Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Black Wolf on June 09, 2010, 02:02:52 pm
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[RELEASE] : See this post for release details and DL link. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=69832.msg1381653#msg1381653)
Been trying out a new texturing style, I think it turned out pretty well. Still needs normal and shine maps though. And turrets. Model and Textureby me, yadda yadda, current polycount is 3868, though that'll shoot way up when I turret it (should end up around 9k).
The ship is the Canberra class carrier - supposed to be an early TV War carrier, from the days when cruisers were kings and Destroyers were too large and expensive to yet be justified in the TV War, and so this was how you got fighters from system to system(or, conceiveably, even battle to battle - they were developed before subspace drives on fighters in my timeline). Anyway, final size will be 350-400m, with 5 turrets only. It's not going to be able to go into a fight with anything particularly potent - it's only real offensive weapons will be its fighter complement.
(http://i47.tinypic.com/dxy59j.jpg)
(http://i48.tinypic.com/6enin9.jpg)
(http://i46.tinypic.com/2z9m8ac.jpg)
The design is inspired a little by the Fenris, but mostly by its namesake. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra_class_landing_helicopter_dock) Incidentally, in-universe the name Canberra came from the initial run being 6 ships, each named after a city from a different continent. When/if I end up using them ingame, I'll keep up the convention by giving them all city names.
Oh, and the general consensus on IRC seemed to be that it was ugly. I'm fine with that :). It's kinda designed to be ugly - pure functionality over form. But mostly, I'll be glad to have a working minicarrier - even an ugly one - since that's something that's hard to find in the current, publically available modset. I'll also be releasing this when it's done, as it's not for any major project, so keep an eye out in the coming weeks if you're interested.
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I think by ugly, they meant not very detailed. The basic design is good, it just looks to low poly, especially compared to everything else coming out these days.
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Yeah, it doesn't quite convince me that it's actually a warship rather than a toy. My expertise is not adequate to pinpoint exactly why, but there are too many big stretches of featureless single colors, I think?
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Oh, and the general consensus on IRC seemed to be that it was ugly.
Bah! Ignore the haters, it has a nice set of woofers...
Oh! wait... those are the engines... :lol:
Just kidding.
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I think for the moment the problems seem to be in the texturing (this might be fixed with shine and normal maps though). My comments up to now would be that its missing a hull plating effect witch is best achieved by textures to the best of my knowledge. Secondly I would say that the windows look wrong, I think its the shade you are using but that could be down to the absent shine maps
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Needs more pronounced PLATING of the HULL IMO.
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Looks WAY too low-poly. If you still want to keep that blocky shape, I'd try to add detail - as others have said - in hull plating or something. Look at the Orion; simple shape but lots of detail (specifically any of the hi-poly ones around).
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I will look forward to completion of this puppy, I am in the market for a light carrier at the moment. It looks like it has a lot of potential.
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It's the textures, they look unconvincing and plasticy (Like a toy, as either Battuta or The_E put it). It needs better textures that emphasis that it is a metallic hull (painted or otherwise) with the accompanying bump mapping.
Some of it may be the lack of detail in the model?
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Yea it's way too underdetailed for how boxy it is. It looks like a Wing Commander ship from like WC 3 or 4.
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Whats wrong with that :p
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It needs some hull paneling, some rivets, or something. It looks bland.
That's what's wrong with that.
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Hmm, near universal negative reviews... :s. Oh well, here we go:
I'm sorry that people think it's bland. The hull plating was deliberately designed to be subtle, as a direct contrast to my uual over-reliance on the "inner bevel" button in PSP. Personally, I was quite happy with the effect, but oviously I'm in the minority on that. Unfortunately, I'm not really keen on the idea of redoing the entire hull and I managed to lose big chunks of the layered version of the textures due to PSP crashing on me, so the option of going back and fixing it that way is out. I may be able to play with the contrast a bit, to bring out the different plating shades, but that'll probably make the dirt too dark. I'll see what I can do. Unfortunately, fixing it with normal maps isn't an option either, as I'm not going to be able to normal map it. I'd forgotten that my card can't support them, so I have no way of testing the feature.
That said, the one thing I will say in its defense is that hhat it lacks in overt, prominent detail, the presence of small, modelled detail (lots of small changes in elevation, mostly), as well as the deliberately subtle hull colour changes make it quite a visceral experience to skim along one of the surfaces. Not many FS ships have that - all the detail is in big things meant to be seen from a ways off, whic then just get in the way of trying to skim. This ship works better up close, right in your face, and personally, I like that about it.
Anyway, I've made some slight changes, and one reasonably big change through adding a little bitof greebling, but not much - TBH, I want to move on to turreting it and getting it in game. For what it's worth, the turrets are planned for the worst offenders in the "Big featureless areas" category - three chin turrets, one dorsal port bow, andother dorsal starboard stern (again, it's not going to be well defended). The size is also going up a bit - (not too much or the windows will be too big - they may need to be tweaked anyway, probably the docking ring as well) - I played around with a very rough ingame model to test for collisions and it felt way too small. Probably be around 500m long.
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In addition to what others have said, I find the color scheme very questionable. The yellow should be gray and the blue more muted. Overall I think it would be best to entirely redo the texture. Even if the very subtle texture detail might be more "realistic", if you do a ship for the FS universe you have to deal with the FS art style, and that's big, very obvious armor plates on Terran ships. The Orion has them. The Elysium has them. The Faustus has them. The fighters have them. Even the Fenris has them to a degree (and lots of windows to break up the more featureless areas).
I'd rather stick with the Evangelist model from the 158th than use this in its current state.
Cruiser size to destroyer size is an unbelievably large jump though, I think corvette-sized carriers would have been used before destroyers. I could see something like this working in parallel with a larger class of ships.
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The issue I have with it is that it looks like its made from sheets cardboard stapled together. That, or its hewn from a giant block of wood.
Seriously. The color and the texture.
If the plating were more pronouced, or if it wasn't so....yellow...then it wouldn't look so much like that.
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On the plus side, it's recognizably pre-FS1-era. I didn't have to read a single letter in the first post to come to that conclusion. That said, the general design is fine. As the others said, you need a lot more effort in texturing.
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OK, update. Conversion has been giving me grief, but I'm nearly there, I think. I still need to do pof data and a few tweaks, but it's close.
(http://i45.tinypic.com/sfuv6t.jpg)
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Looks good.
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The colouring/lighting is much better there
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I'd suggest a revision of the bridge design - using the Fenris/Levy as an inspiration here could go a long way. Aerials atop the main superstructure would also add a lot of life to the design.
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Too late for that Thaeris because... dun dun duuuuuun - it works! :D Turrets track baddies properly and fire their missiles, no flythroughs that I can find, fractures into debris when it dies - everything a proper spaceship is suppose to do :) Still need to fiddle with the pof data and tables, test its ability to launch fighters and whatnot, but my horrow conversion run is finally over :D
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Well, I figured the suggestion couldn't hurt.
:)
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Not too late to change the texture, though is it? As some people said on IRC it does look vaguely Vasudan...
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Make it grayer, IMO.
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I'm not changing the colour sorry guys. As it stands, it's distinct from the fenris and leviathan. Make it grey, and it'll lose some of that.
And now, thanks to The E and the helpful people in the HLP IRC channel, I'm ready to release.
GTCa Canberra DL Link (Sectorgame) (http://sectorgame.com/f2s/downloads.php?action=downloads&id=544)
Mediafire Mirror (http://)
Wiki page (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTCa_Canberra)
(http://i49.tinypic.com/2zoermf.jpg)
The GTCa Canberra is the GTA's mainline starfighter carrier. First deployed by national and planetary stellar navies before the formation of the GTA, these vessels have been, in one upgraded iteration after another, a common sight in Terran fleets for almost three decades. The key to their longevity is their simplicity of design - the Canberra is barely more than a box with a subspace drive. They are weakly armoured and minimally armed, with a quartet of missile turrets their only deterrent against enemy fighters. Their true strength, of course, lies in their fighter complement. A fully loaded Canberra can deploy two full squadrons of fighters or bombers, and several accessory craft, and can be stocked with enough fuel, ammunition and supplies to stay running for nearly two months without support.
Ended up 465 metres long. I knw it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I like it, and it fills a gap in a shiplist that I need filled. So here it is. Only one LoD, since I had an absolute horror run converting it and had no intention of going through that hell again. But the main lod works, turrets fir, debris work (all big achievements for someone with my converting ineptitude). Thanks to The E, Darius and MatththeGeek on IRC for helping me bugfix, and to VA for his hierarchy images, which got me through that particular hurdle.
If anyone wants to use it for a mission or campaign, go ahead, but please let me know beforehand. I wont stop you - I just like to know if/when my stuff gets used. (NB - if you now wish to make it grey, go ahead :D)
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TBH it doesn't look too bad in-game :D
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Actually, it looks real good. :eek2:
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It's still crashing for me though. Log is attached.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Oh yeah the destroyed turret subobjects in the POF need to have no subobject properties defined, or else the game thinks they are other stuff.
Also, nice work BW. :) :yes:
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I realize this is a bit of a bump, but... what are those triangles on her starboard side? The ones that alternate being right-side-up/upside-down...
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Greebles of course.
BTW shinemaps need fixing. MIRRORSHIP \o/
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Blow it up.
Made of LEGO! :D
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Blow it up.
Made of LEGO! :D
Err... call it modular construction. :)
Aardwolf - Droid has it right, they're greebles added in response to the rather lukewarm response the original model got.
Droid - Mirrorship? I'm familiar with the error, but I don't get it at my end. Might be sometimi with your setup?
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Environment mapping. (and the full-white alpha channel on the shinemaps)
It might be because I fiddled around with the textures a bit though.
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Any chance to see it in TVWP? :)
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Any chance to see it in TVWP? :)
TVWP campaign 1 FREDding is already basically complete, at least in the broad ship-placement sense.
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It doesn't mean you can't add a new carrier... :nervous:
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That depends on how heavily the unlucky souls who prepare Act 3 for release want to redo its missions.
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Most of the times a ship class change is completely painless (I have experience) so I don't get why it should force TVWP FREDders to redo missions. IMHO the Canberra could serve as an additional carrier, replacing one or more Constellations throughout the campaign.
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The missions need to be redone or tuned anyway as they're a bit of a mess. Writing the Canberra in at this point would be possible, I assume, but I doubt anyone gives a **** enough to do it. TVWP has no active staffers except for recent additions like T-Man who polish for usability and then push the missions out the door.
It's a zombie project of sorts.
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Act II's release suggested the exact contrary. Oh well. :(
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Act II's release suggested the exact contrary. Oh well. :(
Act II and III have been done for years now. The problem is that they were so grotesquely painful to test that nobody really wanted to do it and the project gradually lost momentum.
Fortunately a couple heroic members, including SF-Junky and T-Man, have stepped up and made some real progress on that task. So don't write it off yet.