heavy model conversion help, please

[Reverend]

This is a good one, I'd say.
Wicked Zombie, I am at wits end, and hope you could lend your expertise for a moment with me.
To begin, for good modding practice without the constant feel of 'competition', I bought a copy of Star Empires:Starfury. Very simple game, but it basically has a freeform continuous space universe, albiet clumsily built. I am using a little of everyone's ships, including yours, as my little mod will not be released- besides its single player only.
I am having great difficulty in converting SFC models over to it- the game requires ships to be in hideous ".X" format. The modding tutorial instructs me to have my ship in ".3ds" format, and use a program called LithUnWrap to convert this ".3ds" to ".X". First off, whenever I attempt to convert a ".mod" to ".3ds", I have noticed that the 3DMax 4.2 I possess strips the model of its textures. Continuing on, I attempt to import this new ".3ds" into LithUnWrap... the tutorial shows a Babylon 5 ship in this program (via a series of thoughtful screenshots) as a 3-D image, and in that program's Materials list, its lists only a 'shipmap'.... well, I get a flat image with all the vertices or whatever splayed out flat, and the Material's list shows the parts like saucerbp, nacelle, so on.
Okay, so I wrote the tutorial's writer, but I think this problem is going way over his head, and he kind of ignores me. I asked DamoclesX, he had me use a rare ".obj" importer/exporter, and had me try to export the ".mod" as an ".obj", in hopes that would preserve the model's original textures (with instructions to shove this into Deep Exploration, and use it to export as ".3ds", so I could carry on)- no dice. The ".obj" exporter has a horrid list of things to choose and check off- either way, I reset 3DMax, and try to import this new ".obj"... it shows as basically nothing. DamoclesX has now lost interest as well, as the list from 3DMax's ".obj" exporter I tried to read to him... you get the idea.
So, I ask you-
1)What can I do with infernal Max to get it to preserve the textures of a ".mod" as it converts to ".3ds"? Is THIS normal behavior?
2)Why would this other program show it all flattened, with wild listings, instead of a shipmap? Are ".mod"'s usually in pieces; should this ".3ds" be in one single piece, or am I barking up the wrong tree?
3)Seems like ".mod", except for usage with SFC, is a worthless format, like that darned ".x" format I'm trying to get it to in the first place.

I can send you a copy of LithUnwrap, its freeware, if you are interested in this problem. The tutorial I speak of is at-
koti.mbnet.fi/sfhaven/tutorial1.php
so you can see this ghost chase for yourself...
Thank you for your thoughts and time.

[Tus]

The loss of textures is not normal, when u import the .mod file to max you should see it textured in the window, if this doesn't happen there are 2 possible problbems.

1. The .mod importer/exporter that u are using is corrupted, delete the files and dled them again.

2. the textures are not in the folder.

thats all i can think of atm

[Reverend]

Thank you Tus, but I meant that I lose the textures when I convert to .3ds; you know, when I reopne the newly created .3ds, it has no textures.... the original .mod is fine.

[CaptainPierce]

I've had some problems, when converting from another format (not .mod) to .3ds, that Max won't quite know where the textures are, and they need to be "re-assigned" somehow... StressPuppy told me how to do it once, but darned if I can remember now, sorry.

.mod's are usually, from what I gather, in one piece (aside from _brk.mods, of course ). SFC2/OP doesn't require this, and models with more than one piece work fine (and indeed a lot of the Trekmods SFC2 "beta" releases I've made are in more than one piece), but IIRC they have to be in one piece for SFC3.

And most proprietary game model formats are useless outside of the game they're designed for. SFC .mod, Homeworld .peo, Homeworld 2 .hod, etc. .x, incidentally, is not a proprietary game format, it's part of Direct X. Back in the old old days of Homeworld modding, I remember having to convert models into .x for use with particular "hardpointing" utility with 3D Exploration (the parent of Deep Exploration, which you mention), and it was a fairly simple process (well, aside from some bugs in that utility ). Perhaps, once somebody helps you get the bugs out of the .mod -> .3ds conversion, you could try using Deep Exploration for the .3ds -> .x conversion?

[Wicked Zombie]

No model has to be a single piece for any of the SFC games. In SFC3's case, it just helps with the dynamic LOD system - of course the butchered game engine ruins the look of the models anyway so the dLOD issue isn't that important. If someone's computer can't run a few 4000+ polygon models, it probably can't run the game either. I also doubt a low-res-ified ship from the dLOD system would look good under any circumstances, so a few gaping holes in the hull would be a bit superfluous.

Er, in case it wasn't obvious, I'm not fond of SFC3's rendering system especially after spending so much time in setting up smoothing groups and other details on ships only to have them tossed out the window by the very game that uses them.

Also, welding everything together increases the polygon count and makes things more difficult when/if you want to kitbash or modify your ship later. Though it does help get rid of shadows and overlapping bugs so it's kind of a pick and choose situation.
-

As for the missing textures, other than trying the afore mentioned Deep Exploration program, you could take a look at Max's "Material Editor" and "Material Map Browser" (usually found in the Edit menu). From there you can either redirect the program to the texture location, or reassign the textures to the model...the later of which is a long and arduous process where my ships are concerned . From the sound of things, there's definitely a hitch either with Max or LithUnwrap and their conversions. Some versions of the .3ds format don't meld too well with other programs and converters.

Typically, when a .mod is imported then exported out as a .3ds file, the textures stay applied. Depending on what version of Max, it may even ask you before completing the process if you want the materials to stay assigned.

Deep Exploration (or 3d Exploration if you can find an older copy) is the best bet and you can try exporting the mod to various other formats and then reconverting it with Exploration.

As for the 'flattened' look, I'm assuming you mean the texture window itself. It may be combining all of the surfaces into one (looking like a jumble of wireframes) and ignoring the original mapping coordinates for whatever reason.

And yes, the .mod format is a fairly useless format beyond SFC though it's fairly stable compared to some others. It'd be nice if game makers would standardize these things so people like us don't get seizures trying to convert them.

Finally, as I tend to remind everyone (even myself), there's always a solution to a problem. Finding it just depends on the time, abilities, and willingness of those searching for it.

[Reverend]

Awesome; thanks for the good words guys... good to know I still have a little room to move in. Here is the game I am fooling with-
www.malfador.com/
It does seem somehow that ".mod" is pretty stable, I agree. This is all just for practice, in case my dream game actually is completed.
BTW, I have been trying to hassle these guys into completeing this game what could be (warning!-bold statement ahead!!!) the ultimate (Star Trek) game, as its engine seems perfect, to me, and they seem to intone they have serious moddablility planned. Immersive, strong AI, completely continuous 3-D space, interactive environment, different levels of play, fully multiplayer capable, but not MMO.... its like Nexus, Eve Online and SFC rolled together! And since I found interest, it is naturally cursed- they likely won't complete it at all. I still have a few ideas to help up my sleeves, but here is the project, just for fun-
www.eschaton-online.com/index.html

Thanks for the help guys-