[Unknown Target]

I've started taking up modeling some capital ships. You might remember my cruiser/light carrier awhile back with the fighter drum concept? Well this is a heavier version. WIP so far, but suggestions? (Again, fighters launch from the big drum in the front).





(This is what the fighter drum on the other ship looks like; it works about the same):

[Unknown Target]

Er...what happened to my topic?

Anyway, this is what happens when you forget a model's supposed to be low poly Maybe this should be moved to art now.
How's it look?

[c914]

Now that is  very good.
You can always replace few polys by texture

[Prophet]

Looks like UT got a little carried away... 

Yes, that should be done by textures. Those "details" are so small that it would look flat in-game anyway. Do a couple of larger variations on the side (like the dock points for example), and do that plating stuff via textures... Thats what me thinks.

[Fineus]

I know (or imagine) you havent started detailing the fighter drumrolls ends yet, but could i recommend bevelling the ends per-segment? That is.. for each row of fighters there are.. bevel for it along that smooth face. Right now it looks far too... flat.

[Taristin]

Did you do those all by hand?

[Unknown Target]

Yep Sketchup makes it really easy, it's basically just drawing panels in Photoshop. Btw, polycount in this screenie (below) is 28,431; just about the entire Galactica mesh in the BSG mod, IIRC I'm thinking of finishing up a couple more details on this side, on the bottom and top, and then mirroring it. By then I'll have some 50,000 polies; great for testing FS2's limits



Tried a Truespace render:

[StratComm]

Yep Sketchup makes it really easy, it's basically just drawing panels in Photoshop. Btw, polycount in this screenie (below) is 28,431; just about the entire Galactica mesh in the BSG mod, IIRC I'm thinking of finishing up a couple more details on this side, on the bottom and top, and then mirroring it. By then I'll have some 50,000 polies; great for testing FS2's limits

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/UnknownTarget/d30a78e1.jpg

Tried a Truespace render:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/UnknownTarget/685b6191.jpg

Or texture baking.  Those panels would make an excellent source for a complete UV map.

[Unknown Target]

Er...how do I do that/how is it implemented?

[Roanoke]

As a Normal Map would be great. For all the high poly grebling it does lack any real features though.

[FireCrack]

bevel the greebles

[Taristin]

Er...how do I do that/how is it implemented?

AFAIK in TS, you can't.

[Unknown Target]

Well what would it be called? Sketchup might have it.

[Taristin]

It's called baking. Or renderring to texture. Essentially what it does it take the model, apply the lighting, shadows, et al, and puts all of the effects into the texture, while it's creating a single texture from the mesh.

That probably explains it poorly, but it's something you have to play with to get a full understanding of it.

[supernova]

Raa explained it pretty well...

Epic games uses exactly that method to produce all the models and textures for Unreal 2007.   First they make a mesh of a character at about 2.5 million polygons, then make the normal and texture maps from that model, then apply them to the actual ingame character of about 5K polys, and then there you go, you have the detail of the 2.5 million poly model at much more realistic polycounts...

It's a shame that the render to texture function on MAX 5 doesn't work properly....if only i had MAX 8...