I'm working on form-fitting shields for current ships that do not have them. As suggested, I started with the Clydesdale. The following has 2140 polies -- is that an appropriate number?
Also, do I need to make a UV map of this, or will the engine handle it ok as-is (I had a wierd face problem last time I tried exporting sans-UV). If I have to, can I just throw trinagles all over the uv-place, or does the uvmap have to look contiguous?
I would say that's too many. I'd shoot for the hundreds. You don't really see the shield mesh for very long, so it's probably not worth going crazy on it.
You've got to UV map it, else the geometry doesn't know which points make what faces when you export to xmesh. If you don't want to put too much effort in, just unwrap it into as few contiguous parts as possible, preferably two, and place them on top of each other in your UV mapping thingamabob. This will minimize the 'seam' that will be visible when the shield flashes.
I think the more interesting question is shield poly-count versus ship poly count - but don't forget the other thing - 2000 sounds not too unreasonable to me for a top level LOD, but there should probably be one or two more - shield flashes far away shouldn't use massive poly draws.
Hmm. Didn't know it was possible to lod shield meshes, though I guess there's no reason it shouldn't be possible!
The great doing lods for this is that they don't necessarily have to be the same! Just the same basic shape. The UV maps totally don't have to match, so you can just map them whatever way is most convenient!
Yeah, the top-level Clydesdale is ~21000 polys so the ratio is about 1:10. But I think I can get a lower-count one down to maybe 400 or so. I might even be able to do better for a really long-range one. Thanks for the pointers.
I've heard that gmail doesn't much care for zip files... so we'll see how this works - at least I know I have room for uncompressed files (just tar it? or rename the extension and see if they just care about that? haven't looked into the matter)
@pincushionman: personnaly, i think the 190 polys version is great! Look at the actual force field and you will certainly notice that your project will be perfectly integrated...
But, just a thing: could you make several field colours? It could be depend on its efficiency or its dimensions... At this moment, i could imagine everything: the colour could change when the force strength decrease, or when the ship arrives in a planet atmosphere...
now that would be cool, the shield colour changing depending on the strength of the shield... it wouldn't be that hard to dynamically change the shield texture, as well, just run something which changes the hue of the image. I know how to do this in clanLib but I dunno about the libs you use
Anybody that knows how to do it want to implement it? It would be an awesome effect, and would be usefu as well...
You'd probably make it a really light blue when the shield is full, and really dark when it is half empty, perhaps also it cuold have a reddish tinge on one end of the spectrum?l
Couldn't you just use vertex colors? It would save a bit of texture memory, and might be faster than dynamicly generating a texture. Are the shields textured? If so, why?
The shields are textured. Actually, they have an animation that plays, making it look like there's little tendrils of electricity going all over the surface.
peteyg wrote:The shields are textured. Actually, they have an animation that plays, making it look like there's little tendrils of electricity going all over the surface.
At least the ships with cool shields do.
oo, well in that case, instead of the shield just disappearing or not showing at all when the shields run out, could it be made to draw away? like heaps of holes get bigger and sread until nothing shows, sorta like a ripple effect from 3 stones in a pool... hard to describe....
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