ship into Cataclysm. You do everything exactly the same as above, EXCEPT, once you get your ship scaled correctly, THEN scale it again by 0.5 . Catactlysm ships are exactly 1/2 the scale of Homeworld ships.
One additional note.. I'm of course not sure on scaling of all SFC ships, BUT Pneumonic81's ships are scaled correctly. To orient/scale one of his ships for Homeworld do the following :
Rotate the
Y-axis : +90
Rotate the X-axis : -90 (that's negative 90)
Scale ship by factor : 37.76547
P.S.
All SFC and SFC II ships rotation should be the same as above.