[EdrickV]

I decided to post a few pics of my latest attempt at texturing. The GTT Brontes. The basic idea behind it is very simple: It's a space truck. Designed to dock with and haul cargo/disabled ships. It's not finished, but the model has been textured and tested in game. This ship would actually be unarmed, as it would not normally be used in a combat situation. (In other words it was a civilian design that the GTA decided to use.)


I'm not satisfied with the cockpit, but it's more oddly shaped then this pic suggests so is hard to fit anything to. It wasn't designed to be folded down the middle, and I'm only using textures I have on hand.

The back view. Note the red "tail lights" on the back of the top "crane arm."

A close up of two of the 3 "arms" that are where the cargo would be docked. The lights could be some sort of low level force field (aka tractor beam) emitters that would hold the cargo/ship in place. The actual dock point would be on the upper arm. (It's not there yet though.)

I need a better name for this ship then Brontes, and I'd like one starting with a B. Any ideas?

[Knight Templar]

i think it's great. No reconmendations as of now, other than its really good.

names... um

GTT Bronco

GTT Bruno

GTT Baulder

GTT Benton

GTT Bison

GTT Bangkok

GTT Boyd

Edit: GTT Bishop

        GTT Banyan

        GTT Barrie :wink:

[HotSnoJ]

I like it! No I REALLY LIKE IT!

Don't feel to glum about the cockpit. Mine are much worse. Though I found out that if you make it out of a different mesh (instead of out of the main hull) you can get much better results. You have to use boolean operations to do this.

BTW it looks more like a capital ship truck/cargo carriar from the back.

[mikhael]

Excellent model. The only thing I would do is actually make the front end more blunt, so it seems like it was added as an afterthought. That would give a more of a utilitarian feel to it.

[Knight Templar]

not sayng anything is a bad idea or anything, but am i the only that likes the front?




*runs for safety*

[EdrickV]

What I don't like about the cockpit isn't the shape, it's the texture and the difficulty I had getting it mapped well. (And once converted the cockpit looks a bigger then it does right now.) Here are some untextured images to show the geometry of the cockpit which makes it a little odd to texture.




See that little extrusion sticking up from the front? The sides of it go straight up so they don't map well with the rest of the cockpit area. And I hadn't thought to put a split down the center of the ship so getting symmetrical textures has been hard at times. What you see of the cockpit texture is actually only part of the original texture, pictured below. It was the best one I could find though. I ended up texturing the sides of that extrusion black, and they don't show up in that first pic. (After that model I started making an edge along the middle of all my new ships so I can make symmetrical textures easier.)



I have no idea what that texture is actually used for. I may play with the mesh some more, but first I'm going to try and make a fully finished version of the one I have. (Going to try adding dock points to that upper arm and see if I can actually make it able to dock with anything that has a dock point, though I may need a dockpoint somewhere else for that 'cause not everything will fit between the arms. )

[Knight Templar]

now i see. your ship sucks now.





well what you have looks good IMO. I spose' just play with it till' it feels right  

and use one of my uber sexy-sleek "B" names

[EdrickV]

I was playing around in FRED2 (trying to test the docking ports) and I just realized something. As converted, my Brontes is bigger then a Fenris! I'll have to re-convert with a lower scale factor before I get one that's ready to use. I will experiment with my huge one and I might as well try and add a split down the center so that I can do textures better. (Though editing the geography will mean I will have to re-texture the whole thing, but at least I have an idea what I want it to look like.)

I had a feeling it was too big, I just didn't think it was that big.

[tomcat]

Wanna learn something of TOMCAT HOW TO GET RID OF UNEEDED POLYGONS?  Cockpit area only:)
at least 16 p:)

[EdrickV]

Originally posted by tomcat
Wanna learn something of TOMCAT HOW TO GET RID OF UNEEDED POLYGONS?  Cockpit area only:)
at least 16 p:)

Not sure what you are asking, but I do know how to combine seperate polygons into one polygon. The cockpit had as many polys as it did because, with few exceptions, combining the faces would have resulted in problems either with nonlinear faces or collinear vertex problems. It'll look a bit different because I'm going to change part of the cockpit so I don't have vertical faces in the middle of it. I had a feeling when I was making the UV map that those two faces would cause problems, but it was only the first version of the mesh. I'm not quite through playing with it, though most of the mesh isn't likely to be changed aside from making a split down the middle. I will have to retexture though and that'll take some time.

[Star Dragon]

Don't scrap the big one!!! Save it as a huge bulk transport. For that version just change the cockpit to a bridge area....  I'm sure there are projects that could use a large transport!!!

[EdrickV]

There's big, and then there's just plain nuts.



The ships are in order: An Orion, an Aeolus, a Brontes, below it a Ulysses, a Fenris, and a Faustus. And at 483 polys, the Brontes is a little low poly for such a big ship.

Edit: I am, in any event, going to try and finish the big one before doing a smaller one. Right now I'm going to test the docking port path.

[EdrickV]

Well, the dockpoint path seems to work just fine for ships docking with a Brontes. (Though I haven't yet tried it with any big ships, that'll be an interesting experiment.) The Brontes however looks odd docking with normal cargo containers, due to their paths and the location of it's docking port. (It kinda rammed into the container nose first.) I've got special cargo containers that I'll texture, pof, and give paths appropriate for a Brontes. (Said paths should work for other ships too.)

[CP5670]

This looks very good, but it would make a better freighter in my opinion with those Triton-like cargo holders.

I have no idea what that texture is actually used for. I may play with the mesh some more, but first I'm going to try and make a fully finished version of the one I have. (Going to try adding dock points to that upper arm and see if I can actually make it able to dock with anything that has a dock point, though I may need a dockpoint somewhere else for that 'cause not everything will fit between the arms.  )

I think that this one is used on the Boadicea. (the NTF asteroid base)

[EdrickV]

Hmm. It is built more on the Triton's scale then the Argo's. (Forgot the Triton was so big.) What, in the FS2 world, is the difference between the two? (I actually didn't remember the freighter class when I designated the Brontes GTT. I tend to group the Triton, Argo, and Elysium together when thinking about them.) The Brontes was originally designed to be, basically, a space tow truck. But it can't dock with small ships unless it's a repair/rearm type and can't dock with other things if it is. (Would be nice if there was some sort of transport/freighter class that could dock with anything.)

[EdrickV]

After numerous LithUnwrap crashes (it doesn't seem to like it when I hit Ctrl+Z and the preview window is open) I got my cargo pod in game. It works, but the path needs some more tweaking. It's either too long or too short. I may replace it with an entirely different path. Here are some pics of the cargo pod designed specifically for the Brontes:


Two pics from LithUnwrap.

That pod just fits between the arms. Not even enough room to fly between the arms and the pod. Exactly as it was designed to work.

For size comparison, a nice little Elysium docked with another cargo pod.

That warp ani looks to be scaled too small considering the size of that pod.
Still need to tweak the Brontes' table data. That thing's dangerous when it turns. Once it undocks it likes to swing around and smack the cargo pod with the docking arms. And it's still unarmed because I'm not sure I could do turrets without screwing up the uv mapping. (We really need an alternative to TrueSpace for doing hierarchy stuff.)

[diamondgeezer]

You want a name? Why not just bite the bullet and call it Nostromo?

Good effort, Ed

[StratComm]

for the dockpoint/paths, I suggest making the dockpoint where the pod connects with the rear of the Brontes, between the arms.  This way, you can make the dock path sufficiently long for the brontes to pull away completely before doing any strange manuvers.

[EdrickV]

The pod doesn't attach to the back of the Brontes. The top of the pod attaches to the bottom of the middle arm. The trick is getting a path that looks right for docking and undocking. Straight in paths (like those used on normal containers) don't look right because the ship heads straight for the container before it stops and realigns itself for docking. For my cargo pod, I want, essentially, for the ship to fly over the pod to a point where the docking ports match, and then lower itself onto the pod. I've got it doing that, but need to adjust the vert locations 'cause the ship doesn't stop far enough ahead so when it goes down it goes down and forward but the two models (with collision detection off for docking) actually overlap for a bit. Need to move the first (or last depending on how you look at it) point forward and maybe move the last (first) point farther away from the pod. I might try a straight horizontal path for alignment, though it would look odd for a smaller ship. (Of course, smaller ships look odd docked with the pods anyways.)

[StratComm]

I've done enough dockpoints to know how to fix it, but I can't really explain it without doing it first.  If you'd send me the models I could probably get the dockpoints straightened out in no time.  I was on staff a couple of places to do this sort of thing, but I don't have time to do it full scale.  One container, though, shouldn't be a problem.  My e-mail is [email protected], and try to keep it under a half-meg or so.