Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => The FreeSpace Port Upgrade => Topic started by: Thaeris on April 04, 2010, 04:29:24 pm
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Apart from being tired of the mother****ing snakes in my mother****ing FreeSpace (I'm looking at YOU, Nuclear!), in a fit of sudden rage/inspiration, I also determined I was tired of the state of the current GTF Apollo. That said, I'm determined to get a better mesh of the fighter to everyone at some point.
Note that I say at some point - I have... many commitments among actually important scholastic commitments to attend to. Thus, I give my apologies in advance to Headdie, ShadowGorrath, and those wanting a new GTF Kulas for cluttering my schedule with things that further delay those projects. :P
I've not too much to show as of yet, but the first objective to attend to is to refine the cockpit section. It's actually trikier than you think...
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The Apollo is kind of outdated right now so I guess it's alright.
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Please take reference from the concept art as well as the opening cutscene.
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My primary references are the original mesh, some aspects of... was it Galemp or Vasudan Admiral who did the HTL Apollo?... the current high-poly mesh, as well as the cutscene. The idea is to capture what we know from way-back of the Apollo while not diverging too far from it - I'm not going to pull a Boa here.
...I will note that I will NOT include a forward canopy pillar when I get around to that component, and I will make sure an appropriately-sized pilot/pilot and WSO (for the GTB Apollo ;7) get placed in the cockpit. I'm also going to axe those hideous "frog-ears" on the current HTL model. The cutscene model (my primary source for general shape) didn't have them, and I won't suffer to put those things on.
As for hull details, the current HTL mesh got most of them right in my opinion, and now it's just a matter of adding some finer details to them. Everything else should be fixed with a new texture map... I'm no texture artist, so hopefully someone will step forward to take care of that problem.
Now, I'm not opposed to using the concept art so long as it doesn't contradict too much detail from what we know of in-game. The Wiki certainly has a concept art page, but it's at a pretty low resolution. What VP should I crack into to find this stuff? Knowing that could help quite a bit.
Lastly, I'll post the current developmental from my notebook - I'm trying to maintain the main slab-sided surfaces of the Apollo's cockpit armor, and the primary reference apart from the cutscence model is the original Apollo mesh, which undoubtably was derived from the cutscene ship or vice-versa (the similarities as well as certain texture regions are just too obvious). However, upon noting the cutscene and looking at the mesh, there is a little more curvature than you'd think to the ship, hence the reason for the higher poly-count apparent in the... rather early stages of the model you've seen so far. Getting the "slabs" right while avoiding the "dents" (which were certainly not intended to be there as a design feature) is something that no one has seemed to get so far...
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In a non-racist way. . . Keep it white please.
No red crap on it.
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I am also of the opinion that it should remain white, but a reskin would be nice.
The original high-poly model is my own, but of course if you believe you can improve upon it feel free to do so. And anything you add with a normal map, please do! :)
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In a non-racist way. . . Keep it white please.
No red crap on it.
Hey! I liked the red!
...But, as I said, I'm not up to par in the texture department - someone else will hopefully volunteer for the various maps. Now, once I have a "GTB Apollo," that of course will be red. However, I think a beat-up white and grey scheme will suit the standard fighter well.
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I would be VERY interested in a GTB Apollo for my cutscene project!
I'll probably finish up the Intro with the current HTL and when/if the GTB becomes available I'll replace the model and render out a new version.
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Alright, I love the Apollo! I might have use for it should I ever get around to working on... something something.
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Anything new?
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I've been rather busy lately, so no, not really.
However, I'll be the first to let you know when I've made some progress.
:)
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Well it's not like there's any other HLP members looking over your shoulder who can beat you to it.
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I'm quite thankful there is interest in this, though, so many thanks for the replies.
I've been busy with near-end-of-semester things as well as many other projects - the Apollo certainly isn't the only one.
I did do some alternate developmental work far from the conventional a while back - I discussed it over IRC. However, for those of you not there:
(http://amaqbw.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pt365McTV-3s2SRQij91k8ldMfJyCQ0zxZSS8w5_iL2W-sDAE4onD5qtBrVHPbFWGRlis2iMVCQ_H0-OsBG0x7lPT27POvNfl/Nosecone%20Geometry.jpg)
So, after being rather fed-up with not being able to find the appropriate way to blend the foremost panel section of the Apollo's nose cone, I found a small scrap of pine and whittled away at it with a Fiskars hatchet as an alternate means of visualizing the desired curvature - it's surprising what seems so simple to do is actually rather difficult in practice! This most certainly must be the reason no one's fixed the "dents" in the Apollo's nose before. :P
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So you're literally hacking away at this model? :lol:
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There were better angles with which to get a view at the curvature of the block, but the picture was a quick job so as to post something on IRC. A full physical model of the Apollo would be pretty cool, though. :lol:
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I'm quite thankful there is interest in this, though, so many thanks for the replies.
Well of course, the Apollo is one of the most epic ships around. :D
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The Apollo is the perfect fighter, except that it's got a huge target profile from above and below.
Other than that, can't complain about it.
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Well, very bad spacing on the missile banks means you can't use dumbfires.
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Yeah, but Furies are terrible anyway. Nothing compared to the Tempest. Dumbfire aren't too helpful in the GW-era.
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Unfortunately, aspect-lock missiles weren't much better. :p
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True, but I'll take Interceptors over Furies any day.
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The Apollo is the perfect fighter, except that it's got a huge target profile from above and below.
Other than that, can't complain about it.
I just love the way the Apollo handles. You don't have to herd it around like a Herc or constantly correct overshoots like with a Ulysses. It's like you can just will it to do something and it will do it.
Also, I agree with everyone who wants to keep the gray/white paint scheme.
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You'll be keeping it for a while. I've got a lot of things to do before I get back to this...
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You'll be keeping it for a while. I've got a lot of things to do before I get back to this...
Sadface