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x-wing (wip)

Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 1:07 pm
by Moe479
Image

before i goon i would like to know what polycount is suggested for fighter scale vessel!?!?

Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 8:38 pm
by hellcatv
probably about 4000 quads or a little over 5300 triangles

Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:36 pm
by DualJoe
Ermm 4000 quads are 8000 tris.

I've been reminded time and time again that it's not so much the tri-count that will drop framerates, but the textures will.

In other words if you can decrease texture-sizes by adding details through polygons that is actually better for framerates than the other way around.

Anything between 8000 and 12000 tris for a model is not very high for todays standards and current "next-gen" games are running 100k-200k tris on screen, with high-res textures.

There's more to an optimal model than just tri-count. Don't use flat-shading, try to avoid floating geometry as much as possible and add some LOD's.

Check the wiki for tutorials on modeling and tricks. ChuckStarchaser made a few entries in which he explains in depth what to do and what to avoid including the reasons.

Keep a look out for some new things from the PR/PU-guys.
The PU-team (well not the entire team exactly, for now mostly Chuck and I) is working on a way to make photorealistic texturing almost automatic. I've already made a proof of concept for the texture-processor, but Chuck is making a new one to be used for the upcoming new shaders for vegastrike he is also implementing.

When it's done all you have to do is feed it some simple masks and the processor will generate the correct textures with wear/tear and correct shading depending material etcetera.

EDIT
Btw I just remembered that I should still have the toy X-wing somewhere. I wonder what shape it's in after more than 20 years.

Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 11:43 pm
by hellcatv
fair enough---higher polygon counts are allowed


1 quad costs 4 vertices (the way we have it setup) and 2 traingles cost 6...therefore it's better to use half as many quads ;-)


ya it's fine if you go up to an arbitrary number of polys--- it's easier to simplify it now if we need to than complexify it later... point taken

Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 11:50 pm
by Beowulf
Hm, that looks quite nice. I do already have a model for the X-Wing (it came along with the other models from Homeworld 2: Warlords) but so far I didn't have much success in importing it into vegastrike since it's texture isn't power of two...
I think your model will be a lot better than the one I already have when it's finished.
Btw. the fighter models from Warlords are around 5000-6000 tris with two to four LODs. On my machine (which is a 2.6 GHz Pentium 4) it's no problem to have over a hundred ships in the game without any slowdown at all at full detail and a resolution of 1280x1024, so a higher poly count probably won't hurt.
There are several other ships for which we are still in need of models---at the moment I don't have models for the
- B-Wing
- A-Wing
- Y-Wing
- the Interdictor Cruiser
and the following models have a non square or non power of two texture:
- X-Wing
- TIE Fighter
- TIE Interceptor
and probably others I didn't take a look at yet.
For the Corellian Corvette I have a model but no texture.

Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:37 am
by Moe479
hmmm ~5k tris sounds nice for fighter scale crafts, that way wee can add alot of detail like on the wing shown above, directly into the geometry, if smothing is done right that will look outstanding with a proper spectacular map.

the othert thing i read is is that i have only one texture for a model of 1024^2, r we going to use submodels for wings so i can use a seperate texture for them?


as i wrote in another thread i think completly from scatch made models will give VS:SWU not the flair of beeing boltet together like other modification for games (that doesnt mean thier models r bad) + u dont have to care about any licensing stuff ... but for placeholders the warlord models r quite fine atm

my plan is:

incom T-Series:

T-65
Z-95 (will share some parts with the 65, like the nose, drivenozzels etc.)
T-73 (pirate/bountyhunter design)

maybe expended universe ships, that iam not looking for:
T-84/86
T-65 with XJ drive modifications

Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:45 am
by Beowulf
Hm, I'm not familiar with the T-73/84/86 and I didn't find anything about them on the net. What do they look like?