[Nash]

 Hello i would like a second opinion on this model. I will call it the GTF Proteus unless someone is all ready using it. Any help will be appreciated. 

[Nyctaeus]

This is awesome *____*, it has something from Loki. Excellent heavy/assault fighter.
GTF Donar fighter is called EAF Proteus in upcoming INFR1U.

[bigchunk1]

Oh dang that looks nice.

Hard to tell how the entire ship looks from just the front view. Is there as much detail in the back/top/side as the front?

If you're planning on converting this to a .pof you don't need to put missiles in the launchers since you can use external models

[JGZinv]

The stub nose kinda throws off some of the lines, and beyond having a lot of polies probably, it's really good.

[Nash]

The ship has about 8000 polies any advice on where to reduce if that is to high. Any idea on ship names?
I am going for a versatile fighter with some light bomber capabilities mixed in.
Thank you for the info on External Models. It will help to reduce polies. Any info on how External Models work would be nice.

[bigchunk1]

Well, external model's are specified by a weapon's tables (weapons.tbl). Tables are text files of information which tell the game what to do. The file name of the external model, which is a completely separate model, is specified next to $External Model File:  You can even specify if you want the model to recede and move back into position when secondaries are fired to simulate the missiles reloading. You specify exactly where external models are located and facing when you do your .pof conversion.

More conplete information about tabling can be found in the weapons.tbl and the ships.tbl freespace wiki entries.

[Nash]

How can i tell what size the external model will be. I am experienced with table files so i should be able to do it.
What is wrong with the stub nose i would really like to keep it is there some way to fix it so it looks right?

[rscaper1070]

I like the snub nose, I wouldn't change that at all. It does look like you have a lot of smooth groups issues going on though. All in all, nice work.

[Nash]

What are the problems with smooth groups And how can i fix them?

If there are changes anyone would like me to make i am not set on anything completely and would love to hear your idea's.
I can make changes very fast so it is not a problem.

[rscaper1070]

Well, you see where everything on the cockpit section is nice and smooth? You want the rest of the model to look like that. Everywhere you can see the individual polygons needs to be smoothed and if smoothing doesn't fix it it's a problem with the geometry. For instance the side of that intake thing on the left. What 3d program are you using? In 3ds max I just use auto-smooth most of the time. I don't know if blender has the same thing but it probably does.

[Angelus]

I like it.

The smoothing groups are really ****ed. What 3D app do you use?
Try selecting the model ( in poly mode), and remove all smoothinggroups, then select a part of the model ( 1 wing, intake, nose, cockpit, whatever...) and apply one smoothinggroup. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the model.

Edit: Ninja'd by rscaper1070

8k polys isn't really that much, there are much (poly) heavier birds out there.
If you really want to reduce the polycount ( my suggestion would be around 5k - 6k for this one),
take a look at the pic below, red circles show the areas where the same result can be achieved with a normal map.

I assume the areas with the red X are missiles? If so, remove them. You can visible missiles, all you need to do is to place a firepoint/ bank in PCS2 after conversion.

Can you upload a couple wireframe renders?


Edit2: might have been a good idea to actually post the link, eh?

[Nash]

I am using truespace 7.6. I can smooth the whole model in truespace i did not know i needed to so thanks.
I will render wireframe when i find out how.
Great i did not know How many polies was to high.
 

[bigchunk1]

The size of the external model is determined by the scale of the external missile .pof itself. You can scale the model to be whatever size you want it to be using your modeling software or directly in pcs2. It's not really something you need to worry about at this point since resizing is so easy to do.

[Angelus]

i advise against using only one smoothing group. the model will look fugly.
It's better to smooth the model in separate parts. If needed, i can paint a suggestion.

[Nash]

Here is the wireframe render

[Nash]

Suggestion would be nice i just did some very basic smoothing for the render. I had no plan on using that smoothing for import into freespace anyway. 

[Black Wolf]

For a first model, it looks fantastic. And don't worry about the name; nobody cares too much about overlap, if we did, we'd probably have run out of cool names years ago. call it the Proteus if that's the name you want to give it.

[Hellstryker]

I'm not a fan of the wings, they look kinda tacked on. The rest of it however looks amazing and as far as a first model goes it ranks amongst the best I've ever seen. As other people have said though the smooth groups need fixing but overally the geometry looks pretty solid to me.

[Rodo]

Nice model man, looks cool

an advise before UV'ing... mmm.

I don't know about truespace, but I tend model only half of the mesh, then I texture that half.
After UV'ing and Texturing is done I apply the mirror property, this reduces the workload a lot, and gives you the possibility to use smaller textures (or getting better resolution per face) since you are using the same texture for two mirrored faces at the same time.
And as always... patience, a hole lotta patience.

[Unknown Target]

Before you start UVmapping, try to visualize the thing you're unwrapping as if you were building it out of cloth, like carbon fiber. That should give you a rough starting point of how to split up and lay flat forms.