[TrashMan]

All those small buldges..I hope they are sperate objects and that you didn't boolean/union them with the hull (and that yu deleted all the faces which won't be seen .. things like that cause polycount skyrocketing needlesly.

[Snaga]

Indeed, they are all separate objects. I realized from the beginning that they would mean the highest problem in polycount. But they aren't actually. I'm spending most polies in the greebling and detailing of the ship, which is why I'm taking so long, because I'm doing a lot of checking to see how to diminish the count without losing detail. But I believe I could make it at 50 - 60 K with all of the detail and triangulated. At the moment it is 63K without triangulation.

I was also thinking on what Chief said before, of making one with less detail, (less polies) for lower computers and OS, and leaving the high poly one for the future.

[IPAndrews]

If there's one piece of advice I could give having worked on TBP, it would be not to put of months of work into reducing a model's poly count to the absolute minimum. All the while you're knocking yourself out doing that people are buying faster and faster graphics cards which will make your work meaningless. Aim for something reasonable to start with. Sorry if I'm butting in where I'm not wanted. Just trying to help.

[chief1983]

No, it's good advice.  Don't burn yourself out cutting polies.  Just do what seems right, and try to keep it clean.

[Snaga]

If there's one piece of advice I could give having worked on TBP, it would be not to put of months of work into reducing a model's poly count to the absolute minimum. All the while you're knocking yourself out doing that people are buying faster and faster graphics cards which will make your work meaningless. Aim for something reasonable to start with. Sorry if I'm butting in where I'm not wanted. Just trying to help.

Great advice! Taking that into account I think I´m almost ready to hand this model to Turambar, who promised to smooth it with max. I´m maling making some tests with it, and it goes on to a good start. It seems to work in fred, but I couldn´t test it on a mission yet cause I can´t find my FS cds. So here´s a pic in fred, tomorrow I could post one in game.

PS. dont mind the textures, I used a crappy one just to test it. And....yes....it still needs some work to be done, but not before some things are decided, like guns, etc.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[chief1983]

My god man, it's amazing!  We'll definitely work on getting all the decisions about guns and such  made very soon.  Anything else you need to know still, let us know.

[Snaga]

Here´s a picture with one gun emplacement, so as to see the relative size within the hole ship. Also, a bigger picture to show the actual thing.
In the front picture, you can barely see the gun turret.
Comments?

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[Turambar]

just when i was wondering what to do over winter break!

[Snaga]

I have no break  .........Just dec 25 and jan 1.......... the rest I have to keep on working. Got many bills to pay this year 

[Turambar]

yeah, im workin 30 hrs next week :-/

[chief1983]

yeah, im workin 30 hrs next week :-/

That sounds more dramatic if you know that Turambar is also going to school.

[brandx0]

I'm not a big fan of the turret style there actually, I wish I could find the picture (Ive been looking) but there was one that had what could have been a gun turret on a moncal.  It was like a square cut into the hull with a small gun barrel sticking out. I kinda like that idea moreso than the strapped on turret idea (after all, there has to be a lot of other equipment that goes into it, so why not just take a passenger compartment, and turn it into a gun battery by sticking a gun barrel out the window and leave the rest of the room for power supply etc)

[Snaga]

Yes, in the first pic with the gun turret you can see some "windows" that could very well be what you are talking about. I was wondering what they where when I first saw the reference pictures. Even so, that would limit a bit the Fov for the laser turrets, being able to fire almost strait, (sideways, and front and back perhaps) leaving an import blind spot when making an attack run from the top or bottom. Unless we put some more windows to match those angles. Nevertheles, it would look more moncalamarish the way you are saying.

[Snaga]

Ahhhh.......I found my Cds, here...... some pictures in game. I have to admit that I chose a horrible sun for the mission, but it´ll do.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Snaga]

This one is from the technical database

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[Turambar]

very nice.  you have much more patience for round things than i do.

a new texture along with some smoothing in max and that thing will be looking perfect.


what we really need is a good tiling texture, combined with having some areas of the ship UVmapped for good light placement.

[chief1983]

Yeah, that thing is gonna look great in game.  You've done an awesome job.

As far as turrets go, maybe just having the openings will be enough, and we don't even need the actual physical turrets.  I mean, it might be cool to have some on the ship, but if they're recessed so much, we probably don't even need them.  Normal maps could maybe even be used to create the recession and we can just make invisible subobjects, or have them attached to the blisters themselves.

[Shade]

I tend to agree with that. I find the idea of gun barrels sticking out of a Mon-Cal wrong, somehow.

If they are going to be there, then why not make some of the (smaller) blisters be turrets instead of simply attaching turrets to blisters? And instead of barrels, then yeah, you could just have an circular opening corrosponding to the turret's fire point, giving the impression that the whole assembly is contained inside the round/ovoid blister and thus maintaining the organic shape so characteristic of Mon-Cal designs. Would look much better in my opinion, as barrels will really hurt the sleek look.

[BS403]

Damn! that ships is fine!

[chief1983]

What do you think then Snaga?  Sounds like you're pretty much done with turreting