Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: eagleclaw on October 12, 2006, 07:42:05 pm

Title: Need help making spaceships
Post by: eagleclaw on October 12, 2006, 07:42:05 pm
 I don't know if this is in the right place, but I'm really not a modeller. Can anyone give me a good program that is easy enough to do my models.
 Right now I have Gmax and Byce 5. Any easier modelling programes do you now of would be a great help. Thank you ;)
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Davros on October 12, 2006, 08:53:47 pm
blender or milkshape 3d im guessing im not a modeller
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Taristin on October 12, 2006, 09:11:39 pm
Not gonna happen. There is no magical easy program. You have two excellent tools already. Learn Gmax, is my advice. It's 3ds Max, and that's really an amazing modelling program.
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Flipside on October 12, 2006, 09:16:52 pm
Blender would be my advice, but be warned, there's no 'easy' way of making HTL level spacecraft, at least not ones that use polygons sensibly, and modelling programs can be scary at first. Just remember to stick at it, start small and work your way upwards and be warned, don't expect all comments on your models to be positive either, if you ask for opinion round here, you get it ;)

Anyway, this is probably going to be moved to FS Modding, so see you in there :D

Edit : Damn, Taris posted while I was typing :)
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: eagleclaw on October 12, 2006, 10:35:23 pm
Thank you for your help.I will learn; as much as I can.
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Nuke on October 12, 2006, 11:08:30 pm
im gonna say this, i hate blender. the fact that its free is probibly the only good thing about it.
id just stick with gmax, or score max 8 if you can.
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Dysko on October 13, 2006, 12:31:03 am
Well, I tried Gmax (but that was a long time ago, when I wanted to make CFS3 aircrafts), Blender and TrueSpace, and the only one I learnt to use is TrueSpace. Yes, obviously it will be looooooong time before you will see models made by me... Maybe I'll be able to make models for FS5 mods  :lol:
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: IPAndrews on October 13, 2006, 02:51:37 am
Avoid Blender like the plague. It's horrid. IMHO. That said I have to echo the earlier comments. There are no easy modelling programs. To learn any one of them takes a lot of patience, effort, and determination. If I were to completely guess at which would be the easiest to learn I'd probably look in the direction of Lightwave or Rhino. I've dabbled with both and they seem more intuitive than 3D Studio although the entire world seems to be agreed on the fact that 3D Studio is the most powerful tool out there. Also you can convert 3D Studio to a Freespace pof. Don't know if the plugin works with GMax.

If you can use trueSpace (get the capitalisation right! ;) ) though what's the problem? Sure you won't turn out any BSG quality CGI using trueSpace but it's absolutely fine for knocking up a few space ships. Well any version after 4.2 is.
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: aldo_14 on October 13, 2006, 02:57:40 am
Blender would be my advice, but be warned, there's no 'easy' way of making HTL level spacecraft, at least not ones that use polygons sensibly, and modelling programs can be scary at first. Just remember to stick at it, start small and work your way upwards and be warned, don't expect all comments on your models to be positive either, if you ask for opinion round here, you get it ;)

Anyway, this is probably going to be moved to FS Modding, so see you in there :D

Edit : Damn, Taris posted while I was typing :)

Until you said 'use polygons sensibly', I was going to say meshsmooth :D
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Nuke on October 13, 2006, 03:23:34 am
i view truespace as a dead end. truespace 7 is just crap, evidence of a downward spiral. there arent any new features that are usefull and there are many more annoyances. i like the fect that as newer max versions come arount they never change the interface and they never mess anything up. also newer version seem to be as fast as older ones (not true for ts). if you want to do 10,000 poly htl models, youre gonna want a more advanced modeling program. it can be done in truespce, but it will drive you insane.
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Colonol Dekker on October 13, 2006, 09:00:45 am
In all honesty TS isn't bad to model, - Once the learning curve is breached i mean........
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: NGTM-1R on October 13, 2006, 11:35:31 am
I would recommend Max myself, because I'm finding it a severe pain to export through multipe formats to .pof, and we have that handy .pof exporter now.
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: eagleclaw on October 13, 2006, 03:26:15 pm
 Would trueSpace 4 be good?
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Colonol Dekker on October 16, 2006, 07:56:51 am
If you can get it for free then yeas!
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Unknown Target on October 16, 2006, 08:22:08 am
Sketchup and Milkshape are both very easy, and good for beginners or advanced users (Sketchup moreso for the advanced end).
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: asyikarea51 on October 16, 2006, 08:26:17 am
What exactly is Sketchup, if I may ask? Some crazy tool that models whatever you draw?

(My guess is that it's not... if that was possible, everybody probably would've used it by now... :nervous:)

Please excuse me if the question sounds rather dumb... I can't model/texture/UV/whatnot for nuts either... :nervous:
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Unknown Target on October 16, 2006, 10:10:10 am
www.sketchup.com. Watch the demo video :)
You can get the free version (Google Sketchup) for free, but it only saves in Google Earth/Sketchup files. But the pro version, Sketchup, is full featured and costs about $500 (very low for a pro-level package). Unfortunately, it can't do anything but tiled texturing, so you'd need a program to do that seperately (probably Lithunwrap, altho I like to use Milkshape).
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: eagleclaw on October 17, 2006, 12:02:04 am
Download the Sketchup Free one UT. Thanks for the help. Should have some models soon.
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Scooby_Doo on October 17, 2006, 12:06:36 am
Didn't someone try converting a sketchitup model over and it was a mess?
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Turey on October 17, 2006, 12:14:50 am
Download the Sketchup Free one UT. Thanks for the help. Should have some models soon.

Didn't someone try converting a sketchitup model over and it was a mess?

Oh dear god, not again!
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Nuke on October 17, 2006, 05:59:02 am
all the old skool nukemod models (ones that have still not been htled) were done in truespace 4.2. thats the apis, nemesis, maelstrom, atlas, chaos, and even the dante (most of it anyway).  so its pretty good if you happen to know all the tricks. i merged into ts6 around the time i was doing the htl ragnarok class, and only recently into ts7 which i now hate with avengance. im thinking about converting everything to max 8  and save me the headaches. il probibly finish the vulture in truespace, because its mostly done anyway, and convert it to max for uving. anyone know if pof export works under max 8?
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Dysko on October 17, 2006, 06:36:25 am
A schoolmate told me about ZModeler. Is it good as far as you know?
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: asyikarea51 on October 17, 2006, 12:29:40 pm
The only thing I know about ZModeler is that it's more common with the NFS circle.

Didn't someone try converting a sketchitup model over and it was a mess?

Is there something I need to know from this quote? :) (sorry if I sound impolite, just wanted to go straight to the point...)
Title: Re: Need help making spaceships
Post by: Colonol Dekker on October 18, 2006, 05:44:49 am
I thought it was a case of export to DXF and import via TS/whatever, and flipping th enorms and resolving the scaling... :nervous: :D