Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: cahdoge on February 17, 2014, 03:10:52 pm
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Hello folks
i discovered blender some weeks ago and started modeling.
I'm trying a experimental ship inspired by the historical ship of the line and Spanish galeons.
My modding skills are rather low and, I don' have that much time as i would like to have.
So I would be very glad if someone has interrest in supporting me.
And I would be truly glad about a high amount of fair comments.
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Welcome to the world of amateur modellers :p
I´m learning and practice as well, so right now i´m building a basic set of containers to make my skills better.
Is a good idea to start with basic models just to learn the other process more easy, i mean UV map and texturing.
There are many nice tutorials on the web and also on this forums....
If you are using Blender here you have a very nice tutorial, may be you know that...
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84335.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84335.0)
Here the models that i´m working on...., good luck and be patient :)
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Your works look decent enough, plus you seem to have a good texturing skills which are rare to find on a modder.
Might I inquire how are you treating flat surfaces?, I'm saying this because some of the models seem to have a little more polies than they'd need, eg: the first canister class-k. It shows 4k polies yet it's blocky enough, save for those lateral slim tubes.
(take all of this from a modder that made his last model 3 years ago :P)
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So I just signed in to p3d and the funny thing is the very first thing I get to see when I logged in was a video tuturial of how it works with a model by... Oddgrim!!
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Cahdoge - It's a good start and an interesting concept, though you may struggle to get it appropriately greebled if you stick too slavishly to your inspiration, so don't be afraid to branch out a but. Also, why the huge number of quads on that one side?
Coffeesoft - if you want feedback, maybe you could post a separate thread? This one looks like it might be on the way towards an (inadvertent) hijacking.
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I'm thinking of a kind of heavy artillery.
So my main plan is placing around 100 turrets where the squares are.
I placed them.
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Your works look decent enough, plus you seem to have a good texturing skills which are rare to find on a modder.
Might I inquire how are you treating flat surfaces?, I'm saying this because some of the models seem to have a little more polies than they'd need, eg: the first canister class-k. It shows 4k polies yet it's blocky enough, save for those lateral slim tubes.
Yes, those models are not finished, just i use like a example.
I have to finish the modelling and change some things that can be done with textures and normal maps, also the texturing is not finished.
Now i´m working on other things so i don´t have too much time to finish them.
Anyway, many thanks for the feedback, i will to share with the community when i finish the job and make a new thread :),
but i want to finish at least 2 of the Containers...
NOTE : The imperial, rebel pilot and Escape Pod of my p3d account was not modelled by me, just i do the conversion for Freespace.
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coffesoft nothing personally, but could you be so kindly to move your models in a other thread.
I'm searching for response to my model.
If you have constructive critics please tell me.
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cahdoge, this model could be an interesting concept if fleshed-out, but it doesn't quite seem FreeSpace-y. Do you want this to be an FS-universe model, or something in a different setting entirely? 100 small artillery cannons don't seem like the kind of weapons which an FS warship would have. Also, how big is this ship?
Also, it seems a bit too blocky; maybe you could break up the shape of the ship with some more lines/curves/detail.
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I'm planing to offer it to the Freespace comunity.
My in tension is making a prototype at all points.
The greebles are still missing and will be added at last in the process of modeling.
I'll try to show the fully turreted version around next week. (I' celebrating carnival so I can't promise everything)
I'm thinking of a length of about 3000 meters / 1.7 nautical miles
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The Turret thing went faster than I thought.
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I've started greebling and search for inspiration and critics.
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Looks pretty good so far... better than I could ever conceive with blender, as I am more of a mission and table modder :D
Keep adding detail and get her textured and it will be a great addition to the fleet :yes:
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I finished greebling the flak- and beam-turrets.
Does anyone have ideas for the backside greebles?
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If I can suggest something....
Don't waste that many polys on turrets. They're cool but also small, and not that noticable. I think you should focus on greebling main hull of the ship, and smoothing prow of the ship.
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More like this?
Or more like this?
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More or less. It's a good start :D. Remember about Edge Split, and go add some details all across the hull.
You can also rethink some change to the overall shape. I think front of the ship should looks similar to this:
(http://i61.tinypic.com/2808me8.jpg)
Goodluck!
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I added the nose and some other stuff.
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Hello guys.
The work isn't going as planned the look of just gets worse and I'm so far away from my originla idea that I decided to make a break and will restet the whole attempt.
I'll delet this topic the coming weekend at the least.
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Please do not delete the topic. You may or may not technically have permission to do so, I'm not sure how the board is set up. However, deleting posts is frowned upon on HLP, even the mods and admins don't do it. You're perfectly welcome to do whatever you choose with the project itself, of course.
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For what it's worth, the ship caught my eye when I saw it in the newsletter.
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OK i'll rewiv the whole thing.
But I need some input to make the design of the bow mor homogeniuosly.
So it's more rounded.
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This is the current state of the ship.
It seems like I've done neatly nothing, but i was trying a other engine section (informative but horrible design)
Is there somebody who can tell me why there are some faces missing in the obj-file? (I'm using blender 2.7)
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These faces are probably buggy for some reason. Try to redo them.
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Really loving your work, such a departure from what I'd consider 'traditional' designed ships. Completely loving it!
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I've done some work on the back. But I don't have any idea what to make under the hangar notch.
Should I leave it flat an ungreebled ore has anyone a idea what to place there.
I'll maybe post the current state next weekend.
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So here it is.
But it still needs some greebleing.
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Obvious bugs are obvious, but I'm really digging some of the visual concepts here. As others have said, it is rather a departure from other ships. At the beginning of the thread, I was thinking that this might be a civilian ship (thinking supertanker or possibly a deep space explorer). But now it is looking armed to the teeth! It presents a very wide target cross-section from pretty much any direction, but I get a sense of mass and strength from it as if to say, "So what?" Might be a good fit for a particularly arrogant faction. Someone with access to lots of hardware and resources, but not necessarily a pure military background. Perhaps this was originally a civilian ship but it has been re-purposed for a more bellicose role?
The turbine-looking things on the top rear are also intriguing. What are they?
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Just Another Boss in Just Another Day?
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For some reason, 'm really digging this! No idea what you'd use it for, but it's a really cool model. :D
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Getting a strong Endless Space vibe from this now, which is pretty cool.
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I love details on the right side of the ship :yes:
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Whenthe Hades-rebellion ended some engineers and scientists immersed because they feared to get accused by the GTVA for high treason.
They had some information about shivan reactor technique with them.
After a short while they joined some other TI-refugees.
This pack of people disappeared for several years and were seeked out by private investors.
These investors wanted to build up their own fleet to defens themselves against piracy and to enforce their interrests.
While fighters are easy and cheap to get on black market bigger ships are way more expensive.
The investors decided to develop some ships on their own. So they met our refugees which need some money to cover their expenses.
The ship is concept as long range support- and/or commandship with focus on artillery support. The ship hasn't that much beam-cannons because big beams are way more expensive and only available on black market and very seldom.
If someone likes he/she can make a campaign around this group of TI-refugees. The campaign would begin at the end of Silent Threat and end around the Capella crysis.
PS: If there is somebody out there who would like to texture the ship let me know!
PPS: perihelion these turbin-look tings are part of the reactor.
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Update !
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I would like to texture it now but I have several problems.
The gimp-dds-patsch can't open the freespace dds-files.
Do I need UV-Mapping?
I wasn't able to find a tutorial that helps by texturing big ships, does anyone of you know where to find one?
And I do not have any idea how to texture it the way it looks good.
So I really need your help.
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Yes, generally speaking, you will have to UV-map your ship. You can try to trexture it using tiled textures, but chances are that you're not going to get very good results using that approach, especially given the amounts of modelled details you have on there.
As for dds files, I wouldn't worry about them during the texturing phase. While working on the textures, you can and should use some more easily edited lossless format like png or tga; DDS is only relevant once you've finished the textures.
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Basicly the texturing is the "tricky part" of making a spaceship, especialy when most of the best texture artists here are gone or busy all the time. Every texture artist here developed his own methods and the best way to learn it is trying various things on your own, and combining various methods from different tutorials. You can also use parts of already made textures.
As for tile textures, it's just like The E said. It would be hard to tile a ship like this. You can do somekind of hybrid mapping. It mean you can do uvmapp of all the greebles and detailed stuff, and than paint some texture on it, but cover large, flat areas with tile textures of some armor plating.
Also remember about 64k poly limit per single object.
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the easiest thing is to tilemap the whole ship, then create an UV map and bake the textures
your UV map doesn't need to be as good this way, and you don't need to create textures yourself
i always do that, because i suck at texturing :(
of course the result will be better if you texture the whole ship manually
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I dont know if you have noticed it or not but at the front there are a couple of missing faces/polygons on the model. other than that its a pretty neat design, i like the rotor/gears at the top ;)
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I have noticed. and thes faces are just not displayed by p3d.
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Check Ctrl + Shift + Alt + M to select non-magnifold edges, and check the edges around missing faces. This causes problems like this sometimes, but not likely this time. Try removing doubles and recalculate normals on your model.
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The texuring willtake a while but I'm getting closr....
(to undersand texuring in blender at all.) :snipe:
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You don't do the actual texturing in Blender, all you really do is a UVW mapping. You can do some Vertex coloring, but that's not going to be detailed at all.
You first map the model, create a blueprint of sorts that shows where your wireframe is, and then you use a image editor of your choice such as Photoshop or GIMP to make the actual texture.
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You know that texturing a model that is verry complex and dispalayed very huge by UV-mapping and using one texture is verry inefficent and uses a lot of graphical memory.
It's better to tile the texture so i can use a 750x750 texture and it looks detailed. When i do it the way you tell me i would have to use a texture with arund 10000x10000.
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Do you know that tiled textures generally look awful regardless of how "detailed" it is?
It is not better to use a tiled texture.
You might want to tile parts of a uvmap texture, but don't use tiles...that's an archaic method of texturing things as far as FS modding goes...
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It's not a crime if you're using tile textures under one condition: Model is UVed on single, big map [or 2 big ones] and you're using parts of tile textures and copypaste them on actual uv islands. Many textures was made using this method, or baked. Everything is permitted as long, as you care about total amount of textures used by the model. The smaller the count - the better it is for the engine.
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You know that texturing a model that is verry complex and dispalayed very huge by UV-mapping and using one texture is verry inefficent and uses a lot of graphical memory.
It's better to tile the texture so i can use a 750x750 texture and it looks detailed. When i do it the way you tell me i would have to use a texture with arund 10000x10000.
It won't look detailed, it'll look terrible. For tilemapping to look even slightly passable, you need a whole lot more than just one texture. And even then, the detail will look really washed out.
UV mapping is both more efficient and looks better. Actually, IMO, a UV mapped flat grey texture with baked ambient occlusion looks better than any feasible tilemapping, and that'll remain the case until FSO can do real-time AO.
Betrayal's idea is how I did my TEI ships originally. It's a good place to start, and is a massive improvement over standard tilemapping because, as I said, having baked AO and glows makes a world of difference.