[IPAndrews]

Whose trolling? Christ you guys are so aggressive you can't even hold a conversation.

[General Battuta]

Let's go easy, guys.

[captain-custard]

my fault i bit ,  i wont delete it but if the mods or admins see fit too then they can , other than that i shall be silent now

[IPAndrews]

a long with bad textures etc

Bit what? I'm just having a laugh with you man. Calm down. Like I said I did LODs for many models. It's a thankless task. Nobody ever says "Wow what a great LOD". Except Maverick once who said that about the lodding on my Drakh Raider. Which was pretty funky.

[Dragon]

Textures in TBP are not very good (some are even in JPG format), but the main problem is that a lot of them are used on a single model.
LOD textures are not needed, but they can reduce FPS just by being there. The less textures a model has, the better preformance.

[IPAndrews]

When we first started developing the uvmapping tools were not very good. We were using the texturing facilities of the early versions of trueSpace. Also the engine couldn't handle large textures. Meaning if you spread your one small texture out over a larger fighter you got low resolution. Later on we got hold of LithUnwrap which made uvmapping easier and the engine got better at handling bigger textures. So when you see a fighter with one large texture as apposed to a few small ones it's generally a newer model. Probably uvmapped by me as I got reasonably good at it - I think. I wrote a tutorial on it actually. Thing is though sometimes you need to do texture repeats and then it's difficult to avoid using separate textures. Especially if you need to repeat on X and Y. See Babylon 5 for a working example. That thing has a huge surface area which demanded repeats on both axis to cover with any resolution. Still we tried to keep to a couple of textures toward the end for the bigger ships. I think I mapped the Q'Quan with 2 LOD0 textures. Not many for a big ship.

[Wanderer]

It is a good result, however what i think Dragon was after was that the lower lods could make use of the same maps as the LOD0 and therefore utilize just a single mipmapped set of textures per ship regardless of the LODs or debris.

[IPAndrews]

It is a good result, however what i think Dragon was after was that the lower lods could make use of the same maps as the LOD0 and therefore utilize just a single mipmapped set of textures per ship regardless of the LODs or debris.

That'll work as long as the uvmapping scheme allows it. It will in some cases. It won't in others. You'll be surprised how many ships, and I could name a truckload off the top of my head, where the uvmapping of the different LODs is quite different because the geometry of the LODs is quite different. But if you were to rebuild the ships from scratch you could no doubt do it in such a way whereby all the LODs could be uvmapped the same way.

[Dragon]

TBP was made a long time ago, so it's no doubt it looks a bit dated.
I think that we need more HTL B5 craft, done with modern techniques, normal maps and Hi-res textures.
Those ships have potential, but they're like mods for retail, great in their times, now show their age compared to other models.
TBP did a great job at making tables to emulate B5 (I never seen it, so I don't really know) and making a semirealistic flight model.
I think that Zatharas will someday become something akin to mediavps for TBP, improving the models while keeping the gameplay.

[Bobboau]

yes, a progressive replacement of the current assets would not be a bad idea, once the technical issues with the current set are ironed out.

[Skullar]

What are normal maps ?

Are the previous ones unnormal ?

[-Norbert-]

As far as I gathered those "normal maps" are what other games call "bump mapping". They simulate lighting that looks like it has structure, when below the texture and normal map there is really only a flat surface. It makes the model look far more complex than the polygons below the surface really are.

I hope I didn't mix any terms up here....

[The E]

Other games call these normal maps as well....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping