ship editing stuff

Fri Jul 25, 2003 4:08 am by seawolfe02

1. Is there a limit to the number of triangles you can have on a model and not be a problem in FL?

2. Is it possible to add animations to a model (via scripting?) to do things like .. oh say .. opening the nozzels when afterburners come on (much like modern aircraft do)

3. give me your opinions on the following model .. it isn't completed yet .. lots of little details I'd like to do (notice the antennae all over the skin .. much like todays aircraft as well) the Bolt

Do ya think it would look better with the wings over the cockpit or under (currently designed as under) .. this is the 3rd in the series (the elite version) the first is the dart and has the underside intake with stabilizer .. the second is the arrow and has the upper two intakes with stabilizers. There are only 3 hard points on it right now .. I'm trying to decide if I want to fix (non moving) some hardpoints on the inner edges of the wings .. others will come as I am inspired).

Seawolfe

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Edited by - seawolfe02 on 25-07-2003 05:19:20

Fri Jul 25, 2003 3:12 pm by BloodRiot

I like your ship design. I'm modeling my first ship as well and I have similar question regarding the detail level of the model and animations.

i'd probably put the wings at what would be the eye level or it might create huge blind spots for the pilot if in 1st person view... at eye level the blind spots will be considerably smaller.

or maybe making those wings smaller to the sides so that it doesnt amper periferal vision and then duplicate them on the upper and lower ends with vertical orientation with the present size and shape... i dunno. All i know is that it looks pretty good. The rest is up to you

Cheers.

Edited by - BloodRiot on 25-07-2003 16:17:53

Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:20 pm by Victor

Well, after some experimenting I found you can go pretty high with the poly count, high as in well over 6000.

If you're not doing multiple LOD meshes though you need to keep a few things in mind, like how many of these ships will be in space at once and how far away can you actually see the model. Keeping a model as a player only ship and its maximum visible range down around 1500 you should be able to work with 5000 poly models without causing any problems in the game. If you want the NPC pilots to use it, adjust it accordingly, in most of my trials I have been keeping the models to between 700-1000 polygons and they are not visible past 1200m in the game, even without propper LOD meshes it seems to be working fine with those values.

Sat Jul 26, 2003 12:32 am by seawolfe02

Hmmm .. you say polygons and I say triangles .. I am assuming that we are talking about the same thing .. so I guess the 16,250 triangles I have in my model are too much for the game to start with.

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Sat Jul 26, 2003 12:37 am by Victor

Yeah, same thing

. You can try it with 16k but it probably wont run well, if at all on low end machines. You might even get away with it if it's only used as a player ship and not on busy servers. But then half the fun of getting your ship in the game is watching the AI pilots fly around in it.

Edited by - Victor on 26-07-2003 01:37:29

Sat Jul 26, 2003 12:40 am by seawolfe02

crumbs .. reducing the triangles on this makes it look stiff .. I hate that. I don't know if I can make this fighter look good with only 2000 triangles

Do you need a pilot and cockpit mesh for these things?

Edited by - seawolfe02 on 26-07-2003 01:42:15

Wow .. got rid of over 9000 triangles by dumping the intake fans

Edited by - seawolfe02 on 26-07-2003 01:45:09

Sat Jul 26, 2003 2:10 am by Wanderer

Odd, Milkshape on my system won't accept anything over 4,500-4,600 polygons without crashing.

Sat Jul 26, 2003 2:17 am by seawolfe02

I'm using version 1.6.6a .. I'd be using 3dsmax but I lost my box and manuals when I moved from Australia to the states .. lost a lot of things. oh well .. this milkshape seems to be doing good for basic stuff.

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Sat Jul 26, 2003 2:41 am by Victor

Never underestimate the power of a good texture/skin, you can usually wipe a bunch of detail polys. I allways thought the general rule of thumb was big obvious and important shapes were part of the mesh and the finer details were textures. Well, I do textures and skins, not models (not good ones anyway) so naturally I feel the model is the less important of the two

Sat Jul 26, 2003 3:09 am by seawolfe02

well .. it's down to 4746 triangles now .. I removed the intake fans which were the biggest single chunk of the model .. I also removed all the vertices that weren't really contributing to curvature and shape. so maybe it will be usable .. I have put the current skin I've been working with up here if you want to see what you can do with it (since skinning is your thing give it a shot). I have it converted to tga format for within milkshape .. not sure if that is the best to use or not .. but it seemed to be what other people were using.

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Edited by - seawolfe02 on 26-07-2003 04:10:35

Sat Jul 26, 2003 5:13 am by seawolfe02

okay .. I have all the mount points on this ..hopefully I have them all named correctly .. is there anyway to limite a mount point to strictly be missiles / cruise disrupter/ torps? I know that making a torp mount automatically lets it be a cruise disrupter if you so choose . I have two mounts I would like to be missle/torp mounts only.

also .. I think I've done this right .. I created a bunch of triangles and named them after the hps (ie Hp/Fixed/Engine01) do I need to bury these into the mountpoints or hover them just on top?

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Sat Jul 26, 2003 7:56 pm by Victor

You can't restrict weapons on the model, that can be done in the ini file, the actual name doesn't matter much, HpWeapon works so does HpTurret or HpTorpedo the biggest thing is the "Fixed" or "Revolute" part

Just put your HP triangles over the surface, the exporter will place the HP on the models surface at the point closest to the center of the polygon you used for the HP. Try not to place the HP too close to an edge (corner), I've had some problems with the exporter doing strange things to my hardpoints when I do that.

Sat Jul 26, 2003 9:08 pm by seawolfe02

Well .. got the model done to the best of my knowlege and now I am reading the instructions by HFH_MACK on adding a new ship to the game (not replacing one) .. so we'll see how it goes. .. back in .. oh .. 48 hours?

(hopefully a lot sooner than that)

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Sat Jul 26, 2003 10:44 pm by seawolfe02

okay .. running into a problem .. I'll keep looking for something but if anyone has any suggestions where to find the info I need .. please tell ..

I have my model done .. the cmp file created with the exporter.

now I want to add it to the game .

I've added it to the nameresourdes.dll , I've got my good.ini and market_ships.ini and shiparch.ini done.

now I need to get the model into the game .. how do I do that?

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Sun Jul 27, 2003 12:42 am by seawolfe02

Things are not going well .. I may not have this done right afterall ..

okay ..
I have created a directory under my flmm mods directory called ba_basillisk (what I ended up calling the ship) I have the directory structure for all changed files the same as the game. I have edited the shiparch.ini, goods.ini and market_ships.ini files to hold my ship information.

I created the cmp file from milkshape and put it into a directory called ../SHIPS/BALLISTA/BA_BASILLISK

I created the mat file (using the lightwafe to milkshape turtorial) and put it into the directory ../SHIPS/BALLISTA

I created the ba_basillisk.3db file as per the lightwave to milkshape tutorial and put it into directory ../EQUIPMENT/MODELS/COMMODITIES/NN_ICONS

I enabled the mod in flmm and run the game .. but the ship isn't in pittsburg for sale.

have I missed a step somewhere?

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Edited by - seawolfe02 on 27-07-2003 02:40:52

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