Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: TrashMan on December 27, 2003, 05:30:23 pm

Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 27, 2003, 05:30:23 pm
the Vasudan Starbase!!!!!
---------------------------

A Demon Destroyer attacks the starbase.
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/Trashman/Pics/VasS1.jpg)
Big mistake - the quadripple Heavy Plasma Cannons at work
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/Trashman/Pics/VasS2.jpg)
The glorious victor
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/Trashman/Pics/VasS3.jpg)
Top of the world Ma!
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/Trashman/Pics/VasS4.jpg)  

Just a test run!
Still not completely turreted. No debris and LOD2&3 are missing.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Ashrak on December 27, 2003, 05:39:43 pm
cannons? dont see any cannons :(
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: diamondgeezer on December 27, 2003, 05:40:13 pm
By God
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Noise on December 27, 2003, 05:50:29 pm
:eek2: :nod: :eek2: Superb, nuff said.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 27, 2003, 06:05:51 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Ashrak
cannons? dont see any cannons :(


the description of athe pic was below the picture...I'll edit that..
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Nico on December 27, 2003, 06:06:21 pm
Drool? No, at least, fix those smoothing bugs :p
Also, seems you have a nicely low polycount, so make the windows area recessed from the "scale" mapped parts, since you have free polys to use :)
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 27, 2003, 06:09:31 pm
HAHAHAHA! Low polycount?

The hull itself is 1460. The two big ass plasma cannons are 242 polys each.

Overall it has 32 small turrets, 8 beam turets and the two big ones..
Total polycount so far 2190
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Odyssey on December 27, 2003, 06:17:05 pm
[color=cc9900]It's a nice idea, even if it does look rather like two starfish jealously guarding a pearl. I strongly advise you change those Orion textures on the docking entrance though, they're so out of place they're an eyesore.
But, Trashie, are you sure you're the king of low-poly modelling? Where have you blown the polygons? I can't for the life of me see close to one and a half thousand polygons there. Can we get a wireframe view?.[/color]
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 27, 2003, 06:28:26 pm
Belive me, It's hard to make a starbase design like this with few polygons..
And I did it in 3DMax, since one can just make one half and wield it together, which is a better solution then doing the whole thing.

But the conversion from 3DMax to Truespace triangulates the thing.....So I was stuck with it.s
But I suppose I *could* go and manually erace all those extra verices...
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/Trashman/Pics/VasBase.JPG)
EDIT: It shows backfaces.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Nico on December 27, 2003, 07:11:14 pm
Looking at the wireframe, you sure could save a lot of polys... Unless the wireframe shows backfaces as well, then those cross section might not be cross sections :p
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Odyssey on December 27, 2003, 07:24:35 pm
[color=cc9900]Ah, the triangulation, that explains it. Annoying, isn't it? That's why I use lightwave ^_^
Just to clarify though, if you remove triangulation you don't do it by removing vertices, since none extra are created during triangulation :)[/color]
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 27, 2003, 07:26:59 pm
That was a typo. You know very well what I ment. (lines, extra polys...whatever)
But I won't be removing anything for now..

I gotta test it more first.

EDIT: The runway texture looks fine. The other one (the blue one) is not an Orion texture...it's a vasudan texture I found among the V ones.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Omniscaper on December 27, 2003, 08:00:16 pm
Is that a Trashman original? That is an EXCELLENT design and texture execution is fabulous. Absolutely beautiful!!! I've been drawing in my sketchbook for years now trying to come up with a design, and I keep overlooking the simplistic and symetrical of ideas. Time to rethink my designs. Don't think I'm just a Trek slave, I can think and design on my own too.

How big is she, I'd like to put her next to my recently converted Spacedock. Can you actually fly inside it? So many questions....

Whats the deal with triangulation? I've been using MAX religiously  to get the trek ships over here. Should triangulation be avoided or enforced. I export as a 3ds then Truespace takes over. So far I haven't bumped into any problems with exporting and importing, besides the occasional game crash due to misaligned or unwelded vertices.

I found that a good test for these models is to try it in FRED. Any anomolous thing will shoot out of the mesh leaving streaks that point right at the problem.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Odyssey on December 27, 2003, 08:30:05 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
That was a typo. You know very well what I ment. (lines, extra polys...whatever)
EDIT: The runway texture looks fine. The other one (the blue one) is not an Orion texture...it's a vasudan texture I found among the V ones.

[color=cc9900]Don't take it personally, I was only trying to help.
Yeah, the runway texture is fine, but the blue one still looks out of place even if it is Vasudan :)[/color]
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Sheepy on December 27, 2003, 09:18:08 pm
im sure i have seen this else where, may be from wip i dont remember
Title: Woo Hoo!
Post by: Star Dragon on December 27, 2003, 11:07:19 pm
Trashman does it again!

   Sweet model... Time like this I wish I could model , "he tasks me, and I will have him!"

  Great, thanks to Omni I got KHAN in my head! looks like I have to exorcise him l8tr, in the St thread...

  Keep it up Trashman, I noticed it has a HUGE runway/hangar, how deep is it? It would be AWESOME if you could fly a cruiser in there and see them docked! OOOO!

   Mission, the starbase is an ENEMY, Alpha1 has to lead a team in there to blow it up (wait I've heard this before...oh well) so you fly all the way inside dodging defenses you get ready to blow the reactors and WTF :wtf:  There are 4 destroyers in there!!! OH CRAP! RUN FOREST RUN! :lol:

  Am I rambling again (my apologies)...
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: karajorma on December 28, 2003, 02:57:39 am
Quote
Originally posted by Omniscaper
Whats the deal with triangulation? I've been using MAX religiously  to get the trek ships over here. Should triangulation be avoided or enforced. I export as a 3ds then Truespace takes over. So far I haven't bumped into any problems with exporting and importing, besides the occasional game crash due to misaligned or unwelded vertices.  


The HT&L build automatically triangulates ships when they are loaded so you won't make your models any more stable in the game by not triangulating them.
 However untriangulated models are smaller and therefor load faster. Also since they have less polys in FRED and modelview you are less likely to run into problems there too.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 28, 2003, 09:40:34 am
Just ran into a problem. Before I welded the two parts in 3DMax, I forgot to erace the faces where thy will join. Thus, I now have intersecting polys on the station that are only seen if you fly close by, but still..
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/Trashman/Pics/Intersect.JPG)
I'm gonna re-do it from top to bottom.
Shouldn't take me long....

EDIT: The thing is 5-6 km in diameter
And since I'm gonna re-do it anyway, I'll add a big ship dock in the middle.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Odyssey on December 28, 2003, 12:07:34 pm
[color=cc9900]To be honest, if it's 5-6km big, I'd recommend making each 'arm' a subobject and maxing its polygon limit. Something that size really needs more detail.[/color]
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Taristin on December 28, 2003, 12:49:00 pm
And lots of defense turrets. Because if it has one or 2 dock bays, it'll take forever to scramble fighters to defend it...

But it's off to a nice start. :)
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 28, 2003, 01:56:43 pm
I just removed the offending polys without making it from scratch!
I simply flipped all normals. which gave me easy acess to the plys in question, delted them and flipped back.

It has 4 fighterbays...

Thining of adding more detail...or to do it from scratch...don't really know...

If I made each arm a subobject, then I couldn't put turets on it...

I was thinking of maby putting a large fly-trough docking bay in it's centre. (something like  that big hole on the Arcadia)...Or would that look too lame?
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Knight Templar on December 28, 2003, 05:41:34 pm
Yes, Yes it would.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: magatsu1 on December 29, 2003, 07:57:21 am
'Wish you guys would put more suns into your levels when posting images. They're all so dark.

Nice work though.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: aldo_14 on December 29, 2003, 08:36:39 am
s'alright.  Ends of the arms need smoothed- they're just a flat. straight edge from the overhead view, which is a bit incongrous for a Vasudan ship (virtually not large flat edges)
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 29, 2003, 10:28:17 am
Take alooky at the main cannon and other armament.
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/Trashman/Pics/screen01.jpg)
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/Trashman/Pics/screen02.jpg)
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/Trashman/Pics/screen03.jpg)

EDIT: Just made a whole new hull...has approx 2100 polys. More smoothed and detailed. Am currently texturing it... but it seems it doesn't want to be textured. When I put a texture on some faces, as soon as I move the view angle, it reverts back to the previous texture...strange..
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: karajorma on December 29, 2003, 11:36:34 am
Add more suns. I see very little in those pics.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Trivial Psychic on December 29, 2003, 01:25:46 pm
Hey TrashMan, your main turret kinda looks like the front end of a Triton... probably the same size too.  Weird eh?

Later!
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Unknown Target on December 29, 2003, 01:29:25 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
HAHAHAHA! Low polycount?

The hull itself is 1460. The two big ass plasma cannons are 242 polys each.

Overall it has 32 small turrets, 8 beam turets and the two big ones..
Total polycount so far 2190



Just one of my fighters has more polys than that. You can REALLY up that count, it's a huge station, 2190 is really low, especially in this day and age of TnL
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: ZylonBane on December 29, 2003, 04:08:31 pm
Go go gadget gamma!
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: Woolie Wool on December 29, 2003, 04:24:13 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Unknown Target



Just one of my fighters has more polys than that. You can REALLY up that count, it's a huge station, 2190 is really low, especially in this day and age of TnL


Yeah, bring on the polies. My new Radeon 9200 and Athlon XP 3000+ can handle it, especially now after I reformatted my hard drive.

I love my new hardware, even if it probably did contribute to Windows going bonkers and forcing me to reformat.
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 29, 2003, 06:17:59 pm
Quote
Originally posted by TrashMan
Just made a whole new hull...has approx 2100 polys. More smoothed and detailed. Am currently texturing it... but it seems it doesn't want to be textured. When I put a texture on some faces, as soon as I move the view angle, it reverts back to the previous texture...strange.. [/B]


2100 fot the hull alone...but I will increase it even further...
Title: Ha! Now drool!!!!
Post by: TrashMan on December 30, 2003, 01:07:41 pm
$&!"$%!&!

3DMax has screwed all the normals on my new pet!
2800 polys for the hull.....Looking better and smoother then ever...

now...to fix the friggin thing!