[Angelus]

ok, take a look at the pic below, the marked areas could use a tad bit of optimisation.
It's a fighter, and you want get ever that close to see the detail.

1. remove those elements. The holes in the wing can be done via normal map
    don't make the missiles part of the mesh, let the engine handle that, it'd look strange, having empty banks, while the missiles are clearly visible

2. hmm, looks a bit polyheavy, but not nearly as much as in

3. you can reduce the number of polys in the pipes, especially in the upper ones near the cockpit
    a 10-12 sided cylinder with smoothing group applied looks nearly as good as one with 20 or 30+ sides

4. can you post a wireframe render of that area? it doesn't look bad or anything, just courious

[newman]

There's some detail in here, like missile holes, chamfered edges, etc.  that is a big of an overkill. Remember, fighters are fast moving small objects. It's nice to have them detailed but in all honesty nobody's going to have time to notice whether your missile holes have 16 or 8 segments when it zips past them full speed in a dogfight. Some detail can be normal mapped - even the chamfered edges. Another important factor with fighters is that they come in wings, and there's usually several of them, so that's another reason to be careful with the count. It's a gorgeous model, especially for a first time effort. A lot of first timers really require a rebuild - yours I'd just optimize here and there and it's fine. Great job, you should be proud!
What I would also suggest is planning your LODs ahead. For example, if you want to have some missile holes modeled, fine, but it makes no sense to have them modeled in anything but lod0 - for lod1 and beyond you should plan just a flat polygon where the holes used to be and leave a place in the uvw map so the holes can switch to textured versions in lod1.

[Nash]

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.

Thank you i will call it Proteus. That is one more thing i don't need to worry about. 

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.

The wings have given me a lot of trouble. What parts of the wings look wrong? I would not mind re doing the wings i don't like some parts of them
myself so any advice would be a big help. And yes they are sort of tacked on

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.

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.

I am all ready doing that but thank you anyway.

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.

What are flat forms?

ok, take a look at the pic below, the marked areas could use a tad bit of optimisation.
It's a fighter, and you want get ever that close to see the detail.

1. remove those elements. The holes in the wing can be done via normal map
    don't make the missiles part of the mesh, let the engine handle that, it'd look strange, having empty banks, while the missiles are clearly visible

2. hmm, looks a bit polyheavy, but not nearly as much as in

3. you can reduce the number of polys in the pipes, especially in the upper ones near the cockpit
    a 10-12 sided cylinder with smoothing group applied looks nearly as good as one with 20 or 30+ sides

4. can you post a wireframe render of that area? it doesn't look bad or anything, just courious

1. Good to know i was allready planing on useing the freespace engine to handle missiles.

2. I already changed that and it is not that polyheavy anymore i will be posting update render soon.

3. Already changed that the pipes i have reduced them to 8 sides from 16.

4. It will be in the next batch of renders.

There's some detail in here, like missile holes, chamfered edges, etc.  that is a big of an overkill. Remember, fighters are fast moving small objects. It's nice to have them detailed but in all honesty nobody's going to have time to notice whether your missile holes have 16 or 8 segments when it zips past them full speed in a dogfight. Some detail can be normal mapped - even the chamfered edges. Another important factor with fighters is that they come in wings, and there's usually several of them, so that's another reason to be careful with the count. It's a gorgeous model, especially for a first time effort. A lot of first timers really require a rebuild - yours I'd just optimize here and there and it's fine. Great job, you should be proud!
What I would also suggest is planning your LODs ahead. For example, if you want to have some missile holes modeled, fine, but it makes no sense to have them modeled in anything but lod0 - for lod1 and beyond you should plan just a flat polygon where the holes used to be and leave a place in the uvw map so the holes can switch to textured versions in lod1.

I will reduce missile holes, chamfered edges etc ass much as i can. Thank you for the complements. LODs will not be a problem i have a very good tool for removing things like missile holes and the weld tool should take care of the rest.

Thank you all for all the help. I will post new renders in a little bit, i made some changes that make it look better plus i reduced polies on some stuff.

[Nash]

New Renders!

[Beskargam]

dude thats an amazing job. especially for a first time. keep up the good work!

[Nash]

dude thats an amazing job. especially for a first time. keep up the good work!

Thank you i will.

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.

I think i fixed the wings so they look more integrated in to the ship. Here is the render.

[Nash]

If no one has anything to add i will uv map this ship.
Once i start it will be more difficult to make changes so please make your suggestions now and not when i am uv maping.

I would like to know if it good enough to start UVing or if there is still anything wrong with it.

[bigchunk1]

Other than the concerns newman mentioned I can't think of anything personally. You seemed to address them at least partly in your most current iterations of the model.

Make sure everything is closed and the normals are all facing outward, and I think that should be it. Good luck UVing.

[Nash]

I have managed to drop the polygon count to 5000 when triangulated.
I found a bunch of unnecessary faces that i used for modeling that were no longer necessary and i made a some reductions in a few other places.

I will post a updates when i am done UVmaping.
I am guessing that UVmaping is going to be long and hard but it might go faster so I don't  know when i will I'll be done.

Any tips on uvmaping?

Thank you all for your posts they helped me very much.

[Scooby_Doo]

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.

Be careful with that approach as it can break normal mapping.  However.... you've got the right idea.   First uvmap one half of the model, apply the symmetry, readd a uvmap, carefully pull the other side away from the original (they should both be using the same uv space up to this point).  Flip it around and bring the two pieces together.



Oh and ya I like the wings.  Kinda reminds me of the Gladius, Sabre cross.

[Nash]

Done with uv maping. Any recommendations for textureing it?
What is the best way to make debris, glowpoints, dockpoints, subsystems and shields?
Should i have put debris texture in the same map as the ship or is there some map tile map in MediaVPs used for dedris?
Any advice on the conversion to freespace open?
Thank you for your posts your help and support i would not have gotten this far without your help.
 
P.S.
I am using gimp for textureing truespace7.6 for modeling and pcs2 for conversion. 

[bigchunk1]

Done with uv maping. Any recommendations for texturing it?

...good luck

What is the best way to make debris, glowpoints, dockpoints, subsystems and shields?

All of this is done using pcs2. Debris can be made separately. Copy your truespace file and split up the model in a way you would like to have the fighter explode. Keep the broken pieces of the ship in their relative positions as if the ship were connected. Separate the objects and name them each debris01, debris02, debris03...etc

Shields are perhaps the easiest unless you want to make your own mesh. In pcs2, you can select the shield header 'the green dot' and then select 'load' at the top right. You can select another .pof file which will import an already made shield mesh. Try to pick one that is shaped roughly like your fighter. When you have imported the new shield, you can use transformation properties to fit your fighter into the shield mesh nicely.

If you want to make your own shield mesh in truespace make a separate object named shield before you export your fighter. You do not need to texture this object. Be careful about excessive polygons with shield meshes though or your model will cause crashes.

Subsystems are also made in pcs2. You might want to open a sample ship from the retail files or a usermade .pof. Create, name and assign special points and label them $communications, $navigation, $weapons, $engine, and $sensors. Give them all the property: $special=subsystem. You can set the radius inside where a hit will cause subsystem damage at the right.

Note: To create, copy or delete special points click the yellow blue and red icons respectively at the right. IMO that's the hardest thing to figure out about pcs2 since they are small and unlabeled.

Dockpoints are a bit tricky, check another .pof for reference or try importing. You must place two points one right in front of the other. Keep them relatively close together. Set the normals facing away from the ship eg. directly up or directly down. This will set the 'path' that the support ship will follow when docking with the ship. After you have set all the special points and docking points, go down to the paths header (another green dot header category) and click on generate paths.

Should i have put debris texture in the same map as the ship or is there some map tile map in MediaVPs used for dedris?

mediavps has its own texture tile maps. You probably want to use 'Debris01-b' or 'Debris01-c' based on the look of your ship. You also might want to find these textures in your mediavps data to see how to uv map them. Look in the mvassets.vp. You do have Vpview32 don't you?

Any advice on the conversion to freespace open? 

pcs2 is the way to convert models to freespace. I don't know what truespace exports, but pcs2 imports only certain types of files such as .dae or .scn or .cob. You will have to export your file in one of these formats so pcs2 can read it. You might have to download a plugin for this. Once you have done this, you need a .tbm file to accompany your .pof.   

 All of this might sound overwhelming, but you might want to also consider adding LODs or 'Levels of Detail'. This will render the ship using lower poly models the further away the player is from the ship saving framerate performance. You can add levels of detail by importing additional geometry into pcs2 called detail1 and detail2 etc. With both levels of detail and debris, make sure your header refrences these objects appropiately. Also make sure your table is set to the 'detail distance' you want to set.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

As add-on to what bigchunk said: I suggest that you make your own shield mesh, an imported one from another fighter will not quite follow the shape of your ship. For debris textures, 'damage' is a moderately tilable, generic damage map, been in FS since retail.

TrueSpace exports COB, which can be opened by PCS2; however, you will use all your smoothing (AFAIK). The recommended procedure for TrueSpace users is to get your model into Blender, clean it up there, then follow the Blender to POF conversion guide to get everything properly set up for use in FS.

[The E]

Yes. As a general rule, do NOT use truespace. Models directly imported from it into PCS2 will get ****ed.

[Nash]

Yes. As a general rule, do NOT use truespace. Models directly imported from it into PCS2 will get ****ed.

Can you be more specific about what gets screwed up by truespace. I imported the model and it did not look screwed up in pcs2 or fsopen.
 
I do not like blender!    If i have to use it i would like to know what i need to do in blender to clean up the model.
What is the best way to import a model into blender?

Thank you for the info on debris, dockpoints, subsystems and shields.
Yes i do have Vpview32.

[The E]

So far, every model I have seen that was made in Truespace and imported into PCS2 has had issues with its smoothing (or Phong shading, or whatever TS calls it), which could only be fixed by converting them to dae, importing them into a good 3D modeller, and fixing it there. Not fixing them causes the model to look really really weird under lighting.

[Nash]

So far, every model I have seen that was made in Truespace and imported into PCS2 has had issues with its smoothing (or Phong shading, or whatever TS calls it), which could only be fixed by converting them to dae, importing them into a good 3D modeller, and fixing it there. Not fixing them causes the model to look really really weird under lighting.

This is a screen shot taken in freespace open. Converted from truespace to pcs2 and then to fsopen.
I do not see any really weird lighting if you can will you point it out.

[The E]

*shrug* seems to have worked for you. Which is nice, I suppose. Still, TrueSpace is an old program, and really really not recommended anymore. PCS2 is nowadays better at interpreting Collada than any other format except pof and pmf (PCS2's own format), using a modeller that can read and write models in that format is recommended.

[rhettro]

Looks good to me. If you're really comfortable with TS then stick with it. I personally find TS very difficult to work with and recommend Blender to model makers just starting out. One of the biggest hurdles for someone like myself, who has worked on a wide range of 3d modeling programs was Blender's default setting to select items with the right mouse click. I change it to left click through the user preferences as shown below.



The other big thing is using TAB to move to Edit mode. Once you understand those two things, modeling in Blender 2.6 is a lot like 3DSMAX. Freespacefreak's Blender tutorial is very good as well.

[Nash]

*shrug* seems to have worked for you. Which is nice, I suppose. Still, TrueSpace is an old program, and really really not recommended anymore. PCS2 is nowadays better at interpreting Collada than any other format except pof and pmf (PCS2's own format), using a modeller that can read and write models in that format is recommended.

I can't afford 3ds max and i can't stand blender. 
I like modeling in truespace so if i can get away with it i would like to use it.
Truespace and Blender are the only free 3d modeling programs that can import into freespace open that i know of and blender is annoying and a pain to use.