Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: TrashMan on December 29, 2005, 04:18:52 pm
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I personalyl think that's one of V's best models.. the shape is excellent and they amde use of practicly every polygon.
I wanted to improve it but am having trouble deciding what to do.
Most would say smooth it - I say no. That edgines of hte claws is exactly what gives it that powerfull, ominous feeling. Just for kicks I made a quick sketch to see how it would look with smoothed pikey bits and I don't like it...
So anyone got any bright ideas what to add/change...this is what I got so far:
(http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/3360/demon2mj.th.jpg) (http://img517.imageshack.us/my.php?image=demon2mj.jpg)
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Hmmm.. I always liked the Demon. I wonder what V was originally going for? If it were smoothed out, I'd think it'd look more like a creature about to devour you, or some such thing. Unsmoothed, it'd look more like a big ship with big spikes that were also about to devour you, I'd think. Hmmm... that's a pickle. Sorry I'm not of more help, I think it'd be cool either way. :)
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I say leave the 'spikes', i'm not sure what you're going for on the neck section there, it looks a bit funky but i'l give you the benefit of the doubt and analyse it more when you have some of the main body made.
The "head" looks very nice though, but i'd like to see the two trangular depresions sunck a bit more into the head.
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Indeed, the neck has a little too much 'built' and not enough 'grown' to it. The Demon is an excellent design (I'm surprised nobody's tackled it before now) and it looks like you've got a good start TM so keep on going. :nod:
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I'd say remake the front spikes, kind of put them under the layer of armor on the front, and give them a sharp, Sathanas arm look curving up to form like a mandible of an interspace Demon.
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I was thinking of curving the two front triangle thinhies.. have to see how it will ook.
As for the nexk, those righ things are separate bjects, I was just testing a few possible changes.
I'm trying to stick to the [V] model as close as possible (as allways), but the thing that gives me the most grief is hte back..those engine section is just...wierd.
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I got an idea: Take the original model and just greeble that/better turrets :drevil: I wub the original demon model anyways n.n;;
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I actually like the really angular, faceted nature of the original low-poly model. What I would do is take the dark parts (with all the little tubes and lights) and really make that into a greebled techno-organic mishmash with pipes and lights and dock ports and other things over it, Ridley Scott-style. That would then be shrouded by the grey armored shell.
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Hm...you nkwo, the demon model in the background is hte origianl [V] one which I begun to fiddle with a little (front of hte head is different) but then I decided I might go from scratch...
Now I'm not sure.. I might go both ways and do it both..but I doubt that. Of all the [V] models I re-did this one is the bigegst challenge..simply becosue if it's design :D
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Drinking a bit on New Years are we?
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beži van iz kuće i društvu odi :D
as for the demon, looks very nice, the neck doesnt look too good segmented tho
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Meh, nemam nikom da odem, ali to nije prevelik problem posto mi se nesvidja nista izvan mojih cetri zidova.
I have to say, I don't get that image at all. Too mangled to be a Demon, perhaps I'm not looking at it correctly.
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It's only part of a demon. In the background is the complete original [V] model.
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heh, ja isto... :D
eh. više sreće druge godine valjda :)
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You're right about the neck..I'll try something else..
But don't expect any new screenies soon... I have things to do and a campaign to finish :D
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But don't expect any new screenies soon...
Careful what you say! :nervous: :shaking: :p
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How about adding a series of swept-back crests to each flat surface of the head, running down its centerline... small ones though.
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I'll give it a shot and see how it turns out.
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My one suggestion on that ship model is that the rear tail pillars that meet above the engines seemed very polygonal to me. I think they would be more neat as a smoother sweeping arc. Like horns or big knives or something.
Spiking them out at the cross beams in the texture may be cool too. Like bat wings or a klingon axe or something.
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(http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/9122/demon7gf.th.jpg) (http://img360.imageshack.us/my.php?image=demon7gf.jpg)
Just resumed work on it...
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Don't forget to pay attention to the textures though. The original Demon has a quarter-arc on its maps near the head that is a fairly important feature as far as mapping goes. Don't move it, break it up, or otherwise obscure it if you can help it.
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You've seen my high-poly versions of FS2 capships. They are as true to the original as possible.
no worry:D
EDIT: The only thing I'm unsure about is the engines..they are so strange and...strange!
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I think the Demon was grossly GROSSLY underdeveloped because of the game restrictions.
Personally I think you should smoothe and spikey the hell out of it. Naturally keeping it to canon looks, just way more badass and Shivany.
That's my personal opinion anyway.
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it might be from perspective, but i think you need to lower the sides a bit, as they don't seem canon enough. :)
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I could use some advice on the engine secztion...the very rear.. It's just so confusing and the onyl thing I realyl want to change on the whole Demo concept, but have no idea to what or how...
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Whatever you do, don't get rid of the strip engines like the Lucifer, Cain and Lilith have. They define Shivan almost as much as the triangle on the front.
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Thing is, in their currrent form thes don't even look like engines. If it weren't for hte glows you could never tell.
The engines are the onyl things left to finish, but I simply can't decide what to do.. :mad:
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how about giving us an ass view of them? :)
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If you want to make them more like the red lines on the Cain and Lucifer then that would be a place to start. But be really careful, because they are still supposed to be Shivan engines.
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Having seen the pics that are eventually coming, I like what's been done so far but there are a few things I'd like to see improved. One is just the direction of extrusions; on the nose, the three red bars should be inset, not extruded (pull the space between them out instead of in). Another involves the dragonscaling that's been done in parts of the ship. It works pretty well, especially on the head, but it needs to be more consistant. Of the upper shell of the hull, it looks like only about 40% got this treatment. It should be everywhere or not at all. And see what it does with the textures on it before you call it final; they may clash like there's no tomorrow. Of course, you'll never know about that until you try. Lastly, the engines. That's actually about what I was hoping to see. Inset is correct for Shivan capital engines (see Cain/Lilith) and while they are a little deeper than I'd really like that's really a matter of taste. The one thing I would like to see brought back was the implied complexity of the engines given the way they were mapped on the original model. They weren't just red stripes, they had structure. You may try put a girder-like structure over them or something, as I can see that working nicely.
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Does look better with grides...tried it :D
I'm allso adding moredetail to the 3rd "arm" and have started texturing the head..
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YOu may consider, for the kinda "wings" under the head, adding butresses on the inside to support them.
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Added those litlte extrusions..and started texturing hte head
http://dj.rogueserv.com/TRASHMAN/Pics/Demon3.JPG
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The texture on the top is way overtiled.
Also, the bottom wasn't all that black-red texture.
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WAY overtiled. Look at :v:'s Demon. The curvy part of that texture is almost the full size of the head, and matches the curve of the armor belt around the red glow bits. The tiling factor is at most 1/3 of what you're using now.
EDIT: I'm going to add that I believe the Demon may have been the best tiled ship :v: made. Yes, it uses tiled maps, as was more or less essential for a ship of its size in FS1's days. But the time and effort spent making those tile maps look good is obviously much, much more than just slapping a box mapping on the thing. If it were possible for a ship that low-poly to have elegant and alien curves, the Demon definitely pulled it off.
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A couple of things I notice:
1) As has been said, the tiling factor is too much. [v] was pretty clever with their usage of tiled maps on the Demon. The details on the maps matched or suited the places to which they were applied, even if the actual geometry was lacking. The overall effect is that the textures look much better than they would if they'd just been slapped on as they had on the aeolus, triton or many other FS2 ships.
2) The mapping is not symmetrical. Symmetry is one of those reasons the Demon's somewhat odd textures look like they're meant to be that way.
3) You're being way too conservative of polys to be honest. The whole reason for the rebuilding of the [v] ships is to build the ships as [v] would have if they had a much bigger poly budget than they did. The HTL engine is very powerful. As long as you keep the map count to a bare minimum (1 big UV map would be nice :p ), the ship may as well be 50 000 polys, since it's not going to greatly dent performance. Remember that the number of copies of these big ships in a mission is also of little concern. :)
4) Just step back and take a look at the Demon to determine what details should be modeled in, and then model them! The textures and geometry must work well together and complement each other if the ship is to look good overall, and the best way to do that with HTL ships is to get the ideas for the geometric detail from the textures themselves.
You could try something like this: http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Misc/Hecate_Outlines.jpg
It's an old image I used to help Grimloq get ideas for things to do with his hecate. It's basically a combination of highlighting detail-worthy texture features and new geometry ideas. I could do a similar one for the Demon if you like? :)
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Noticed that about the tilin.. It's easy to fix :D
I know the mapping is symetrical and that's what I plan to do. no worry.
You can always put more pollies.. and I can too. Maby I will in several places, but if you're asking me to smoothify it then the answer is no - it would be a crime to smooth the Demon.. it must have the rugged, blockish look.
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Rugged yes, but not blockish with sharp corners as a fair ammount of it is now - left over from the original.
Here's one of those idea&feature outline things I just made for the Demon:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Demon.jpg
and without the Demon itself in the BG:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/DemonShaded.jpg
Now, while you probably wouldn't model in _everything_ there, maybe it can give you ideas for more interesting ways to approach it.
It's just, the more I look at what's changed so far, the more it looks like a touch up than a HTL job. :\
Some parts have changed, and it is a bit better - but it really needs more than that to reach full Demony potential.
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Rugged yes, but not blockish with sharp corners as a fair ammount of it is now - left over from the original.
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It's just, the more I look at what's changed so far, the more it looks like a touch up than a HTL job. :\
Some parts have changed, and it is a bit better - but it really needs more than that to reach full Demony potential.
Quoted for truth. VA's sketch ups have highlighted what I said earlier about modeling in the details of the textures rather than making the textures fit your greebling. I was worried about the scales on the head reacting with the mapping, and it would appear that my concerns were justified.
And the Demon certainly should be smoothed out, as a shaded (untextured) view of it in Modelview clearly shows. You've already changed the lines (by making the rib structure on the bottom square) which I don't like but you haven't even made the huge single-poly surfaces on the original model go away.
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(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/DemonShaded.jpg)
Hey, that's basically what I was suggesting for the head section.
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Yeah - that's how I interpreted your suggestion, and quite liked it. :) (Random OT here, but that solid colour segments image looks pretty ugly without the original demon in the background actually. I like the other one better ;) )
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Demon.jpg)
The main problem I had was that huge flat area on the side of the head. I was thinking of using transparency to create a sense of depth, but has anyone got any better ideas we can give the man?
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That's one area, because the maps show absolutely nothing, that creativity is definitely in order. The only thing that needs to be considered is what is supposed to be on the other side of the lower half of it; there's metalic structure back there so that could probably be adapted to the front somehow without drastically changing the way it looks.
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to me those textures of the flat side of the head look like struts and girders that layer over eachother like the underside of a big suspension bridge. Kind of like the supports of the hull but with no armor over it.
maybe like this?
(http://bridges.midwestplaces.com/il/alexander/cairo-ohio/underneath-zoom.jpg)
maybe extruding the areas under the most obvious beams and letting the textures do underneath would give the impression of depth?
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highly interesting... I like the head idea....It's better than mine. (at least on paper) :D
I allready know what to do with that flat area on the head (where the beam cannon is)..
As for the rear part I'll have to think about it... the work on the Demon is progressing slowly as I have loads of other things to do, so don't expect any updates soon.
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I love the idea for the head, but the ribs and the rib-like structure on the top shouldn't be triangularly plated as in the picture. They need to be more smooth and pointy at the end. The plated look on them would make it look too Terran-ish and not buggy enough.
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The idea here is to just model in the detail that is on the textures, and add to it if need-be. Besides, all those details aren't really going to be nearly as glaring and obvious as the pics suggest they would be. ;)
I intended them to just highlight possible places to introduce layers to the hull through raised or lowered areas that match at least some of the plates they represent. It'd basically add detail to the ship without changing the shape or introducing big weird details that don't belong to the design.