Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: AqueousShadow on July 21, 2002, 11:21:26 pm

Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 21, 2002, 11:21:26 pm
LOOK, LOOK!!! I finished my Battlecruiser model and it is WAY more precise than the wraith will ever be. :nod: I hope you guys liked it, and I figured why the wraith was being a pain when importing to Truespace and I made sure to take precautions so that my battlecruiser wouldn't end up the same. As for those of you waiting for my Protoss ships, keep waiting cause I am no expert at making smooth "Vasudan-like" ships.

copy the links and paste them into your address bar. Stupid geo****ties....*mumble* *mumble* And if the stupid thing doesn't work, give me your e-mail addresses and I'll send them to you. And actually texturing the ships would be very helpful :D I also have to learn how to turret it.....:sigh:

http://www.geocities.com/vietbboyraver/BC1.GIF
http://www.geocities.com/vietbboyraver/BC2.GIF
http://www.geocities.com/vietbboyraver/BC3.GIF
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Stryke 9 on July 21, 2002, 11:27:17 pm
Not bad. This is the sort of ship that looks really fantastic with lots of detail, tho, if you can afford the poly count.
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 21, 2002, 11:31:40 pm
Oh yea...I forgot to mention the poly count! That was the main thing I was supposed to put in the post! And what's worse, I can't even remember!!! I was wondering what the recommended poly count limit there was. I know it's about 500 for fighters, but I knew that was totally different from destroyers and the like. The BC is way upwards of 500 polys, but I sure hope it's not above it. Grrr....turrets....texturing...hierarchy....:sigh:
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: vadar_1 on July 21, 2002, 11:53:39 pm
it looks a little "squashed", or else the head is just out of proportion. The shaft connecting to the head is not supposed to be completly solid either. Engines are much too long, and need to be in more of a diamond shape.

Those are just suggested improvements... its a good start though. You can either detail it now, or give it detailed textures...
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Nico on July 22, 2002, 01:55:09 am
yeah, the head shpould be smaller, and the whole thing longer :)
Title: cool
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 22, 2002, 04:06:33 am
Quote
Engines are much too long, and need to be in more of a diamond shape.
dimond shape?????
just make the head a bit smaller and you got a pretty cool ship. if you want it to look sleekish mabey try getting rid of right angles.
and if that's only your second ship, well, wow. :D i think i took at least 5 trys to even begin to get my models looking like ships. nice start :)
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 22, 2002, 10:59:55 am
Thanx for the suggestions vadar. But the engines should be, if anything, more circular, not triangular. Yes I know the shaft connecting the head and the body is not completely solid, but I needed to know the recommended poly limit so I didn't want to try at it. When I got to the end, I was like, screw it, so I added the side panels as well and got lazy so I didn't wanna change the shaft. I agree the ship should be longer and maybe the head should be a bit smaller. When I first finished the thing, the whole ship was practically "stubby." I then extended it a bit. I guess it could use some more "extending." :nod: Well...again, if anyone can help me texture it, add turrets and stuff, and help with the heirarchy, that would be cool. ;7
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Flipside on July 22, 2002, 11:12:55 am
Well, I think it looks good :) At the end of the day, Battleships are not going to be going in for speed races, leave that to the cruisers etc, my own idea of a Battleship is like a destroyer, but where the launch bays are, they have cunningly installed even more guns instead ;)
As for texturing..... To be honest, it's better to learn how to do it yourself, you'll never be 100% happy with someone elses work, just as no-one else will ever be 100% happy with yours, alas, it's a side effect of being human ;)

Actually this reminds me of a couple of questions.....

1 : Isn't there a patch to increase max polys, I'm sure I read about one somewhere?

2 : For one of my own projects, I think somewhere on this forum, theres a Registry patch that lets you use larger than 256 x 256 textures for fighters etc in FS2?

Any help would be appreciated

Flipside
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 22, 2002, 08:40:56 pm
ditto :rolleyes:
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 22, 2002, 09:18:45 pm
haven't heard of the poly patch, the reg thing is around here somewhere (it was in the news) but it didn't work for me. said it had to be a valid registery file. although, it seemed to work for everyone else. :doh:
and for the poly max, the limit is effectively 3500 polys alltogether. as you need modview, unless you use pcs to do all the pofing then it's fs's limit of 5000. (and if kazan perfects pcs's new viewer, most people probably will. :) )
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: karajorma on July 23, 2002, 04:15:58 am
For the reg altering have a look here (http://www.descent-freespace.com/ddn/kb/registry/)
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 23, 2002, 06:17:14 am
even reading all that, i'm still not sure what they do. how d they make the textures better?
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 23, 2002, 11:12:42 am
Haven't actually tried it, but it makes sense. lolz I dunno, I'm perfectly fine using my 3dfx Glide option ;7 The game runs perfectly with all details up at maximum resolution and...guess wut? My computer is only 300 Mhz! :rolleyes: But of course, I'm gonna get a new motherboard and processor for it. Welp...still tweaking my battlecruiser:sigh:
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Knight Templar on July 23, 2002, 11:31:37 am
cool model should look good w/ some of the above suggested improvements, otherwise,

   excellence
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Flipside on July 23, 2002, 11:58:20 am
It's texture divider and use large textures I'm interested in, Since Freespace only allows a maximum texture size of 256 x 256 (I think it can use larger ones if they are tiled, but that's not good for fighters). I have 512 x 512 textures for my models, which I tend to have to scale down, I thought it would be great if I could use them, even if only for LOD 0 on my new models :) I use a GeForce 4 on a 1700XP, so I think it should just be able to handle it ;) hehehehehehehe
I'll give it a try, and if my computer is still working afterwards, I'll let you know what happens ;)

Flipside :)
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 23, 2002, 04:55:17 pm
cool :D
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: vadar_1 on July 23, 2002, 04:58:50 pm
shadow, please stop making posts with no useful content...

anyways, just to clarify on my previous post, I meant the engines should be arranged to more of a diamond then diamond-shaped. I beleave it should also be possible to hollow out some of the neck while still keeping poly count down, but right now its pretty low as it is, so I dont see where the problem is.
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Kitsune on July 23, 2002, 11:12:58 pm
The poly limit per object is about 850-890.
Subobjects can have that many as well provided they don't break that limit of 3.5k.

As for the model itself, yeah, the head is too big, or the body too small.  Take your pick.
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 23, 2002, 11:50:22 pm
a 3.5k limit? never heard of that one before. :confused:
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Kitsune on July 24, 2002, 11:09:18 pm
3,500 pollies total for a ship, including sub-models and  other junk.

Hell, I'm quoting YOU.
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 24, 2002, 11:24:41 pm
oh, i know that limit, i thought you ment a file size limit for the pof. :D
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Kitsune on July 24, 2002, 11:36:56 pm
Oh nooooooo...

I've seen a couple models that were  a couple hundred k in size cause of all the turrets and stuff on them.

A 3.5k filesize for a pof?

Would there be a point to making one that small?  Maybe if it was the last LOD.

But at any rate, now to get a protoss carrier...  Still have the unfinished model I had started.
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: vadar_1 on July 25, 2002, 12:30:22 am
A Protoss carrier would be cool, specially if you could fly inside of it and blow off peices (Episode 3 - Protoss campaign - end movie)
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 25, 2002, 11:57:18 am
Heh, vadar, sorry to annoy you with those posts. I posted a reply with an explanation, but obviously it didn't show. Newayz, I made the head smaller and the ship a bit longer. I'd post the pic, but I didn't transfer the image yet. So I'll be back shortly with the pic.
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 25, 2002, 07:34:17 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Kitsune
A 3.5k filesize for a pof?

Would there be a point to making one that small?  Maybe if it was the last LOD.

no, probably not ;)

unless you had a pof of a space man with a jet pack (who started that idea anyways?) with 0.5 hitpoints and a really tiny laser :D
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 25, 2002, 10:23:11 pm
haha, that would be hilarious to have the lil space man flyin around, almost completely off sensors. lolz, he would have the little beam cannon to destroy the universe, hahahaha :doh: newayz, here's the pix!

You know the drill, copy and paste. :rolleyes:

http://www.geocities.com/vietbboyraver/BCnew.gif
http://www.geocities.com/vietbboyraver/BCnew1.gif

Any new suggestions would be appreciated and if anyone has a recent tutorial on Truespace, it would be really helpful. I tried all the tutorials on FSwatch but they are for the earlier versions of truespace and the icons and such are very different. I have yet to find a Truespace 6 tutorial. :doubt:
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 26, 2002, 03:22:36 am
couldn't get the links working (tried clicking, copying shortcut, copying words and copying the link in the properties :D )

do you build your models in truespace??? and get em that good??? best i ever did in truespace was put a primitive in and streatch it :p
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 26, 2002, 11:01:28 am
No, actually, I would rather hate Truespace than use it, lolz. :rolleyes: I can barely get Truespace 6 to work what with all the different features and the outdated tutorials flying around in Vwatch. The program that I use is Blender. It's a very easy-to-use tool and very easy to learn. I didn't even finish Max Sterling's tutorial and I had already gotten the basics down and created my wraith. Again, I really need some Truespace help! :confused:
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Flipside on July 26, 2002, 12:49:49 pm
If it weren't for the textures, a Borg Cube would fit into 3.5K :) Possibly with a bit of tiling, you could even get away with that! LOL
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Martinus on July 27, 2002, 07:38:08 am
I'm going to go against the crowd here and say:

If you built it that way and you like it that way then don't change a thing. It's your ship afterall. :nod:
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Vasudan Admiral on July 27, 2002, 05:57:55 pm
Quote
Originally posted by AqueousShadow
No, actually, I would rather hate Truespace than use it, lolz. :rolleyes: I can barely get Truespace 6 to work what with all the different features and the outdated tutorials flying around in Vwatch. The program that I use is Blender. It's a very easy-to-use tool and very easy to learn. I didn't even finish Max Sterling's tutorial and I had already gotten the basics down and created my wraith. Again, I really need some Truespace help! :confused:

i know about blender, while i admit it is very easy to use i still want a more powerful modler :D
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 27, 2002, 08:30:31 pm
Yes, blender isn't the perfect tool to use, but it is a very exceptional tool for newbies like myself. I might stay with Blender though later on in my MODding "career" or I might select a more powerful program to better suit my needs, in any case, I'm gonna practice my moddeling and I just HAVE to find a way to learn Truespace...:sigh:
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: Black Wolf on July 28, 2002, 02:21:27 am
Quote
Originally posted by Maeglamor
I'm going to go against the crowd here and say:

If you built it that way and you like it that way then don't change a thing. It's your ship afterall. :nod:


Not really - It's Blizzards ship. He's said he's making a copy of it - it should really be accurate.
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 28, 2002, 02:04:19 pm
True, true, but I think that's as accurate as I can go for now. The only other thing I would need to do is change the shaft and make it hollow. And thanks for that little boost there, I'd like to think my ships are as good as I want them, but you can't get better unless you listen to constructive criticism :nod: So I like to take the suggestions that people have and put them into action. :D
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: [DP]Ghent96 on July 28, 2002, 05:44:29 pm
links aren't working :\
Title: Battlecruiser Operational
Post by: AqueousShadow on July 28, 2002, 10:54:58 pm
Links don't work, gimme your e-mails and I'll send 'em to you. Stupid geocities. :doubt: