Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: bobbtmann on April 18, 2010, 12:47:18 pm
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I'm taking a little break from the Braha'tok. I'm going to start the dreadnaught, if nobody has any objections. I'm using this pic as my main reference, because it's the best version of the ship I've found.
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Awesome. The Dreadnaught is from the good EU, fills a needed slot for us size-wise, and that's painting is my favorite version of it. :yes:
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Yes, we need something medium-size.
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...So, is that a bunch of Dreadnoughts towing a large fuel reserve, or something like that, then?
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http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Outbound_Flight
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A couple more. (http://swc.fs2downloads.com/reference.php?subdir=Misc/Dreadnaught/). Note the non-thumbnailed bmp files at the bottom too. Unfortunately PHP+gd can't process bitmaps.
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Looks like a cross between a Carrack and a Gallofree.
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Did the dreadnaught appear in a game? I've noticed that there are a number of ships from the EU that look very similar to each other. In particular the Neutron Star class bulk cruiser and the Carrack. The dreadnaught also looks like its back end is from the same source as those two.
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looks weird.. I love weird looking ships :nod:
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AFAIK, the dreadnaught was in SW: Rebellion, XWA, and EAW at least.
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Did the dreadnaught appear in a game? I've noticed that there are a number of ships from the EU that look very similar to each other. In particular the Neutron Star class bulk cruiser and the Carrack. The dreadnaught also looks like its back end is from the same source as those two.
It was in SW: Rebellion - that's where one of the pics in the link Chief posted came from. It was also featured in XW Alliance. The actual 3D models from neither of those games was remarkable enough to stand out in my memory though...
edit: ninja'd by The E!
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Pardon my FS-trained eyes, but that setup in the first post looks an awful lot like a big ol' Mjolnir. :p
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In addition to the several slightly different version of the Dreadnaught you are making that are floating around, there was a quite different take on the ship featured in Tie Fighter (and XvT I think):
(http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~john22/xvtdrmax.jpg)
This dude has meshes of both versions (and a few other EU ships) available for download if you wanna browse around there.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~john22/maxfile.htm
I dig the version you've started on--the more unique engine block (as seen in the Outbound Flight pic) really helps differentiate its shape from the Carrack. That top angle shot is especially nice.
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The X-Wing Alliance Upgrade Project has a finished Dreadnought, and it's the only design of the ship I'm familiar with - Here's the main progress page:
http://www.xwaupgrade.com/
Here's some samples of their Dreadnought:
(http://www.xwaupgrade.com/screenshots.php?image=dreadnaught_2_3.png)
(http://www.xwaupgrade.com/screenshots.php?image=dreadnaught_1_1.png)
There seems to be two versions of the ship on the project page - apparently, two different individuals had an interest in making the model. The most notable difference is the texture, though there are subtle geometry differences as well.
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Thanks for the links. I've stumbled on all those sites years ago, but I'd forgotten they existed. The X-wing Alliance people sure are busy, they've got a lot of models under their collective belt. I even noticed their escort carrier was made by someone called Col. Fishguts.
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I don't think I even need to say how happy this will make me when completed, I've been a dreadnaught fan for yonks :D
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I don't think I even need to say how happy this will make me when completed, I've been a dreadnaught fan for yonks :D
I guess it not appearing in the prequels must have broken your heart.
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I don't think I even need to say how happy this will make me when completed, I've been a dreadnaught fan for yonks :D
I guess it not appearing in the prequels must have broken your heart.
Vics and Dreads would have been nice, but over all their absence is the least of whats wrong with those films :P.
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The Assault Frigate models floating around also shares some parts with the Dreadnaught. But that's actually intended by canon. It's a ship based off of the older Dreadnaughts, so it basically ends up looking like a Dreadnaught kitbash.
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Thanks for the links. I've stumbled on all those sites years ago, but I'd forgotten they existed. The X-wing Alliance people sure are busy, they've got a lot of models under their collective belt. I even noticed their escort carrier was made by someone called Col. Fishguts.
I'm glad this was of some use, then. ;)
Is it the same Col. Fishguts? The XWA board says that particular member is from Switzerland.
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AFAIK, the dreadnaught was in SW: Rebellion, XWA, and EAW at least.
Rebellion and X-Wing Alliance yes, but not Empire at War, at least not the original or addon. Allthough there is at least one mod (Ultimate Empire at war to be precise) that added the Dreadnaught in EAW.
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As an added note, it seems the assault frigate was derived from the Dreadnought. This could thus be useful in finishing up a kitbash such as that. :nod:
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Thanks for the links. I've stumbled on all those sites years ago, but I'd forgotten they existed. The X-wing Alliance people sure are busy, they've got a lot of models under their collective belt. I even noticed their escort carrier was made by someone called Col. Fishguts.
Is it the same Col. Fishguts? The XWA board says that particular member is from Switzerland.
Yes, that was me.
As for the Dreadnaught, if memory serves right, the XWAUP version was a conversion from an excellent model made for the "Warlords" HW mod, Darksaber converted it to XWA. The original TF/XvT version always struck me as a very boring design that screams "generic starship no.258". So I very much like your take on it :)
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Any thoughts on bringing the Escort Carrier to FotG? :P
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Any thoughts on bringing the Escort Carrier to FotG? :P
I personally think that the Combat Escort Carrier looks a lot more badass.
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The Escort Carrier is great from a mission standpoint because it can realistically deploy numerous waves of Ties, and it's far more vulnerable to fighter attack than an ISD. Only problem is how damned ugly it is...ideal candidate for a reimagined version? Yeah the Combat Escort Carrier is a much cooler looking ship, but its size means that the fighter complement probably isn't all that different from a Carrack, so it might be a bit redundant at this stage. Not that it isn't cool to have multiple ships with similar capabilities, but we still have major size gaps to fill in the cap ship department.
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Is this pretty much the same ship? It looks bad ass already...
EDIT: The Carrack can only carry five fighters. I'd imagine the escort carrier can carry more than that.
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Here's an update. I've made a landing bay and a recessed hangar bay. The hangar can carry 12 fighters, and the landing bay could probably hold another eight. The landing bay isn't big enough for a Lambda, however, so the shuttle that parks there will have to be smaller.
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Hmmm...
...This is a little divergent from all the Dreadnought models I've seen to date. I'm not saying it's thus wrong, but I will say I'll need to be won over to support it fully. I'm not saying you should go with the heinously bad official schematics (no one should), but I would suggest you take another look at the rear hull/engine assembly.
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Well I started a Dreadnought but I barely put any time into it, so I can't complain that someone beat me to it. :p
The only piece of crit I can give right now is I don't quite like that flat bevel on top of the blisters. I saw them as shell like thing. Schematics put those as turbo laser blisters, so I was planning to have the blister as a sort of shell that goes over the turret. In battle the blister retracts revealing one or two deadly cannons. Since we can't do that right now, I was just going to have them mostly open anyway, so you could see that the blister shell is there. But that's just my two cents.
The rear does need a bit of work, but if those engines borrow heavily from the Star Destroyers... It'll be a match made in... Star Wars Heaven... ;7
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Thaeris:
Well, I always felt the old engine assembly felt a bit forced. Or poorly thought out. It also wouldn't work very well with the flatness of the newer design. Also, the profile looks more dynamic with the new engine.
Axem:
You're right about the blisters being domes. I flattened them out in an attempt to relate them formally with the rest of the ship. I don't know if it works or not. Here's the pre-flattened version for comparison:
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Domes look better to me. I do like this take on the shape. Since it's EU and there's not a whole lot of consistent refs we can definitely go our own way, but we gotta stick to the most consistent traits. The blisters probably fall under that category as they're similar across most interpretations.
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Thaeris:
Well, I always felt the old engine assembly felt a bit forced. Or poorly thought out. It also wouldn't work very well with the flatness of the newer design. Also, the profile looks more dynamic with the new engine.
You know, it kind of does, but I will confess that I feel the models that they've produced for the XWA Upgrade Project pretty much capture the best of what I've seen of the Dreadnought to date. However, your model is growing on me. :D
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personally i prefer the domes but i think they are a little to round try reducing the curvature a bit
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I like this.
One could set up a campaign with you leading the 5 fighters of a dreadnaught, and then complete assorted missions, perhaps dealing with some rebel cell in early GCW
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Okay, I'll keep the domes rounded. As for the fighter complement, there's enough room in the hangar to fit an entire squadron.
EDIT: I think that textured surface on either side of the hangar needs some extusions. It feels too cut out.
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I'm really starting to like this thing...
:nod:
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I like that you're detailing it more, but I think that the greebled areas need more attention. Right now it looks like just a random maze pattern. It'd be better if the greebles looked like they had a purpose, perhaps more in style with the ISD or even some prequel designs.
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Just checking in... The size does match up with listed figures, does it not?
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Yeah, I'm starting to think I should just get rid of that textured/greebled surface altogether. It doesn't work at all with the rest of the ship. As for the size, its right on 600 metres.
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I've heard Brand's suggestion before in IRC, I think when Axem was modeling his Gunship. Every greeble should have a story to go with it. If you're doing an EU ship where you have this kind of liberty, it's up to you to come up with that kind of reasoning for why a part exists in the first place. Anything beyond the basic recognizable form of the ship needs to have a purpose. You don't need to document this or anything, but it could help keep it straight in your head to draw these things out on paper or something.
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You realize very little about any of these ships has an actual purpose? It would be better to say that the greebles shouldn't look arbitrary.
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i know that the greebles dont have a clear purpose, its a technique i use, however, to help me. arbitrarily assign functions to greebles, it also helps in the aesthetics department. you can then ask questions like why would they need two shield projeectors so close together? then decide to diversify that area. its more of a mental technique that focuses your creativity
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Gotcha. I guess I could be specific about the purpose issue, too. Functionally, very little serevs a purpose in the fictional sense. Engines, turrets, and hangar bays are an exception to this. Even the domes on an SD don't really serve a fictional purpose, since nobody seems to actually know what that purpose is.
Aesthetically, the greebles do serve a real purpose. They make the ships visually interesting (by contrasting big flat open areas) and most importantly they establish scale. Its easy for spaceships to all look the same size when they're smooth and shiny. By introducing the smaller elements (ie. greebles) the viewer can guess as to the size of the ship. It seems obvious, but small ships like x-wings or the Falcon don't have greebles.
As for my little experiment: don't worry, they're gone.
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There are a few greebles that would make sense. Airlocks, docking ports and sensors (antennae, parabol dishes,...) would be the first to come to mind. Mabe a nameplate too, though that isn't a greeble.
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just a bit of critique, the lower engine section rides a bit too high imo. the painting makes it seem lower.
In addition the drawings in outbound flight show a marked 'v' shape engine block with the lower comm/shield parabolic located there. while i realize that this differs from the version you are representing, it could be implemented as an addition to the bottom of the engine block. just a thought.
and docking ports for greebles makes sense, the cruisers still in service would have been retrofitted for use with lambdas
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I would say even the sensor dishes don't really make sense. They look like they serve a function, but it's only the appearance of function. Take the Barah'tok, for instance. It has two massive dishes on either side. We're made to assume that it serves some purpose, but they're not really positioned in a way that makes sense.
About the painting, Archaic. The artist generalized a lot of the forms. It isn't all that aparent at first glance, but there are parts that do't make sense, or are inconsistant. That is what its supposed to do, since the viewer fills in the rest with their mind, the ships actually appear more realistic than if all the details had been painted. A lot of the Impressionist painters did this, and it makes for a great painting. However, it means that what works well on the canvas doesn't work well in the round.
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It's shaping up nicely, if anything I could suggest, however, is to break up the overall form some more with some smaller greebles, to give it a meaner and tougher appearance. Of course, I know it's not complete and I'd imaging you were planning to do so already, so this post is probably redundant =P
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anyone who wants to see bobbtman's dreadnaught sliced into every single copy of revenge of the sith, say aye!
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Aye!
The novelization had a Dreadnaught in it that played a minor but pretty significant role. If you haven't read it, I recommend it, since it's about 842 times better than the movie.
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Nay.
Slicing in little bits of goodness are a wasted effort. Those three films need a complete remake! Unless you only watch the battlescenes and skip the rest (which I usually end up doing - and hating it, but hating the alternative even more), then Aye.
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Still, if someone were to take the finished model, and then fake a vid where a dreadnaught actually shows up in the film, kind of like the Thor-in-Hulk thing, that'd be pretty friggin sweet.
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bobbtmann, I hope you put the Assault Frigate together next...
...After all, a great portion of that ship was in fact made from a Dreadnought.
:D
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Sorry guys, its been a busy week. Lots of stuff happening. I'll get back to the dreadnaught this weekend, hopefully. Break up its form and all that. If I do make the assault frigate, I'm going to UV map the dreadnaught first so that I don't have to UV map the front portion twice.
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I'd also say the assault frigate could use some reimagining too, considering it's depicted as either a neb B with a dreadnought nose and wings, or just a dreadnought nose with a mess of random greebles.
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Yeah, no kidding. I couldn't even tell that it used to be a dreadnaught, so I was surprised to find out what it was.
Here's a little update. There's some windows in the back I intend to get rid of, and I'm not so sure of the ribbing inside the hangar.
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I like it a lot. As far as the bay goes, I think that if if fighters are supposed to be stored hanging rather than landed on their gear then maybe a pronounced central spine/catwalk thing could look cool, with offshoots that lead out to where the ships are parked. If they are supposed to land on their gear "upside down" in relation to the rest of the ship though, then just a flat landing area with elevators or something marked out would be fine and you wouldn't need the ribbing. Either way could be visually effective IMO.
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Are the things the dummy is standing before supposed to be launch ports for escape pods?
Their looks reminds me of Hangar doors for some reason.
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They're just really big windows.
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They're just really big windows.
big windows are nice, but you have to be careful about getting A-wings in them...
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They're just really big windows.
big windows are nice, but you have to be careful about getting A-wings in them...
common sense has yet to gain precedence over the rule of cool, deal with it.
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They're just really big windows.
big windows are nice, but you have to be careful about getting A-wings in them...
Those pesky A-wings. But which came first, the big windows or the A-wing? Maybe the A-wing was designed to fit into windows...
EDIT: There are now some smaller, A-Wing proof windows as well.
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Really starting to like where you're going with this!
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I've never been this excited about the Dreadnaught before - looking GREAT!
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Sexy sexy dreadnaught.
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bobbtmann, you have created the definitive rendili stardrives Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser. very sad it will never be official, yet another to hate george lucas and lucas arts.
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I wouldn't say that. If the model is truly that impressive, LA just might steal it for their own purposes. It's happened before. (http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?157918-Grebbling&s=b8cf27941c3cb0895415dd384f2a7616&p=1298259#post1298259)
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Then it becomes official. Isn't that nice? :P
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in that event, have greebles spell out your name or show a watermark design
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UV mapping
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Wow, really impressive pace on this one, and it looks great :yes:
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I'm working on an "older" feeling colour palette
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Hmm, I'm not too keen on the pink personally. I'd love to see her in old republic colours though, a really warm grey tone overall with red markings =)
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I suppose I could introduce some green into the lighter brown (pink)
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dont forget katana fleet colours :)
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Are you going to be doing the turrets as well at this point? If yes, then at least the amount needs to be thought about a bit first. The stats given on Wookieepedia would put the number of turrets to 40 or 50, which IMO is too high.
If the original stats are these:
* Quad laser cannons (20)
* Turbolaser batteries (10)
* Laser cannons (10)
Then my gut feeling suggestion would be to drop the number of quad lasers to about 12 or so. 10 turbolasers sounds fine as well as the 10 normal laser cannons, but 20 quads is likely to end up looking silly due to their high ROF.
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With high numbers like that, I tend to just start considering those firepoints. So, quad turbolasers = four turrets :)
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yeah, 20 quad lasers would just be unfair to fighters.
for multi-turbos, couldn't, if there are performance concerns, create particles that look like 2/3/4/8 turbolasers firing salvo
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Well in the movies we see shots coming from all over, but the overall rate of fire isn't that high. Maybe they've got tons of firing points but they deliberately stagger their fire? Or are somehow forced to stagger their fire, even... perhaps a combination of whole-ship energy concerns and per-turret reload/rearm/chargeup/whatever?
^ This is of course just one possible explanation, which could explain the big numbers of turrets, versus the small amount of fire actually seen... and would allow the game to be actually playable. Although it'd still be kinda funny having all those turrets being idle most of the time, and I don't know if that'd be doable in-engine...
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Well in the movies we see shots coming from all over, but the overall rate of fire isn't that high. Maybe they've got tons of firing points but they deliberately stagger their fire? Or are somehow forced to stagger their fire, even... perhaps a combination of whole-ship energy concerns and per-turret reload/rearm/chargeup/whatever?
^ This is of course just one possible explanation, which could explain the big numbers of turrets, versus the small amount of fire actually seen... and would allow the game to be actually playable. Although it'd still be kinda funny having all those turrets being idle most of the time, and I don't know if that'd be doable in-engine...
Just give the turrets a long fire wait time.
Or rather, just jack up the random turret re-fire delay, and maybe tweak the cap for number of turrets attacking a single target, and you'd get a similar effect.
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That's true... I had thought about the random refire delay, but I had figured it might take more changes than that. But now that you mention $Max Turret Target Ownage (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ai_profiles.tbl#.24Max_Turret_Target_Ownage:) (albeit not by name), that would fix the problem I had anticipated: that when a ship first enters range and the engagement starts, without that Ownage limit all the guns would fire at once, and only after that would the random refire kick in. But actually I'm not 100% sure how the random refire thing is applied anyway... whether it's truly a 'refire' (i.e. delay after the first shot), or whether there's some delay pre-shot (for the first shot fired) as well.
That said, including 20 multipart turrets and 20 single-part turrets (assuming the non-quadlaser ones could be 'button'-style turrets) would still be a lot... although I reckon it wouldn't be a HUGE performance hit, if any.
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I despise max turret target and player ownage with a fiery passion.
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You don't like seeing ships actually use all their guns? Strange, cause max turret target and player ownage is the only way to allow that (or to control it in any way, actually).
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Wow people flying ships with shields complaining about cap ship firepower.
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You don't like seeing ships actually use all their guns? Strange, cause max turret target and player ownage is the only way to allow that (or to control it in any way, actually).
Wow people flying ships with shields complaining about cap ship firepower.
Completely backwards. I despise them being anything less then about 9999.
And of course I know what they do.
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Well if it could be set on a per-ship basis, perhaps... Or per-weapon-type-on-a-ship...
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As in armor.tbl?
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armor.tbl controlling AI firing patterns? O_o
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No damage per weapon type against ships and shields.
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Well, seeing as the discussion was on how to make it look right (ie. not firing everything at the same time), and making the game playable (ie. not hitting the projectile limit), I don't think damage really an issue.
But yeah, I think firepoints would solve it. 20 quads = 5 turrets.
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If you hit the projectile limit you better be above Endor.
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Haven't made any turrets yet...
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I like this, though I think I would like it a lot more if the barrel portion was considerably shorter (like, equal to the width of the rotating bass part at most). My iconic turbolaser image is the heavy DS towers, and the stoutness of that design for me reinforced its power--when the barrels stick way out from a tiny little base, it looks kind of fragile IMO. I dig the "cowled" look--I think it fits in well with our reimagined Republic aesthetic. Also don't forget that the barrels have to be able to rotate 90 degrees straight up or the ship won't be able to deliver a broadside. :yes:
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I'm not so sure about it, personally, since the Dreadnaught's weapons were in the blisters on its sides. I've always figured shielded galleries like we saw elsewhere aboard the Deathstar rather than external turrets.
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Working on the texture.
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Love the coloration for a Republic-era vessel. And yeah, those are some huge windows :) Awesome work! :yes:
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IMHO it needs some red
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this really looks like it would belong in the original series, good work!
just one problem, its not dark grey. Dark Force FTW! /jk
one question for the team: are you planning on having Katana fleet dreadnaughts, and if so, will they have different stats? (being slave rigged and having 14,000 less crewers than a standard dreadnaught)
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this really looks like it would belong in the original series, good work!
just one problem, its not dark grey. Dark Force FTW! /jk
one question for the team: are you planning on having Katana fleet dreadnaughts, and if so, will they have different stats? (being slave rigged and having 14,000 less crewers than a standard dreadnaught)
I don't know about the stats of these ships. I would imagine that if we do feature Katana fleet dreadnaughts, they'd just be a different colour.
Here's some red paint, though I might increase the intensity of the red a bit:
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Are the white spots just large windows? Cause considering that thing is supposed to hold 14000 people, those windows would be massive. But I don't think the ship at its spec'd size could ever hold that many people anyway.
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Yup, they're pretty big. This is a 6' 2" person next to the window:
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thats 3 decks worth of window 0.o
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Who puts giant windows and the attendant structural weakness on a warship? Oh, right, the engineers of Star Wars who also forget to put railings over deep bottomless chasms. :P
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Two words: Transparent Aluminum. :P
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Transparisteel to be precise (that's how it's called in SW).
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Possible good use for enormous gallery windows on a warship:
(http://www.swtroopers.com/imp_dsg/imp_dsg_01.jpg)
Granted, the openings on the Dreadnaught are much bigger, but it seems like it could work. Shine a bunch of really bright lights outwards and enemy pilots wouldn't be able to visually identify which of the windows had active weapons and where they were pointing. Anyway, you wouldn't have to model the turrets :)
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At twice the length, more than twice the width and more than twice the height of a Nimitz class carrier, 14k people should be possible.
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Are the white spots just large windows? Cause considering that thing is supposed to hold 14000 people, those windows would be massive. But I don't think the ship at its spec'd size could ever hold that many people anyway.
I think 14000 is a bit big a number for the crew size.
also, look at the other windows, those big ones look to be about 2 DECKS tall.
fancy observational views, or shield doors for big guns, i think the latter
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Wow, looking great! This is really coming together nicely! I'm not a big fan of the red paint, or maybe it's just the strange way it's striped. Doesn't look quite right to me. Other than that, this is a fabulous looking model. Starting to look like it'll fit in with the rest of the Star Wars ships of the line quite nicely.
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I have to agree on the red, While I love the accent it gives, making it look very old republic, the actual placement of it kind of irks me, it's a bit too complex. I'd rather see it more simplified, as seen on previous old republic ships like the Venator and others such as the corvette.
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I think the windows are way too large - you can get pretty much the same effect using long clusters of smaller windows, which also help to sell the scale better. Otherwise, great job so far - I'm very curious to see how you end up tackling the blister guns. Is there a reason you went with a rounded engine block? Most versions of this ship I've seen have a big rectangular-section engine assembly.
14000 crew is no problem, space wise - after all, this thing has the volume of 8+ modern supercarriers, and that's 40000+ crew all told. It's just stupidly inefficient, since an Acclamator can run on ~1000 (but then again, the way these things are written up - they ARE stupidly inefficient).
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No automation in space, it seems. Everything has to be done manually so you have to lose 14,000 trained officers and crew when you lose a single ship.. luckily the galaxy is enormous so finding new people to train shouldn't be a problem.
Seriously, some of those numbers are ridiculous. What do they all do in that ship? Shovel coal?
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its actually 16000, katanas have only 2000 crewers, hence 14000 less >.>
geez, you guys just pull numbers out of the air some times, or posts :doubt:
besides, crew intensive is a design flaw...its even admitted in EU that they are notoriously crew intensive
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Well, I think I'll keep them as windows. As for establishing scale, fractalsponge does have a point. I might consider breaking those windows up a bit since they make this ship seem too small for its size.
The blister guns are nonexistent, I'm afraid to say. The closest thing for this dreadnaught is blisters on the guns. Lets face it: any guns inside the blisters would have seriously limited firing arcs. Either that, or the entire bubble would somehow have to rotate into the hull to expose the guns. If that's the case it wouldn't respond to enemy fire very quickly since it would have to retract the bubbles before engaging the enemy.
I made the paint into stripes because I feel there are already too many horizontal lines in the ship already. By keeping the paint lines vertical I hope to integrate the different sections better. I'll look into whether it can be simplified. As for any other design choices on the ship (eg. the engine block), they're there because they look better than whatever the alternative was.
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I was thinking: why not ask for the collaboration of evillejedi from the warlords HW2 TC? he has quite a lot of star wars ships modelled in there already (including the dreadnaught, the eidolon and the ssd vengeance)...
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I was thinking: why not ask for the collaboration of evillejedi from the warlords HW2 TC? he has quite a lot of star wars ships modelled in there already (including the dreadnaught, the eidolon and the ssd vengeance)...
the detail on these ones are often a fair bit better than what I've seen in warlords.
plus its cool to see the re-imaginings of many of the offscreen ships such as the E-wing
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Yeah we're going for first-person levels of details here, and while the ships in in Warlords look great in HW2, I really don't think they're going to scale up appropriately to FSO.
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FoTG already uses (or used) some Warlords ships as placeholders.
Models for FSO need to me way more detailed, at least if you're going for high quality, like FoTG.
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well all i gotta say is, cool ship :) cant wait for the finished product
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Here's an update on the colouration. I took some cues from the starshuttle. I've tried making the windows into clusters, and so far I can't test it in-game because the ship won't convert to pof. Is there a limit on polies for a single object?
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Which build of PCS2 are you using?
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now that looks like something the republic might have built
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actually, I think the more "corvetty" tie fighter version of the dreadnaught is also quite interesting... might you have a use for that version in game?
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I likes the previous coloration. Felt less like wasted paint.
Maybe one or two red stripes... Just throwing ideas out here.
I really think you've captured how a Dreadnaught should look like though, just feels right.
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Which build of PCS2 are you using?
It's version 2.0.3. The collada one.
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Use this one instead (http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~samm/pcs2.7z). Simply overwrite the old PCS2 exe with that one. You may also have to replace the dlls for PCS2 with these (http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~samm/dlls.7z).
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bobbtman, considering the amount of work you've done lately, have you been keeping backups? If not the ftp listed in internal is a perfect place. There's already a folder with your Carrack in it ;)
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Yeah. For... backups. :nervous:
Nothing to do with anyone wanting to put them ingame and make missions... :nervous:
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What he said.
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Okay, well, it's on the ftp now. Includes debris and LOD's. I haven't exported it, and the psd's have to be saved as .dds. Other than that, I think it's ready to be in the game.
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Awesome. Don't let us stop you from attempting any conversion on your end though, our main model converter is still detained with other tasks outside of FotG.
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Hah. My own abilities stop me from converting these. That carrack pof I sent you took as much time to rig an export as making the thing did. Months. And I don't even remember how I did it.
I think my time would be better spent making new ships or fixing ships that already exist. I'll make the assault frigate and a marauder corvette. After that I was thinking that I could make debris and lod's for the ships that already exist.
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Yes, debris and LODs are awesome.
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Is it intentional that the debris doesn't use a different texture on the parts that usually have the "damage" texture on them? They look pretty funny using just the regular textures. Also the material setup in general is quite a mess AFAICT, although I can probably sort it out.
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Ideally, for debris, you could come up with a new set of uvws for a new debris map, then use uvw channels to bake from old uv's (channel1) to the new ones (channel2). What this does is that it allows you to have a new map with efficient uvw usage for debris, while matching the hull perfectly. All that would be left would be to dirty the new baked maps up in photoshop, so you could simulate burnt edges, etc. I wrote a tutorial on how to do this some time ago, it's not perfect and I'd need to revise it a bit before releasing it to the public, but if you're interested I could probably dig it up.
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Ideally, for debris, you could come up with a new set of uvws for a new debris map, then use uvw channels to bake from old uv's (channel1) to the new ones (channel2). What this does is that it allows you to have a new map with efficient uvw usage for debris, while matching the hull perfectly. All that would be left would be to dirty the new baked maps up in photoshop, so you could simulate burnt edges, etc. I wrote a tutorial on how to do this some time ago, it's not perfect and I'd need to revise it a bit before releasing it to the public, but if you're interested I could probably dig it up.
Yes, we are. Pretty please! :D
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What mess are you talking about? I thought I knew how to make maps. Maybe not, though. In 3ds max I make multi map. Then I take parts of the model that use map #1 and give it material id #1, then map #2 gets id #2, and so on and so forth. In the case of the dreadnaught, there are two maps, and id#3 is reserved for the damage texture. Those are the actual blown up parts. The actual multi-material never had a map, just an empty slot for where the map would go, since I figure all the ships will just use that damage texture and I don't have it. I suppose I could make individual damage maps for all the ships. It would double the number of maps, though.
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We should probably make a placeholder (or just use the FS default Terran debris map) until we go standalone, but yeah, having a few common debris maps would be much preferable for performance as far as I understand it. I imagine it's pretty hard to make something that works well at a lot of different scales, but would a single map for all our fighters be doable? Something like that could have specific components drawn from each fighter map and burned out along with basic melt/char stuff for the interiors. Likewise, a texture that all the cap ships could use would be nice, though I don't know if things like showing blasted out bulkheads would work well, particularly between ships of widely varying sizes.
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Ok, after another attempt at fixing some of the problems I'll just list them here:
1. Unclear material setup. All sorts of unnamed green materials but not a single multimat I'm supposed to apply to everything.
2. Odd material id's here and there, like half of the turbolaser polys having mat id 11.
3. Mat id 1 uses 'dread2' and mat id 2 uses 'dread'. Urgh.
4. Bad polys (image attached) here and there.
5. The top of the reactor has holes you can see through.
6. No word on where subsystems should go. Should there be a fighterbay? Should there be dockpoints?
7. The UV mapping for the destroyed texture in reactor-destroyed and engines-destroyed seems a bit lacking, when a separate damage texture is used (I'm using debris3.pcx).
8. Turrets aren't instanced so if any any changes to them are going to be needed, it's going to be painful.
I think I've fixed issues 1, 2 and 3, and uploaded my working file in my user dir on the ftp in case you want to look at it (saved using Max 2009). It also has all the turrets set up with fvecs/uvecs and helper dummies in place (I think; I haven't been able to test them in-game).
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Huh. I guess I missed that one. I try to fix them as I go, and usually I catch the missing ones during the UV map. And sorry about the the texture names. I went and placed all my turrets before realizing the numbers were all messed up. Found it easier to just switch the materials. Can't find the hole in the reactor. Images?
I won't hate you if you just make up the subsystems. Heaven knows that's what I've been doing. I tried naming the subobjects in a way that made sense, but you can change them if you want. The fighterbay will be the big gaping hole with all the lights, probably.
Is the texture on the damage model too pixelated? It should be fixed by scaling the uv's. I think that maybe things got changed between your version and mine. I've never used green.
edit: just checked the model. Try turning the polygone you mentioned. The triangles are just lying against the edge, so it should be okay.
edit2: Thanks for doing the conversion, zookeeper. I appreciate it.
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Ok, now that the Strike Cruiser is out of the way, I'll come back to this...
Found it easier to just switch the materials. Can't find the hole in the reactor. Images?
Here's a screenshot; the missing polys aren't part of any other subobject belonging to LOD0 either.
[attachment deleted by ninja]
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Well damn. I dug up the version I sent you and it does seem to be the case. I guess the last thing I did before sending them off was delete those ploygons. I've attached the replacements.
[attachment deleted by ninja]
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Thanks, that does the trick.
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Status report: the only thing still remaining is the fighterbay (the little landing deck in the forward section of the hangar). It has problems though:
1. There's just barely enough space to fit 6 fighters in there at once when they arrive. This is a problem because they all start to move at once, and there's currently no feasible method of forcing them to fly out one by one.
2. The AI tries to fly way too fast, making them often overshoot some of the path points.
It very much looks like we're gonna need some new features to make this work. Firstly we need a way to prevent the arriving fighters from bumping into each other when they start to move, and then we also need a way to cap their speeds so that they actually manage to follow the path.
Other than that it's currently good to go.
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Uh, you could try putting the start of some of the paths further back so that the fighters appear to come out "after" the ones in front.
That is, if you manage to persuade them to follow the path properly :P
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I only ever intended that bay to carry shuttles. Four TIEs at most. I think I read the specs somewhere that said the Dreadnaught carried only a single squadron, so that's the big bay. The most sizing I did was to make sure that the space was big enough for the Millennium Falcon. Which is pretty arbitrary, I guess.
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The most sizing I did was to make sure that the space was big enough for the Millennium Falcon. Which is pretty arbitrary, I guess.
Arbitrary or not, I'm sure Han appreciates it.
Keep up the good work!
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Committed. It took this long because 1) in the end, the engine just can't handle the TIE racks I spent hours and hours trying to get to work and 2) getting even fighterbay paths to work well enough was really difficult. Now there's 3 docking points in the ceiling of the hangar (for transports and other mid-size ships), 1 docking point in the middle of the landing deck (a Lambda should just about fit there; probably the AI can't handle the docking/undocking, though) and the fighterbay is capable of launching 4 fighters at once.
I've added a modelled communications subsystem (in a bit of a similar style as the one on the Strike Cruiser) and detached bits of the hull to make bridge and navigation subsystems.
EDIT: Unsurprisingly, the AI apparently can't handle undocking from the landing deck dockpoint, so don't try to do anything fancy with it. The three dockpoints in the hangar ceiling probably work just fine though, since they only got two path points, which is something the AI seems to be able to cope with. Also, a Lambda doesn't quite fit in the landing deck: the bay is pretty much exactly as high as the Lambda, so there's not really any room.
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Figures, the Lambda is tall enough for the XQ2's hangar as well. Is there a way to make it appear with its wings closed when it comes from a fighterbay?
Also here are two random shots that feature the Dreadnaught.
(http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/9496/dread1.jpg)
Sorry for the angle in this one.
(http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/111/dread2.jpg)
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Figures, the Lambda is tall enough for the XQ2's hangar as well. Is there a way to make it appear with its wings closed when it comes from a fighterbay?
I don't think so. We'd need better control over custom subobject animations to be able to do that; we'd need to have an animation which instantly snaps the wings open or closed in addition to the current 5s-long animation, and AFAICT currently you can't really use more than one custom animation on a single ship because you can only trigger all of the animations at once.
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But some of the ships Dawn of Sol and Blue Planet WiH use have animations for weapons and afterburner flaps. A good example would be the Jackal/Kentauroi. It has two different weapon slots being opened or moved in place and a third animation were flaps change position during afterburning.
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But some of the ships Dawn of Sol and Blue Planet WiH use have animations for weapons and afterburner flaps. A good example would be the Jackal/Kentauroi. It has two different weapon slots being opened or moved in place and a third animation were flaps change position during afterburning.
Ah, yes, you're right. The current opening/closing animations are script-triggered animations, and those you can only have one per ship. So, that wouldn't prevent us from also having the same animations as docking and/or door animations for the Lambda. However, I don't know if they would trigger at the right time during the docking/launching sequence; maybe someone can test?
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There was another Star Wars based project for FSO: Imperial Alliance. In the latest MP demo (which isn't available right now but I still have it), S-Foils can be opened and closed just like in the X-Wing games.
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It wasn't for FSO, it was for a heavily modified fork of the FSO codebase. Their S-Foil animations were part of that codebase, not part of FSO.
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It wasn't for FSO, it was for a heavily modified fork of the FSO codebase. Their S-Foil animations were part of that codebase, not part of FSO.
Yes, I've already thought so. IA also uses XWA's IFF system instead of FSO's one. And I've also once tried to use FSO's exe files with IA without success. That made me think that it's nothing like the other Freespace based projects. Thanks for confirming that. :)
Btw someone over at the Emperor's Hammer forums told me that the FotG team received some code of IA. Do you think that you'll use it in FotG?
On topic: Nice work on the Dreadnaught. :)
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We've had the code, but the fork is so heavily modified, and outdated, that without the help of the original authors it's not likely we'll ever be able to utilize it in our codebase. But, we've already independently implemented a lot of what they had, using more generic systems that just took longer to develop since they had to be mod-agnostic.
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so you guys have working s-foils now? or is that something that's still being worked on?
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Define 'working'. The models have the ability to be animated, just like the Lambda, but unlike the Lambda, which will fold up during docking procedures, when do you actually need to use X-wing S-foils in a game like this? Any time they've ever been implemented before, it's more of a gimmick than any sort of useful or reasonable feature.
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If you do atmosphere missions, it could be used. Or you could depart from canon a bit and make fighters go faster with folded-in s-foils, if that's possible.
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well, i had plans to make a star viper for you guys, but its sort of been pushed aside.
the s-foils on a viper, when deployed, make the fighter's front/back profile about 300% bigger.
besides, it looks cool when it opens and swings its guns forward.