Ferret Cockpit (remodelling)

Post by **mkruer** » Sun Dec 11, 2005 6:18 pm

Looking Good,

Just for fun, I created a screen split like chuck does, for comparison purposes. I would say you are 85% there for the entire cockpit, its just that the remaining 15% will take 90% of your time

Keep up the good work.

rockstar · Post by **rockstar** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 9:16 pm

I'm frustrated... no real progress achieved . Guess I'll give it up for today. After five tries modelling cockpit frames, messing around with to many vertices and finally achieving a nice FUBAR it's time to prevent a 3d overkill and relax myself some hours.

Here's something I did somewhen in between. Just for you having something you can look at - Shield-Armor-Display for the P-64D Superferret Control System.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:19 pm

Gorgeous. The white screwheads are a nice touch; looks like a modern, nema-type, molded enclosure. Very professional-looking. Excellent work.

I'm really happy you took up modelling, Rockstar; I was dreading having to work alone on so many ships that need updating + cockpits; but between the two of us, and once we get up to cruising speed, we should be able to steamroll through it all.

Post by **klauss** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 3:16 pm

Just a thought: be sure to bake some radiosity in the cockpits.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 4:19 pm

Absolutely!

(Rockstar, you know what radiosity baking is? Check this tutorial:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... in_Blender)

I haven't tried unwrapping or that tutorial yet, but I have an idea of using the square of the radiosity for specular map masking, and the square root of the radiosity for diffuse texture masking, as well as the standard masking for the glow texture. That's what I did, albeit manually, for the space elevator station military base texture,
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... msk_sm.jpg
and the result was very good with fake gimp tests. Looks 3D already even though it's just a textured flat plane...
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... e_noon.png
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... _night.png
CoffeBot is unwrapping the base now, so we'll see ingame results soon.
My theory is: Where the radiosity comes out VERY dark, chances are even direct light has little chance to get there, so it can't hurt. Ergo, the square root. And as for using the square as spec map mask is also a rough mental calculation about the probability of reflections being obstructed. If it works as I expect it will, maybe I'll write a tutorial to supplement Tiny Painting's tthat we can make the standard for all ships, cockpits, 3D bases and whatever...

Also, BTW, the engine apparently supports "Detail Textures". I'm about to try that on the military base. I think we should standardize to using detail textures for bases and ships; tho it consumes an extra texture unit, I think it's worth it. I came up with this tentative tiling texture we could use as default...

rockstar · Post by **rockstar** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 5:27 pm

Oh shit... as said in the tutorial - WOOOOOOOOOOOT!

I'll finish the model first and take care of such "details" later, I guess. Step by step... I'm just at the beginning of 3d modelling. But you can be sure I'll pick up every aspect that's needed!

BradMick · Post by **BradMick** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:09 pm

this is shaping up rather well. the geometry still looks a bit heavy poly/tri wise, but overall a very good recreation. it's good to see some qaulity work starting to come off these boards, and this is definately a really good first (i think you said it was your first, can't remember) modeling go. keep it up, and i see you and chuck will go far towards realizing the art side of this project.

also, in a related note. i'm finally done with finals. last day of college was today, first day of the rest of my life is starts the evening of the 28th. i'm going to do my damndest to get the ship pack i started done, should be able to. in between packing my room, and visiting with my buds up here before i ship out.

anyway, keep up the great work. i'm mightily impressed with what you've done there.

Post by **hurleybird** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:39 pm

Chuck: We already have a bunch of detail textures that are also used in a doom source-port called doomsday. I'm not sure if they are in the main VS directory, but they should be included with vegatrek.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 11:03 am

Just thinking what would really be coolest would be a Detail Normal Map.

Post by **klauss** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 1:15 pm

That does exist and is fairly easy to implement.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 1:50 pm

OT

YAY! Let's do it! And let's have a default detail normal map, so that if the material doesn't specify one, and provided there are spare texture units available, we add (a very very subtle one) by default. It should be added, by the shader, to the normal normal map.

For those who don't get what this is about, a Detail Texture is a texture that maps automatically to a small region of an object, but repeats (tiles) across, making it appear like there's a lot more detail to the normal texture, but hopefully not being too obvious about the tiling trick. Here's the detail texture I came up with the other day, again:

And here's the same texture tiled (repeated) 6 times to prove that it tiles well (seamlessly, or unnoticeably):

However, this being just a texture, it would look like "staining" on a flat surface. I can write a little program to interpret darkness as depth, and produce a normal map out of it, which would cause it to look like low level relief or bumpiness across the surface. That is, instead of like a flat staining pattern, each pixel would appear to have a surface angle or tilt that makes it look brighter or darker depending on the position of the light source.

Detail textures help in more than one way:
When a surface is too smooth, either by design or because of loss of resolution and filtering when looking really close, color quantization artifacts begin to shine through. By maintaining surface geometry anchored detail, even if just noise, as you get closer, that noise remains above the color quantization level and helps mask it. And from a point of view of realism, most surfaces aren't perfectly smooth. So it helps 3 ways: Adds detail, adds realism and hides artifacts.

/OT

rockstar · Post by **rockstar** » Mon Dec 19, 2005 11:26 pm

Damn, I set a personal deadline for finishing this project at Dec 23th 05, but unfortunatly I got in trouble with another project i also have to finish before Christmas. Spend nearly every free minute in the last week working until late night. My room looks like a desaster and me too somehow. So I'm afraid I won't get this cockpit ready this year. I'm off for a family visit for Christmas and New Year and I'm really looking forward for this offline time without my rig crying for beeing used all day

Thank you all for your great help and I'll be back at work as soon as possible.

Merry Christmas

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:47 pm

Same story here; I was as close as putting in the last screw in the Hellcat, then I got involved in a little software project, then I got involved in updating the wiki, just about to start popping interrupts from the stack... Okay, low level software joke.... Good thing for me about Christmas is I'll have more time. No family, no parties, no social obligations... Just me and my computer; --the way I like it.

rockstar · Post by **rockstar** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:31 pm

combat seat 1.0 wip

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 11:32 pm

Wow! Nice! I want to sit on it already. And somehow the patterns agree with the general feeling of a Ferret, as does the narrow width. Excellent.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 11:47 pm

Comfy! Well, being the ferret, not really

Seriously, good job. how many tris is it?

Hey, does anyone have bugs to report other than "the jalthi and razor don't appear properly" and "the weapons factory shield crashes the game"? (thise have been found and will be fixed next patch that comes out)

BTW, right now we have a default damage texture, I just wrote a lil batch file to put it in all our models -- it worked cookies. Could do the same with the bump texture?

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 2:15 am

Bumps are not generalizable; they are different for each ship; and aren't yet supported by the engine; but a "Detail Texture" is --both: generalizable AND supported by the engine. There's one at the first post on this page, if you scroll up. That would definitely be a good thing to have. I don't know how to do it, though; someone pointed me to an old thread from the time Hellcat implemented Detail Textures, and I didn't understand a thing about how to use it. The one I posted at the top of this page is generic enough noise that would be good as a default Detail Texture for everything, I believe. Also, Klauss mentioned a Detail Normal Map would be easy to implement, which goes somewhat in the direction of your generic bumpmap idea. With a detail normal map, the regular bumpmap or normal map would put the ship-specific bumps and seams and depressions, while the generic, detail normal map would make all surfaces have a bit of tiny bumpiness or graininess when you get really close to them.

rockstar · Post by **rockstar** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 8:44 pm

dumdidum... found some time doing something...

and maybe the best original image of the ferret. so if somebody's interested in working on a detailed model or something i'm sure this image will help.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 8:47 pm

Coolbeans!

We do have a Ferret model, although it may not display properly in game.

rockstar · Post by **rockstar** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 9:16 pm

don't wanna promise to much, but i guess i can't avoid to create a whole ferret model to get the cockpit proportions right. and when having a look a the rear view image there can be seen the upper parts of engines and some parts of the wings - so i have to go half the way anyways.
i downloaded some models somebody's posted here on the board, but i'm not sure if these are the ones being ingame in the current version. if so there's a need for a new ferret 'cause after all the time i spend starring at pixel images i can definitly say this model is out of proportion - much to long.
i'll keep on working and all in all this can only be a matter of months, years or something

btw. they've released some hi-res blueprints of WC I ships on CIC and a friend of mine was thinking about modelling one of the ships - dunno which one exactly. unfortunatly he's mostly doing hi-poly stuff, but i told him to try keeping polycount low and that it's always more satisfying to see work being used somewhere instead of working for nothing.
maybe i can convince him to do all the WC I models... he's quite good and this would save time while raising content quality.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:00 am

I've just finished rehashing the WCU 5.0 ship pack (guess mine would be 5.1 then?)

What would be a convenient way for me to upload it? It does have two very nice ferret models.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:26 am

http://www.deeplayer.com/spiritplumber/ ... ck-5.1.zip here ya go! Please see if everything that should be there, is there. I think I did a good job with it.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:26 am

Bravo, Rockstar! That's quality work you're doing there; and thanks for the pic; I might give it a try. Where can I find those blueprints you mention?
Spirit, I was gonna ask you where the ship-pack is, but I see it coming... 7 megs so far..

EDIT, you should hold on until upload is complete before posting a link, though; I mean, I can look in there, but if Rockstar was dl'ing now he'd get a 404 or a corrupted file..

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:47 am

sorry.... i never know if / when i can pst.

again, major changes are:

- removal of redundant meshes; we don't need 4 identical (and i mean identical!!!) bearcat models

- everything is in .obj, with .png textures, and z axis pointing forward

- all the capships that are flythrough actually have the flythrough polygons in place

- added some ships, such as the wc2 strakha

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 9:07 am

Confirmed. The file IS there now. However I can't download it at the moment; seems my server is slow right now.