Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: --Steve-O-- on January 04, 2008, 02:38:08 pm
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finally sat down and decided to do an over haul of the Vexor class Destroyer. it wasn't bad to begin with, for one of my early models, it did however need a facelift.
Before
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/vex7.jpg)
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/Vex2.jpg)
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/Vex1.jpg)
After
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/VexorA.jpg)
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/VexorB.jpg)
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/VexorC.jpg)
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/VexorD.jpg)
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I like it. It reminds me kinda of an Starlancer ship but better. Will you do a complete fleet with this design?
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not the exact design persay but pretty much every cap ship i've done or have in the kettle all share certain design traits, as well as all the fighter save for the MiG (not my design)
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It stuck me as a SL descendant also (I kept all the meshes - untextured)
Great job! It's looks liek it's all greebled to hell!
Infact, it that a additional fighter bay in the bow? So it actually has 2? (hard to see in that angle)
Would you be offended if I asked to use it as a Carrier? In fact if you move the two bow guns a bit left and right or made them fixed forward cannons left and right nose that would be awesome..!
(Carrier/Battleship Fetish) ;7
[EDIT]: Forgot to ask, WHEN WILL IT BE READY? ;) :p :D :nod: :eek: :eek2: :nervous: :shaking:
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actually, the CS Pukov was a huge inspiration for this bugger. SL was an awsome game.
it's getting close to completion. i still have to do the detail box renditions for both hanger bay insides and sort out and number all the turrets, plus i still have to revamp my current torpedo turret model as its old and ugly. after that i still have a few details to throw in then its off to the PCS factory for finally assembly! but yeah once its out do what every you want to or with it!
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Could you do me a HUGE favor and point me towards an in depth UV mapping and texturing tutorial?
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:yes:
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I do like your modelling technique, you have an eye for interesting shapes :)
Really nice work again.
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Some updats and eye candy. first 3 shots are of the forward hanger bay. the other 2 are just for kicks, they do show a little added detail though.
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/VexHngr01.jpg)
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/VexHngr01a.jpg)
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/VexHngr03.jpg)
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/VexNew.jpg)
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/VexNewa.jpg)
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I like the last image a lot. The ships in the back seam to have a rotating section like the B5 human destroyers is that right?
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Just... wow!
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those are nice.. where are they being used?
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I think I remember seeing the cruiser in the back used in Blue Planet's last mission, and I think some of the fighters have been used in... I can't remember.
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Sometimes I think Bobboau should never have released his shadow trials, I simply cannot help thinking how much self-shadowing would improve those 'indoor' images ;) It shouldn't be too hard to make bump maps for those textures either :)
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heh... his shadow trials also ate machines for breakfast... eventually we can do shader soft shadows though
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Wasn't it planed anyway that when shaders are done to add shadow support? I also think that ships with cockpits would benefit a lot of haveing a shadow system.
A question I would have is how to simulate it for hangars like this one or like the ones we have in saga. Something should tell the program to eather not apply shadows to the interior, what would make it uninteresting or you have to be able to set some lightsources or am I completly wrong?
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Steve-O's ships haunt my dreams.
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A question I would have is how to simulate it for hangars like this one or like the ones we have in saga. Something should tell the program to eather not apply shadows to the interior, what would make it uninteresting or you have to be able to set some lightsources or am I completly wrong?
lightsources
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I like the last image a lot. The ships in the back seam to have a rotating section like the B5 human destroyers is that right?
it is, that ship was built using the B5 omega destroyers as an inspiration. those are nice.. where are they being used?
for my own pet project pretty much, Blue planet put the frigates in the background to use in their mod.
other than that i've posted for D/L everything else i have completed so far for anybody to use in a mod.
A question I would have is how to simulate it for hangars like this one or like the ones we have in saga. Something should tell the program to eather not apply shadows to the interior, what would make it uninteresting or you have to be able to set some lightsources or am I completly wrong?
lightsources
and shaders....gives me tingles just thinking about it.
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Query: Is this for a mod, or is this a side gig? Either way, excellent work, perhaps the start of a Starlancer section of the Wing Commander mods.
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StarLancer is its own universe...just as a sidenote.
Still StarLancer was a nice game and had some kinda interesting looking ships. A StarLancer mod would be nice.
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this thing is screwed...... :mad:
it converts with both PCS1 and 2, no hassle. but the moment i try to plop it down in Fred....immediate crash. when i try to view it in the tech room (changed POF in the table) immediate crash. i even tried loading just the hull and made a table saying that it is nothing more than a nav buoy, it crashed once, then actually loaded the model but at 1/8 the size, missing parts and textures both mine and even ones in the MVP files. if any body is up to taking a look at this mess i would be ecstatic cuz with now this model is nothing more than taunting eye candy, and i have no clue what is going on with it.
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ok - I'll take a look
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much appreciation :D
here's a link to the RAR containg what i firmly believe and might just be the gate to hell itself.
http://www.mediafire.com/?3kheljmmzdm
i'll keep slugging it out with this beast over here as well.
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Noticing quite a few modeling errors - boolian type stuff. Which version of truespace are you using?
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TS 3.2
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You may need to change either how you model or the modeling package. Only use boolean functions if you are willing to edit/tidy up at the poly/vertex level. Sometimes letting the game engine work out some of the intersections may cause less problems than Truespace's attempt.
Also if you never see a poly in game - then you can delete it. For example the 14 polies under the turret base(x10) etc...
Got your pof in game after re-saving with PCS2, and yes most of the bits had disappeared.
Got the hull in game and then got the skirt in game. Both of these were re uv- mapped (auto with single texture - Blender)
Made a temp table and attacked the ship - most of the turrets were invisible so it was hard to tell which ones were firing.
PCS2 has error checking stuff to catch problems. But all automated fixers are there to catch the occasional error. TS3 does not do booleans very well - and you have done quite a few. For an object that gets copied multiple times like a turret, it pays to get the first one right.
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/booliean.jpg)
At the end of the day it's FSO that chooses if a pof is usable, not PCS.
( 1k for a gun barrel is high poly :nod: )
So it is fixable with a bit of effort - but I don't think Truespace 3.2 is the App to use. I would recommend Blender (but maybe not to a Truespace user) - possibly try Wings3D. Use it to fix the mesh and then re-import to Truespace.
Nice ship ;)
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yeah, i am actually looking into moving up to a newer TS. 5 or 6 haven't decided yet. i had wings, the interface was unbearable. i actually downloaded blender yesterday and tinkered with it a bit. Now, if i import it into blender and hammer out the bugs, will it preserve all my UV information? or will it get tossed? also what were the catastrophic errors that caused it to crash? or was it cumulative effort of numerous errors? and another good question...what parts where the most dodgy? i've still got the model in a textured pre-union format so i'f all else fails i can toss the current pieces and start out semi fresh without loosing to much. as for that turret, i just checked it and i found why it was drawing "funky faces". so that i'm sure i can fix it easy with some line draws.
thanks for looking into it
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yeah, i am actually looking into moving up to a newer TS. 5 or 6 haven't decided yet. i had wings, the interface was unbearable. i actually downloaded blender yesterday and tinkered with it a bit. Now, if i import it into blender and hammer out the bugs, will it preserve all my UV information? or will it get tossed? also what were the catastrophic errors that caused it to crash? or was it cumulative effort of numerous errors? and another good question...what parts where the most dodgy? i've still got the model in a textured pre-union format so i'f all else fails i can toss the current pieces and start out semi fresh without loosing to much. as for that turret, i just checked it and i found why it was drawing "funky faces". so that i'm sure i can fix it easy with some line draws.
thanks for looking into it
Well Blenders cob import isn't the best. Although it brings in the uv info, it thows out the material list. Obj is better for importing. It's more hotkey orentated, so unless you learn them the interface is not useful, but fast when you do.
I think it may be cumulative errors, anywhere you used Boolean ops. With the colours Blender uses I can find/see the problems easily enough.
When I re uv mapped the hull and skirt with a single material - all the parts showed up in Freepace. So maybe FSO has a problem with faces with no material? Before you start fixing the mesh - Assign everything to one texture map and test it out.
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up date.
i tried assigning a single map, still wouldn't load in fred. so i took it apart and started feeding it bit by bit into the engine to see what part makes it crash, or atleast what bits show rendering issues in fred. all the parts loaded fine into fred, i then started adding the parts back together and feeding it though, a few pieces added at a timei got nearly the whole hull into fred with no issues (after i corrected and replaced some parts), but when i introduced the main hull it crashed. i reverese ordered it and attatched every thing to the hull and it crashed when i added one the last few bits, one of the main engines. so some of it goes in, but not all. next stop is to rework that main hull...even looking at the geom on that makes me shudder.
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i have a theory, to many polygons on one total object of the mesh. i just tested it, when it loads, the poly count is around 8500. so i left the main hull out, but copied and glued a bunch of parts to the overall mesh and pushed the hull count above 10,000. crash.
so i know more or less its not the main hull, cuz it wasn't even present and all parts used were certified as stable enough. so could this be it then?
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Nope. The game handles many more polys than that just fine. I've managed to get a 230 000 poly test model working before. Your problem will almost certainly be an unstable mesh, and by the sounds of it, more than one piece.
When you say you were 'gluing a bunch of parts to the overall mesh', can you get a screenie of the hierarchy used?
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i have a theory, to many polygons on one total object of the mesh. i just tested it, when it loads, the poly count is around 8500. so i left the main hull out, but copied and glued a bunch of parts to the overall mesh and pushed the hull count above 10,000. crash.
so i know more or less its not the main hull, cuz it wasn't even present and all parts used were certified as stable enough. so could this be it then?
If you were using PCS1 then yes, it only handles about 9k or so. (per sub-object) PCS2 doesn't have a problem.
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Victory!
i still have to clean up the mesh a bit more... but here it is!
here's the kicker... all i had to do really to fix it has break up the sub objects into groups with poly counts less than 10,000. so the engines went into one group, the skirts into another and the main hull being just that, the main hull. this was all done with PCS1. i still dont know why PCS2 butchered it though. i do know i erradicated some horendous geometry and fixed the turrets, so maybe that had a huge hand in it. i would like to thank all of you especially water for helping me out with this bugger.
so yeah, screen shot to celebrate!
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h308/t64smyhotrod/Victory.jpg)
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If PCS2 butchered it, then it almost certainly had a reason I'm afraid. Can you try opening the model in a debug fred build and checking for any errors that appear there? Also I'd suggest extensive ramming and shooting collision tests all over the hull, especially at potentially problematic places like intersections and stuff.
The latest builds of PCS1 did have pretty solid BSP compilation, but if the model really was stable it should have converted in PCS2 - which makes me a bit suspicious of it having worked in PCS1.
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when PCS2 takes a butcher knife to your model it means it's screaming at you about bad geometry
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i still have to clean up the mesh a bit more... but here it is!
Umm... I think Steve has got the point already :p
(TS3.2+Boolean=fix intersections)
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Well the issue is more that he's implying the solution involves using PCS1 over PCS2, because ideally you want to fix the model to the point where PCS2 can convert it correctly rather than settling for a result that may only half work or something. :)
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Doesn't using Truespace3.2 with anything newer than PCS1 create a time paradox or something :lol: