[Hades]

To be honest, I agree. The missile launchers should be a circle, not a pentagon.

[sigtau]

Looking at the full screenshots of the Cain, I don't see any missile launchers anywhere.

[Thaeris]

Circles and Shivans don't mix. If anything, it would be some jagged/polygon-ish opening with a bunch of triangular missile ports in the middle. That's far more Shivan than any circle.

-Thaeris

[c914]

And now you will have pentagonal missile launchers in eye drop 

End work with arm, now is time for Cain fat ass.

[shiv]

Beauty.

[Snail]

To be honest, I agree. The missile launchers should be a circle, not a pentagon.

I assume the arms should be curved too? And the ends should be circular? And the back should be circular?

And the Orion should actually be a large cylinder, of course.

[Droid803]

Nice slippery slope there.

But damn it does look good with glows.

[Commander Zane]

Daaaaaamn, that is nice.

[Hades]

Circles and Shivans don't mix. If anything, it would be some jagged/polygon-ish opening with a bunch of triangular missile ports in the middle. That's far more Shivan than any circle.

-Thaeris

Tear drops don't fit the Shivan aesthetic, and yet they're on the model anyway.

To be honest, I agree. The missile launchers should be a circle, not a pentagon.

I assume the arms should be curved too? And the ends should be circular? And the back should be circular?

And the Orion should actually be a large cylinder, of course.

Mmm, nope. I never actually said anything like that.

[Aardwolf]

Which being a ten year-old game, was very blocky, just like the missile launchers.
Smooth it out, blocky on smooth suddenly doesn't look right.

There's no basis for you to claim that would have made it round back in the day if only computers could handle it... The fact that they COULDN'T make it round, true or not, doesn't mean that they WOULD have, or SHOULD have.

Anyway, I'm not advocating that the exact geometry of the original missile launcher indents should be kept (that would be silly)... what I am saying is that the overall pentagonal symmetry should be explored further... make something cool that still looks like the original.

[Snail]

Maybe we should just leave it to c914...

[Commander Zane]

Who has a perfectly good looking model in my opinion.

[Thaeris]

I must agree with Aardwolf's last point. Even if the poly count was so much of an issue back then, a hexagon or heptagon would have been used rather than a pentagon. Just look at the Argo. You can tell that the many docking ports on that thing are supposed to be round... yet they're modeled in hexagons if my memory serves me well (and it does do that...). Any shortfalling in the mesh would have also been accounted for in the texture. I'm quite certain every retail FS model follows this convention.

-Thaeris

[Snail]

I must agree with Aardwolf's last point. Even if the poly count was so much of an issue back then, a hexagon or heptagon would have been used rather than a pentagon. Just look at the Argo. You can tell that the many docking ports on that thing are supposed to be round... yet they're modeled in hexagons if my memory serves me well (and it does do that...). Any shortfalling in the mesh would have also been accounted for in the texture. I'm quite certain every retail FS model follows this convention.

-Thaeris

YOU ARE MAH FRIEND

[Droid803]

If it's going to delay the completion of this even one second, screw the pentagonal launcher...really.
Not worth wasting time over.

[General Battuta]

Concur. It's an absurd degree of nitpickage.

[Snail]

If it's going to delay the completion of this even one second, screw the pentagonal launcher...really.
Not worth wasting time over.

And to this argument of yours, sir, I disagree!

[sigtau]

Beautiful kill, sir!

Indeed, this is quite awesome looking.  Cain't wait for it!

[AthlonBoy]

The discussion about high-poly interpretations of a low-poly mesh reminded me of Metal Gear Solid.

I recall reading in an interview that Metal Gear Rex was designed with flat sides, because that's all the Playstation could handle. Thus, it looked like this.



Rex makes a reappearance in Metal Gear Solid 4, with all the Playstation 3 horsepower that goes with it. Even though they could have made the legs cylindrical, with a hundred sides, they didn't; the original design was flat. Naturally they added in greebles, bevelled the edges and the like, but it's still a very flat design.



What Konami did with Metal Gear Rex can be seen as the perfect example of what the FSU is trying to achieve. It embodies the act of converting a low-poly model to a high-poly model.

Notice that on the radome (dish on the left arm) they smoothed it over a great deal, because it was obvious that the intent was for it to look rounded. Also notice how the hydraulic spikes on the feet are rounded for the same reason.

You can take from this what you will, but on the subject of hexagonal missile tubes, I would vote for rounding them out; or, as this is a Shivan craft, make them edgier. But there's no need to chain yourself to 6 sides.

[Kolgena]

For the record, it's 5 sides, not six, which is why a lot of people argue that it can't be circular; All other circles are drawn with hexagons on retail models. (as pointed out by Thaeris)