mtl file I need to manually make itno a sml?

No, SpaceEngine does the conversion, you have to manually correct wrong texture path, usually. And adding bump maps, specular maps... if you have it or you make it.

And for some reason no matter what I do with the obj once in should result In SE making a file?

The reason it does make a file is because you prepared a .sss file with a <nameofyourobjfile>.cfg in it, as described in the manual - creating a ship, under "Importing the model from the *.obj format".

is it possible to have just the mesh show up wo texture so atleast you can know if your on the right track?

Never tried. If you don't provide a mtl material file, the cfg file will be without material list, it means you'll have to manually add what it needs, as per manual.

Also how do you know if the model has defects?

If SE doesn't create the mesh, and there are errors in console or in se.log, then you should open your original file in your 3d editor and check for usual issues, like degenerate vertices, flipped normals, duplicated points...

Edit:
On second thought, if there are no replies yet and yours is the last post, you may prefer to edit that post instead of creating another one

I'm not sure what you mean at the end.. But anyway I created the sss as stated in the manual. I have checked my file paths over and over... I do have an mtl file with my obj. So once I have done those things SE should create the additional files at least from what I understand. But in my case it is not:(( I have really have no option but to throw in the towel bc my SE log shows my sss but no errors concerning the obj... I really hate this. I would literally drive a couple hundred miles to learn how to do this.. I am beyond frustrated.. Thanks for the input. Evidently I am not savvy enough or lack the understanding. idk thanks.

How do you create a star cluster?

I added the wrong file a second ago. here is the mtl created with blender. Does this look about like what I should be seeing? I still cant get SE to convert. There has to be some simple error that I am making somewhere. My file paths are correct.

And now I'm trying to make a mod where lifeless terras have the old ugly default rivers, while the lifeterras get the rivers designed by Rodrigo:

I also noticed the texture files in the DATA folder for the Surface pak, in the 6 separate folders of neg_x, neg_y, neg_z, pos_x, pos_y, pos_z have black and white pictures with the suffix "_a" and the color pictures have the suffix "_c". The texture files in the ADDONS SolarSystemHD Earth-Surface-PBC-16k.pak folders all have the landmasses cut out of the PNG (made transparent), and do not have separate "_a" and "_c" versions of each. I figured I would only use higher resolution versions of my map to make additional pak files that do have transparent holes, later on.

I had trouble trying to create an alpha channel for an RBGA PNG in Photoshop though. So I simply used CubeMap to make the 2047 files in the Surface folders, added the suffix “_c” to each one with a batch renamer. Then I converted all of those to black and white greyscale versions and added the suffix “_a” to each one. So then I had the same number (4,094) of file as in the Earth's Surface folders, in the Data folder. I made sure the Base files also had their respective suffix.

Rather than using the pre-loaded values of 8192 x 4096, I created a RAW version of map at 10800 x 5400 because I noticed the Base Bump PNG was 675 x 337 (Which is 10800/16 x 5400/16). I was then able to use CubeMap to make the 6 folders with the same number of files (511) that the Earth's bump folder has.

I named these two folders with the 6 position sub-folders after the name of the planet, Toril-Bump-PBC & Toril-Surface-PBC

Why don't my new textures work?

So I have a text file saved as the user-eng-db.cfg for the description of my planets in my add on, but the descriptions are not showing up in game

tornadotodd wrote:
is it possible to have just the mesh show up wo texture so atleast you can know if your on the right track?

Never tried. If you don't provide a mtl material file, the cfg file will be without material list, it means you'll have to manually add what it needs, as per manual.

Material	"dump_test"
{
	// just a solid red color, nothing more
	DiffColor       (1.0 0.5 0.5)
}

Unit     1.0
Length   4.3114
Mass     9.9973e+012
Material "dumb_test"

Tornadotodd, why are files .txt?

I added the wrong file a second ago. here is the mtl created with blender. Does this look about like what I should be seeing? I still cant get SE to convert. There has to be some simple error that I am making somewhere. My file paths are correct.

I imported for you. here the pak file.

The model was full of errors. many faces with wrong normals; it is also decentralized and crooked. mtl was ok.
I corrected errors in blender and imported.

when I have time, I will prepare a visual guide to import ships

I added the wrong file a second ago. here is the mtl created with blender. Does this look about like what I should be seeing? I still cant get SE to convert. There has to be some simple error that I am making somewhere. My file paths are correct.

I imported for you. here the pak file.

The model was full of errors. many faces with wrong normals; it is also decentralized and crooked. mtl was ok.
I corrected errors in blender and imported.

when I have time, I will prepare a visual guide to import ships