[Mongoose]

Holy crap, a trifecta!

[Hellstryker]

Neat. I'll see what I can do with this.

[Rampage]

Greetings from the Inferno Team.  We would like to seek permission from the author of the HTL Basilisk to complete the model for the Community.  First, kudos for making such an impeccable Shivan model.  Although there were no geometry errors, we have optimized the model to remove any redundant faced without compromising the detail.

As of now, we have found the HTL mesh to be incompatible with the retail Basilisk textures.  Thus, with the permission of the author and from the Community, we would like to UVmap the model from scratch and make an attempt at texturing it in our style.  Or the Community can texture it.  Please kindly let us know soon.

[Dragon]

Could you keep the original style?
Then, it could go into Mediavps.
Compatiblity of HTL models with retail maps has been abandoned a long time ago.

[Zacam]

Compatiblity of HTL models with retail maps has been abandoned a long time ago.

O rly? That's news to me. Any modeler that chooses to can UVmap to the retail maps.

Does this mean that they should?  *shrugs* Depends on the modeler, the model, and just how good both of them are.

So I wouldn't say abandoned. More like, not too many people bother. But your namesake model (just as an example) still uses the Retail texture. The Ulysses still has the retail aspect to its textures (and in fact could probably use the retail map without any hassle).

I could continue to list, but that isn't the point.

[BrotherBryon]

Go right on ahead, seeing the extreme closeup of the retail Basilisk in the FSO trailer made me cringe and I would love to see what you guys can do with it.

[Galemp]

If the retail UV map has been upgraded with a high-res redraw, glow, shine, and normal maps, then making a new UV map would probably duplicate a lot of unnecessary work. Unless the new model is significantly different from the retail model or the retail UV is unusable (like the Valkyrie) it's convenient.

[Rga_Noris]

I've always felt that no visual sacrifice should be made in order to maintain retail UV's. If you can maintain an uncomprimised level of detail with the texture AND maintain the original UV, then I guess it's worth it. However with polycounts and details skyrocketing, this will become harder and harder as time goes on.

The gains are minimal. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this would only have a benifit in cases where a mod has previously reskinned a ship that has been HTL'ed, as to maintain compatibility with that mod. Well, if this happens, it is very easy to simply use the old one.

[Zacam]

Omelets. Eggs. Quality is quality, there is no such thing as "reduplication" merely refinement and the achievement of perfection.

"IF" you can (within a reasonable frame of reference) get away with recycling AND make it look good, GREAT. But if it's going to take a lot of effort in either case, then go with something new. Otherwise, who's going to notice that the model is any different when the maps has no changes to the details other than to try and fit it in? For several ships already I've had to delete the existing normal maps because they were made for pre-higher poly models. If those ships had been remapped instead with NEW maps, then the replacement textures would have gone in with the models and there wouldn't have been a need for discovering "oh wow, the old normal maps actually make it look worse" _after_ it's now out and about.

There is a BIG difference between retaining the retail elements of appearance, and slavishly adhering to recycling the Retail maps (or stitching retail tiles into a unified texture) that I'd like to make sure doesn't become a habit. Because while it may not be a BAD habit per-se (if done right) when it goes south, you have the issue of people going "wait, that got upgraded? I thought that was still Retail" which means we've failed at providing the necessary aesthetic of providing an upgrade.

[Rampage]

Thank you for all the input; the Inferno Team has decided to make new textures for the Basilisk that models closely to the retail ones.  We will then release a layered version of the texture map for the community to play around with and to make glow/shine/normal maps from it.

[Rampage]

Attached is the Basilisk HTL LOD0 and the simple UVmap as exported from Wings3D.  The UV coordinates are mostly done but there are areas that seriously need fixing (eg the beveled portions of the gun arms; basically anything beveled).  Right now the Inferno Team is occupied on other projects and cannot get to doing this, so perhaps by handing it off to the Community the Basilisk can get done faster.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ezxgairpaaqapwq

Please post the fixed UV version here so we may continue working on the texture map.

INFTeam