[Swamp_Thing]

It´s not an exact science, is it?
I set the 3º number to minus -500, and the ship is about 700 meters long. I guess it depends largelly on the axis of the ship.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

damn that looks good

[c914]

youre right:D

[Unknown Target]

Neato. But the solar panels should be flat, not smoothed.

[Janos]

All those pretty colors

[Krackers87]

Not in FS2 was there a ship named galileio, maybe in FS1.

[Carl]

i don't think they're solar panels. no need on a ship with a fusion drive, since solar panels would give it .0001% more energy.

...and the extra mass added by the panels would mean it would actually loose energy.

[Falcon]

*squints eyes to read tech description*

[ShadowWolf_IH]

No i was thinking of Trashman's science ship.  Which is damned sweet in it's own right.

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Carl
i don't think they're solar panels. no need on a ship with a fusion drive, since solar panels would give it .0001% more energy.

...and the extra mass added by the panels would mean it would actually loose energy.

They're sensor arrays

Or perhaps provide power for the ion engines.

[Woolie Wool]

Awesome, but not very FS-like.

[Lynx]

FS capships don't really have a common style. But this ship would fit to the Fenris for example.
What's cool there is that all the texture areas are clearly defined. There are no cut off windows like on most FS ship using a tile for windows, and it doesn't look stitched together like Frankenstein since the textures are homogenous because the plating isn't so bleeding obvious. Another nice detail is the painting, blue and red parts. Most FS capships look "nude" and boring to me because of the bare plating, without any logos, colored stripes or anything. The textures are great. Only complaint is the oversmoothing. To me it looks like it consist largely of flat faces, thus it should be facetted. With smoothing, sunk in areas like the window parts will look wierd, especially with spec mapping which enhances those graphical behavior.

[Krackers87]

I WILL have its babys.

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by Krackers87
I WILL have its babys.

Galileo is a guy. Are you sure you still want to have his babies?






Ok, now i need to add the glow and shine maps to this thing. What do we call the shine textures again? I think i´ve red somewhere that you just need to add a line to the texture name or something. Can i get a clarification on this?
Or is there a way to use a side view screenshot of the ship with only the lights visible, and use that as glow map?
And the shine map is a chrome like texture, right?

[aldo_14]

Spec maps are simply texturename-shine.pcx (or TGA, etc); they indicate how the surface looks when lit, i.e. the shinier a surface area is, the lighter its shinemap will be (can also use colour).

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Spec maps are simply texturename-shine.pcx (or TGA, etc); they indicate how the surface looks when lit, i.e. the shinier a surface area is, the lighter its shinemap will be (can also use colour).

But what´s in it? Is it just a monochromatic texture, with a simple colour? Or is it a chrome like texture, that alters the way light reacts when the ship is lit?
Better yet, can you show me an example of a shine texture?
I know a glow texture is just the brightened area of the original texture , like the green lights in the Galileo, in a black or transparent background. Right?

Is there a tutorial somewhere, that covers this stuff?

[mitac]

I'm not exactly an expert on that, but you may try and have a look at Lightspeeds shinemapping thingy, which, in theory, should contain plenty of examples of shinemapped textures.

[Swamp_Thing]

What thing? Where? Links please.

[mitac]

Ehrm...that thing.

[Flaser]

A shine map determines the intensity and color of the reflected light from a lighsource (suns, ect.) if it were a pure white lightsource.

A nice thing that noone has really played with so far (AFAIK) is setting said color different than the base texture - so for example with an amber-red hull you could have a copper glint by assigning a yellowish-amber color to the shine texture.

BTW shine maps are just a texture with the base texture's name + shine tag.
They can be pcx, tga, dds and jpeg just like the rest of the textures, but either tga or dds is recommended since those have an alpha channel - which will probably be the standard for environment mapping.

Before you ask - yes env maps are 8-bit greyscale maps.
So:
Basemaps - 32 bit textures, 24 bit texture data for base hull + 8 bit opacity in supported formats (AFAIK).
Glowmaps - 24 bit textures rendered over the base texture as if in 100% white light.
Shimaps - 24 bit textures that tell the color and intensity of the reflected light if the light source is 100% white. (a different color source will reflect differently...ask Bobb for details) + 8 bit alpha channel as environment map.