[karajorma]

Heck, he may have that bad record on his back (i wont even describ what I think of it, for pleasantries sake), BUT imo, that doesnt mean we should be acting totally moronic at everything he does\tries to do\whatever you wanna call it... besides, he seems to be enthusiastic on what he wants to achieve, no matter how ridiculous his ideas and actions can be.

If it were just one thread I'd tend to agree with you. But when you have to go around correcting the bad advice he's giving other people you'll soon find it starts to grate a little.

One thing is certain: the more modders, the merrier. So from my part, Ill continue to give my honest input (be it good or bad) on what he does, try to teach and educate him on how to be a decent modder\artist, and a member of this community... ofc it will be up to him if he wants to listen or not. But ill be doing my job, flame free

I agree. The problem I had was with saying that he needs encouragement. He doesn't. What he needs is honest opinions on why this model is bad and what can be done to make a good one. You only need to look at GW to know that we've tried the softly, softly approach and it simply wasn't working.

[Raven2001]

I gave an honest opinion: I said he needs to pracrice on his skills, that greebling would go a long way, etc... however I didnt make comments like these:

Long awaited by who?

MY EYES! THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!!!

Honestly, this is worse than that cargo container I made!

I didnt see any constructiveness on them... as for the first quote: let him keep his illusions, he will naturally, eventually loose them
Its pretty simple, he will find out that if his stuff is sub-standard, people wont play it (which is bad for him). In the meanwhile, it is our task as a community to give our opinions (decent ones) on how he can make his stuff to standard level... politely, flame free.
In the eventuality that you are fed with his attitude, just say nothing at all

But honestly, flaming, being sarcastic or whatever, just gives us a bad name, which is negative in the long run

[Unknown Target]

If you've had to deal with him as much as the GW crowd, I'm sure you wouldn't be as patient with him.

But, an honest critic? It's blah. Nothing particularly interesting about it, it looks like a half triangle stuck onto a larger triangle - and I'll bet you my bottom dollar it's made up of thousands of polies, 95% of which don't need to be there. The only thing reasonably bearable is the cockpit.

[Raven2001]

The day I loose my patience with him will be the day Ill start to not even bother to reply to his posts... simple, and no harm caused whatsoever

And there, you already made clear you dont like the design so much (your in a position to do so ofc), but then you had to ruin it with rudeness by stating something you cant even prove atm

However, I must digress. I do like the general shape, IFobviously the model is further worked upon... in fact I already have pretty clear in my head how it COULD end up like, and I like that psy-image tbh

[FlareBaffled]

It certainly needs far fewer polys in the basic mesh. You can see from the wireframe that the thing would need to have a lot of those polys triangulated to render properly ( lots of stretched geometry there.... ) The thing could be built with a lot fewer polys to get the overall shape, so the thing could have a load more detail built in to define engines, add panels of greebles to shape and fill out the rear area ( for example ) and to give it some weapon apertures etc.

This is a shape made up from stetching and squishing primitives, and then meshsmoothing ( or whatever Wings has that does the same thing ). When it comes to game modelling, you have to look for the fewest possible polygons to make any given shape. Plan your model.... don't just muck around with shapes until you think..'oh...it looks like a spaceship!' I do that on a pad of paper.....

Look at how many polygons you have...and whether they actually add anything!

Slap on a UV map before you post a picture ... it adds so much to the finished article!

Finally .... ALWAYS...ALWAYS...ALWAYS be modest about your work. If it's great, then let other people tell you. Nothing is long awaited unless people have actually been hassling you to finsh it

Anyway....that's the benefit of my experience .... but then I have only been modding since Quake came out...so what do I know

[takashi]

its meant to be sub-par for a reason. it plays into the story of the mod.

heres one fo the lines: beta 3: wow...nice ships (sarcastic)

[Raven2001]

That doesnt mean the ship has to look unprofessional though

[Titan]

ya, make a heavy assault fighter that looks like a brick (I.E., make a ursa with bigger engines and less armor and loadout)

[Getter Robo G]

So..... (munches on more popcorn)...

He's making a mk VII Viper? *runs*


[Note and you know it's bad when it gets to the point I give modding advice and then retroactively he had the skill all along magically when in reality it was a day...]

Game on!

[takashi]

it would be SO much better if i knew how to make 3d cockpits.

ps: the triton class freighters were just cubes that someone messed around with before HTL. any simple model is just a reshaped primary. the poly count is 750 btw.

[jr2]

..Forget the cockpits for now, get the exterior looking the way you want it.
EDIT:

...For inspiration.  (Look at my siggy )

EDIT: Apparently that server doesn't like links from other sites... The direct link is:
http://area51specialprojects.com/
under "SR-71 Photos"

[takashi]

nice, earthy, dull easy to do texture. i'll make it.

edit: that one plane witht he spade head looks like my cobra mk. II

[jr2]

They are all the same plane (or variants of it).
But you can go to the website, it has all sorts of other area 51 planes for you to get ideas from.

[Water]

it would be SO much better if i knew how to make 3d cockpits.

Takashi

Yes the *SHIP* would be better if you could make 3d cockpits.

What people have been telling you for a while now is to get the basics done right. Making cockpits is the wrong direction for you right now. Get your ships looking like ships first. The skills you get from *DOING* this will automatically allow you to make anything you want, including cockpits.

[Titan]

i remember this site, luft46.com has good material. i remember showing it to my uncle after i got it from the WW2 in space thread. he loves making models.

[aldo_14]

its meant to be sub-par for a reason. it plays into the story of the mod.

heres one fo the lines: beta 3: wow...nice ships (sarcastic)

The problem is that very smooth ships are more organic and sleek than 'sub-par'.  Look at, say, am F-22 Raptor;


now look at an F-86 Sabre, a sub-par fighter when placed against the F-22


Note that it looks far more blocky than the modern, streamlined ship; particularly in that the wings, tail, etc noticeably 'jut' out rather than smoothly blend into the hull.  Whilst it's not a universal rule, of course, it generally stands that the smoother and sleeker a shape is, the more modern it looks.  Another example is the 2 types of Viper in BSG.

Arguably, it's harder to do a 'poor' ship than an 'elite' one.

[FlareBaffled]

A cockpit is simple to make .. it's just more modelling!

Build the outer tub, add a seat and control panels, and thats all there is to it. The mesh then has to be textured ( best to use a seprate UV map and material here... ) and finally you seperate it so it is a sub-object of the main hull. Glass needs another texture with an alpha channel to give transparancy. Add that as another sub object. If you leave the glass attached, you can get problems with the rendering if it's attached in teh wrong order.

Finally, you set the flag in the ship table to make the mesh visible "show ship" and make sure the eyepoint is in the right place.

It requires exactly the same skills as making a ships hull mesh.

[Getter Robo G]

to Get you started the community HAS a terran cockpit - somewhere (though you'll probably say you want your OWN). check the vp's.

[takashi]

anywho, WIP ancient (the species) fighter. the AF kaamos. screenies when its in the beta stage.

[Turey]

anywho, WIP ancient (the species) fighter. the AF kaamos. screenies when its in the beta stage.

Hasn't someone already done this?