Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Archived Star Wars Conversion Threads => Topic started by: Challenger on August 21, 2003, 10:46:58 am
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how are ya doing over here? Slow as usual? (haven't been here for quite a while :D)
Anyway, I guess my models aren't usable within the Freespace engine properly - clipping errors and all. And most of the newer models would simply blow the engine due to polycount ;)
Like this one for example ;) (forum hijacking, watch it! ;))
(http://www.nightsoftware.com/project/tb/images/mc80a_06.jpg)
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1. Nice model :yes:
2. As I am still to be considered a new guy at SW-C, I daren't say we are proceeding slow(I don't want to be banned from this forum), because I don't know what the others(GalacticEmperor, KARMA, Black Wolf) are doing in the background.
3. Polycount is not a great problem with FreeSpace Models, FS engine is now old., and many people are now having very powerful machines(Above 1200 MHz, more than 128 RAM and at least a 64 Megs videocard), so do not worry about the polygon number. Larger problem is that it is unLODed(as I presume)
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Originally posted by TopAce
3. Polycount is not a great problem with FreeSpace Models, FS engine is now old., and many people are now having very powerful machines(Above 1200 MHz, more than 128 RAM and at least a 64 Megs videocard), so do not worry about the polygon number. Larger problem is that it is unLODed(as I presume)
This is true. However a 5k polycount on a common ship in mission would kill FS2 stone dead. Nice model though. :yes:
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Well, this model would certainly cause major trouble for you as well.. as far as I remember, FS doesn't like intersecting model parts too well.. this model has LOTS of them. ;)
Anyway, looking here at the forum, I am somehow disappointed.. I hardly can see new screenshots.. so progress must be pretty slow (no offense, please :))
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how old this project?
when complete?
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Originally posted by Cancer
how old this project?
I'm not sure.
when complete?
When It's Done.™:thepimp:
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That was a useful post, Woolie :lol:
It hardly looks that something will become of this project this year. we'll see what the project leaders(forum moderators) will say once they return from their holidays.
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KARMA on holiday... GE in the middle of nowhere... not much can be done :'(
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Originally posted by Hippo
... GE in the middle of nowhere...
In space? :D
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yo challenger, nice to hear you again:)
fs2 engine has been upgraded a bit now(it's open source), and a lot of the problems with intersections have been solved
nonetheless I still tend to prefer solid meshes when possible, since they work better and cause less performance hit (IIRC intersections need to be solved by the zbuffer by generating new triangles around the intersection)
and 5k polys is also probably a bit too much for our standards
nice looking model anyway:) (althought textures may need some more work:p)
oh and about when this projects will be completed...
when it's done obviously:p
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I don't want to be sceptic, but why the hell does a model need 5000 polies at all? I think any starships with around 2000-2500 polies are looking quite nice.
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well, we've moved on to Haegemonia, Bridge Commander and so on.. so we use the higher ability of these engines - Haegemonia, for instance, can use 10,000 polies easily for battleship class ships. Like MonCal in the Star Wars Fleet Command mod, so this is a fairly low polycount :D
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Low polycount for today ... but high polycount for FreeSpace.
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Ships looked ok but to tell you the truth if you lowered the polly count on them but used the same textures they would convert over to FS2 just fine (A ship dosen't need more than 3000 pollies( take it from me, a decent texture job will make even a 20KM brick look good!) I was impressed with the 115km star Destroyed I accidently converted. If only the textures were sharper it would have been nice). When you convert an opt file to 3ds make sure you click on "convert to one unit scale" otherwise you end up with a fighter as big as a planet and a cap ship as big as a few planets!!!
"Sir! We're being attacked by a 30km tie fighter!" :lol:
I gave up on Bridge commander cause like with Hega I disliked the gameplay (Klngon academy was much SUPERIOR)plus there are few RTS I like... I'd rather be in the cockpit taking those ships apart then simply dragging windows over units and ordering them to fight... Plus with voice commands it's really cool being the wing leader, your hands never hand to move from the joystick or the tab button (afterburner)... I even change my secondary loadouts when I want to that way...(I'm lazy) :D
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you'd be surprised how impressive higher polycounts can look like ingame. At least my friend was struck in awe when his Star destroyers were engaged by our new B-wing starfighters (1249 polies) and these new MonCals. ;)
[edit] Original Haege wasn't the greatest game, I agree.. but where in the seven hells would be the fun to mod a perfect game? ;) :D:D
[edit]
or do you want that baby? ;)
(http://www.strategyplanet.com/starmada/fgx/screenshots/challenger/gallery/img/sw/xwing_v3_new.jpg)
now that is what I call poly-heavy ;)
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OK, put the Mon Calamari cruiser into game, and see how your FPS drops.
So much about polycount. SW-C is basically facing problems with FPS optimizations, so this amount of polygons are very BRUTAL anyway.l
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Into which game? When I put it into Haegemonia, the FPS average was about 10% higher than with normal human cruisers (same amount) :)
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Now put it into FreeSpace 2. If you can.
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I wouldn't dare. ;)
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Exactly. It wouldn't work!
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It's actually not that hard to lower the polycount on a model, once one gets past the realization that you are going to lose some detail. It's just a matter of finding out what detail can afford to be lost first.
Heck, if that MonCal model is in a .MAX file, I wouldn't mind trying my hand at lowering the polycount. ;)
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And couldnt you use the high poly models for cbanims and what not?
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Originally posted by Sheepy
And couldnt you use the high poly models for cbanims and what not?
Ooh, that's a great idea! Provide some basic generic cbanims for all the ships in the MOD. One would be a general flyby of a capital ship (with the requisite fighters zooming by in the foreground), and another could be a capital ship zipping in from hyperspace and launching fighter wings. They wouldn't need to be big, nor terrribly varied between them - just swap out the main ship, mess with the camera paths a bit, and render a completely different scene.
I like this idea. :D
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btw iirc from what challenger said, haegemonia uses an autolod system
actually I have no idea about how a game engine can modify a mesh in order to generate lods without wasting too resources, but this explain why it is possible to put such hi pcount ships in game (althought I consider them a bit inefficent)
Btw you can put those model (at least the models of small ships) in fs2 too, just work with lods: put the hipoly mesh as lod0 with a very close visible range (so you see it only in external view or flying very close) and make normal lods for all the other situations. Obviously this doesn't mean I'm going to do it:)
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more or less it's an AUTO LOD. from what I heard from the guys of Digital Reality, the game engine checks which models are in the tech tree and loads all of them, processing them to some kind of LOD mesh (you can define your own LOD's as well, thats not the problem). Planets, map objects etc are always loaded, no matter what.
@Sandwich: good luck then, finding all the stray vertices and lowering the detail.. ;)
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Originally posted by Challenger
@Sandwich: good luck then, finding all the stray vertices and lowering the detail.. ;)
Linky? ;)
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no linky. just hand-to-hand deal ;)
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just hand-to-staff, right? :)
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:nervous: *thinks he missed something*
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who? me?
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I totally forgot about tech room animations, I deleted a crap ton of high ploy models cause I figured I'd never get to use them, so why tie up the space? They would have ben perfect for non combat stuff! Oh well...
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How do you want to give a different ship model in the tech room that the game is using? An FS_open stuff?
Or a table doubling?
:doubt:
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As far as i know you cant, all i meant about the high poly models was for animations and stuff, you cant use them for much else
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ohhh ... animations = cutscenes?
forgotten about them. :)
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well... polys aren't the problem anymore...
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so will we use this MC80 as our own?
if yes, give the Austrian(not Australian ;)) guy an avatar!
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avatar detection system isn't working for Sw yet... :hopping:
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Are you gonna use Fs2_open for this MOD? The ISD would look great with shine maps.
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It is up to Mr. Project Leaders, like KARMA, GE and Black Wolf.
If you ask me, surely.
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i belive we are using the surface shield idea from the person who coded their own tree...
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It would be a travesty not to use FS2_Open. Shine maps, glowmaps, new SEXPs, new weapon effects, all will be used. :D
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yay!
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I'm a bit perplex about shine maps
as far as I can remember, the SW ships of old trilogy weren't shiny, the materials were more plastic than metallic.
Maybe we can use some low shine maps except for the cockpits
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Originally posted by KARMA
Maybe we can use some low shine maps except for the cockpits
:nod:
Except, of course, for the Naboo...
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Originally posted by KARMA
the SW ships of old trilogy weren't shiny
:p
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:bump: :drevil:
Since FSO can now handle so MANY polygons(HT&L): Don't we need this?
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maybe, but I don't have time to check the model in game (it has many intersections wich are rendered flawlessy now, but may cause collision troubles)
I'm also working on my own model of this thing, but it could be useful, at least, as a temp model since I don't know when I'll finish my own