[Sandwich]

IMHO the first thing I'd take out to make room for other things would be the windows - those look like wasted polies unless you're touching them. A decent hi-res window texture + glowmaps + (eventual) bump mapping could do the job just as well for a lot cheaper.

But yeah, looks great, although there are some parts that still need greeblage (nose, top, and bottom) IMHO.

[Raptor]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
Err, how many polys is that? Sure, Hi polyfication is awesome, but going overboard is never a good thing.

The wireframe looks fairly efficient, but still, a poly number'd be nice to set my mind at ease:)

Well, I haven't fully trianglated it yet (If I can, I don't split faces into triangles), but ATM the whole LOD0 mesh is sitting at 1958 polys.

So, with complete trianglation, we're looking at around 2.5-3K.  There are some areas were I can lope off polys though.  Remove some windows, mainly:nervous:

EDIT: Well Sandwich, I'm finding it hard to greble the bow, due to all the angled faces, while the top and bottom, well...

[Black Wolf]

Wow - that really is an efficient mesh. Commendations for the detail then.

[Taristin]

Isn't 1958x2...*thinks*... 3916?  4000 polies when the game triangulates it?

[IceFire]

Two comments:

I think it may be efficient to remove some of the window details and keep the savings.  Use textures to explore some of that.

The flak turrets and the heavy pulse turrets...great distinction but I think the flak turrets could be shorter.  Just looks a bit off.

Love the design work however...Aeolus never looked so good!

[Nico]

Well, that helps, since it never looked good

[Col. Fishguts]

Looking good...but yes, the windows are maybe a bit overkill, compared to the rest of the ship.
The bridge is cool, but imagine what happens, when a Treb impacts there.....BOOM....and the ship is out of control.

EDIT: The smaller turrets are better, IMHO

[Janos]

Hmmm.

I kinda always thought that the bridge of Aeolus were somewhere near the engines or at the rear part of the "nose" of the ship - like a drag car or something..? Because honestly, when the bridge is in the front the ship looks more vulnerable than it is (it's a goddamn Aeolus ) and a bit funny.

Just my two cents though.

[Sheepy]

wasn't mik going to try and edit this some?

[Raptor]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
Wow - that really is an efficient mesh. Commendations for the detail then.

Thankyou.  Glad you think so:nod:

Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
Isn't 1958x2...*thinks*... 3916? 4000 polies when the game triangulates it?

No, that would be 2 ships.  When I stated 1958, I had already done the mirrior calculations.  The current half mesh only has 980 polys.

@Icefire: When you say the flak turrets could be shorter, do you mean the barrels, or the whole turret?

Very happy you like the ship;)

@Col.Fishguts:Simple answer to that: extra heavy armour:D

The windows may go, at least some of them.

As for the Bridge, well, we're never told where the bridge is cannonically, but I've always been partial to a (slightly) exposed bridge.

[Unknown Target]

Wow...I'm amazed at how efficient that mesh is!

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Raptor
No, that would be 2 ships.  When I stated 1958, I had already done the mirrior calculations.  The current half mesh only has 980 polys.

I think he meant when you triangulate that you'll turn all the quads into triangles so you'll at least double the poly count.

Not a very accurate method though. Although most TS models have lots of quads they often have many higher order polys too so the triangulated count is often much more than just double the poly count.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
Wow...I'm amazed at how efficient that mesh is!

I don't, I'm 100% sure the final ( guessed ) polycount is way off

[Flaser]

Originally posted by Raptor


As for the Bridge, well, we're never told where the bridge is cannonically, but I've always been partial to a (slightly) exposed bridge.

I think the Gundam saga had the perfect solution for the bridge exposure problem:

The ships were actually built with 2 bridges, a panoramic bridge that allowed a great overview of the surrounding area, and a battle-bridge ('sentou-bridge'), which was well armored and deeper in the hull.

When the ship entered grave combat, the bridge personal could quickly move from one to another, 'cause the seats were railed to allow quick tranfer. They also put on normal-suits (spacesuits that offered a tad more protection), so a hull-break wouldn't kill anyone.

I think the same method could be used by corvettes, while cruisers would have only a semi-exposed bridge more heavily armored than the observation-bridge of a corvette.

Destroyers would only have a heavly armored bridge deep in the hull of the ship, with several observation stations to give visual aid. - Those ships are too big anyway to be overseen by a single bridge.

That said big ships could have a secondary bridge - the Aeolis would greatly benefit from a secondary, "tactical"-bridge on its aft section.

A Hecate could have 3 of these tacical/observation bridges (fore, aft-high and low) and a main bridge deep in the hull.

[Raptor]

Okay, I just did a quick check.  Used TS default trianglation function, de-Tri'ed the mirrior face, then calculated the 'true' face count.

It's now looking at 4934 triangles total (includes both sides) .  However I feel that a manually trianglated would be less. The TS default is not efficient.  Also, I have added some extra detail on top of the ship, and there is vast areas which I hadn't trianglated when I quoted that figure.

@Flaser:I'd expect that, like modern (or at least WW2) ships, the ships 2IC/XO would have a battle station some were other than the bridge.  In fact, I have a fanfic planed (that would go with my planed campain;7 ), were the GTC Aggripa's 2IC was at her battle station, with engineering, when the main bridge was lost. (she's one of the main chacters;) )

[Flaser]

I wasn't refering to battlestations only, it's the double bridge setup I was emphasising.

Loosing the main bridge could be catastrophic - so it should be more protected - therefore it would be deep inside the hull.

The double bridge setup would allow a great flexibility - which is ideal for a corvette class ships. It would take up too much space on a cruiser, and would be too expensive and won't give enough pluss on a destroyer.

The setup is like this(very raw abstract):

Obs..../----------\
_____|.......,_,.....|______
|Bttl..|...............|

[Unknown Target]

Originally posted by Raptor

It's now looking at 4934 triangles total (includes both sides)

Still not that bad, considering all those details you put in.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Raptor
Okay, I just did a quick check.  Used TS default trianglation function, de-Tri'ed the mirrior face, then calculated the 'true' face count.

It's now looking at 4934 triangles total (includes both sides) .  However I feel that a manually trianglated would be less. The TS default is not efficient.  Also, I have added some extra detail on top of the ship, and there is vast areas which I hadn't trianglated when I quoted that figure.

Considering that Karma's Fenris was around 7000 that's really not that much different.

Cut down those polys on the windows and you'd have another 1000 or so for detailing elsewhere

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Raptor
It's now looking at 4934 triangles total (includes both sides) .  However I feel that a manually trianglated would be less. The TS default is not efficient.  Also, I have added some extra detail on top of the ship, and there is vast areas which I hadn't trianglated when I quoted that figure.

That's not true.  There is no such thing as a more or less efficient triangulation.  Yes, there are multiple ways to triangulate a face, but you will find that they all come to the exact same number of triangles.  So manual triangulation isn't going to buy you anything but a waste of time (as the final mesh can easily be untriantulated).  The problem is all of the windows, that's a texture detail rather than something intended for mesh-level construction unless you're going truely high-poly which no real-time render can handle.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by StratComm
That's not true.  There is no such thing as a more or less efficient triangulation.  Yes, there are multiple ways to triangulate a face, but you will find that they all come to the exact same number of triangles.  So manual triangulation isn't going to buy you anything but a waste of time (as the final mesh can easily be untriantulated).  The problem is all of the windows, that's a texture detail rather than something intended for mesh-level construction unless you're going truely high-poly which no real-time render can handle.

That's true however there are two important poly counts for a HTL ship. The triangulated count and the number of polys the ship has when converted.

The first affects the speed of the model in-game and the second affects the filesize and loading time.

Raptor may have been on about getting the second figure as  efficient as possible. Karma's Fenris for instance loses a couple of thousend polys when untriangulated and would probably load quicker that way (don't know if doing that would mess up the UV maps though).