Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: Axem on June 20, 2006, 05:38:46 pm
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I'm pretty sure no one has done this yet. I remember someone doing a Alastor, but not the other (more pathetic) sentry guns.
Anyhow, the model is pretty simple (which also means mapping will be simple ;)). Its just above 1100 polys, but I can reduce that to just under 1000 if people don't like that.
Now I was thinking of maybe making separate models of the Watchdog and Cerberus. Nothing too unbalancing or radical. But something that'll let you tell them apart right away. A change in textures might do like the Fenris/Levi and Cain/Lilith. Anyway, comment away.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/NarfPics/watchdog1.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/NarfPics/watchdog2.jpg)
For the lazy people looking for a finished download: Click Here! (http://www.axemspace.com/files/models/hp_gunplatform01.rar)
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fantastic... now for the interminable wait while someone (anyone ?) textures and uvmaps it.... right ? :sigh:
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Looks a hell of a lot better than the 20-poly retail version. :)
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hi,
looks really nice.
maybe a little to nice, nobody will shoot at it J/K :D.
Mehrpack
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Woo! If there's one thing that says 'most of the Terran ships are done or in progress', it's people making sexy sentries. :)
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I don't know why the shivan ships are left alone so much, why doesn't anyone want to work on HTLing some of the low poly count dogs we got on the red side ?
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I'll be doing the mapping and I think I'll just use its original map. So mapping and texturing shouldn't take that long. In theory anyway. :nervous:
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Looks sexy, keep 'em coming.....
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Pretty :yes:
Maybe spice up the barrels a bit ?
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Why? We're already at 1k polys, and this is a sentry, not something you gaze at.
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Because they're uglyness detracts from the rest of the model ?
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If anything they highlight the quality parts.
Maybe an outrigger on each or some tapering, nothing to brash........
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Just remember it's a single small model thats part of a greater scene, that usually includes alot of action.
From my own experiance, you never see a single sentry gun, always in groups, they're always part of a rather larger scene. Just remember that while more polys is nice, we gotta remember you mostly see the sentry from far away, in low LODs, while blowing it up.
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If you would put both the new and old watchdogs around for me to shoot, I wouldn't notice the difference between them. They are small. Too weak to be a threat and too annoying to be ingnored. They will be destroyed quickly once targeted. All in all you never see them closely, at least not longer than a second when the thing bumbs on your windshiled and then blows up. Those barrels really are quite high poly enought. And Ace Pace is correct, you only see them in groups. So close those golden eyes of yours if this thing is too meager for them. If you want a performance hog out of it, the I'd prefer flashing ligths and glows over perfectly round barrels.
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Its nice to have a high poly LODo though isn't it...
:yes:
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I don't know why the shivan ships are left alone so much, why doesn't anyone want to work on HTLing some of the low poly count dogs we got on the red side ?
shivan ships are all toughies because the shapes are difficult, and theyre incredibly easy to get wrong. and if there's one thing that'll get you roasted around here it's doing shivans wrong. there's also a lot of disagreement about 'what is shivan'
youre welcome to try though, i'll give you constructive criticism all the way through
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Its nice to have a high poly LODo though isn't it...
Yeah. If you want to make renders or have close ups in cutscenes. For gameplay, I don't think it's worth the time.
Then again, it's not my time we're talking about here...
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Well, very nice model! :)
It looks good. I've hope, you will end it soon ;)
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words
Yes, I understand. But I'm not talking about perfectly round barrels, I was more going along the lines of adding some variation to the barrel thickness. The plain cylinder looks to simplistic IMHO, adding a simple box can make a big difference
(http://www.toonfox.com/share/3D/APC%20Turret.jpg)
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Col. Fishguts, Why add something that isn't visible on the original model or texture? Thats not the point of high-poly models imo.
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And it would still be pretty and detailed... OMG 1 meter long gun barrel!1!! As practical as modelling nosehair to the little girl in FEAR.
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Col. Fishguts, Why add something that isn't visible on the original model or texture? Thats not the point of high-poly models imo.
Artistic freedom ? But since I'm the only one suggesting more detail, I'll shut up now.
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If someone wants to add extra stuff to their model let'em i say.
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Well I'm neither modeler nor coder so I don't know how much impact the number of polys has. But lately I have the feeling that HTL models are TOO detailed. As an example in the first model you've posted there's a lightly large border around all the cannon that I doubt anyone will notice within game. And more over I think you could 'paint' this border just with textures. I feel FS2 is losing all code optimizations because of very heavy models, effects, ultradetailed textures and so on.
(Just my thoughts, any work will be welcome in any way...)
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point is, the polycount isnt an issue too much anymore. it is important, but to a much much lesser extent than textures.
also, you might look here here... (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,37158.0.html)
as for the floating turret... how the hell did you manage to get 1k polys? for the amount of "detail" it has, the sam shape could have been achieved with 200 polys MAXIMUM.
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You do it then.
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:pimp: :yes:
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i might do the alastor. tomorrow perhaps. depends if i'll have time to do it or not... i need to find a job, and that takes precedence to any hobby.
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Well I was more interested on how you would do this model with 200 polys.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/NarfPics/watchdogs.jpg)
The one on the left has no border and the turrets have a poly reduction. The base is 350 polys and the whole thing is 600 polys. The one on the right has had some optimizations to the turrets and taking away the cylinders the turrets rested on. The base is 630 polys and the whole thing is 930 polys.
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I think the borders would be hardly noticeable in game since the model is so small, so good texturing could perhaps suffice... But I like the high poly turret better.
Good work on both of them :yes:
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I think the borders would be hardly noticeable in game since the model is so small, so good texturing could perhaps suffice... But I like the high poly turret better.
Good work on both of them :yes:
Agreed, while I can't deny the importence of a great model in the look of an object, but a texture can and does make up for model detail.
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Well I was more interested on how you would do this model with 200 polys.
*snip img*
The one on the left has no border and the turrets have a poly reduction. The base is 350 polys and the whole thing is 600 polys. The one on the right has had some optimizations to the turrets and taking away the cylinders the turrets rested on. The base is 630 polys and the whole thing is 930 polys.
well, i'll try just for you :D
also, i like the left one, looks a lot better than the right one :)
i just hope we're talking untriangulated models, cause triangulated, their effective polycount is doubled....
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Yeah, all triangulated. :) I like to work with non-triangles since it looks so much cleaner when modelling.
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aye. i hate triangles with all my heart. i might have something done by the end of the night as i overdosed myself with caffeine... again.
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Let's all ask ourselves what difference a few hundred polys on a turret is going to make. I seriously doubt anyone will ever notice, and we should use the best models that we can.
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Meh, a few hundred more polys? I say we unleash Axem, and let him add a few thousand.
Comming from a guy who can't low poly model. :p
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Let's all ask ourselves what difference a few hundred polys on a turret is going to make. I seriously doubt anyone will ever notice, and we should use the best models that we can.
"a few hundred polys" might not make much difference on 1 model, but you put 5 or 6 of those models together and you have a thousand extra polys, and if you take the same attitude with every model in the game you've got 10s of thousands of extra polys... now that *does* make a difference. A line has to be drawn somewhere, and i think the model on the left is just fine. with a decent skin on it, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two in-game - and thats what it comes down to. Even community projects are bound by the performance/prettiness tradeoff, whether you like it or not.
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There is no 'line'...
First of all, the number of polygons isn't near as important as good texturing and the number of submodel. Every texture entails a render pass. If it has shine/glow/env maps, those entail an extra pass. If there are more than 8 lights nearby, that entails an extra pass. This holds the same for every submodel being rendered. Polygons don't matter near as much, because when a texture or submodel is rendered, the CPU passes all the polygons to the video card at once and lets it do its thing.
Second of all, even if you do draw a line, who do you draw it for? Must people with GF4 MX440s be able to run every single item in the mVPs, or can you let modders have a little bit of leeway?
Thirdly, since extra instances entail extra render passes. How many of these should it be possible to have in game at once? To answer this question, you will need to answer #2 as well.
Fourth, no-one has even tried the model in-game.
And fifth, most of the high-poly ships started at around 400 polys. A thousand extra polys isn't a big deal any more. With the last two sets of mediaVPs, there would be about 24,125 polies floating around in the first FS2 mission when the Belisarius and Psamtik arrived. To match that, you'd need about 68 of the turrets on the left. Maybe 10 ever appear at once, which is just about the same number of polygons as a single Serapis.
EDIT: Not that I'm singling you out here, this is just another in a long line of people saying "That's nice, but what about the polycount?" when 99.9% of the feedback I've seen on the forums has indicated that the biggest slowdown problem are the animated effects. I can't remember someone complaining about the polygon count of any of the fighters in-game. (Except for way back when the mediaVPs started, and someone just meshsmoothed the Perseus to 10k polies)
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Yeah, my guidline for polycount is th add as much as are necessary to make it look good (without being rediculous of course)
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As WMC says, the performance issues I have are related to things like DaBrains insanely - highend explosion effects, not polycount. The lower the polycount, the sooner someone will have to redo it.
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The lower the polycount, the sooner someone will have to redo it.
Quoted for good measure.
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On the other hand, there's also the question of whether anyone will ever notice the extra polys; it's wasted effort otherwise.
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It's arguable that with the advent of more advanced graphical features (like shaders etc) the extra detail will have a greater effect. I'd rather see a 'full' version, as intended by the modeller, than see them cut down the polycount for no reason.
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I'm not too concerned it being a wasted effort. The border took all of 15 minutes to do. Its not like I slaved over it or anything.
Anyway, I did some craptastic UV mapping. I still have to redo some of it (like the turret base), but its getting close to done now.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/NarfPics/craptastic.jpg)
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Much improved
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looks like the textures could do with some work, were they ever updated back in the day?
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On the other hand, there's also the question of whether anyone will ever notice the extra polys; it's wasted effort otherwise.
Till we start getting stenciled shadows and the like again. :p It's worth remembering that just cause they can't be seen now doesn't mean that they always will be invisible.
I tend to agree with WMC on this one. No matter how many times we say that poly count is not the most important factor we still get people saying that they have to be cut down. It just doesn't make sense as good LODding will prevent that huge number of polys ever being present at one time even if it was a big problem.
As long as someone isn't spending 50,000 polys on a sentry gun it's not much of a problem. Sentries should have as large a poly budget as fighters do. They are present in similar numbers and the player tends to get much closer to sentries when playing.
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Bump for great justice. I redid the model and went in a different direction with the turret barrels this time.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/NarfPics/hp_gunplatform1.jpg)
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Cool... still liked the original one you did better... but this is still a vast improvement.
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Awesome. :)
But... naughty, dirty black x. What's up with that? I know it's from the original... but... it looks so dumb. :(
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You gonna model in the rest of the texture details now?
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Nah. That sort of detail I'd consider unnecessary. And the texture doesn't fit on the model 100% so it wouldn't be very fun to do so. :blah:
Anyway, download available!
Includes POF and TBM for initial turret action (http://www.axemspace.com/files/models/hp_gunplatform01.rar)
Aaaaand a pic.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/NarfPics/watchpuppy.jpg)
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I can't help but laugh at the turret and what it's sitting on. :P Any chance you could slim that out a little?
Looks awesome nonetheless. :yes:
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Looks great, good job
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I'm pretty sure no one has done this yet. I remember someone doing a Alastor, but not the other (more pathetic) sentry guns.
http://hades-combine.com/img/turretrender.jpg
yeah, i did the watchdog/cerberus long ago.
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Hey, Krackers, by the way, what are you doing about Hades-Combine? The webpage is screwed up. :P
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I like fishguts turrets, but I know you won't add them so, *shrug*. Whatever DID happen to HC anyway? Hacked, or somthing?
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Taken down because of spambots, and I believe it got corrupted from there. (?)
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As far as I could tell there were only spambots on the forums. There was a faulty .php file that managed to get screwed up. As far as I know, Krackers never contacted our hosts and the hosts never did anything if he did.