[Akalabeth Angel]

Hey, I just spent the better part of four or so hours trying to make my first model with Truespace. I'm about 80% done but when I looked over at some of the fighters and such found within the VPs I noticed that their models are a lot more simple. A thrust port for instance on one of the models has about 4 facings whereas mine has about 12. I'm not sure about the polygon count, but my model's already at about 1200 facings. So I'm guessing that its too detailed for the game???

  Here's some pics of the model. It's supposed to be a Dilgar fighter for the Babylon Project (I'm not involved in the project, just planning to make some MODs of my own to compliment it). The fighter still needs a cockpit and 8 claw like projections on the rear fuselage area, so obviously the face/polygon count will go up more.

[Starfury]

You're in luck.  SCP Fairly recently released a version of FS2 that's Direct3D supported, and therefore the models can be MUCH more detailed..  So, from what I've been led to understand, your model is barely scratching the surface of a fighter right now ( 2 - 5000 polys )

[aldo_14]

Uh oh.  I think you may have a few problems with yer booleaning there - it looks like a lot of stuff is not actually attached to vertices with edges, which means the face where it intersects won't be shown.....

Regulst (no H T&L) Fs has a limit of about 850 polys per subobject, and 500 overall.  You may need to triangulate that model to get it's textures to display properly, too.

[GT-Keravnos]

I love the dilgar, and I salute your effort !

[GT-Keravnos]

You do know about the B5 homeworld mod that has some dilgars. Maybe it could help you some...

I don't know, converting them over here maybe..

I can't find screenshots but I remember it was REALLY COOL!

Here it is, (in beta form)

http://www.tgu.org.uk/users/gw/gw5/TDI_Beta1_0.zip

[karajorma]

Nice model. It will probably only work in the HT&L build of freespace but who cares? I've already gone over to building HT&L models only and the rest of the modding community are probably following suite anyway.

[mikhael]

Aldo is right. You need to check some of the geometry on the wing struts. You'll also want to subdivide all the surfaces down to 3 and 4 point polys.

For vanilla FS2 use, you should consider subdividing it into seperate subsystems too.

[Deepblue]

Maybe its cause freespace models were done in Max.

[KARMA]

with FSO it would probably work althought intersections, you just can't be sure of the result until you try it in game: Bobbau's enhancements of z-buffer code made the engine more flexible in those situations.
Btw remember it is ALWAYS better to avoid intersections and make solid objects
about pcount..IIRC with FSO you can have around 3000 polys x subobject ( limits have been already bumped in actual FSO), but until the HT&L system will be released, it is better in my opinion to don't go over around 1500 polys for a fighter.
You can reduce a lot the pcount, consider that you vasted a lot of polys in many points.
With a wise use of the shadings, you don't need overdetailed circular shapes; for example, on a shape so small like a fighter, a cylinder of around 12-16 edges will always look like perfectly smoothed, therefore you can reduce a lot the pcount without loosing much quality

[aldo_14]

I never knew Bob had worked on the z-buffer...........  neat.

[KARMA]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,16586.0.html

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,16727.0.html

[Akalabeth Angel]

Uh oh. I think you may have a few problems with yer booleaning there - it looks like a lot of stuff is not actually attached to vertices with edges, which means the face where it intersects won't be shown.....

   Yeah, I dunno what the hell I'm doing. I think the thrust pods on the wings are one model but the rest is just glued together as the same hierarchy or whatever. I tried making the wings one model and the program complained about something not being right. I haven't really found any good tutorials for truespace, just one on Kara's telling me what some of the buttons did. I've only got TS 3.2 and there's a few tutorials in there but it just goes by really fast and its hard to see what's actually going on.

For vanilla FS2 use, you should consider subdividing it into seperate subsystems too.

  Uh, sounds good but I don't know how to do that

Btw remember it is ALWAYS better to avoid intersections and make solid objects about pcount..IIRC with FSO you can have around 3000 polys x subobject ( limits have been already bumped in actual FSO), but until the HT&L system will be released, it is better in my opinion to don't go over around 1500 polys for a fighter.

   Well as I said I tried to join the two parts of the wings but TS didn't like what I was doing for some reason. It looks as though I should probably just re-do the model with less detail. This was alright for a learning experience. After I do a model I'd like to send it over to someone so they could tell me what I've done wrong, but even posting the image here has obvious shown some errors in what I'm doing.

[Unknown Target]

Ok, two things about the model:

1) Too simple for that many polygons. Try to make the cylinders a little less round

2) Fix that wing geometry Select and snap those vertexes together, don't make the wing section go into the other.


Oh, yea, and Bob bumped the counts out insanely, so you're model is OK as it is, I'm just saying it's a bit too simple for that many polies

[Akalabeth Angel]

Oh, yea, and Bob bumped the counts out insanely, so you're model is OK as it is, I'm just saying it's a bit too simple for that many polies

   Yeah, well the fighter is just a bunch of cylinders when you get down to it. Nothing special. I'll try a new model and see how it goes. I think I can do the wings in one object but yeah,  I tried to join the wings into one object but TS didn't let me. Is there a "snap to point" for the vertices in TS 3.2 just like Adobe Illustrator? Because I have Ill 10 so I'm a bit familiar with that kinda thing.

[karajorma]

Have you tried the Boolean union option? I suspect that is what you are looking for.

[Bobboau]

that will work technicaly, but man, try to make it out of one subobject, it just looks like a bunch of cylinders glued together

[KARMA]

Yes, build them as solid objects, intersections doesn't work always, we tryed to convert some models from xwaupgrade (wich are all built with tons of interceptions). Some work but some  (namely the bwing) have some "bad intersections", with this result:
 
actually I'm building a new really overdetailed mesh specific for HT&L

from what I can see from your pic, it is very possible that the wing pylons will create some weird effects in game

[Bobboau]

have you tryed that model in FSO recently?
I made some changes to the z buffer that (c|sh)ould fix that

[KARMA]

well the test was done by sigma with -i think- the most recent build of fso, btw I'll tell him to update the exe and redo the test.
anyway, I opened the model in truespace to use it as reference and, believe me, it is a bit odd, some intersections  don't create "clean" edges, that means there are some very "ambiguous" situations that I imagine can easily generate those problems

[Unknown Target]

Bob, does your latest thing with the T&L include everything you've done?


Namely the Z-Buffer, Specular Highlighting, T&L (Duh ), ship trails, etc?