@DTX:

Look... just go read my tutorial on skinning. If you think it's about MS3D, then you should probably actually read it

It comes with downloadable templates, example screenshots, and step-by-step instructions about uvmapping, and while I'm talking primarily about using UVMapper Classic (which has a much better interface than Max, among other things), 99% of what's in there can be applied no matter what you're using. Good luck in your next efforts to apply this material

Here is a couple of my models. All my LightWave Battleships, and DarkFighter version 2. I cant promise anything, but I might release ALL of my models in an huge ship pack. But when and or IF I cant say...I have been planing the release for almost a year now




since I cant coment on each individual model so far..I am gonna say in general:
Those are some excelent models you guys have created





Edited by - Leonhart on 6/28/2005 12:53:02 PM

@DTX

First of all you are extremely arogent! You brag about your models like you designed them. Every one i have seen so far is just a modified version of an already existing Freelancer model. You were told that you had learned the basics and you were offended but in fact it looks like you simply learned to import and export models, do a little modifying, and apply a basic skin to them. It's obvious that you have just read a few tutorials from here that have helped you conquer the basics but are not very appreciative of the hard work people did to make that available to you. They obviously see something in you that I don't. The same people that taught you are trying to give you positive feedback but you are talking down on them. I have been keeping up with this thread but don't know why they bother. They think you have potential but are unwilling to take constructive criticism. I disagree. I think you just learned a few things and think you are the sh**. From wht I have seen of you work you have just copied other models. Don't get me wrong the model you made based on the drawing is one of the best I have seen but it was still base on someone else's drawing. On top of that you use the excuse that someone else was suppose to skin some of the models for you. How Weak! You have come up with absolutly no truly original models of your own and you say that someone else is responsable for skinning them. So with that said, If the models aren't -YOUR- original design and -YOU- are not responsable for skinning some of them them why do you come back with, and I quote, "this thread is called "Show off -YOUR- finished and in progress work ""?
If you don't like the criticism given to you then don't post here. There are a lot of experienced people and newbies that are working together. That's what this web site is about. We criticise each other then help one another to become better at what we do! There is no need to take offense. I have been doing this stuff for a very long time but still take head to any advise or help that is offered. My advise to you is that you do the same. You obviously have some modeling skills. I have seen that from the ship you designed from a simple drawing. You really brought out the feel of the drawing in the 3D model. That's not easy to do. But everyone can't be perfect at everything so listen to the constructive criticism from these guys here if you truly want your work to shine. The only reason I am posting this is because this thread is for just what you said, "Show off your finished and in progress work". If you don't like the criticism then don't reply here. This post is not for "I didn't like what you said about me and lets argue about it". If you don't want to take advise then just ignore it.

PS you might want to get with -Argh- (the same guy you have been going round 'bout with) about skinning that model that you made from the drawing. Your model is actually kick a** and he's actually really very good at skinning models and a really cool guy from what I've heard. He's helping me with re-skinning some of the models I showed earlier in this post. I freely admit that I could use the help because I suck at texturing.

@Argh
Go ahead and release whatever you want as far as the models I sent you. It will end up to be a combined effort. I still have a lot of others I'm working on so I'll just give these guys up to lancersreactor to help other modders and this web site. Freely release them to whoever might need them for tutorials or mods or whatever. Forget what I said about being worried about me trying to sell them and all and then freely giving them out. I was just being a little anal about covering my a**. I was military for five years so it is kind of built in. So go ahead and release them if you want. Anyway I'm really excited to see my designs with your skins on them. It will truly be a team effort that can't be beat.

PS. I still want some cool screenshots of the finished products befor you release them

The reason I bother with DTX... is that his talent as a modeler is obvious. He thinks well as a sculptor, and while I haven't seen much from him that isn't derivative of other people's imaginations, that's OK- most people doing this aren't terribly original. We're talking spaceships here, and this is pretty well-explored territory, artistically speaking.

All he needs to do is realize that just modeling isn't enough, and apply himself- which is why I keep on him, and diss his attempts to act like he knows what he's doing To be truly good at this stuff, one needs to learn how to skin, how to diagnose and repair structural flaws at the vertex level, and model efficiently. And, of course, one should make decent art... but that's in the eye of the beholder.

He does 1 out've 3 right His models are usually pretty, and are low-poly... but having seen a couple of them up close, they're full of flaws- everything from welding issues to verts that cut through each other to gaps to seams to parts with the normals reversed when you import them into MS3D. All of these things add up to a model that won't look as good as it should- a professional-grade game model should be tight as a drum. Seeing models in MAX is not the same as looking at it up-close after exporting to MS3D, for example- and one should not post screenshots from anything but the export environment if they want me to be impressed.

Now, does this mean I'm perfect, some tin god who's able to say that everyone is less skilled or talented than I am? Nope. I'm the first one to say that- while I'm pretty good, and usually make nice work, I'm not perfect, and I'm still learning with each new piece- and sometimes I make pieces that aren't very good art, just like anybody else. And I keep myself aware of my strengths. I skin better than most people, and know a lot about modeling, and I try to teach myself something new about the technical aspects of modeling each time I do a piece.

For example, with the Light Hauler, I tried to teach myself about how to make as "perfect" of a model as I could with hard edged surfaces and intersections, while achieving my aesthetic goals, which were to produce something that was realistic looking, obviously designed for its task (in this case, moving Cargo Pods around) and fitting the Freelancer art style.

So I basically combined some aesthetic concepts from Aliens (the infamous Cargo Loader with its bright Industrial Warning Yellow and striped markings), Freelancer (the styling of the Transports, which combines Kusari art styles with brutal utilitarian design) and modern construction machinery- and the design you can see in the beauty shot's what resulted. I think it looks and feels great in the game engine- it's really cool, for example, how the Cruise Engines activate, and I got the scripting just right for the POV so that flying it is intuitive but gives users a proper feeling of scale. The model's design, in short, is complemented by the rest of the work, and I'm satisfied with the result. I don't claim it's the "best" model made for this game- it's not sexy, and I mainly made it to add more variety to the civilian traffic in FL. But it's what I set out to do. Which is the best that all of us can achieve

The thing about feedback is that you can either take it or leave it. DTX has made his choice futher criticism is not useful. Best of luck to him.

I have found that in general the quality of released models here to be ordinary with a select few producing anything of worth. I believe that the main reason for this is that most of the feedback is from non-modellers so the bulk of it is simple oohing and ahhing.

For some if 90% say it's superb and 10% say it needs work they go with the consensus rather than considering the source of the dissident opinion. Mind you it's great when people like my work but if a fellow modeller points something out to me I'll listen because there's always something new to learn. One you think you know it all you will not improve beyond your current state.

Of course this isn't life or death so at the end of the day it doens't matter either way I just like to try to keep an open mind.

Here's jsncalif11's "Bandit"... a Light Fighter. A big "thanks" to Harrier for helping me to resolve the welding issues. Basically, I turned off "auto-smooth", unwelded everything, and deleted the smoothing groups. I wouldn't have ever guessed that was what I needed to do- I didn't even know that MS3D was smoothing things without my explicit permission Now that I do, I'll never have an issue with this again

Here is the original:

Original Bandit

And here's what it looked like after unwelding, cleaning up various issues, and breaking into Groups for skinning. Note the nice, clean lines showing off the details.

Bandit

Now we see the final results after painting it up and exporting the CMP:

New Bandit




And here it is after fixing the welding issues. Note that the details on the rear of each engine are much cleaner now:


This final shot was a lot more like what I was hoping for. Jsncalif11's model was basically made to have a faceted look to it, and he used high-poly areas for the engines- the body's very low-poly. I'm glad I got things to look the way they should have

Edited by - parabolix on 7/28/2005 7:29:13 AM

Argh to be honest Milkshape is the only program I've used where you can join vertices without actually welding them. In metasequoia and 3ds Max joining will automatically weld the vertices.

Have you exported other models with unwelded vertices from milkshape before with different results?

If not, it's possible that the FL engine treats joined vertices as welded also. In which case you would have to detach the faces before exporting to get the faceted look (I believe) you're trying to achieve.

No offense to you Milkshape users, it's a good value for the price but overall.......it sucks .

I usually am exporting Rhino meshes. My working theory is that what's happening here is that it's MS3D that's the problem, not the FL engine. I've been able to build things and get them working properly directly from the engine- I'm guessing that that's because when Rhino meshes polysurfaces, it applies welding according to the angles in the mesh, per polysurface. Therefore polysurfaces are being welded correctly for each piece. My Rhino meshes don't have the welding problems I constantly see with other people's stuff.

The reason why I think this is that you can watch MS3D welding things even when you've very specifically told it not to. If you bring a model in without welding information (split or not) and then apply a texturemap to it, you can watch it weld the verts. This is very, very annoying when you have a model like this one, where it really should be faceted to look its best.

What I'm going to try when I have some free time Saturday (thank goodness I finally have some free time) is to take the OBJ back to Rhino and "weld" it, but use maximum welding angle of 179 degrees- which will mean that aside from nearly-coplanar faces, it won't look welded at all, but will have welding info. Maybe, just maybe, that'll prevent MS3D from trying to "fix" it.

I think you'll be surprised at how much better this model will look when it's faceted properly. Most FL models aren't welded very heavily, aside from a few sweeping curved surfaces, and the engine's really been designed for pretty faceted objects, so I suspect that this model will look much, much cleaner if I can get this fixed. The welding really distorts the way that the skin's supposed to look in the game engine- it's supposed to be subtly faceted on those engines, the way that the modeler intended them to be. Thankfully Rhino can do weld operations to user specifications


<comes back from trying to fix things>

After laboriously fixing the model from scratch... erm... well... it didn't work. The FL engine seems to be assigning a generic welding angle to every vert, or the CMP Exporter does (I'm guessing that it's the Exporter's fault, myself). Why my faceted models tend to be just fine whilst other people's work usually comes out wrong is a mystery, but ah well... I'll just move on to another ship... I've made a drawing of a design I'd like to try out, so I'm going to take a whack at it.

Edited by - Argh on 7/2/2005 4:59:39 PM

heres a project i'm working on for FL. I'm a super noob to modeling and editing period. i wish there was an easier way to get models into FL besides milkshape, i just cant seem to get it. But thats for another thread. This here is my first real untextured ship without details and such. i can make the meshes, but i cant seem to get the textures perfect. here it is:

View - Here



Better late than never........

Edited by - undun357 on 7/2/2005 5:20:59 PM

PLEASE....!! KEEP THE PICTURE SIZES REASONABLE... otherwise too big and you have to scroll across to read it..

Harrier (moderator)



Edited by - harrier on 7/5/2005 10:56:35 PM

Argh,

I have given your problem with milkshape some thought .. I also played around and imported some max 5 meshes to milkshape..It seems milkshape sometimes automatically applies smoothing to groups on imported models.


There are a couple of things I can suggest you try..
Three suggestions:

1. Unhide all, select all then clear all smoothing groups, (uncheck auto smooth)
2. Select all and unweld vertices..
3. Run model cleaner (but dont seperate the verts) (proly wont help much but it does clean the model nicely and will get rid of duplicate faces and vertexs)

Other than that I dunno.. I did ask chumbalum about it a year ago.. and got a reply in reverse (sorta) from Mete Ciragen:

"Hi,

if you have cleared all smoothing groups, then the only reason that there are hard edges are multiple groups. Note, that vertex normals are only averaged between groups and not across groups. So you can select all, regroup it and smooth again. If there are still some hard edges, then select all, and weld together.

Greetings,
Mete"

Dunno if it will help, but the reverse could answer it..

Sometimes.. (and its not because milkshape is crap) despite all your best efforts some parts of the mesh are smoothed and some are not, and it's usually a step or action taken in error, but if I want hard edges those are the steps I take, plus I will often bring those common faces into groups and use photoshop (bevel and emboss) to accent individual panels in groups.. and use a different tex (and group) on the surrounds.. finally only bringing the groups together and making say 50+ groups into 3 or 4 just prior to export - excluding hardpoints - however my method of texturing is not for those in a hurry..but it can result in very clean lines

Harrier



Retreat[![! ---- I'm too badly messed up now[![!

Edited by - harrier on 7/2/2005 9:55:49 PM

I think PantherX is 100000% right here. When i started out modeling, i thought as i looked at my "creations" they looked "so-so" but got the oohs and ahhhs, and it made me say "hmm ok - i'll go with it". Big mistake. I'm still paying for that to this day. My "skill" has increased with my newest batch of ships for sure. Using less and less polygons to achieve the same results, and things just look so much better for it. I still waste a fair amount of polygons, but i'm working on that. Now to address this in another light...The people we MAKE these models for generally AREN'T modelers, and out of the ones that ARE, so few are GOOD modelers. So if the public likes the stuff, overall, there really isn't anything wrong if YOU are happy.

Texturing. Ugh. You know, i used to do a lot of PC drawing in Photoshop, and even PantherX thought i was decent, but let me tell you, i can visualize very cool panels and skins for my ships, but honestly just can't produce them. I've tried over and over, and my texturing skills suck hardcore. I DO want to get better (i just got your tutorial, Argh - gonna give a good read and test later) but honestly, that part of the modeling package is just tough to wrap my brain around. My newest stuff, i think a lot of folks would appreciate, even here, but man once i texture them, i end up hating them big time. It's like i'm ruining my own stuff, and that bugs me. SO, before i post a single thing here, i'm going to dig in and learn how to skin better. I'll give it my best shot, and see what happens.

Panther - OMFG man, i love that model you put up here. Moreso the skin you made for it - GORGEOUS. Disgustingly sweet dude. You and Hobbes are my idols when it comes to models and skins. Creative, simple (you guys don't try to do TOO MUCH on a model, it's just perfect) and elegant in its own way. Nice work bud.

Also, i use MS3D to make my models now, and am working on 3ds max - i love the program, so i think it will work out decently. What i'm trying to do is figure out which function coincides with functions i use in MS3D (although MS3D is much more simple). I see how much MORE you can do with a better package, and that's what i want to work towards.

Now basically, i'm just trying to say here that Argh, you ARE a bit TOO blunt (one of those dudes sorta earned it though -DTX i believe his handle was...) but i love your plain honesty. I think that if everyone here keeps working, this community will have so many talented modelers that it would benefit us all, and the new GOOD mods would flow again. I know i need to keep working, but i love having fun doing it. Modeling has become more than a hobby for me, it's more of a passion now, and i love to see my ideas take shape. People think they have my designs pegged, then i do a 180 and make something along a different line and i love the responses to that Anyway, keep on working guys, the stuff in here is looking fantastic!

Baene

Well, as I've said before, I don't think of myself as being "perfect" in any way- my comments are blunt, especially when talking about technique, where it's not really about the art so much as the process (i.e., it's factual, not interpretation)...

But when talking about aesthetics... it's just my opinion. I don't think everybody should use the same style, or anything- that'd defeat the purpose of modding. I do tend to prod people to be more original, but that's because it's just so darn easy to be lazy and just do whatever the herd wants. I'd rather see something like Art, y'know?

I've gone out've my way to demonstrate several things to the modelers here:

1. Skinning is at least as important as geometry. Good models look like crap if they're skinned poorly, and a great skin can save a mediocre model.

2. Technique matters. A well-executed model shouldn't have lots of flaws in its geometry. When I put a piece up here, I'm as blunt about my mistakes as about anybody else's- and I make them, just like anybody else does. Building structurally perfect models isn't easy, especially if you're just trying to whip something out while making a mod. But the difference in quality is pretty easy to see, once you've gotten the model into the game engine.

3. Spaceships can be more colors than gray IRL, how many gray cars do you see on the road? Especially gray cars with obvious electronics and other delicate things exposed to the elements? Why nobody else thinks this sci-fi cliche, inherited from Really Bad Movies from the 1950's is a little ridiculous is beyond me

4. Glowmaps and selective use of transparency makes a big difference in how a model looks. Good glowmaps can make a FL model look a lot more professional.

5. Uvmapping an entire ship, while somewhat time-consuming, usually produces much higher quality than tiled projections, and is faster to execute than face-mapping (although face-mapping is more precise).

just been scanning around the forums and happen to stumble into this one and thought hey i have some unfinished models i could show people see if its worth me carrying on with them, so here they are, both are fighters and where originally designed for fixed weaponary which make them a little different to most FL ships i have seen ,

Fighter1

Fighter1 again

Fighter2

Fighter2 again

Those designs are bad as... h3ll. I'd almost offer to skin them, if you're not in a hurry and will put up with whatever I come up with. But I'm a little afraid to ask... what are your polycounts? The guns, especially, look like they're higher-poly than they need to be.