Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: --Steve-O-- on July 10, 2007, 10:02:11 am
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How do you go about building planets with atmospheres like in the Twisted Infinities screen shots?
i'll take anything, Tuts, examples, stick figure pictures drawn on napkins late at night in a dank bar next to a lady that sounds oddly like Kevin Costner.
i have some fun missions in mind for this. the planet, not the kevin costner lady...no sir.
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Joshua would recommend to ask the Twisted Infinities creators...
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hmm...creators you say?
i'll have to do a little homework.
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I'd suggest you check out the Celestial Objects thread, I'd link to it but I can't find it at the moment!
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what kind of planets? bitmaps or models?
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Joshua would recommend to ask the Twisted Infinities creators...
And Snail would advise you to speak in the first person as opposed to the third.
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<3 search
Celestial Objects Thread: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,41939.0.html
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A lot of it is tricking the graphics engine, don't think of it as a landscape, think of it as a very big ship with rocks for subobjects ;)
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to top gun: 3d models
i've got a rough idea how i want to do the model, with nukeable cities for submodels !!! the atmosphere thing though has me astonished, and bewildered. i think its a sky box of sorts, but what i want to know, is if its like a local sky box or detail box thats attatched to the model, or is it a global skybox that you have to swap out in fred. can you transition from atmosphere to open space while in mission?
Thanks for the Link Kazan, it had another link in it to the celestial motherlode, gold mine!
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The sky itself is a skybox sphere loading in Fred, as for how to make them, well, you either need software that can do panoramic rendering, or make one using photoshop :)
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I just downloaded free skybox textures from a Quake III resources website and rotated them so that they join correctly on some of the cubical skyboxes available for FreeSpace. The only problem is that there's no ground and the scenery never changes as you go further out.
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can you transition from atmosphere to open space while in mission?
Not the way we do it, though you can transition above and below the cloud layer.
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so transition are a matter of mission planning, i.e. mission and then scramble mission right after with open space skybox?
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That'd be the logical way, and, in all likelyhood, the way we'll end up doing it (though maybe with a stop along the way).
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i've got a rough idea how i want to do the model, with nukeable cities for submodels !!!
Are you wanting to fly through the cities or just view them from a distance?
Either way you are going to get familiar with detail boxes.
From Low Earth Orbit to ground level is a fairly tall order, Here is a possible solution that I haven't had time to develop further. Highest density would be towards the centre. The aim was to have a limited number of generic landscape blocks that would fit together.
Then there is the problem of changing from the space sky box to an atmosphere sky box.
(http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/pcantwel/images/planet1.jpg)
Above LEO it won't work :p
(http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/pcantwel/images/planet2.jpg)
Having a pure ground level and a separate high view point level would be much less work.
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Since skills aren't available to me I'm simply doing the "start in space, red alert to ground" or vice versa...
Using Nico's old Skybox:"
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/Star-Dragon/Skytest1.jpg)
Lowered the hemisphere till it touches the ground model so I have about 16km up and 32 KM horizon to play with...
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i thought it would be cool to fly through cities and such. it would make for a nice tense field of battle, have to dodge a whole sort of things trying to kill you, whle weaving and blazing throught cities. imagine Thor flying down your street. thats what i want.
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i thought it would be cool to fly through cities and such. it would make for a nice tense field of battle, have to dodge a whole sort of things trying to kill you, whle weaving and blazing throught cities. imagine Thor flying down your street. thats what i want.
ok - Because you are already in the city, the Freespace lodding system won't work.
A simple city is easy to make. The more complex you make it, the more you have to juggle within the limitations.
Keep the landscape as low poly as possible. Height maps are the most common way to generate the landscape polys. Use one large texture map or go for tiling. (For tiling - google high pass filter) The landscape will always be a balance between what looks good close vs far. Make a flat piece for the buildings to sit on. Having this separate from the landscape means you can texture it a different way. (roads etc)
If you can keep most of the buildings to simple extruded shapes, then you can skip detail boxes.
Make 8-16 buildings, depending on how interesting you want the city to look - (recommend 8 for version 1)
UV map at least 4 buildings per map. You will be mostly zooming past them so you don't need to get too fancy.
Don't add extra poly details to buildings - use texture maps. Plan to use normal maps to simulate polys.
Once you place the buildings
Select all the buildings using the same texture map and merge them into one poly object.
If the poly count for any object is more than 9k (approx) then you will need PCS2 for pofing. If you hit this limit you either missed the keep it simple part or like lots of buildings.
A good sky box makes a difference
Since this method is not using detail boxes - don't go crazy on poly count.
In a nutshell ----> Less objects and Less texture maps = better
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Got it. i've got a few ships to do still, but i think i'll work on this one in bettween, like when i ned a break from one model i'll tinker some with this. It looks cool as hell in my head now i just hope i can do it justice.
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It looks cool as hell in my head now i just hope i can do it justice.
Since Spikes' ship was an inspiration for Thor, I had a look at a Beebop city... If you are thinking anything like that... OMG :eek2:
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i just had an idea.
dome cities!
the planet can be relativly small, like a moon and devoid of atmosphere, so i wouldnt have to change to global skybox at all. that way i can use like planetary defense cannons and the such to spice up the mission. as for the cities themselves i can place a dome over them, make an outside dome with one texture, and an inside dome with reversed normals and a simulated sky employed as a glow texture. think of Cloud Nine from Battlestar Galactica. then inside that i can have the nifty little city. overall i can keep the whole thing compact, cutting down on relativly unused space that i would get with a large planet, and the player can approach it and experience the Star/sky transition in a way that flows and makes sence. in addition capital ships can hang in low orbit and bombard targets on the surface without the player thinking "how did that thing survive rentry? even better how come its not dropping like a rock?" hell its even a geat setup for some underground action. setup the structures as large subobjects over a large crater in the actual planetoid model, so if the city is destroyed it will leave a large crater. i think i can even pull off being able to destroy individual buildings. with the help of fred i can kill the glow maps and simulate all hell breaking loose in side. this reeks of cool!
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good point.
its going to depend on who's side i do it for.
if its a federal planet then yeah, i' think i'll go for a modernized yet gritty look, GTVA it'll be clean, neat and modern...sparkly, the kind of sparkle that will make you want to redecorate with a helios. or maybe i'll do both. we'll see where this goes.
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going to have to study the city scapes in Beebop, BSG and Firefly/Serenity.
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The dome version will be ideal for what you want. Basically it puts a lid on how high someone can go, and allows you to concentrate on the city itself. All you need is a large impressive airlock and you're set.
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going to have to study the city scapes in Beebop, BSG and Firefly/Serenity.
Cowboy Bebop!
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hmm...getting in the thing is going to be the interesting part. i can do the airlock, and just make it so the player has to time his entry with a fighter or other craft launch, or balst some vent hatches and worm your way in...or both.
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og into the very large air lock, when who ever is in control decides not to let your life be easy and won't open the inner lock, in fact they summon fighter drones to kill you, but luckily you see an air vent that might blow up if you shoot it and voala air vent fight until you blast your way out into the city.
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BINGO! air vents and mine shafts. starting to hunt down sky bitmaps i can map. any body know of any good places to look?