[The Dagger]

I'd say the neck is fine, but the rear armor plates have a lot less detail than the rest.

[Rodo]

Indeed, but I'm guessing that's an area he has not touched as of now.


On other topic slightly related to this, is there a reason why laser turrets are always represented with button turrets, just as the beams?
I mean I'd expect them to be smaller multipart turrets of some sort.

Note that I'm not saying the Deimos should have lasers morphed to multipart (though that would be quite cool), instead I'm wondering why V went that way when making the models, maybe some hardware limitation or the likes?

[Mongoose]

From what I remember, the retail engine didn't support multipart turrets on any axes other than straight up and down, so would have been limited to using simple blister turrets for the sides.  Now why that limitation was in the engine in the first place is another question...

[Hades]

An idea I've always played around with buttons is being, the 'button' that we see is just the 'crater' the turret sits in, and it acts as armor/cover for the turret. Of course, the issue with this is that it seriously restricts FoV.

I'm also considering leaving the armor plating on the back undetailed. It gives it a sort of shell look and makes it fairly unique.

[Ulala]

I love it.

[Rodo]

I'm also considering leaving the armor plating on the back undetailed. It gives it a sort of shell look and makes it fairly unique.

A lot of detail can be added from textures, but please consider adding some kind of separation on the mesh around the missile launchers.
Something like the gap used on the rear beam turrets maybe, just to make it clear that the launchers are "not part" of the rear plating.

[The Dagger]

^This. And maybe some visual break (an inset?) where the curvy plates meet each other.

[Aesaar]

I'm also considering leaving the armor plating on the back undetailed. It gives it a sort of shell look and makes it fairly unique.

I think it makes it look unfinished.  I strongly suggest you greeble it like you did the rest of the flatter bits of hull.

[esarai]

It's possible to make detailed shells, come on man.

[Phantom Hoover]

It's also possible to have a ship that looks good without being encrusted with greebles.

[Luis Dias]

The "horror of emptiness" is a common mistake many (newbie) artists make in any endeavour.

Hades does not need advice, but to anyone else disagreeing with the "lack of greeble" on any given square meter, I'd say this: you can have a whole big smooth plate and still make it extremely high quality if you accompany it with a very detailed finish or recess or something. Homeworld designers perfected this design strategy: make huge plates and then extremely narrow detailed parts that were able to capture the scale of the ships.

This way you have your cake and eat it too: detailed greebles that give you a sense of scale, not too much work because you only have to fine detail 10% or less of the mesh, not too much noise on the screen that would obliterate the effort put on it, not too many polies or textures that would overwhelm the GPU.

[Enioch]

Yes, but if you choose to follow that school of design, follow it across the whole ship.

Hades has detailed the front armor to a ridiculous extent, to the point where an 'empty' rear would really clash with the over-detailed front.

[esarai]

I see what you're getting at, Luis Dias, but here it doesn't work because it produces such a heavy imbalance in the model.  The entire front section constitutes the 'narrow detailed part' and it's half of the whole ship.  The 'monolithic armor slab' appearance is defeated by giving small details the same visual area as the armor slabs, and they end up feeling discontinuous with the rest of the ship.  For the rear armor plates, I'm not saying we need super-dense tech greeble.  Just some minor surface details that integrate the plates to the rest of the ship, because right now they don't flow well. 

From another perspective, Hades has already done a magnificent job on the monolithic armor slab thing, padding each major section with a very nice amount of detail that frames the heavy armor.  That's not going on in the rear section.  There's no small detail to convey a sense of scale, unlike the front sections.

Perhaps some small trenches outlining the different plates.  That's at minimum what we need, because the rest of the ship uses them so heavily and then you get to the rear sector and everything suddenly starts flowing together with no detail spacing it out.

EDIT:

Hehe Enioch you ninja'd me.

[Luis Dias]

I agree with the "small trenches" separating the plates' comment.

[An4ximandros]

So Hades, when are you planning to start UVing this baby?

Too many greebles if you ask me. There are some so small you wont even notice them once they are textured and in-game, so I ask, why even have them? (Look between the trench splitting the front for an example.)

[Raven2001]

I see what you're getting at, Luis Dias, but here it doesn't work because it produces such a heavy imbalance in the model.

This... I actually would advocate getting rid of some greebling in the front section, to re-balance the model. Not add greebles in the back. I don't see what the fear of ungreebled surfaces is all about :\
And the Deimos looks so beautifull without greebles, because its form is well designed.

[Flaser]

Aren't we kinda forgetting that the engine also has normal maps now? Hades could've had using that in mind to detail the rear.

[Buckshee Rounds]

Don't you have to model the details first to make normals off of?

[An4ximandros]

Afair, when I asked the same question, (this year?) I was told it was one of two ways of doing it, and the most inefficient FSO-wise.

[Mongoose]

Let's step back for a second and appreciate the fact that the past several posts have been telling Hades to both add AND take away some greebles.