[didli]

Hi everyone !
Here is my first 3D creation with Blender (so please ... be indulgent with me ) :
http://designed2.free.fr/work_in_progress/sp_fighter_2.jpg
http://designed2.free.fr/work_in_progress/sp_fighter_1.jpg
Actually 1744 poly. I found somewhere (in the wiki I think) that a fighter must have less than 2000 polygons ...
Do you think this model will be fine for freespace 2 ? Could you give me some advices if it's not ?
Thank you !

[Water]

Do you think this model will be fine for freespace 2 ? Could you give me some advices if it's not ?
Thank you !

It's fine for Freespace. 2k polys is a guideline. Break it if you have to, but.. spend them well. The small guns tie up polys while the main body lacks them. The guns look like they have an internal space in the barrel. Except in screen shots you will never notice, and texture can take care of the black circle.

In other words - the guns look great but they show up the lack of attention to the body.
With good texturing you could probably get away with it as it is.

You can also use blender for unwraping and painting concept textures on the model.

For a first attempt, very good 

[DaBrain]

Try to use as few subobjects as possible.

Using one cube only is pretty much optimal. Although just sticking more objects into it, can save a lot of polygons.


BTW that model is pretty nice.

[Scooby_Doo]

Cut down on the number of sides for the guns, the big ones probably 6 or 8 sided, those little ones (or are the some sort of intakes, on the port side) those can be removed and handled with textures.  The engines are probably ok, hard to really tell. If you can get any with using textures instead of details for small stuff then do it.  I would personally cut out where the cockpit glass would be, if nothing else it'll help you if you want to add a cockpit down the road.

[takashi]

subdivide to add detail through extrusion, then make f-gons to reverse the poly-increase without losing detail.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Very nice work - for a first model that's quite impressive!

As far as advice goes, pretty much what's been said so far - if you can cut down on the polys used in the guns, you can add more detail elsewhere to much greater effect. Polycount is no longer really an issue as long as the ship uses just one UV-mapped texture. As Water says - the 2000 poly count is just a general guideline. One that I've broken with.....oh....just about every model I've done since the HTL engine was first implemented.

subdivide to add detail through extrusion, then make f-gons to reverse the poly-increase without losing detail.

No, that's a really bad way of doing it sorry.  What that's effectively doing (aside from causing uncountable possible problems in terms of mesh stability) is making whatever detail you add out of whatever shapes result from the subdivisions. This is bad because you have little to no control over what these details will look like - you're basically just picking polygons you want to extrude. It's an easy way of adding primitive detail, but it will come back to bite you later on.

If you want a ship to look right, you have to shape the details to look as you want them to look - not based on the shapes you can extrude from subdivided polygons. It takes a bit longer, but it's far better modeling practice, and will enable you to build FAR more complex ships than you would be able to otherwise.

[didli]

Thanks all of you ! I'm relieved that I could still use this model in FS2. I will do as you said, cut some edges in guns and some other little things, in order to add some details on the main part of the ship. Textures will hopefully enhanced this main part, but for the moment I know very few about UV mapping, especially in Blender and low-poly modeling. I have a lot to learn, and understand, what I can and cannot do.
And just another thing :

I would personally cut out where the cockpit glass would be, if nothing else it'll help you if you want to add a cockpit down the road.

I'm not sure to understand what you meant Scooby_Doo. Sorry for that, some difficulties with english
I intented to map the cockpit with a texture, and here where I would have done it : http://designed2.free.fr/work_in_progress/cockpit.jpg
Is it what you suggest Scooby_Doo ? 
Thanks again !
./me return to Blender now

[takashi]

delete those faces and make a cockpit tub. then make a piece of "glass" and skin both sides of it (or else it will only show from the outside) with a .tga texture, also with an alpha channel (or else the glass will be opaqe).

[Scooby_Doo]

Actually don't delete those faces, simply make them a seperate object.  This becomes the "glass".  Then you can hide the glass and stick a cockpit tub in there.  Once your done, unhide the glass and give it a glass texture 

[takashi]

you could always have a raised cockpit 

[Scooby_Doo]

That would work too, then you wouldn't need those polys.  Although you might realize you need to slice some of those polys if you think the cockpit hole is too big.

[Water]

I'm not sure to understand what you meant Scooby_Doo. Sorry for that, some difficulties with english
I intented to map the cockpit with a texture, and here where I would have done it : http://designed2.free.fr/work_in_progress/cockpit.jpg
Is it what you suggest Scooby_Doo ? 
Thanks again !
./me return to Blender now

Doing the cockpit with textures is a good choice for your first model. Scooby is talking about when you have finished the model and then decide LATER to add a modeled cockpit. Basically having an area set aside for it, makes it easier, which you have done with that red lined area. Continue on with modeling the body. Trying to do a cockpit at this stage will just slow you down.

If you haven't used it already the knife tool is very useful- shift k
and merge vertices - w > merge

[Raven2001]

Alt-M will do the trick better for the merging

[takashi]

one quick question, excactly how long have you been making this!?

[didli]

Thanks all of you ! Very nice from you all to give me an hand on this !
Well for now I've cut some edges, reduced the cylinders used for the guns (1517 poly for the moment) and will begin some tweaks on the main part.
Also thanks to you I know all about ... cockpit modeling for freespace 2, arf !
I will give it a try for the two methods I read about here and will decide the one I prefer later :

Actually don't delete those faces, simply make them a seperate object.  This becomes the "glass".  Then you can hide the glass and stick a cockpit tub in there.  Once your done, unhide the glass and give it a glass texture 

Doing the cockpit with textures is a good choice for your first model(...)

I will post the results as I make some progress. As I already said, I have to learn about UV Mapping, subobjects creations and some other details...

one quick question, excactly how long have you been making this!?

Why're you're asking ? Hard to tell as I learn Blender while I'm creating this fighter. Maybe 6 hours or more for the moment. Imagine this, everytime I have a problem I'm running here or into a Blender french community asking dumb questions... wait for smart answers ... then continue with the modeling. A quite great loss of time (I think that I would have soon succeeded making them lose patience… !)
PS : here's a strange blender behavior while I have seperate the cockpit. It happens only when rendering, some edges I surrounded here in red do not appear like this in edit mode or object mode ... grr ...   

Well now thanks again all of you, and have a nice day !
(01:54 AM here)

[Scooby_Doo]

You've got the cockpit idea down pat...    Theres a pilot model somewheres here. I could upload it if necessary.  One more thing with cockpits, you will need to make sure the edge vertices of the cockpit match up with the edge vertices of the ship, otherwise you'll get slivers and be able to see the background throught the ship.

As for the guns, make the very little ones on the starboard  4-6 sides only.  8-10 is usually max needed for most.  Also don't forget to remove the backside polygons, parts of the cylinder that will never be seen.  On squares it isn't as important, you only delete 2, but on cyclinders it can add up over time.

[takashi]

6 HOURS? did you download a tutorial model and go off that!? it takes most people a month to make a model like that!

[Unknown Target]

A month takashi? Wtf? Er...no. Just no. Why don't you do us all a favor and stop trying to give advice?

[Water]

6 HOURS? did you download a tutorial model and go off that!? it takes most people a month to make a model like that!

See what happens when someone asks dumb questions (blender forum?), *listens* to the advice, thinks about it and uses what he has learned. Basically it's simple steps and figuring out how to make it better.

@didli If you don't figure what is causing that error - I'm happy to take a look at it for you.

[Getter Robo G]

That's totally awesome for your "first" fighter! I like how the ship itself is symmetrical but the weapons aren't. 

Especially that you did it low poly (a decent model is nice but after adding slight detailing a really good texture will enhance it more). I've got "Fighters" in game at 8k (The Gundams) with no problems mostly, so don't be worried about limiting yourself in the future.

Don't worry about cockpits for now if you want to get used to the process and get it in game. You can always go back and redo a second version later once you become more comfortable with the whole process. (plus you know if there is a problem in the conversion process and have to go back and do more model work anyway.)

I always do an "alpha" test for stability first. (cause in my case if it fails 99% of the time I can't do anything with it t and it goes in a failure drive as I move on to the next thing.)