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Next ship up for critiquing...

Here you can discuss building custom ships, texturing and 3D modeling in Freelancer

Post Sun May 22, 2005 6:11 pm

Next ship up for critiquing...



It fits mostly as a mini-hauler. Only 2 guns and 4-6 turrets with a medium-large cargo hold, ~lvl 8 shields. Maybe higher if people want them.
The gun/turret classes will be limited to 8 or 9 though.
What do ya think?? I'm going to take a crack at a cockpit which will require a transparent window, and also I'm going for the glow maps.

Anyone care to point me in the direction of the tutorials?? Hey Argh, I took a look at your hauler with the glow maps and stuff; will the mat exporter take care of all that stuff for me and all I need to do is create three texture groups; ship uvmap, window, and glow map right??

BTW: if you guys noticed, in the perspective window, you can see the objects box is askew for some reason. I really don't know why this is happening. Does someone know how to fix this?? I'm currently doing this in Gmax.

Edited by - AluminumHaste on 5/22/2005 7:14:42 PM

Post Sun May 22, 2005 11:30 pm

No, the exporter won't get you there alone. What you have to do if you're using one uvmapped texture but you want some of it to glow... is make the glowmap texture use "glass" in the Material name... export the model as usual... and then work in UTF Edit to set up the texture as DcDtEcEt. Take a look at the UTF for the Treefrog to figure it out- it's really not very hard to do. The Ec node's a Float, btw... when you look at it like that, it'll all make sense, I think.

Glows are a bit tricky in some ways, though. For example, you don't want a glow with the Ec settings higher than about 0.900000 or so, otherwise the FL rendering engine throws error messages. This is just because it's ending up with an alpha value higher than 255 (that means some areas are "whiter" than pure white), so it has to reduce it to 255. Easy enough to avoid, though- if your glow areas are going to include some near-white, set the value to 0.800000 or so- it'll take care of it.

From an aesthetic standpoint... glowmaps can really add a lot of life to otherwise dull geometry, if carefully managed. You really have to visualize the final result you're after and execute carefully, though- basically, you want to think about the material that light's coming through/reflecting off of, and make it brighter in the areas that make the most sense. This can be a little tricky at first, but it gets easier with a little practice, and it can add so much life to things, I'm surprised more ship-builders don't make extensive use of it. Just making some lit windows can make a ship feel a lot more professional- it's the little touches that say that you've really put the work in.

Post Mon May 23, 2005 4:17 am

Thanks, sounds like I should be able to do this no problem. Thank you again.

Post Tue May 24, 2005 2:09 pm

Update: I got the cockpit ready


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