[esarai]

Your ship (when I first saw it, anyway) looks a lot like a ship in my "Some Non-FS Models" thread in Fan Art or whatever that board is now called. (It's one of the most recently posted ships there)

I See what you mean. The blue one, right?

Oooh.
That looks like the 'cruiser'-sized counterpart to this juggernaut thing.

WOAH. SCARY!  I agree it needs moar detail. Be careful of those awesome non-vertical/horizontal multi-part turrets. Those are a pain to make work in FS.

[esarai]

Okay, update!

I installed all the guns and the full LOD0 polycount shot up to 24,604. That's LOD0. Just take away all the guns and you get 17,000.

So the LOD plan is this:

LOD0: at 4500 m (a little more than 1/2 ship length) you see the whole thing. Guns, greebles and everything else.
LOD1: at 4500-9000m you see only the greebles. The guns turn off, and reduce the poly count.
LOD2: at 9000-18000m there will be only the base hull. No greeb or guns. I may change this to LOD3 and make LOD2 be where the greebles get flattened out into single planes to reduce greeb poly count by 3/4ths.

So far there are 169 different guns on board: 84 Light Advanced Lasers, 58 Advanced Lasers or AAA guns, 12 beams of TerSlash or similar class, and 15 primary beam cannons similar to LRBGreen.

This ship is not to be underestimated.

The advanced laser is an upgrade to the standard terran laser turrets. They have been upgraded with higher velocity and more punching power to make them effective at engaging anything from a fighter to another juggernaut.

There is a weakness, however. There are no guns guarding the gap between the forward spires. enter there and you can pick this ship apart. It's kinda like the Death Star. Get past the outer defenses and only another fighter can stop you.

[Droid803]

Well, the polys are still withing safe limits, especially for a one-of-a-kind juggernaut.
You could probably start reducing the smaller greebles at LOD1, really, because some of the detail is designed for when you're up close, no? Or are you using detail boxes for that?

[esarai]

Well, the polys are still withing safe limits, especially for a one-of-a-kind juggernaut.

YAY!

You could probably start reducing the smaller greebles at LOD1, really, because some of the detail is designed for when you're up close, no?

Very true... at the range for LOD1 there won't be much difference between a flat plane and a squished box.

Or are you using detail boxes for that?

What are those? If they can optimize this ship even further, I'd love to hear about them.

[nvsblmnc]

169 guns has made me wonder something - what's the maximum number of turrets that any ship will use at one time?

I know the number of turrets attacking a single target varies with difficulty, but what's the maximum number of targets?  I'd hate to see a ship with nearly 200 guns never fire more than 25% of them at any given time.

[Jadehawk]

Some really small details you may have on the hull can be deleted from the model and replaced by a nicely done normal as long as they are simple and rectangular. 

[esarai]

169 guns has made me wonder something - what's the maximum number of turrets that any ship will use at one time?

I know the number of turrets attacking a single target varies with difficulty, but what's the maximum number of targets?  I'd hate to see a ship with nearly 200 guns never fire more than 25% of them at any given time.

As I heard it, there is a limit on the number of turrets engaging a single target, but I've never heard of a limit on number of engageable targets. So unless there's something I missed somewhere, in theory there is no limit. I wonder if that only applies to beam cannons, since I've had corvettes use every non-beam weapon they had on me before.

It's either that or how much your computer whines at you for it.

Some really small details you may have on the hull can be deleted from the model and replaced by a nicely done normal as long as they are simple and rectangular. 

... I know the basic idea behind normals, but how exactly do you give one object another's normal? I think that's called "Normal Mapping," isn't it?

[Topgun]

what program do you use to model?
All hail Queen Zeal!

[Jadehawk]

Some really small details you may have on the hull can be deleted from the model and replaced by a nicely done normal as long as they are simple and rectangular. 

... I know the basic idea behind normals, but how exactly do you give one object another's normal? I think that's called "Normal Mapping," isn't it?
[/quote]

Yes normal mapping. There is a thread in this very forum (hear the top and it's a sticky) that gives you an idea on how they are made. By adjusting the  creation of the normal in such a program as Crazybump can give you control on how deep (or raised for that matter) you want to make the lines. This gives the impression of an...well an impression on the surface of the CG model.

[Krelus]

Didn't really go through the thread to see if you'd decided on a name, but I'd like to suggest the Odysseus.

[esarai]

what program do you use to model?

I used Blender for this model. I've been tinkering around in 3DS Max, and have a pretty interesting "Strike Corvette" coming down the line. 

[esarai]

We has shiny.



The second version of the texturing as seen in PCS2. Now, to get all those turrets working.

[Stormkeeper]

Oooo. Preeeeetty.

[Krelus]

We has shiny.



The second version of the texturing as seen in PCS2. Now, to get all those turrets working.

Ooo, me likey. Very detailed, but not cluttered. Well done!

[esarai]

Thank you!

There's a problem.... the ship only reads 84 of the guns. There are four designations of turret: turretXXa, turretXXb, turretXXc, turretXXd. If two turrets have the same XX value but are different, say class a and c, then it chooses only one of them and leaves the other out. I can't manually assemble the turrets because my install of pcs hates my guts. Any suggestions to solve this?

I'm loading the model in as all the original subobjects, not having been thrown together in TrueSpace. Would assembling subobjects that could be only one subobject help allow for more turrets?

[Droid803]

I think it may take the a b and c as LODs or something, so...just try going bigturretXX, smlturretXX, medturretXX, wtfturretXX.
Alternatively, I could try manually renaming the turrets for you in PCS2 (but why would it be in PCS2, wouldn't the naming be done before export from whatever program you made it in?)

[esarai]

I think it may take the a b and c as LODs or something, so...just try going bigturretXX, smlturretXX, medturretXX, wtfturretXX.

That might be so...  but eek... 169 turrets to rename.... 

Alternatively, I could try manually renaming the turrets for you in PCS2 (but why would it be in PCS2, wouldn't the naming be done before export from whatever program you made it in?)

It's not so much renaming turrets as telling PCS what is and is not a turret. All the subobjects and firing points are present in the model, correctly named and PCS can see them. The issue is that the Auto functions don't assemble a lot of them, and so you have to click the "new" icon in the turret editor, and then select the parent and physical objects and then a normal and firing point. This is a problem because setting the firing point is one of the things my PCS install refuses to handle. I have one of the most crapped installs of PCS ever. And no one knows what is wrong with it.

If you could fix up the turrets, I'll pack everything up and upload it to filefront or mediafire so you get it. It might be a bit, since I'm still working on the debris. Christos, this thing has a lot of debris. It's gonna be one hell of a fun time flying through the debris cloud this thing will make...

wtfturretXX.

rofl. 

[ssmit132]

We has shiny.
*Snip*

Very, very nice!

This is a problem because setting the firing point is one of the things my PCS install refuses to handle. I have one of the most crapped installs of PCS ever. And no one knows what is wrong with it.

I have a similar problem. It might be because I have two versions of PCS2 around - PCS 2.0.3 Stable (May 15 2008) always crashes when I try to view something that comes up with those 'orbs', but PCS 2.0 RC2a Release (Jan 18 2008) is all right with them.

[asyikarea51]

looks like a boxy version of a certain fighter plane from a certain show, if it was scaled down with many of the boxy features and stuff on the surface removed and/or cleaned up. XD

[Getter Robo G]

Actually it looks more like it could fit very well in the HW2 genre... 
Me likey though...