[Oddgrim]

Veeery nice fighter bay bay, the lighting is very good..
I can't wait to see some nice textureing on it. 

[Vengence]

We'll see, this model has numerous textures on it already. The main hull likely has 2 large textures, then there are 2 for the fighter bay and I haven't even done the turrets yet. This ship might use up of resources ingame. I mean, a ship this big needs 1024x1024 maps for the hull alone and the hangar, well they might be 512x512 but still that is big. The turrets I have no idea. Because of this I may have to use DDS and they can be quite screwy on my computer sometimes.

[Scooby_Doo]

Whats the polycount on that bay?  Right now my tiger carrier bay is sitting at nearly 10,000 and am I bit worried....

[Vengence]

  Mine doesn't have nearly that.

[Nuke]

sometime after we have normal mapping, were gonna need tha ability to have more hardware light sources. then theese super high detailed bays will really look awesome. baking in lights is good, but it seems like an old skool way of doing things.

[Vengence]

even so they are still used today. I read that Resistance: Fall of Man uses light baking to an extreme extent. The scene unlit looks terribly bland but when lit up with lightmaps it looks so amazing. I am basically following that routine.

[Nuke]

dont get me wrong it looks totally awesome. im just looking forward to such features in game.

[Vengence]

Me too 

[Vengence]

I've hit a tiny snag. There is too much detail on the model for efficient texture maps. I will have to reduce polygons to make unwrapping easier. Or at least use repeating tile maps on pieces too detailed for efficient skinning or highly repetitive places.

[Scooby_Doo]

Have the same sections reuse the same texture, i.e. the overhead beams can all use the same texture, the rectangle boxes on the floor (with the lights and the bumpouts) can share textures. Hopefully you use instances/references which would cut the work down significantly.  Also symetry could save you some space too.

[Vengence]

Symmetry is already there but th' size o' th' model makes it hard t' unwrap.  I'll have t' get rid o' some polygons.

Btw: Crap, pirate day!

[Nuke]

just uv half of it and apply symmetry

or use smooth groups to store contiguous face selections and map one at a time. you can always use more than one texture worth of space and condense later. you can also use really high res texturtes. most video cards theese days have no problem running textures up to 2048^2, and ive used bigger before.

[Vengence]

I already use symmetry. The ship is just so darned long that I have to split it in half for the UVs to work. Basically there is a symmetry seam down the middle and another seam that splits the ship in half in front of the tower. There are just so many polygons in some places that it is eating up the space on the UV map.

[Nuke]

i figure this ship is about the same size as my ragnarok class, which uses a single uv map for everything. it was probibly one of my more difficult uv projects, as of the uv map was layered over several times. like the inside of all the truss structures is mapped only to about 3 different rectangles on the map. all the multipart turrets shared the same base model and uv map, only the gun parts had aboout 3 different styles of uv models and uv mappings. i also did something insane by using a 16.7 megapixel map (4096^2 ftw!). the ships still are technically not done as i need to add in damage models for the missile pods and maybe some lods. and i also still have a half-finished carrier varient. just when doing one map capitol ships, you really got to scrounge for every last pixel of mapping effietiency.

[Scooby_Doo]

Cheat then, cut corners, do whatever you need to reduce polycount while keeping up appearances.....    

You don't need to boolean and connect everything together.   Overlapping is ok as long as yourr not trying to make decals (Z-buffer still fights with those)



Those red walls...   you've got at least 9.   so thats about 9*2*2= 36 polygons there...   you can do with with just 2.
The blue floor...   2 there too.   (maybe 4 if using symertry)
the light blue cylindar on the bumpout on the wall? Stretch the entire cylinder all the way from one end to the other.
the blue, green and yellow bumpout on the wall..   it can be done with 6 polygons.
same with the yellow on the floor area...  2 polygons
the green dividers...   6 polygons will do....   assumin' it's flat on all sides.
 
Edit: Did this 'ere pirate talk mess up IMGs?

Double Edit: Wait? your having problems lack of UVmap space or too many polygons?

Triple edit... hahah pirate talk change cheat.jpg to swindle.jpg 
Plus if you editted your message, pirate talk won't disappear.

Also you can get rid of any polygons that the player will never see.

[Vengence]

Both sort of

[Rico]

This is turning out great, keep up the good work 

[Vengence]

Cheat then, cut corners, do whatever you need to reduce polycount while keeping up appearances.....   

You don't need to boolean and connect everything together.   Overlapping is ok as long as yourr not trying to make decals (Z-buffer still fights with those)



Those red walls...   you've got at least 9.   so thats about 9*2*2= 36 polygons there...   you can do with with just 2.
The blue floor...   2 there too.   (maybe 4 if using symertry)
the light blue cylindar on the bumpout on the wall? Stretch the entire cylinder all the way from one end to the other.
the blue, green and yellow bumpout on the wall..   it can be done with 6 polygons.
same with the yellow on the floor area...  2 polygons
the green dividers...   6 polygons will do....   assumin' it's flat on all sides.
 
Edit: Did this 'ere pirate talk mess up IMGs?

Double Edit: Wait? your having problems lack of UVmap space or too many polygons?

Triple edit... hahah pirate talk change cheat.jpg to swindle.jpg 
Plus if you editted your message, pirate talk won't disappear.

Also you can get rid of any polygons that the player will never see.

The red is one  polygon, so is the blue, so is the light blue. Everything inside is optimized. Heck the whole fighterbay is its own texture. I am light baking the whole thing so basically everything you see there has to be mapped basically as a separate object to achieve the best result.

[Scooby_Doo]

lLight mapping will make it more difficult, but if you can get a repeating cycle of lighting, then you'll only need one cycle. Dunno if that made any sense.