[DahBlount]

Looks great! I really can't wait for this to be finished.

[whitearrow]

Hi guys! I've been away for a while... busy with university things... 

Here are some screenshots of my recent progress on the detail side. I hope you like them...

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Uploaded with ImageShack.com

Uploaded with ImageShack.com

[BritishShivans]

Oh, lovely job, here.

[Enioch]

Hng.

I have no idea how you plan to unwrap / texture that, and I can only wish you good luck. I will be glad to see it released in 2024. [/pessimism]

Seriously though, excellent greebling.

[whitearrow]

Hng.

I have no idea how you plan to unwrap / texture that, and I can only wish you good luck. I will be glad to see it released in 2024. [/pessimism]

Seriously though, excellent greebling.

Know what? Neither do I have an idea how to unwrap it... but anyway I think that I can make it by december 2023...

[rhettro]

Really nice design. In the future if you up the level of ray tracing samples in the Cycles rendering engine, it will take away that grainy look.

[whitearrow]

good tip, thanks!

[The Dagger]

I really love the details but I'm worried on the polycount. How much tris does your model have?

[whitearrow]

ehm... 225000... 
Anyway you can read the polycount on the screenshot itself: in the upper side there is a gray bar, by the center of which there's the counter. But I'm planning to re-design those railguns under the plates: each couple is over 4000 faces...

[The Dagger]

Ouch... Nice work though.

[Nyctaeus]

IMHO it doesn't look like for 225k polys. Most of the polys are hidden in turrets and detail clusters, while most of the hull is empty. It makes very big imparity between. As for the turrets, spending 2/3 of the ship polys for small parts like turrets doesn't make any sense at all, as most of these polys are unnotibacle ingame, but have very big impact on engine. I think there is tremendous waste of polys in the model. On the other side I appreciate all of the pretty details you've made here. I see your skills incrased

[Droid803]

Detail is great, looks great too...if you're making a render model. Some of it is kind of unnecessary for a game model, especially if it gets in the way of mapping.

I cannot advise in the slightest modelling super-detail that you have no idea how to actually UVmap or texture. The median outcome of that is a model that's never finished, aka. worthless waste of effort. That happens too much.

Then again this is all coming from a noskill-lowpoly n00bmodeller so take it with a grain of salt. Some people certainly do pull of beautiful detailed models, and UVmap them, which I find mind-boggling!

[whitearrow]

I checked it out: the problem is the curvy elements, not the greebling itself. Hitting "limited dissolve" just kills half the polys, but I'm not confident in proceeding that way, because I think it could cause problems during the unwrapping phase. I'll try to replace all those pipes with someting else. Thus, Betrayal is right about the main body's poly count: it's 20k actually.

[Droid803]

you could probably just replace the cylinders that make up the smaller pipes with cylinders that have fewer sides.

[Shivan Hunter]

I haven't followed this very closely, which was a mistake as that is an amazing model. It's heavy and angular, yet sleek- like a cross between UEF design and Esarai's fleet, maybe an advanced Fedayeen prototype.

[BritishShivans]

I imagined it as some kind of advanced Fedayeen prototype too, maybe a potential future flagship, even. That's what I love the most about this model - it's a major departure from the usual UEF aesthetics, but adheres to it in this way that you can easily think of it as being a UEF ship, but without bringing up the usual i.e Karunas, Narayanas, etc.

[whitearrow]

yes, it is meant to be an advance prototype: its foward beam cannon is absolutely a new technology for UEF.

you could probably just replace the cylinders that make up the smaller pipes with cylinders that have fewer sides.

Well, IMHO the problem is the fact that they have to be heavily facetted if you want them to warp smoothly. A straight cylinder is composed, at worse, by 32 facets. But a warped cylinder is made of over 500 facets. So, firstly I'll try to manually remove unnecessary polys from those straight sections which don't need them. In the case it's not sufficient I'll try to simplify the shape... I let you know...

[Phantom Hoover]

I admittedly know nothing about modelling, but I agree with Droid that it seems like there's a risk here that your reach will exceed your grasp and you'll end up with a gorgeous model you can't texture. All this extra detail does add a lot to the basic model you had; but not as much as textures would. I don't know, could you consider setting the detailed version aside (for now, at least) and working on maps for something more manageable?

[whitearrow]

I was considering that option too. Moreover I think that some of those details can be successfully baked into textures. Anyway, I deleted half of the warped elements by now, and this killed about 50k tris without noticeably altering the model.

[majorvader111]

ehm... 225000... 
Anyway you can read the polycount on the screenshot itself: in the upper side there is a gray bar, by the center of which there's the counter. But I'm planning to re-design those railguns under the plates: each couple is over 4000 faces...

Hell  theres not way this is going into freespace blueplanet at war, sins has a 40000 triangle limit.