[Commander Zane]

I'd also like to point out that each of those ships belong to a different species and had their models made in rather large gaps between time.

However between the three the Hatsheput looks the best, but that's mostly just because of the fact that it's newer than the Hecate or Ravana.

If the Colossus was textured already and the Sathanas was HTL'ed with textures as well then such a comparison could be debated, but even then each species has a different appearance so texture styles would still remain different.

[General Battuta]

Hatshepsut, no question.

[Dragon]

Hatshepsut is much newer, plus I'd like to know the resolution of it's texture.

[bkd86]

Well the way around having to use a huge UV is to break it down onto several UVs (I don't know if the engine supports). 4 512k maps would give much better detail than 1 1024 etc.

[Commander Zane]

Plus we'll get the best results once the model becomes available so we can experement with lighting.

[Aardwolf]

Well the way around having to use a huge UV is to break it down onto several UVs (I don't know if the engine supports). 4 512k maps would give much better detail than 1 1024 etc.

The engine definitely supports that! Or, you could use some UV and some tiled! Hmmm, I'm repeating what's already been said, oh my! 

[Enioch]

4 512k maps would give much better detail than 1 1024 etc.

4 times 512 squared is 1048576 pixels

and 1024 squared is 1048576 pixels.

So, your total canvas size is the same. 4 512 maps are the same as a 1024 map. And they're a worse option, because there's four of them, which slow the engine down.

The fewer (and thus bigger, but nobody's perfect) your maps are, the better.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Well the way around having to use a huge UV is to break it down onto several UVs (I don't know if the engine supports). 4 512k maps would give much better detail than 1 1024 etc.

Errr, no that would provide the exact same in-game texture resolution for approximately 1/4 of the performance a single 1024 res map would offer once you factor in glow shine and normal maps.

About the topic at hand personally I think in general UV mapping (assuming good texture painting) yields the highest quality by far for your average destroyer scale or below, and it's the fastest for the game to render and the neatest file-organisation wise.

Something the size of the big C however...ugh I dunno. It would benefit so much from AO, but using even several large UVs strikes me as being impractical and still insufficient to provide good close up detail. A hybrid approach might work in some respects but the lack of AO on the tiled bits would mean AO on the UVmapped bits would look pretty out of place, and hence you'd lose one of the big advantages of UVmapping anyway. :\

[Colonol Dekker]

Whact's AO ambient occlusion? Shadows?
 
I honestly don't know.

[Aardwolf]

Whact's AO ambient occlusion? Shadows?
 
I honestly don't know.

AO. Stands for Ambient Occlusion. Basically, the more 'sky' you can see from a point on the model, the lighter it is. If no 'sky' is visible (i.e. it's surrounded by opaque stuff, like a fighterbay, or an armpit)... it's dark.

[Water]

Whact's AO ambient occlusion? Shadows?
 
I honestly don't know.

Both are the same model, same uv's, one has a white texture map the other has ambient occlusion added. The ambient occlusion can take from 10 min to several hours to calculate. Once it's done though the model looks slightly better. Think of it as lighting on an overcast day, without strong sunlight or strong shadows.

[Colonol Dekker]

The penny drops now, baking AO is unpossible with tiled textures. So this is yet another map on top of bump, shine and glow?

[Mongoose]

I'm no texture person, but I think ambient occlusion is something added to the base diffuse map, not another layer in and of itself.  You can use it when you UV map, because every part of the texture is going to be applied to one specific location, but it doesn't work with tile maps, because one texture segment is used all over the place, and so any shadowing in one location would look completely out-of-place in another.

[Water]

The penny drops now, baking AO is unpossible with tiled textures. So this is yet another map on top of bump, shine and glow?

Mongoose covered it pretty well. It just gets added to the diffuse map. You would need a second uv layer to do it with tiles. One uv layer for the tiles the other for the light map texture. Tiled textures never went out of use. Some of them can be really hard to spot as they got really good at using them. Some games now have a 2nd uv layer just for the extra lighting map.

For some cool info on tiling try  http://www.amc.ro/ In the Shares section there are some pdf tutorials on creating next gen environments. The tiling is achieved by using polygons, and a single texture map. To make a textured wall five times longer you copy the poly four times. Won't help with the Colossus though.

[Raven2001]

I'd like to point out three high-poly capital ships: the Hecate uses tile maps, the Ravana uses a hybrid of tiles and UVs, and the new Hatshepsut uses UVs only.

Which looks best?

That's an unfair comparison. The Hecate and the Ravana were done what? 5 years ago? Neither me (the modeler) nor you (the texturer) knew what we know today, both artistically and technically. In fact, that's why I asked you for their UVed meshes, because I want to get back to them when I get a chance. Also, both you and I know that the Ravana doesn't use an hybrid approach as it could have... the only part that uses UV is the triangle windows. That's what? 5% of its surface?

But since you asked which one looked better, take a look at the attached image. Atleast the Ravana and Hecate don't suffer from all that artifacting, not to mention bluriness in some parts. And thats not as close as we will be able to get on an Hatshepsut... So yeah, even without baked AO and other fancy stuff, the Hecate and Ravana do still look better in my eyes. And I'm fairly sure most people will think the same, once they get the chance to get close and personal with it in game.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Commander Zane]

That was the result of someone else messing with the model's smoothing, the textures are not really that borked and the Hatshesput's corners are not that rounded out.

Sub polygon displacement. more of a test how it'd work out



also, it managed to crap out one of my pc's...

[Snail]

I don't actually like the Ravana at all. It looks like someone just decided to put a bunch of ugly triangle girders all over it.


NOTE: the personal opinion of this member is a load of bollocks and shouldn't be taken seriously.

[Commander Zane]

Anyone ever look at ragingloli's Photobucket account?

[Snail]

Link?

[Commander Zane]

http://s676.photobucket.com/home/lulzifer/index

Unfortunately it also bears some bad news...