[archangel35757]

Hey guys, have you ever laid out the modeling philosophy and guidelines for the Star Wars Conversion project? 

What are the design guidelines for the new Normal Map feature?  When should normal mapping be used?  And when should higher polycounts with standard textures be used (in lieu of normal maps)?

What about cockpit models?  There's been some chatter on some of the forums about cockpits being separate models all-together rather than being built as subobjects within the ship model...  What is the SWC philosophy and guidelines for modeling cockpits (and pilot figures)?

What about "Detail Boxes" for larger capital ships, stations, etc.?  What is the SWC philosophy and guidelines for using detail boxes?  When should they be used (if at all)?  What are the pros/cons of detail boxes?  Will they "pop" into view rather than gradually blend into view?

Also, what should the scale and grid settings be in 3ds Max for making ships to be used in FS2 or SWC?

I look forward to reading the replies...

[chief1983]

The general philosophy is that these ships need to look good.  I mean good.  This game is gonna be sexy.  Since in space, all you have to look at is other ships, we have no reason not to have absolutely gorgeous models.  The more references there are for a ship, the more it needs to look like those references.  Any other ships that have only been invisioned in crude comic drawings and other games have more liberty given to the modeler as far as what it should look like.

Normal maps:  Currently not a stable feature, and even in 3.6.10 they'll require a very high end card to use them (Shader Model 3.0 is needed, even recent midrange cards aren't always compliant, only 2.0 typically).   So, the more we can do without, the better.  They'll be able to save us time creating the massive tiny greebles and fine details on a lot of ships, but really solid detail would probably be better on the mesh.  This has been the plan from the start essentially, as we've known about normals coming for quite some time.  Some of the really fine details on the ships may be used to generate normal/parallax maps, but for now we're just putting most detail in the mesh.

Cockpits that are seen from outside the ship will be modeled for all fighters, and possibly other ship types as well (bridges, anyone?).  The virtual cockpits will hopefully be able to be separate POFs in the near future, and save us the trouble of having to create those right now.

Detail boxes will see lots of use for the capital ships and other large structures.  We don't have an established set of guidelines for them, other than if you use them, use them right

Brand or Turambar will have to answer any Max questions.  But FS units are in Meters, it's just that I don't know how well the max pof exporter maintains units, and how well any other conversion steps treat them.  I'm pretty sure we've had a lot of luck with unit conversion with the exporter though.

[archangel35757]

Thanks for the reply... I found a thread pertaining to Detail Boxes containing a video from DaBrain where he added tons of detail boxes on Borg cubes and did some fighter-sweep fly-bys.  The problem that I see is that the surface is smooth and flat and then BOOM... a big box of details pops up.  This will totally kill the immersion aspects in my opinion.  The detail boxes he made extruded details both outward and inward on the detail box.  Perhaps it would be best to have the full outer mold line of the vessel modeled and then only allow the detail boxes to pop-inward only.  Just a thought.

What about playable turrets?  ...and what I mean by that is being able to put the ship on "autopilot" (have the AI fly the ship) while you the player man the turrets of say a YT-1300, or a Corvette, or any ship with turrets for that matter...???  And for ships having multiple turrets you should be able to TAB thru them...

Many months ago I broached this subject with Den Darkhill (one of the coders... and he said this is very doable but would require coding, IIRC), so has the SCP developed this type of turret playability?  Is it on the SWC coding list?  Speaking of which...

What coding changes/enhancements are needed for the SWC in order to create the feel of the Star Wars universe?  Are any coders presently working on any of these?

[chief1983]

There has been talk about adding some features for existing FS turrets, such as controlling them via the command console.  Having autopilot might also be doable, we'd probably have to talk Turey into looking at that.  There's not a lot of changes we 'need', but some we could definitely use to make our lives easier.  Turey is currently the only one offering to help us specifically.  The detail box demo was meant to look that way, in use the popup would hopefully be all but eliminated.  The video wasn't a practical application, just showing off the technology, if I recall.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Thanks for the reply... I found a thread pertaining to Detail Boxes containing a video from DaBrain where he added tons of detail boxes on Borg cubes and did some fighter-sweep fly-bys.  The problem that I see is that the surface is smooth and flat and then BOOM... a big box of details pops up.  This will totally kill the immersion aspects in my opinion.

He did that on purpose to show the way they worked. It's a trivial matter to tweak the distances on the boxes so they appear smoothly.

[Shade]

The problem that I see is that the surface is smooth and flat and then BOOM... a big box of details pops up.

This was done deliberately to show how detail boxes worked, by having large details pop up at a closer range. It was a demo video, so you had to be able to see what was going on. When used properly, the changes should be no more obvious than the already-occuring LOD changes, indeed perhaps even less so as you can tailor the popup distance to the size/visibility of the details in question and even nest the detail boxes inside each other to create a progressive increase in detail as one draws closer.

[Edit] Bah, beaten to it At least it's something that bears repeating, since I've heard that same argument based on that same video several times by now... it really should have come with a disclaimer...

[archangel35757]

thanks for the clarifications on Detail Boxes.

[chief1983]

Yeah, all 3 of them I'm sure

[Turey]

There has been talk about adding some features for existing FS turrets, such as controlling them via the command console.  Having autopilot might also be doable, we'd probably have to talk Turey into looking at that.

AI control of player ship is already possible. Human control of turrets is not. It might be possible in the future.

[Flaser]

A single comment: AFAIK 3.6.10 would have normal map support for a wider number of cards by providing a different set of shaders for different cards. (At least taylor said that was what he was going to do....though it could be this won't make it to 3.6.10).

[chief1983]

Yeah I believe he said that would be a later feature, not sure though.