I've recently found
Starman01's old XQ2 platform model and started to polish it up. However, I'm by no means an expert modeller and things like UV unwrapping seem really hard to learn to do well quickly (that's one of the things I don't really have any prior experience of). So, I figured that why not see if someone outside the core team would be willing to help finish this thing?
Here's basically what needs to be done:
1. Improving the model itself. Things which currently look pretty bad are the central top antenna, the four other top radar/sensor/antenna blocks and the bottom antennas. Things which should get a little bit more detailing would be the three main platform arms. If you feel like some other part could be improved, you're welcome to do so. Also, a little bit of re-imagining doesn't hurt, so don't be afraid to change or add something canonical as long as it's not too drastic (for example, adding extra little hangars somewhere or extra features to the main platform arms, which are currently rather dull and empty, wouldn't be too drastic).
2. Creating the interior of both the central hangar (needs relatively lot of detailing) and the small hangar near the bottom (shouldn't need a lot). Currently the central hangar interior isn't even placeholder-textured.
3. Unwrapping the whole thing. Currently it's just hideously inefficiently and unclearly auto-unwrapped. However, this should of course come last, so no point doing that before the model has been declared final. When you edit the model, the placeholder texture mapping will of course become a bit screwed up, but nevermind that.
There's no need to worry about the details of model conversion, such as setting up helper objects, resetting x-form or such. I already have the conversion process set up and the current model working in-game as a placeholder, so that part isn't a problem.
So, if you think you'll want to help, grab the attached .zip containing the model in .max format along with the two placeholder textures used, and just do whatever tweaks you want and then post the working file for it (or PM a link to me if you don't want it to be public, however you want). Feel free to do as much or as little you want - if you don't fancy doing more than tweaking a single antenna, then that's perfectly fine. Feel free to post screenshots or just describe what you want to do if you want feedback on your idea before doing all the work, if you want. I only ask that you somehow clearly mark which objects you have changed: for example, a good way would be to hide, freeze or delete all the unchanged objects in the scene before posting it.
If several people submit conflicting changes, then I'll just simply pick the one we think is better. Of course, I doubt we'll get dozens of people working on this at the same time anyway, so non-minor conflicts should be pretty unlikely and not really worth worrying about much.
I'm hoping this will firstly help us get this station ready much quicker, get the first release out the door faster and grant considerable fame to the people who'll help accomplish that.
Note: the file is currently only in .max and Collada .dae format. If you need the file in a different format, please just say so. Anything 3ds Max 9 can export to, I can give you.[attachment deleted by admin]
