[WeatherOp]

I have been working on some turrets lately, But, their poly count is at 300, whitch is high. But have got e'm down to around 200. Also needs some more detail .Post Any comments, or such.


This is the 300 poly model.

[Pilot Of The US]

looks sweet! how about a little radar/rangfinder T-Bar on the top flat surface.

[Flaser]

Originally posted by WeatherOp
I have been working on some turrets lately, But, their poly count is at 300, whitch is high. But have got e'm down to around 200. Also needs some more detail .Post Any comments, or such.

AFAIS you've wasted way too many polies on simply making the barrels round.
With less smothness - and little change in-game - you could shrink that model to 1/2 the polies.

The shape is pretty generic so far, so I don't have a true impression of what your aim was.
It also lack any apparent mechanics for rotating the turrets - in elevation at least if you wanted the whole base to swivel around.

From an armoring point of view, the sides should have slanted armor too if you tried to make some WWII - ish anti shell armor.

Those are my thoughts on it so far.
To sum it up - it's pretty 'simple' so I will merly comment on the technique.

[Swamp_Thing]

Over 300 polys for that?? Those barrels are consuming way too many polys...
Look at this one, with only 600 polys:




Get rid of those barrels, or make a better detailed turret base. As is, they don´t fit together.

[Nuke]

i try to keep my turrets under 200 polies, usually cause id like to put more than a couple on any one ship.

[StratComm]

I've actually got a deck gun around here somewhere that comes in at a fairly reasonable size; I don't have pictures of it at the moment, but I'll find some when I get back to school.  WeatherOp, that's not bad.  I agree with what's been said already about its function and the number of wasted polys in rounding, but if it's all done with one texture then it should be fine in HT&L.  (Nuke: with HT&L and a single texture, rendering those 200 polys isn't a problem as long as they share the same texture).

Swamp_Thing, you changed the picture.  Besides looking silly on that absolute brick of a base, you've got far too much texture variety on that thing.  Bake it, or unwrap and custom map it, if you're planning on using it anywhere.

[KARMA]

monstrously overrounded...

[Nuke]

its not the 200 polies, its the 200 polies * the number of turrets that bugs me. 6 of those gatling turrets is 3600 polies and ya still got the ship and other submodels to render as well..

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by StratComm
Swamp_Thing, you changed the picture.  Besides looking silly on that absolute brick of a base, you've got far too much texture variety on that thing.  Bake it, or unwrap and custom map it, if you're planning on using it anywhere.

Why do you think i took it down?
Besides, this was only to ilustrate a point: that you can make detailed tuerrets using little polys. If  WeatherOp had used only half of the polys of the barrels and transfered them to the base, he can make a faily detailed turret without going crazy on poly counts.

Another thing: now that we have been given a bit more leverage in a model´s polycount with SCP, wouldn´t we be the silly ones if we upgraded our ships and left the turrets as ugly and under-detailed as before? We have the polys, so use them! We don´t need to make them all hi-poly, but at least the multi-part ones should be a must.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Nuke
its not the 200 polies, its the 200 polies * the number of turrets that bugs me. 6 of those gatling turrets is 3600 polies and ya still got the ship and other submodels to render as well..

Depends on if the guns you've got on the ship then. If you've only got a couple of main gattling guns its a lot more forgivable.

[WeatherOp]

Yeah, the Turrets still need of work, I have been pulling the polys down to around 200. And I have been modeling some other things lately and had not worked on e'm in the past week or so. Thanks for the advice.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Nuke
its not the 200 polies, its the 200 polies * the number of turrets that bugs me. 6 of those gatling turrets is 3600 polies and ya still got the ship and other submodels to render as well..

But since subobjects get rendered seperately, I don't know that what you're implying is correct.  You're going to be passing the texture anyway, which takes (comparitively) much longer than the rendering of a couple of hundred polygons with that texture.  One of the rendering engine guys should say definitivly, but as far as the rendering engine is concerned I'm pretty sure that all subobjects, from high-poly hulls to tiny button turrets, are treated independently.

[Nuke]

even though htl allows for more effietient rendering of polygons the fact still remains more polygons = more proccessing.  200 polies is more than enough to make an attractive looking turret. and you can still use a dozen of them of them without screwing over the polycount too much. this doesnt mean a 600 poly turret is a waste, when used on a ship with fewer, more powerfull turrets its totally acceptable.

[Bobboau]

you run twenty miles and then lift a 1/16th ounce weight, or you run twenty miles and lift five pounds.

you change a texture and render 100 polygons, or you change a texture and render 5,000 polygons

get the comparason.

[Nuke]

no mater how good your htl engine is is it really a good idea to overtax it?

[Grimloq]

i have a fairly good turret model which is 67 polys. it could be much more detailed, but as it is it looks nice and is small (poly wise).

my advice is shoot for 100 polys for a turret. that way you have leverage if you go over, and if you go under... meh, yo ucan add more detail

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Nuke
no mater how good your htl engine is is it really a good idea to overtax it?

There's a difference between overtaxing the engine and not doing enough with it.

There's no real point in spending 8,000 polys on a ship if the turrets look ugly and low poly. If you have turrets the size of the ones on the hecate for instance you really need to spend a fair few polys on them cause otherwise they'll look like an afterthought.

What we really need to see is a big capship made using as few textures as possible. The HTL fenris is giving everyone a false impression of how fast HTL actually is.

[FireCrack]

Yeah, that feneris.

How many polies is it again?

[karajorma]

~6500 according to modelview.

[Raptor]

Since we're talking about turrets...

I might as well show off these:


In order:

A: Colonial Turbolaser turret.  Untextured
B: The new Trition main turret. Model by me, texture by VA
C: Triple barrel version of my standardised FS2 plasma cannons
D: Twin barrel version of FS2 Flak
E: Twin railgun turret, with alternate base texture.  Note the shadows cast on the flak turret;7
C,D & E are designed to be modular

F: An olde, my replacement for the Orions main guns.
G: Quad Subach HL-7 turret
H: A nice little 50 poly gunport (like those on the flanks of a Deimos)