[skygunner58203]

Hey all, I know i've asked for help before and people have been kind enough to help me out.  In the time i've spent as part of this forum i've mainly lurked about and picked up bits and pieces of info on modeling and the like.  As it stands now, i can Fred a VERY basic test mission or two, make simple but nice models and pof models that have textures already.  The only two things i can't figure out are turrets and textures.  I can't texture to save my life, and I have very, very limited experience on turrets.  I am uploading a cob file of a halfway decent Arwing, and am asking for texture help on a standard paint job.  Thanks for the help.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Getter Robo G]

Well I was going to post an arwing for you to examine the mapping, but can't seem to find it..

I looked at your cob.

I see you have it divided into two parts, Main body and wing assemblies.

Teh main body is fine on teh sides, but teh top and bottm surfaces are mirrored opposite [<] and [>] when you look at it.

Same thign fro teh wing assemblies, each piece is fine by itself but the left side is opposite fromt eh right.

If you use a detail texture with a stripe on top it will be on the bottom on the other peice.

[UP] (main body) [Down]

Hope that helps you.

[skygunner58203]

so what programs do people use to model and texture?  I have truespace 3.2, maya 3.0, and blender for modeling.  I also have paint shop pro and photoshop 5.5. 

@getter robo
         That does help somewhat.  Now its just a matter of doing the actual texturing.  Any tips or programs that can help?

[Getter Robo G]

Some can use Lithunwrap, milkshake, and a few other I don't remember.

I don't UV map, I just change existing textures to something logical that fits themes I want to bring across...

[skygunner58203]

Interesting.  So if I can figure out how to get, say, a one color hull texture...I could fiddle with it to get a basic skin?

[Getter Robo G]

Basically that's whatI was going to do for you and then post it, but the way you had it applied even a square texture had different orientation for the same object on different sides

I can't help you with that. 

[skygunner58203]

Would it be easier if i remade the object as all one object?  for the wing assemblies i made one, then used the copy/mirror technique to get a duplicate.  It made it easier to model.  But i can make it all from a single cube if i need to.

[Getter Robo G]

Not my department.
I'm just a Veteran Noob giving Noob advice but if you can figure it out this way, it might get you by until you can learn to do it right...

But two good things about mirroring.
1.) Some people think it saves work. Do half, mirror, model done!
2.) On parts that have an opposite, if the texturing will look correct when mirrored , your good to go!.

Always do a test at each stage!!!


I don't want to keep filling up your thread with my conversion pics but here's a decent example:

Kreeargh makes LP models and throws generic textures on them (usually single color).

This one has a Head, Mirrored tail and wing (engine/weapon) block, and a single body.

Through a process of painting on separate objects and then mirroring them and then painting the head and the body he made the texture slots I could change.

I have many thousands of textures and usually when i first see a model I envision some changes as to how I would want it to look like. I then look for textures to test out and if need be, resize, flip or color change them and re-save the new textures after making sure they fit right and if on opposite sides match.

  like    or ]I[   not  [I[ ect.. On all surfaces, top and under wings, sides of fuselage, ect..

If you need to, don't be afraid to use mirror and then AFTER pain over specific poly later. Just make sure you save a lot!

  

[skygunner58203]

Fair enough.  You've been a big help as is.  I'll see what i can come up with.  That and i'll try a couple of different programs to see if i can get it working that way.

[Vasudan Admiral]

For the final conversion to POF (by any method), you should try to have as few separate objects as possible both for efficiency and stability reasons. So, in your model there, you'd end up with:

Fighter
|
|-Wings
     |
     |-Cannons

as a final hierarchy, but for no real reason unless you want to animate the wings and cannons in some way.

As for programs, I would really really really strongly recommend against using TS 3.2 (AT ALL) due to its overall instability, complete lack of good modeling tools, horrificly clunky interface and terrible work-flow, and that instead you should go for either Maya or Blender.

Blender has the (pretty big IMHO) advantage of having a direct conversion path to POF via saving as DAE (There's a guide on how to do that here), as well as being very capable of any animations (effects, cutscenes, head ANIs, command briefing ANIs etc) that you might want/need, it's free and continually evolving.

Maya has the advantage of being a very powerful mainstream program used in professional CGI work, so it's *probably* more capable than Blender for the non-ship-building applications. (I've not used it myself, so I can't really give much more info sorry - I don't know if it can save to DAE)


About texturing, well there is a lot to learn there, but essentially it comes down to tile mapping or UV mapping. I loathe texture tiling, so I'd actually recommend you learn to UV map from the get go, but for beginners tiling might be an 'ok' way to get a grasp of the concepts before you get comfortable enough with the modelling side to work out the ins and outs of how it relates to the texturing side. It might be better to pick a modelling program and focus on learning to model well before tackling texturing (in that same app - don't switch for something like lithunwrap). Learning both modelling and texturing at once might be pretty overwhelming.

For texture painting you should be able to use just about anything that's not MS Paint, but the big 3 would be Gimp, Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. I currently use PSP, but I plan on switching to PS because my version of PSP does a lot of things that piss me off no end, like taking ages to save auto-saves, and then not actually being able to restore them when it crashes. :\

Finally, don't be afraid to put pen to paper when coming up with ship designs - just rough scribbles of interesting shapes/outlines are infinitely better than making up a shape as you go in a modeller, only to find it looks ridiculus or simplistic at the end of it.