Catfish, Solar-powered Nav bouy (check links for more later)

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Catfish, Solar-powered Nav bouy (check links for more later)

Post by pontiac »

Hi all,

finally after a long time of vegastrike-withdrawal i finally had some spare time to finish one of my models.
It's just a relay station, but it's the first model i made where i used some new texture techniques. Learning that is quite a hassle.
Thanks again to Howard Day and his cool textures/ships.
And FINALLY Wings3D has an very decent UV-Editor including vertice-manipulation 8) :shock: *doesthehappydance*
The power of AutoUV-unwrapping combined with fine/detailed corrections make the difference.

The model is something i had made a long time ago (actually only the solar panels). The body of the station was just a test, but worked out fine.
Then i read through JackS' model list and found that relays are needed to be revamped.
So i just put some antennas (and here and there some transparency) on the model to make it look like a relay.
That said i call dibs for the relay station ;-)
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... een_01.png
More pics (also ingame and with form fitting shields):
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... 1/screens/

As i see it the reason for the solar panels is as backup power supply, to guarantee the communication between systems. JackS?
I also gave it a more powerfull defense installation (9 heavy beam turrets) to prevent easy communication breaking.
The rest of the unit file should match exactly the old relay.

Finally the vegastrike files for this unit:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... it.tar.bz2
If there are any major changes needed just mail/pm me.

Here a few problems i had when putting this into vegastrike:
  • transparency is somehow broken. if you look into the direction of the grid-antenna and another antenna is in the way the behind one will show up in front of the nearer one.
    Example (looking a bit like an escher-drawing ;-) ) http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... een_04.png
  • I didn't manage to get LODs (just some extreme lowpoly) to work. I tried different sizes and nothing worked (current CVS)
--------------------------------------------
Just to prevent some questions:
  • Yes i'm still working on the catfish. Do the forsaken have a unique style of ship coloring?
    Current status: finished the head section.
    http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... ls/catfish
  • Regarding cockpit export in the Wings3D Plugin (especially for etheral walker):
    There are a whole lot of missing things in the BinarySpacePartition algorithm that i wasn't aware of beeing needed. Basically i need to do BSP-sorting 2 times to be useable...... lotta timeconsuming redundant work, we will see when/if i get to do this.
    I think it would be easier to write an OBJ/BFXM/XMESH converter (perl/python), that transforms them into Cockpit files, than to change the existing code for the Wings3D plugin. It is much more likely that i try this way, we'll see.
    Then you just export to xmesh and tehn convert it to a cockpit file ;-)
--------------------------------------------

Also there is an aera-style (i hope) cargo hauler in the making.
Though i'm still searching for the right colors/basic layout of the hull:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... een_01.png
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... hauler_01/

Should i go after the few finished ships already in vegastrike or are there other/better guidelines for aera ship-hulls?

--------------------------------------------
Last but definately not least i put some samples for texturing up for download: I tried to make a tutorial for textures similar to this, but they aren't finished yet. Another WIP ;-)

Pontiac

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PS: I will NOT read through ALL of the threads i missed, so if there is anything important i should have read please point me to it ;-)
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Re: Finally back (with art too)

Post by pontiac »

pontiac wrote:Finally the vegastrike files for this unit:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... it.tar.bz2
If there are any major changes needed just mail/pm me.
A small update to the above archive.
I changed the shield animation to be much smaller (less big pixels):
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... een_05.png

updated xmeshs:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... high.xmesh
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... _low.xmesh

and updated wings file:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... uped.wings

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Post by Gorrünwe »

It looks great! :shock:
Congratulations... 8)
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Post by pincushionman »

I was about to write a long description about possible problems with LOD that I ran into...and then I realized that you were the person who wrote the wiki page on xmesh... :oops:

So I figured I couldn't tell you anything you didn't know already.

-pincushionman
Conquer space!
-pincushionman

---------------------------------------

Kansas really is flatter than a pancake!
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Post by pontiac »

pincushionman wrote:I was about to write a long description about possible problems with LOD that I ran into...and then I realized that you were the person who wrote the wiki page on xmesh... :oops:

So I figured I couldn't tell you anything you didn't know already.

-pincushionman
You may be surprised how few i know about LODs ;-)
I know the priniple (how they 'should' work), but not the real world (TM).
So if you have interesting facts about them please post them. I (and the other modellers) can only profit from that.

Pontiac

PS: i just rewrote the xmesh description, not defined them.
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Post by pincushionman »

Actually, you're the guy that answered my questions when I was having those problems earlier. But for those who missed that post:

yes, indeed, the game uses ONLY the LOD information in the meshfile specified in the .xunit. This top-level mesh specifies both the switch size and the meshfiles of ALL the LOD meshes for that ship or ship part. If you all remember, I was trying to daisy-chain the mesh calls so that each LOD calls the next furthest out. Nope. All in the high-poly mesh. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to echo the lower-LOD info in all the meshes so that any mesh could be used as the top-level mesh w/o much trouble.

Also, you're probably going to want to play around with LOD sizes that are far larger than the size in the example xmesh from the wiki. I'm not certain if that size is the pixel area of a rectangle onscreen that encloses your mesh, or if it's an actual count of the pixels that display part of your mesh, or something else; but it has something to do with the rendered image of your mesh.

I got reasonable values (for my particular unit) by dropping at 40,000 pixels and again at 5000 pixels (the second switch could probably stand to be smaller, but 5000 works okay). I'm running in 1024X768, so 40,000 is a square 200 pixels wide, or about one-fifth of the width of my screen. The example xmesh in the wiki says the first switch for that mesh is coming at 300 pixels. That's just larger than a square 17 pixels on the side, or for your reference, about the size of one of these yellow smiley faces: :D 8) :D In most cases, that's going to be a long ways out before it starts LOD-izing.

But since you can only get the lowpoly to show, I don't think those are your problems. I haven't played around too much in the latest CVS, though, so I can't say if the feature is broken or not.

-pincushionman
Conquer space!
-pincushionman

---------------------------------------

Kansas really is flatter than a pancake!
http://www.improbable.com/airchives/pap ... ansas.html
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Post by peteyg »

Welcome back, Pontiac!
mikeeusa2

Post by mikeeusa2 »

New Relay looks great :D

Perhapse the old relay could be used as a civillian relay, or maby something pirates use? Add variety.
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Re: Finally back (with art too)

Post by jackS »

pontiac wrote: Also there is an aera-style (i hope) cargo hauler in the making.
Though i'm still searching for the right colors/basic layout of the hull:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... een_01.png
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... hauler_01/

Should i go after the few finished ships already in vegastrike or are there other/better guidelines for aera ship-hulls?
looks less like the beginings of the mass cargo hauler than the beginings of the cargo mover and an aera cargo container.

couple of suggestions -
drop two more engine pods down from the existing two so as to have some thrust below center of mass of pod as well as above.

Do use the 3 models we have for the fighters as inspiration - don't use the aera capships we have (noting that they're all scheduled for being rennovated)

From the 3 models we do have, take away that the Aera ships, in contrast to the human models which are clearly built up out of parts, have an aura of "carved out of some grea singlet mass" (to wax perhaps too overly poetic) This is not to say that they actually were, but that the craftsman's aesthetic for Aera ships is somewhat different than that of the human designers

Big engines to pull a big mass can eat a lot of fuel - having somewhere to store the fuel could be nice.

For the container, I think having it as a fairly straightforward object with an interesting harness is the interesting way to attack it - simple basic shape with detail lavished on the external connections and maintenance hatches and product intake+outtake mechanisms, what-have you...

Hope that's more helpful than confusing :)
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Re: Finally back (with art too)

Post by jackS »

pontiac wrote: Do the forsaken have a unique style of ship coloring?
not yet - but they should - it'll be interesting to see how hard it is to make textures that are simultaneously indicative of high technology and aged+underfunded construction.

Unless it's a shuttle of some sort (or tending to traffic in particularly unpleasant regions of space), it's probably not seeing enough atmosphere for dirt or rust to accumulate in interesting fashion to denote the "less well off" nature of the Forsaken.
But - damage might not be repaired to conditions as pristine as in the more well off worlds, hence, little patches, welds, mismatched coloration of armor plates. Some things may have been made on the cheap - never looked as crisp in the first place. So - subtle blemishes, differences... make it look... used.

... that probably wasn't very helpful... :-(
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Post by pontiac »

pincushionman wrote:yes, indeed, the game uses ONLY the LOD information in the meshfile specified in the .xunit. This top-level mesh specifies both the switch size and the meshfiles of ALL the LOD meshes for that ship or ship part. If you all remember, I was trying to daisy-chain the mesh calls so that each LOD calls the next furthest out. Nope. All in the high-poly mesh. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to echo the lower-LOD info in all the meshes so that any mesh could be used as the top-level mesh w/o much trouble.
Ok, that I already know ;-)
But as you stated correctly this wasn't the problem since i only use 1 LOD Mesh.
Also, you're probably going to want to play around with LOD sizes that are far larger than the size in the example xmesh from the wiki. I'm not certain if that size is the pixel area of a rectangle onscreen that encloses your mesh, or if it's an actual count of the pixels that display part of your mesh, or something else; but it has something to do with the rendered image of your mesh.

I got reasonable values (for my particular unit) by dropping at 40,000 pixels and again at 5000 pixels (the second switch could probably stand to be smaller, but 5000 works okay). I'm running in 1024X768, so 40,000 is a square 200 pixels wide, or about one-fifth of the width of my screen. The example xmesh in the wiki says the first switch for that mesh is coming at 300 pixels. That's just larger than a square 17 pixels on the side, or for your reference, about the size of one of these yellow smiley faces: :D 8) :D In most cases, that's going to be a long ways out before it starts LOD-izing.
I tried values reaching from 1s 100s 1000s 10000s and 100000s, and didn't get any noticeable difference.
Maybe my low poly version is as cool as he high poly one ;-)

I suspect that the number should be the screen size (area/radius)?
But since you can only get the lowpoly to show, I don't think those are your problems. I haven't played around too much in the latest CVS, though, so I can't say if the feature is broken or not.
That was also my first thought, but i want to get this behaviour confirmed before stating anything.

Thanks for your answer,
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Re: Finally back (with art too)

Post by pontiac »

jackS wrote: looks less like the beginings of the mass cargo hauler than the beginings of the cargo mover and an aera cargo container.

couple of suggestions -
drop two more engine pods down from the existing two so as to have some thrust below center of mass of pod as well as above.
i'll just use three of them at 120°. That's the must simple combination to get 360* steering.
To make it more modular i could just put a second part similar to the one i already have on the other side (one piece, see below?)
Do use the 3 models we have for the fighters as inspiration - don't use the aera capships we have (noting that they're all scheduled for being rennovated)
That was what i actually meant ;-)
From the 3 models we do have, take away that the Aera ships, in contrast to the human models which are clearly built up out of parts, have an aura of "carved out of some grea singlet mass" (to wax perhaps too overly poetic) This is not to say that they actually were, but that the craftsman's aesthetic for Aera ships is somewhat different than that of the human designers
I will see what i can do to fit it more into this description ...
What about modular designs, everal parts per ship/unit?
See the various examples in this post.
Big engines to pull a big mass can eat a lot of fuel - having somewhere to store the fuel could be nice.
Jup, that's one thing i didn't think about yet.
I can think of 3 ways to do this:
1) integrate them into the cargo mover,
2) embed them into the cargo itself or
3) make it a 3rd part (would that be against the description above?)
For the container, I think having it as a fairly straightforward object with an interesting harness is the interesting way to attack it - simple basic shape with detail lavished on the external connections and maintenance hatches and product intake+outtake mechanisms, what-have you...
So lots of greebling greebling greebling ...
Hope that's more helpful than confusing :)
I would say 'most helpful'.

pontiac wrote: Do the forsaken have a unique style of ship coloring?
not yet - but they should - it'll be interesting to see how hard it is to make textures that are simultaneously indicative of high technology and aged+underfunded construction.
Incoming transmission ... translating message ..... Done.
"Make it look like cheap, expired and half-broken pseudo-cyberpunk equipment."
hehe just kidding ;-)
Unless it's a shuttle of some sort (or tending to traffic in particularly unpleasant regions of space), it's probably not seeing enough atmosphere for dirt or rust to accumulate in interesting fashion to denote the "less well off" nature of the Forsaken.
But - damage might not be repaired to conditions as pristine as in the more well off worlds, hence, little patches, welds, mismatched coloration of armor plates. Some things may have been made on the cheap - never looked as crisp in the first place. So - subtle blemishes, differences... make it look... used.
Good hints .. so i will try to make it look like it is a high tech ship that is on duty over hundreds (tousands ?) of years without enough money/material to fix it properly.

Pontiac
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Re: Finally back (with art too)

Post by jackS »

pontiac wrote:
I will see what i can do to fit it more into this description ...

What about modular designs, everal parts per ship/unit?
See the various examples in this post.

...

Jup, that's one thing i didn't think about yet.
I can think of 3 ways to do this:
1) integrate them into the cargo mover,
2) embed them into the cargo itself or
3) make it a 3rd part (would that be against the description above?)
it's not expressly an issue of modular design as much as the aesthetic of the exhibited modularity - more of modern unibody-construction versus a 1960s VW Beetle. Or perhaps more aptly, that all ships are composed of modular parts, but that one can have otherwise modular parts with a custom finish, or one can have something that was clearly built, so to speak, out of a snap-fit model kit. The Aera don't have scores of competing companies producing different models at the same time, just scores of designers competing to produce the next universally adopted model. Modularity in an Aera ship would be at the macro and micro scale - internal parts, and external subunits - but each piece should be blissfully ... whole - I'm sure I can come up with a better description if I sleep on it, but.. this is what stream-of-consciousness gets me

indeed, speaking of modularity, and adressing the fuel issue - I was hoping that you'd make the cargo container and the cargo mover into distinct models, thus making option 2 rather odd
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Re: Finally back (with art too)

Post by pontiac »

Ok, i think i got the idea of wera modular design into my head now ;-)
jackS wrote:indeed, speaking of modularity, and adressing the fuel issue - I was hoping that you'd make the cargo container and the cargo mover into distinct models, thus making option 2 rather odd
It was just an option that popped into my mind, that doesn't mean it is usefull at all ;-) (Though, if you think of this: every cargo(container) has it's own fuel so it can be carried around. the mover unit just has a basic amount of fuel to move itself around ... whatever, you get the idea... may ve quite useless in practice)

Regarding the relay, do you need some 'factionized' textures for it?
I made an ISO one[1] (which turned out to be quite cool), but are there any special requests?



Pontiac

[1] 1.2MB PNG ISO Texure:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... ay_iso.png
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Post by Guest »

Nice texture :D.

So will ISO, Luddites, Independents, etc have this very nice relay and the confed
and their cohorts have stranj's?

Making everything more diverse and thus fun too look at would be good, so
having multiple models for facilities is a good thing in my opinion. There would
be many diffrent relay station models in real life (TM).

The ISO texture is very good, can't wait to see it ingame.

Perhapse a rundown (luddite, forsaken) texture and maby a pirate one? and
a few diffrent generic ones for other less well funded orgs?
mikeeusa2

Post by mikeeusa2 »

Darn, the relay is nolonger the piddling little defenseless duckshoot it used to be :P
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Post by pontiac »

I've now updated the wiki with some of the Aesthetic descriptions (mostly quoted JackS and crosslinked to the forum):

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/phpwi ... ctionsAera
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/phpwi ... nsForsaken

C&C are welcome as always ;-)

Regarding the heavy beams: i don't know if this will be kept by the dev team, But i could imagine that a single point of failure (provided there is no comm backup-ship/station somewhere esle in the system) should have heavy defenses. ;-)

EDIT: BTW I think there is currently no effect to the dynamic universe engine if the relay in one sysrem is destroyed/jammed, but are there plans to do this?

Pontiac
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Post by jackS »

pontiac wrote: Regarding the heavy beams: i don't know if this will be kept by the dev team, But i could imagine that a single point of failure (provided there is no comm backup-ship/station somewhere esle in the system) should have heavy defenses. ;-)
Well, from a failure perspective, there are two sorts of relays - the ones that are insystem oriented, and the ones that bridge systems across a jump-point. The insystem oriented ones should be (as installations go) smallish, heavily specialized, and cheap outside of their specialization. These should be failure resistant via a ubiquitous nature ensuring sufficient redundancy for normal failure modes. Thus, not stations in any real way - if there's a dock, the only thing there would probably be some emergency fuel, emergency hull-patch type stuff, and a call box ;-) Any bulkiness the station posesses would be a feature of its dedicated comm equipment, not of voluminous internal space. Not heavily armed, nor even that heavily defended, except that they'd squeel on all the comm channels and launch repeater probes like mad if they got fired at, thereby letting everyone and their mother know that you're doing something the owners would greatly frown upon.

The inter-system links are necessarily stations in their own right, not only because of the single-point of failure issue - albeit much of the offensive aspect of the defense burden one imagines would be placed on the shoulders of whatever passes for the customs/checkpoint station/fighter squadron/fixed defenses/what-have-you near the jump point (at least in more upscale or defended regions) - but also because it has to be large enough to house and service the jump capable message relay probes and have room to keep a couple courier craft around. So, the inter-system and intra-system communications setup would be notably different. Even then, one doesn't want to make civilian targets too unnecessarily tempting - better to be replaceable, even if not cheaply so. it's not going to be a fortress, it'll be designed to withstand small attacks, but it's not cost effective to have to build star fortresses at every internal jump node. If such a station were destroyed, an intra-system station could be quickly deployed that, along with courier craft, could fill the void, albeit in somewhat less less fluid fashion, until a new inter-system relay station could be built

@Pontiac - your model makes a pretty good intra-system comm station, albeit I'd probably tweak the unit scale to make it a bit smaller, it doesn't need 4 docks, and it'd be nice to have a couple launch tubes for repeater probes - but on the whole, it fills the slot pretty darn well.
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Post by pontiac »

jackS wrote:@Pontiac - your model makes a pretty good intra-system comm station, albeit I'd probably tweak the unit scale to make it a bit smaller, it doesn't need 4 docks, and it'd be nice to have a couple launch tubes for repeater probes - but on the whole, it fills the slot pretty darn well.
I wasn't sure with the scale, so the model you got is just the same scale as i used them for testing. (This time i think i saved it with another one anyway ;-) )


Here is the current model with only one dock port and three hatches instead of the missing ones (new textures). I dunno about the launch tubes though, where should they sit on the model?
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... it.tar.bz2
it's 3MB just so you know (is the name of the iso-map correct?)

Pontiac

PS:
The current source-files are here:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... ed.tar.bz2
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Post by pyramid »

It seems that the Catfish concept proposed in this thread follows the canon and as such should be followed for this vessel.

Unfortunately the links to the concept images are broken, and since such a long time has passed since the last posts, there is little hope to recover them, though I'll try through the only means available (the forum + pm).

Should any of the forum visitors know pontiac's whereabouts or have by chance the concept images stored on their drives, sharing of those would be greatly appreciated.

Via email, jackS commented on the general concept. I want to share this authoritative guidance with the artist(s) that would like to take the challenge of reinventing the concept in case it is entirely lost. Authoritative in this context means according to the UTCS (Upon the Coldest Sea) canon and aligned with manufacturing styles of the faction by which the vessel in question was manufactured.
I'm in favor of this design (modularly extended train of sections, each with scarabs as parasite craft) than with collections of Scarab shuttles glomming on to each other. Or, to say another way, I'm not particularly well-disposed to the concept of agglomerations of shuttlecraft, and I'd rather see something more akin to an at least skeletal Catfish shuttle-carrier and freight body, even if it ends up being dependent on it's parasite craft for movement or some such high degree of symbiosis, than to see a craft composed entirely of shuttles.
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