Could anyone even give me a rip of the starting ship in .3ds / .obj / .dxf
and the texture for it so I can try to remake it in a way that looks roughly the same but on closer inspection is actually more detailed than before?

One thing I know, is that Milkshape is a payed product, it would be frustrating to find out after paying for it, that nothing works anymore.

I would like to see Freelancer refreshed in HD though otherwise left unmolested. Though this might sound like a reasonably straight forward thing, it's actually on par with re-doing all the game assets so could prove a mighty project. I'll assume I'm not the first person to think of it and I'll also assume that there's no real support for it, otherwise it probably would have been done already.

Maybe it's also too simple an idea for many.

Re-doing the models with about 20% extra poly's and re-doing the skins with 20% higher resolution probably isnt fun enough.

I'll stick to playing the original for now.

If you can hand me the model and the texture, that is, on a platter, ie, in .obj or .dxf or .3ds then I'll rework it for you. I might even build the station from scratch because there's just certain things you can do with a model that ya cant do with a texture.

send me an email to [email protected]

I'll rework it and you can check it out

That is a really nice offer! There is a 3dsmax exporter, but importing them with animations etc. is another problem. Give me some time to write a converter and I will get back to you!

and I know the bottom struts should be flipped but you get the general idea, would be easier to modify the existing model rather than make a new one from scratch like this.

That kind of thing + a slight increase to resolution on the existing textures would make the game look a few years newer than it actually is.

Ah, excellent, so this is the model you sent me (I gather the stations are lumped together using several models) Included are the minor adjustments done to the mesh.




Next, I'm going to re-do the textures, then do the various mapping and we'll see what comes of it.

Examining textures a bit more this morning, had a look at texture stadtls2, which is a 128x128 pixel texture, so I remade that texture to 256x256 pixel's. It's the same colour as the original, same kind of pattern but it's quite a bit more crisp and features a bump map.




Obviously, life likes to get in the way of progress, but
even by doing that one, relatively simple exercise
it's quite clear how much more lovely things may
look at the end.