Akalabeth Angel and Raven2001 I think both have pretty sensible points of view here.
(Not saying no one else does, but it's feeling a little too 'them-against-everyone-else' for my liking.
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And BTW can we PLEASE retire the whole 'haters gotta hate' concept? It's just stupid, and I have only ever seen it used on this forum to create a convenient strawman to rip into and/or ignore in a most inflammatory way. I've been a part of this community for a very long time now and I have never seen anyone who is simply 'a hater'. Poor communicators and occasionally rude people sure, but never just 'a hater'. If people are posting anything about a model then they're doing it because they have an opinion on the matter, and as users of the MVPs, I would say they have a stake in the model too. Their opinions warrant consideration because they may well be held by other stakeholders who do not say anything. (Possibly from fear of being branded 'a hater' btw)
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Anyway from what I can tell, everything being talked about here really comes down to whether or not a HTL job preserves the essence, or feel of the ship it is an upgrade of. There is no hard and fast rule of what changes will cross that line on any given ship, because each ship has different key aspects that combine to give the ship that feel. As such, sometimes you can find cases where quite large changes don't overly affect the feel of the ship, and others where relatively small changes will quite radically alter it. The more these key aspects are altered, the more you depart from the established feel of the ship, and hence the more people will feel it has crossed that line, and no longer fully captures the feel of the ship.
Now, the line itself is different for different people, and this is where most conflict over a given HTL job will arise, with some people having a very lax line being willing to accept say, 'loads more greebles a vaguely similar profile and colour scheme as the original', and others wanting 'something that carries over as many of the key aspects as possible'. Note that this latter category does NOT, and I really, REALLY mean does NOT imply that all they want is a retail model with a recess or extrusion added here or there, or they 'want to keep their precious tile maps'.
It is also never a case of 'you can only please one of the two groups', because it's perfectly possible to create a very high detail model that both groups will accept as a good HTL without a peep, and it's also possible to create a model that fits most aspects of the original so well that the ones where it deviates can be overlooked. These two possibilities are what I think the FSU should ideally be all about. We're here because we like the Freespace universe, and that in general includes the feel of the ships in that universe. If you want to build a ship that takes artistic liberties that might look spectacular but break the feel of the original in too many or too significant ways, then the ship should be in FS modding and not the FSU.
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Ok so for some examples:
The Cain/Lilith:Here I would say the model and textures are undeniably superb. It is an absolutely excellent HTL job and carries over almost all the key aspects very well, and most of those which it doesn't can be overlooked because the rest of it is just so freaking awesome. However, I would also say that the pentagonal missile launchers were definitely an important apsect of the original, and I do think it's a shame they weren't carried over with the same attention to detail as the rest of the model. The teardrops I feel make it look too streamlined for a shivan ship, and the textured-on pentagon doesn't really undo that nor fully capture that aspect.
Now, a lot of people have noted this and mentioned not liking it in one way or another - and notice how it's almost invariably focussed around this aspect of the original that was most departed from. People who have a more lax 'line' don't mind it at all, but NEITHER would they mind if it were something more in line with the original aspect of a 'pentagonal pit with a missile launcher in it'.
Hades' WIPs of the new Levy model: (Sorry dude - don't mean to pick on you, but I think it does let me nicely illustrate these points!
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Now obviously this is purely based on the WIP shots, which right off the bat is a bit unfair since the model has little chance to do the whole 'it's so freaking awesome in some aspects that I can overlook the aspects it breaks' thing I've previously mentioned. That aside though, let me firstly say that YES the model is truly honestly, already a very cool model. Hades has proven time and again that he can model very well, but the quality of the model is not the point here. It's all about the feel, and in that regard there's a lot to be said.
The first issue is the shape of the whole centre section. It's segmented, and quite differently shaped to the original. Where the original had an imposing 'sheer ironclad fort' sort of feel to the tower, the curved and segmented look conveys much more of an 'armoured core' kind of feel, which is pretty far departed from the original feel of that aspect. Secondly the original engine block was an octagonal prism in basic form, with no hint of curvature, whereas this one forms a smoothly curving surface over the top and bottom, which definitely breaks that aspect. Thirdly, the trapezoid mechanical recesses on every face of the top and bottom tower are completely and utterly gone, which again I would say definitely breaks the feel of that aspect.
As such, given the extent to which the model has departed from the feel of the original I don't think that in its current direction it would be suitable for the MVPs. It probably will be an utterly fantastic model, but at the same time it's just not going to feel like the Levy for too many people. (That said, I must say that the Levy model that somehow got into the current MVPs is pretty terrible! Sorry Galemp, but really! It's like someone tried to hurricane-proof it with steel plates or something.
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The Iceni:This is an interesting one because model wise it's great! Sure it could have more detail, but what's there is still quite nice. The original model (as with a lot of FS2 ships) doesn't give a whole heap to go on, but what was there has been very distinctly maintained and given a facelift. Given the model alone, it clearly captures the feel of the original. Where it falls down pretty miserably is in the textures. (Mostly my fault.
) Really it deserved a custom painted UV map, but all it got was a bake of the tile mapping it had been given. Texture tiling does have its place, and to be fair this WAS a pretty good job of it, but in this case it's also far inferior to a painted UV map. If it were not for the fact that it's FAR too dark overall (a broken aspect), you'd be hard pressed to spot that it's a HTL model since the textures hide just about all the detail. In this way it breaks the feel of the original by significantly altering the colour scheme. The tiles applied to the details introduce a sickly greenish tinge that looks very different to the relatively bright but also drab colours of the original.
Seeing as there's no alternative model around and the model IS still better than the original, it may as well stay - but it would be really nice if someone could give it a nice new map sometime.
