Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: supernova on January 31, 2006, 04:35:45 am

Title: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on January 31, 2006, 04:35:45 am
Okay now here's another addition to my fleet of vessels.   The Cruiser I made and posted on the forums is again also of Terran design, but not originally intended for the Freespace Universe, but I would like hopefully in the future to port them to FS2, if the MAX to POF exporter ever works on my computer. :blah:

I'm not as far along with this model as I'd hoped, but again, please critique it so I can improve it and make some decent changes...
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer2.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer3.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer4.jpg)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Mefustae on January 31, 2006, 04:41:30 am
I really like the assymetrical look you've gone for, but is there a purpose for that structurally? I only ask as I see that the 'intake valves' on either side of the Hull are considerably different...
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: SadisticSid on January 31, 2006, 05:25:50 am
Any reason for the giant tiger fangs on the side of the hull? Other than that, it look great...
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Flaser on January 31, 2006, 06:43:47 am
Probably radiators to dump heat.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: aldo_14 on January 31, 2006, 07:24:30 am
Probably radiators to dump heat.

I thought you couldn't radiate heat (effectively) into space due to the lack of matter and stuff to radiate it onto?  (correct me if I'm wrong, isn't getting rid of heat by radiation usually done by transfering the vibration onto outside atoms?)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: karajorma on January 31, 2006, 07:34:33 am
Nope that's convection and conduction.

Radiation is the only form of heat transfer you can do in space.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: TrashMan on January 31, 2006, 07:55:43 am
Wicked!

Alltough those claws looked oddly out of place...
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Black Wolf on January 31, 2006, 09:08:44 am
Nope that's convection and conduction.

Radiation is the only form of heat transfer you can do in space.

Actually, it's only conduction. Convection involves physically moving the hot material through fluid systems (air, semi molten rock, water, etc. ) with convection currents - it generally works in tandem with conduction to spread the heat evenly, but they are two separate processes.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: karajorma on January 31, 2006, 09:19:18 am
Actually, it's only conduction. Convection involves physically moving the hot material through fluid systems (air, semi molten rock, water, etc. ) with convection currents - it generally works in tandem with conduction to spread the heat evenly, but they are two separate processes.

I was refering to needing a material through which to propogate. Radiation is the only form which doesn't need one.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: castor on January 31, 2006, 10:44:48 am
The structures at the bow could be simplified a bit, IMO.
ButIlikeitalot, anyway :yes:
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: starbug on January 31, 2006, 12:44:18 pm
Wow i like that  :nod:, i like the fangs on the side of the hull, gives the impression of a agressive species   :D
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Unknown Target on January 31, 2006, 12:47:28 pm
I like it :)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: WeatherOp on January 31, 2006, 12:48:47 pm
While the model is awesome  :yes:, It really has a frail look, or atleast  for a destroyer. Reminds me of some sort of Blockade runner, not a vessel designed for taking punishment.

Like I said very nice model, but add some thickness and armor to the middle part, where it won't look like a single beam could take it in half. ;)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Taristin on January 31, 2006, 12:52:41 pm
I think it would look better with those rear engines integrated into the body rather than being supported away from it...
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Flaser on January 31, 2006, 03:28:19 pm
IMHO it's excelent AS IS.
He never said whether it was meant for FS or not.

It's a modular design, that has some touches that make it more realistic in my eyes:
While elaborate, the general shape is simple and structuraly sound.
The thrust will go through the center of gravity.
Even though it has a clearly defined top and bottom, it doesn't suffer from the sea-ship/gravity syndrome, the parts are allowed to freely flow together in space as they should on a starship, they're not hanging or standing on anything.
While it has gimmicks on it, I can vaguely guess their actual role - that's a very good thing, and hard to achieve.
Finally, the model has the bravery to put all kinds of delicate sensors out there. (Antennas ect.)

While fine, as navalised-spaceship designs most ships I see are also very unrealistic in those regards.
This ship, while not suited to the heavy (and quite unrealistic, but fun) engagements in Freespace, is actually realistic and delicate design, that I could easly see in a hard sci-fi setting.

Good job.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on January 31, 2006, 07:58:55 pm
well, if you look at the side opposite the "tiger fangs", the protruding three openings, will become the docking bays...maybe, if I add a blast sheild to cover the openings.   

The "tiger fangs" although mainly used to add a "look" to the vessel...you all can deduce a function for them, because the protrusion they are attached to, also is the main guns.   The vessel may look thin, but I will post another photo giving an example of the size of the vessel, it would be thin if it was a smaller vessel, but considering it's size...it's not that small.

Also, the Actual main engines are in the center of the vessel, between the "pods", at the center of gravity.

Anyways, I'll post some more pics soon...
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on February 01, 2006, 01:41:49 am
Here's a comparison of size to the cruiser, plus I did add the retractable blast door to the front section of the fighter and cargo bays.
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer5.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer6.jpg)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Getter Robo G on February 01, 2006, 08:12:05 am
Do you have to reduce poly's to make a game friendly version?

Also if max-pof is acting up can you simply save as .cob or use 3d ex to change to .cob and convert teh tradition ways? (PCs or cob2pof)?

I so want to see them in game with glows and shine!

Sems like you got a design style for the fleet... Are fighters comming along soon?
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Unknown Target on February 01, 2006, 09:55:57 am
Goddamn I'm loving this. I'm going to have to start building ships again :D
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Kie99 on February 01, 2006, 10:09:51 am
The Cruiser looks fantastic, even better than the Destroyer.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Trivial Psychic on February 01, 2006, 12:35:25 pm
I think they might work well with Kazan's Ferrium universe, should he ever complete it.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Roanoke on February 01, 2006, 01:06:26 pm
how many polys ?
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: MetalDestroyer on February 01, 2006, 03:15:47 pm
Magnificient !! I love them. More !!
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on February 01, 2006, 04:27:39 pm
Yeah, the cruiser is around 20K polys...and that's way underoptimized.

Just the turrets themselves are about 1500polys each!   An in game turret would be more like 100 polys or so.   I was going for maximum detail for videos, then making lower level models with Optimizations for the game.
By the way you can view my cruiser finished at
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,38094.0.html this thread.


right now the destroyer is at about 30K polys and again, this is the video render version, in game would probably be around 15K or 20K.   Just a guess, but we'll see.   If anyone around here ported Freespace to the upcoming Unreal Engine 3.0, and made a mod there...we could see models with up to 50K easy.   The game engine is capable of rendering scenes with up to 1,500,000 rendered polys at a time!!!!

Can't wait till the guys at SCP make this possible with FS2.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Taristin on February 01, 2006, 04:54:53 pm

Just the turrets themselves are about 1500polys each!   An in game turret would be more like 100 polys or so. 

You can afford to spare more than that. 1500 polies shouldn't be toooooo horrible, so long as those aren't plasterred all over the model.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: karajorma on February 01, 2006, 07:01:54 pm
Can't wait till the guys at SCP make this possible with FS2.

You've not taken a look at the Battlestar Galactica mod have you? :lol:
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on February 02, 2006, 01:08:41 am
Quote
You've not taken a look at the Battlestar Galactica mod have you? :lol:

Yeah, actually I have, and it looks amazing!   The Battlestar is about 30K polys, but again, there's only one of them.   If you add in ten or twenty ships with that LOD you'd have a few problems.   I don't know how well that would run on even a high end system with this graphics engine.   The engine needs to be capable of easily producing those numbers. 

But seriously, would you get decent fps on my computer?
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8Ghz
ATI Radeon X1900XT 512Mb PCIexpress
1Gb DDR400
Nforce 4 Ultra chipset.

I'd like to think so...the X1900XT is a beast and ought to do fine, but I don't really know how Freespace would do with a million polys on screen.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: BlackDove on February 02, 2006, 05:10:05 am
Mmmmmmmmm pretty feckin PWN.

:yes:
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: karajorma on February 02, 2006, 06:44:03 am
I don't know how hard anyone has tried pushing the engine to be honest. The first limiting factor people bump up against is texture sizes and numbers. If you stuck an ugly 2x2 pixel texture on everything and just tried seeing how many polys the game could cope with I've got no idea how far you'd get. :)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Sigma957 on February 02, 2006, 08:17:12 pm
they are going to look great textured.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on February 09, 2006, 08:07:55 pm
Done

(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer7.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer8.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer9.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/Destroyer10.jpg)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Unknown Target on February 09, 2006, 09:25:49 pm
Looks nice, but can we get some side/top/etc views? The blur/perspective makes it hard to judge texture quality :)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Mehrpack on February 10, 2006, 01:43:34 pm
hi,
the picture looks great, but like unknown target say, its difficult to say more with that blur.

Mehrpack
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on February 11, 2006, 12:58:10 am
eh, sorry bout that, just makes the ship look more like it's actually moving, I use it mainly for renders at about 1280x1024, but I scaled these, so I'll turn it off and get you some renders without it.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on February 11, 2006, 01:30:53 am
Here you go...I don't know if it's any better though...I made em a little bigger, hope they fit on the boards
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/D1.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/D2.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/xagainstthetidex/images/D3.jpg)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: DaBrain on February 11, 2006, 04:11:14 am
Wow, you're pretty good at setting up renders too...

Maybe you could help me out with the SoL loading screens.  ;7
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Getter Robo G on February 11, 2006, 07:54:24 am
How many polys is that again?

(Note the original Galactica in game shots was "50k" direct port from sci-fi meshes, Omni has since knocked it down to 30-Something k, but it is going up steadily again cause of the landing bays...)

Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on February 11, 2006, 01:07:09 pm
44,410 to be exact.   It really could be less.   Each turret is also 1500 polys like on my cruiser.   OH, and the pictures might be down for a while...I overused my allowance of uploads, so my hosting site won't let you see the pictures for a day or so/
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Turambar on February 11, 2006, 02:08:55 pm
i gotta say
both of those spaceships are very attractive
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Gregster2k on February 13, 2006, 07:50:14 am
Indeed. Beautiful, just beautiful. Truly a work of art.
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Grug on February 13, 2006, 11:58:04 am
Dude, that kicks arse.

May I ask what your making your fleet for? :)
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Trivial Psychic on February 13, 2006, 01:09:15 pm
Isn't it obvious?  He's planning on taking over the Galaxy.  :lol:
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on February 14, 2006, 04:38:33 pm
Eh...well my brother is lead programmer for CSLA, a government intelligence contract company...and has several co-workers(about 5) who all had this grand idea to write a brand new game from scratch.    Some of these guys have no lives other than coding and being total nerds(exactly the kind of people I would need to get anything done)...but we still haven't decided to go for it or not.

These ships are pretty much for my own universe, although not necessarily for the Engine these guys will be working on...they haven't decided what kind of game they want, or whether or not to just modify an existing engine.   I suggested they just wait for Unreal Engine 3.0 and make a mod for that seeing as there's no way we'll be able to reach that level of detail with a 10 man crew....so yeah, these ships are for no game in peticular...maybe someday I'll make my own FS2 total conversion...
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: karajorma on February 14, 2006, 05:09:10 pm
Why don't you just suggest they come over here and help us out? :D
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Mehrpack on February 14, 2006, 05:12:51 pm
hi,
that was my first thought as i read, too :D.

Mehrpack
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: supernova on February 14, 2006, 08:52:52 pm
Unfortunately, they're not fans...this is why we probably will never be working on any Space Combat sims...
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Mehrpack on February 15, 2006, 05:28:13 pm
hi,
mhh, they have never play a space-sim?
or they dont like star wars, star trek or babylon 5?

if they dont like that, then they not geeks ;) Just Kidding.

Mehrpack
Title: Re: Now the Destroyer
Post by: Ulala on February 16, 2006, 02:24:38 am
Holy hotness.  :yes: