[BlackDove]

Nico's Moloch notwithstanding.....

Originally posted by DaBrain
This is my design suggestion:

I like this

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by Trivial Psychic

Agreed!

I want even more polies! DaBrain's is the best, especially with the subtle cues taken from the Sathanas and Ravana.

[DaBrain]

@Nico If you want to use tile maps, or if you want to create an UV map, you may want to use this glow map.

I think it fixes the ugliest part of the Moloch.


http://www.8ung.at/dabrain/CruisTileS5A-glow.pcx

@Woolie Wool You want that mesh?
Just open the *.pof in Lith and use 'subdivide' twice, then use 'optimize'. That's it. Well it has way too many polys now, but who cares.
Ah, and it has some ... holes...

[Woolie Wool]

Dabrain: I don't have LithUnwrap, so I can't use it as is.

[vyper]

**** me that's pointy!

[Gloriano]

I like that new front, old one looked like it would be good for ramming things

[karajorma]

Made it look entirely too much like a praying mantis from that angle for my liking. The new version is better

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Nico
Yeah, well, fighter style UV is definitively planed
update:

Funnily enough, while carving into that thing, I extruded what looks a lot like a pointy version of the lucifer front. I've detached it an made it a separate body in the "head". That's where I put the triangle thing, as you can see. I've cut the prrow into some sort of geometric shape, I'll work more on that.

From that shot, it looks quite different from the original, so, to avoid complaints:

I've kept the profile view, it's almost identical, save for the dent in the prow, under the "worm" head.
All in all, save from a couple specific angles, like the second shot, you can tell right away that it's a moloch, even with the new front.

Holy ****. You ABSOLUTELY hit the nail on the head with this one. The very definition of Shivan, right there.

Absolutely stunning work, looking forward to having it ingame. I always hated the Moloch design.

[Mongoose]

Maybe having the original side-by-side as a comparison would help me, but as of right now, I'm seeing even Nico's most recent update as deviating a little too much.  I'm not an insane purist (I like the hi-poly Deimos, for instance), but I feel things should be kept as close as possible, a la the high-poly Herc.  Obviously, Nico can do whatever he wants with it, but I might have a few objections to it going in the Media VP.  I'll have to re-check the retail model, though.

As for a lot of people hating the original Moloch, I couldn't disagree more; it's one of my favorite Shivan ships.  It's big, badass, spiky, ugly, and a nightmare to fight against, the way a good Shivan ship should be. If you want to talk ugly, look at the Rakshasha...a log with spikes on the ends.

P.S. Those red Shivan block engines were ridiculous-looking.

[StratComm]

Ironically, Nico's last update did more to bring the thing back in to "canon" than anything else.  He changed how the textures were applied on the nose area, and there is the addition to the Lucifer-style front end, but neither of those is even particularly noticable except from the front where, IMHO, the Moloch was its ugliest before.  That last shot that Lightspeed quoted is actually older.

EDIT: Board time really is FUBAR'd.  I've got the last post in the thread, but Raa has it in the forum listing

[Taristin]

What a strange ship...

[WeatherOp]

The Moloch was my favorite ship when I first played the FS2 demo.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Mongoose
P.S. Those red Shivan block engines were ridiculous-looking.

Guess you're not gonna like the next update

[Nico]

Not gonna do a fighter style mapping after all, it looks good enough as it is, at least the moloch doesn't have friggin huge sections covered with one single overtiled map.

[Gank]

The armour looks kinda dodgy though, maybe just map those parts.

[Turambar]

well, I want to see it!!!
*is impatient*

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Nico
Not gonna do a fighter style mapping after all, it looks good enough as it is, at least the moloch doesn't have friggin huge sections covered with one single overtiled map.

Fewer maps mean HTL works much more efficiently.

[StratComm]

I'd imagine Nico knows that as well as anyone; tiled maps do have the advantage of being higher resolution, so it's not like it's a total loss or anything.  As long as he doesn't introduce any more maps, the model won't be significantly worse than the stock one anyway.  We're only talking about four, which is as much as some fighters.

Though it would be useful to use custom maps for the turrets, as right now most of them are using 2 maps for something like 6 faces.

EDIT: 5.  I forgot that he's using that Lucy front end, and it's taking a special map.  That said, it could probably be folded in with the "tile" that's being used for the spikes if he's careful about it.

[Setekh]

Oh, I like that last update to the nose. Kickin' ass.

[Bobboau]

Originally posted by Black Wolf


Fewer maps mean HTL works much more efficiently.

four or five of them is ok, so long as he makes them all worth while (ubber poly count)