New Hornet model

[Privateer Ferrius]

The Salthi isn't far off the original WC1 one though. They just changed the cockpit, and reshaped the wings to go better with the curved design that seems to be a hallmark of Kilrathi design.

[chuck_starchaser]

22.5
Spans like 90 degrees wide.
I know it makes no sense, since nobody has meter-sized screens; but most games, if not all, like to give use players fish eyes.

I thougt the Salthi was a Privateer - Righteous Fire ship; so, it's actually from WC1?

[Privateer Ferrius]

That didn't make any sense at all to me, Chuck. Maybe you could provide some context, since the rest of the conversation's buried on the previous page?

[DualJoe]

22.5
Spans like 90 degrees wide.

Thanks
Would you like to greeble the engine? You're more at home with that stuff than I am. I need more time to figure that stuff out.
I'll do the greebles on the next ship I make, I promise.

OT again
Seems that a number of the ships in SWC are from privateer.
Ferrius the Dralthi that you are currently texturing is also the one from SWC.

[chuck_starchaser]

That didn't make any sense at all to me, Chuck. Maybe you could provide some context, since the rest of the conversation's buried on the previous page?

I don't know enough about it, actually, to provide context
What it is is this: the camera, in Blender, has a way of controlling the angle that its view spans, horizontally and vertically; but the way you change it's by changing a parameter given in millimeters. Something to do with cameras or zooms; but I'm not a photographer. What I do know is that, when I was working on the Hellcat's cockpit I had to do a lot of fiddling and testing cycles before I got it right, and the figure was 22.5 mm in the end; which is a very wide angle (50 mm is a pretty narrow angle); which makes sense, since the Vegastrike engine spans about 90 degrees of visual field horizontally, which is about the same as most 3D games, but makes no sense at all, since you're sitting at least two feet away from your screen, and so your screen only spans like 30 degrees of your visual field horizontally, but heck.

[DualJoe]

50mm lenses for the standard size negatives (that's what it refers to in Blender) is on par with the human eye.

You are also talking about camera in the vegastrike engine I presume when you talk about 90 degrees of vision.

EDIT
BTW WC1-cockpit views are not 4:3, but I gather that the vegastrikes view is.

[DualJoe]

It seems we did a pretty decent job in merging the two styles. And the origin artist had a good feeling for perspective.






@Chuck if you put the wings lower on the hull and gave it an angle down, then there's no way that you could see the front wings from the cockpit and at the same time see the inside.

I assume that the view should be correct for this model and not a pixelperfect overlapping match with the original?
I'm asking because I just saw your 3d cockpit.

This cockpit will be a working model ingame right, and receive lighting and whatnot?
If this is not the case, then I agree with Ferrius' post a while back about there being no purpose in redoing the cockpits.

[chuck_starchaser]

Hey; you're doing a great job with the camera positioning.
Ultimately, the comparison shots will have to agree exactly; but this may require fiddling with the cockpit geometry (thinning those window frames, etc.).

Yes, I suspected that's why you were putting the front wings so high and horizontal; and here we're facing yet another Origin inconsistency; obviously they cheated. What do we do?
Frankly, nothing we do will be "right", but we could conceivably cheat also
I mean, what parts of the ship we see from inside the cockpit, will, of technical necessity, be in a separate file, together with the cockpit interior. So, in that file, we can raise the front wings so that they are visible, I suppose.
Personally, I think I'd much rather cheat about where the bottom of the windows should be.
But we could also do half and half cheats: Lower the bottom of the windows a bit, and raise the front wings a bit; --in that file; not in the main model, though... But that's what I would choose; if you disagree, I can raise the front wings again; haven't started welding them yet... Uh, wait a minute, I have... sort of, haven't cut the hole in the hull yet.

My HellcatV cockpit is fully 3D; AND it is also a pixel-perfect match from the camera's POV, at the default position. There's no contradiction between these two things. And of course it will receive dynamic lighting and shadows and whatnot, as well as have some static lighting baked into the glow map. In-game, the camera can move: Presently we have forward and back motions in response to acceleration. Possibly Klauss will add lateral acceleration shifts one of these days, (or I might, if he tells me where the code for that is ); plus, he was working on a padlock view (camera automatically tracks the locked bogie), and I was suggesting to him (or at least thought of suggesting to him) that a lateral motion from the head rolling on the head-rest be included, as the head turns. Finally, once we have 3D first person walking at bases, we'll be able to climb onto the ship and step down into the cockpit.

EDIT:
No cheating!
I was just thinking, if we consider the lateral motion of the head on the head-rest, as it turns; it does move closer to the window it's looking through; so maybe if we adjust the size of the helmet...

Have a look at the HellcatV Blender file, you'll see it's fully 3D...
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/WCUships ... mera.blend
That was my first model, too, btw.

[chuck_starchaser]

Just a teaser...



I had to do a lot of cuts of the fuselage to prepare it for welding the front wings; and I didn't want to cut through stuff that would need a lot of adjustment later, so I worked on the side-windows a bit. Turns out, they still need adjustments, but I've now separated the cockpit, to its own object, and I'll remove unnecessary cuts from it. Anyways, I'll finish the welding tonight no matter how late I may have to go to sleep, and post the file. I haven't changed the external geometry of the cockpit; just the window frame lines.

[DualJoe]

Haha, nice job on those last adjustments on the cockpit.
Well I see there's no room for anything but perfection here.

If you want the cockpit to be exact match with the cutscene and cockpit-views, then the side window should be flat from front to back. The ingame model had a more rounded cockpit, that's why I did the cockpit as is.

Allright I will step up my game. A pixelperfect match it is then.

I will need the exact values for the vegastrike-camera and cheat all of the geometry accordingly. This would however be noticable when you also animate getting in and out of the cockpit.

[DualJoe]

Still feels a bit awkward though. Update everything to modern technology but keep the limitations of 16 year old graphics and hand drawn perspectives.

Why don't we just rebuild the cockpit like shown on the old ingame pics, but this time with the correct perspectives for 3d ingame?
That would be the only real solution IMO for animating getting in and out of the cockpit.
If everything is correct in relation to each other than that would also mean an update for the old cockpit-views.
Just work out the positions of everything, measure them relative to each other and rebuild it in the new cockpit. It would not be a pixelperfect match, but it would be correct and realistic.

[chuck_starchaser]

Wait; that's not "limitations". Pre-deforming displays to compensate for perspective viewing has been done before, and will be done again. If you look at the HellcatV cockpit, you'll find those displays have very odd shapes, so that they approximate a square shape from the pilot's perspective; and, well, if I was designing a cockpit in real life, what's there to prevent me from doing the same thing? Might be more expensive; granted; but then again, we're talking about the future...

Allright; I'll have to eat my words; it's 3:30 and I've got to get some sleep.
The welding is done; but there's a lot of cleaning up to do...
Here's a teaser:

[DualJoe]

Coming along nicely.
Pretty soon a decision must be made wether the top of the canopy is glass or not.

I'll start on the instruments of the cockpit. Will make them symmetrical at first and then I'll see about deforming them to accomodate pilots view.

BTW, poly-wise this one will rule them all, no textures, everything is modelled.
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ound+image

[DualJoe]

Base-shape of the dashboards is done. Now those screens and lights.

Chuck are you absolutely sure, that the ingame camera is a 22.5mm equivalent?

If you are not going to use a standard camera ingame all this pixelperfect-matching is complete bs.

Also is the engine able to map the content of the displays under those weird angles?

I won't continue untill all of the above is confirmed.

[klauss]

Also is the engine able to map the content of the displays under those weird angles?

The Ogre port will map whatever you give it - the current engine will have to be hacked - best option IMO, until the Ogre port is ready, would be to use 2D renders of your 3D cockpits.

About those MFD, though... please make sure they make sense 3D-wise. That is... you can tweak the shape and location to achieve a good match, but don't do stuff like floating things or totally unrealistic stuff, because the idea of a 3D cockpit is that you'll be able to move your head around a bit - if the MFDs don't make sense, you'll notice when you move your head. If you can't keep the MFDs there and make them make sense, I'd say it's OK to move them (a bit). I don't know... a compromise seems necessary here. In the case of the hellcat, they were quite integrated into the dashboard, so it wasn't that big a deal - but these MFDs are not, they're simply square views slapped on the screen, as if they were zoom-ins on smaller (rather farther) actual screens on the dashboard. Perhaps doing that (the screens on the dashboard) would work - I dunno again, I think this is a nice oportunity to try alternatives, and decide how future models will be.

[chuck_starchaser]

The screens on the Hellcat, I started off with square ones, then I rotated them like by about 10 degrees horizontally and vertically, and finally deformed them, but keeping their display quads flat. I don't know what you mean by "making sense", klauss; but if you mean that the deformations shouldn't be noticeable from other perspectives, I disagree. There's nothing sinful or reprehensible about deforming a screen to improve its ergonomics.
And the alternatives, I've already explored them, and they aren't pretty. Either you make your cockpit pixel-perfect to the original, or you'll wind up chasing wrinkles all over the place.

[chuck_starchaser]

Coming along nicely.
Pretty soon a decision must be made wether the top of the canopy is glass or not.

Yeah, I just colored the top like glass as an experiment. I actually hadn't noticed there were stuff at the top on the cockpit screeny.

BTW, poly-wise this one will rule them all, no textures, everything is modelled.
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ound+image

Don't worry; we'll get there...





(No, I had to cut in order to weld the wings on; but I'll optimize the mesh afterwards.)

[klauss]

The screens on the Hellcat, I started off with square ones, then I rotated them like by about 10 degrees horizontally and vertically, and finally deformed them, but keeping their display quads flat. I don't know what you mean by "making sense", klauss; but if you mean that the deformations shouldn't be noticeable from other perspectives, I disagree. There's nothing sinful or reprehensible about deforming a screen to improve its ergonomics.
And the alternatives, I've already explored them, and they aren't pretty. Either you make your cockpit pixel-perfect to the original, or you'll wind up chasing wrinkles all over the place.

No, I meant that they should be physically plausible, sound cockpit designs that would be "possible" in real life (that is... likely or not, at least possible). "floating stuff" is a good example of something that does not meet those standards. A less obvious yet accurate example would be something that obstructs the way in/out of the cockpit (making the cockpit impractical or physically unreachable - noone can sit on it), or something that wouldn't fit within the canopy bounds.

Things like that, that would blatantly kill believability if you dared to look at it from a slightly different angle.

The shape being odd isn't enough to kill believability - rather, it makes the design aim (making the MFDs look perspective-correct) rather obvious, and makes the whole cockpit design come to life by making stuff have a purpose.
But seeing an infinitely thin quad representing the MFD screen separate from it as you change your viewpoint... well... does kill believability.

[chuck_starchaser]

Ah, okay, I get ya. I could add something to that list, too; economy of form also makes sense; like I could have left the MFD's on the Hellcat on a flat plane and just deform the crap out of them, but they would have been very long vertically on the outside, and therefore more expensive to make, less space efficient. A rotation to partially face the camera was in order.

I hope welding the wings is a worthy endeavor. I finished the front wings now, but I still have the rudder to do. Getting rid of guraud shading artifacts is a frigging nightmare, tho, I tell'ya...

[Privateer Ferrius]

Normally I don't post modelling crits because I don't know anything about Blender, but I can't help but be extremely irked by a few nitpicks. Instead of failing miserably to describe it, I'll give ya a picture:



The front wing shape seems wrong, and it extends to the nose of the starfighter. The cockpit should either be long, or the wing should be cut a bit. The cockpit point of join to the body is also way off.

[chuck_starchaser]

Yeah, I know all that, Ferrius; it's just that the pics of the ship in-game, the pics of it on-deck, and the blueprint, all disagree with each other; not to speak of the views from inside the cockpit; so what we're trying to do is find a compromise that aesthetically evokes each of those views, while beiing somewhat of an "average" of them all.

[Privateer Ferrius]

The wing and nose just strike me as wrong. Sorry to be that blunt, but that's just my opinion.

[chuck_starchaser]

Well, sorry to be blunt, in turn; but what really strikes me as really WRONG is that you'd wait until I've spent like 25 hours of work welding the wings to the body before voicing your opinion.

[Privateer Ferrius]

No need to be so defensive

I only noticed it when you posted with that picture and the cokpit togeter.

[DualJoe]

Yeah, I know all that, Ferrius; it's just that the pics of the ship in-game, the pics of it on-deck, and the blueprint, all disagree with each other; not to speak of the views from inside the cockpit; so what we're trying to do is find a compromise that aesthetically evokes each of those views, while beiing somewhat of an "average" of them all.

That sums it up.
You could be specific as to what you think is "wrong" if there's something we're not seeing. Keep in mind that the views of the model are orthographic and the handdrawn-pics are in "perspective".

Sorry to keep going on about it, but I still need to know the exact camera-angle used in vegastrike in order to get the cockpit to be an exact match ingame.

I will probably never agree about that ergonomic reshaping to appear square, I'll trust the old gray mass to do that for me. It's been used for similar tasks longer than man has been using the wheel and like that it will not get outdated anytime soon.
I see no problem at all in looking at a flat display at a slight angle and I'll stick to KISS everytime.

But hey, it's your show, you people want funny-shaped displays, then you get funny-shaped displays.