Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Hellequin on June 02, 2012, 04:30:20 pm
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Meet the GTF Gwydion, my first fighter creation. The Gwydion is small, lightly armored, and lightly armed as most recon fighters are, nothing special. The name comes from Welsh mythology referring to a magician trickster. Might end up getting called by some pilots as pizza cutters, looking at its profile.
I'm using this to learn blender. Still trying to figure out the outliner and the hierarchy by comparing it to the HTL version of the Apollo. I placed a bunch of empties for glowpoints, thrusters, dockpoints, and weapon points without really knowing if there are rules to their placements. If you got hints, by all means, I'd appreciate it. For one thing, I noticed that the glowpoints are divided and parented to different glowbanks. I have only one glowbank with 49 glowpoints in it. I'm not sure what helpers are or how docking paths will be used but I'm guessing those are going to be referred to when writing the tables or for scripting, neither of which I have dived into yet.
The main body (detail0) has a polycount of 3098. The antenna is meant only to have some kind of asymmetric element. I'll leave the details of its function to your imagination. I have not mapped the model yet. Let me know what you all think.
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/gwydion_4_view.jpg)
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/Gwydion_front.jpg)
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/Gwydion_rear.jpg)
For those interested to see, here is my outline with some things collapsed.
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/Gwydion_outline_01.jpg)
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Hey, that looks pretty cool, and really nice for your first try. It looks like something out of Homeworld.
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Well, first things first - it's certainly an interesting looking fighter, although a tad hard to see through all the black lines. The big wheel is certainly interesting, design wise - is that supposed to be the cockpit, or some kind of sensor apparatus? If it's the former, I'd say maybe consider adjusting the shape a bit so that it looks a bit more like it was built around the pilot, rather than the pilot slotting into a predetermined shape. But that's just me there - I guess I can see how changing that part would mean adjusting the look of the ship a bit too much.
I like the underslung weapon pods on the wings - reminds me a lot of Steve-O's federal fighters (BP used them for the UEF). The wings themselves, though, could probably do with a few more polies - at the moment they look like they'e been asymmetrically triangulated as well, I'd probably want to fix that.
As for the technical stuff your hierarchy and whatnot - most of that could probably be done much more easily in PCS 2, after you've converted it to Pof. I suppose they could be done in Blender, technically, but you're far less likely to have problems (naming inaccuracies and whatnot) if you do them with PCS, and IMO it's just an overall simpler process. But each to their own.
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Oh I see. I will try it in PCS2. Like I said, I was just following what I see from the HTL Apollo model after I converted it to dae to see how it is set up in blender. So if I understand right, those empties and hierarchies were probably created in PCS2 as well and were just included when I brought it to blender. Thanks. I'll also check the triangulations and try more polys.
EDIT: And ya, that wheel is the cockpit.
EDIT2: Oh actually, I guess the next job after fixing the triangulations and polys would be mapping and texturing. I'll get on that first before going to PCS2
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Anything that can be done with empties can with a little practice be done easier in PCS2.
As for the design its cool, if a little unconventional in the FS community, but done well that is a good thing.
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Unconventional is cool.
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Change the cockpit somewhat and it could pass for a Romulan fighter.
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The cockpit's brilliant, looks very Quarian.
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The cockpit's brilliant, looks very Quarian.
Dammit. CANNOT UNSEE.
OT though, I'm really digging this fighter. Can't wait to see it finished, keep it up!
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Bit too late now, but you probably would've wanted to create the LODs and debris after mapping..
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Aha, you're absolutely right. I was following the shipbuilding tutorial but then after I finished detail0 I started looking at the apollo model and got too far ahead of myself hehe. That's a lesson to read something all the way through before diving in.
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The ship looks really cool though. Kinda reminds me of something I saw at conceptships once.
49 glowpoints
:eek2: woah...
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Me like! However it seems more like a Heavy Assault fighter than a Recon craft.
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Where did you get the ship's name from? King's Quest III? :)
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Ah hehe, no, it was actually a random search for some trickster myths. And ya I suppose there are angles that make the ship look like a heavy fighter. But I imagine it to be smaller than a Loki and a wingspan that is narrower than a Ulysses. Hmm, I may need to resize the guns and missilepods to reflect that relative size.
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Update pics. Added more polies and used smooth shading and edge splitting on the wings and cockpit. I had originally thought that the canopy frame would just be in the texture but since i have that much detail around the cockpit, I guess I should extrude some of the framing to match. I already finished the uv mapping but since I have the canopy as a separate geometry for the ao baking part, it won't change much.
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/Gwydion_render_00.jpg)
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/Gwydion_render_01.jpg)
Haven't shown the bottom yet so here it is.
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/Gwydion_render_02.jpg)
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The ship feels very maneuverable, yet heavy at the same time. Depending on how you texture the canopy, you could emphasize one aspect or the other.
Looks really good.
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Kinda feels like the Seth in term of how compact yet packing it looks.
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Feels like a combination of a seth and the defender ship from homeworld, I rather like it c:
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Found the little dude. Thought I'd post this to show how the pilot would fit in there.
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/Gwydion_cockpit.jpg)
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Judging roughly from that, I feel like it this fighter is somewhat smaller than the average FS fighter. (Not that that's a bad thing, I really do like the design. ;7)
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I would put it in about the myrmidon range
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Here is a size comparison. The Apollo is 21 m in length and the Gwydion is 9.6 m.
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/gwydion_size.jpg)
I finished the PCS2 part and I'm now working on the texture.
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Terran Dragon. ;)
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This thing will be like those tiny nats you find by a lake that get into your face and annoy the crap out of you. Looks like it fits into Freelancer pretty well in my opinion.
I like this a heck of a lot better than the Pegasus (can I see a size comparison of the Gwydion and the Pegasus?).
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The Pegasus is about 19 m long. Hehe I didn't think it would end up this small when I started. When I found the pilot inside the Apollo model, I imported it to the Gwydion and scaled the the ship to the pilot. Wonder how hard it would be to shoot down. And I wonder if I should make it a stealth recon to really make use of the size and to balance the fact that it will probably fall apart after a few shots.
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/Gwydion_Pegasus.jpg)
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I'd say it doesn't seem terribly stealthy to me, but, most FS fighters are stealth via magic. :D
It would be cool if the Loki had a mechanic where it would be hard to lock on to at range, because although no longer undetectable, the fighter should still have been pretty low profile, at least according to the tech room. I'd say your fighter would fit into this category quite well. Excellent work so far.
:yes:
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I should probably have asked this sooner. This is my model with the AO bake texture. Notice the antenna on the right wing and the lack thereof on the left. But following the tutorial, that is, leaving the mirror on and not overlapping any of the shapes, I ended up with those shadows on the left wing. I thought it was small enough to be left alone. But I wanted to ask what would be a better course of action in this situation? Let's say that someone is making another ship that is mostly symmetrical but has a significant asymmetrical element. Should it be done with the mirror applied and symmetrical shapes overlapping or should it just be the entire ship laid out with no overlap?
Also when making the AO bake, the tutorial, if memory serves, made no mention of using lamps. I did read somewhere, I already forgot where, that AO baking ignores the lamps. I also found a youtube tutorial where the person used six lamps all around before making the ao bake. Do I really need to bother with lamps at all? And again, I'm using blender 2.6
(http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh616/hellequin04/gwyd_ambocc_ant.jpg)
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You have the option to do some mirroring and some not.. they aren't mutually exclusive.
In your case, I would just take the triangles on each side (with their respective walls) and UV them separately. Redo the AO and you won't have the shadows. The rest can stay mirrored.
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So that would mean I should combine the two AO bake images later, keeping in mind that i need to keep the size a multiple of 2, so I only use one texture for both mirrored and unmirrored parts, right?
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What? I think you are making this more difficult than it needs to be.
The AO bake relies on the UV layout. Mirrored pieces will always have the exact same bake (Be careful though, some 3D apps will DOUBLE the bake in that area since it calculates it twice.. always manually tweak.). To solve the issue of asymmetrical areas, simply don't mirror those UV islands. Then just redo the bake.
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Oh ok. I probably am hehe. Bear with me though. This is pretty much the very first 3d model I've made ever. So when I said I'm using this project to learn blender, I'm actually learning 3d modeling from the ground up. But I think I get it. I thought I'd be ending up with two different images cause I was actually worried about doubling it if i redo AO on the same bake. I'll go ahead and work on that. Thanks mjn.
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Well... don't do the AO bake on top of the current bake. Just remove the first bake and then redo it.