Thanks go to:
- Adoxa & Lancer Solurus for reversing most of the .sur format
- Adoxa for his .sur file dumper and MS .sur importer
- Colin Sanby for the MS Sur Exporter source code (I used some of the helper functions)
- Skotty for helping me testing and thus saving much time

Known issues:
- Some parts and values are still not the same as in vanilla .sur files

What the tool does (besides writing the format):
- Filtering double vertices (always) and merging close ones (if selected)
- Filtering every group for connected triangles and making a new group out of every connected ones
- Checking whether every connected triangle group is convex, else splicing them into single triangles (This is done to make every geometry
work. The same trick is used in vanilla .sur files.)
- Generating a complex tree for collision detection later in the game (stored in the bit section)

Keep in mind that you are responsible for the quality of the .sur files. Reproducing the geometry with convex elements is most probably better
than letting everything getting spliced...

You can help the tool if you put every convex geometry in a single group.

it would be nice if you would mention me in the credits if you use .sur files created with this tool in your mod.

Hope you don't discover too much bugs
Schmackbolzen

Changelog:

v. 1.1 BETA 1.2:
- Fixed listbox for group selection not behaving correctly on Windows XP
- Made width of listbox more convenient for selection

v. 1.1 BETA 1.1:
- Fixed bug which lead to missing triangle groups
- Added basic mass conversion support for non multipart meshes
- Changed automatic center calculation for target crosshair from mean to median value
- Fixed group list not updating when started via "open with" command

v. 1.1 BETA
- Fully support every feature of the .sur format
- New more accurate way of checking whether a shape is convex
- OBJ loader now reads more variations of the format
- Fixed all known cases where the .sur file was not correctly generated
- Some new options like merging close vertices and using only the outer convex hull for collisions
- Model cleanup before and after conversion

It is recommended to reconvert every .sur file you created with the old versions since there most probably were errors!

v. 1.0 BETA 1.3:
- Some tree generation bugfixes and speedup

v. 1.0 BETA 1.2:
- Fixed another bug in tree generation, collision should work more often now
- Deleting existing .sur file now before creating new (seemed to cause strange bugs sometimes)

v. 1.0 BETA 1.1:
- Fixed memory leak
- Fixed bug in tree generation, collision should work more often now
- Started implementing drag & drop / send to / open with... support as suggested by FriendlyFire

General info about collision meshes:
- They always should have the least polygon count possible!
- The best is to reconstruct the original geometry using convex elements, although it will work of you don't do this (but the filesize will get bigger then).
- The more groups per object there are in the .sur file the more calculation power is needed for collisions. Thus splicing rapidly decreases performance, since
the group count increases a lot with every group spliced. How much is up to you to test.

Don't use more then 16384 vertices. The format does not support it. You can be lucky and the count is reduced in the cleanup process, else the file creation
will stop.
Don't use non-triangulated geometry. The format does not support it and the conversion won't start.

If you view the converted geometry there is always a convex hull around everything! This is needed for collision detection and you will not collide with it!

Some explanations about the options:

Q: What do you mean by splicing?
A: If a shape is not convex every triangle will be made double sided and put in a separate group, which is convex, because a doubled sided triangle is
convex. This way geometry is preserved, but you get more data (that's how vanilla does it!).

Q: Is merging close vertices good or bad?
A: Depends. In some cases you can find more convex shapes and reduce file size, in other cases it makes things worse. You should try both and even adapt
the merge radius if structures are small. The file which is smallest is usually the better one.

Q: What should I put into the hardpoint text box?
A: Enter all hardpoint names (one name per line!) which have no geometry attached like HpCloakxx etc. To prevent crashes you should at least add HpCMxx,
HpThrusterxx and HpMinexx either there or with geometry attached via groups (use the table on the right then). If no geometry is attached you can't hit it!
If there is no such hardpoint on the model then of course it is not needed in the .sur file.

Q: What center value shall I use if I have assigned groups to a group via the table on the right?
A: If a group has other groups assigned then you also enter the center for this one. All attached groups will be moved so that the center of this one is on the
origin.

Q: What happens if I don't select a group in the table on the right?
A: Everything which is not selected will be assigned to root.

w0dk4 wrote:
Sounds awesome! Now waiting for some real-world user reports