High-Born Luxury Yacht

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jackS
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Post by jackS »

Downloaded the .wings model.
The pronounced viewing area has firmly solidified my opinion in the direction of a High-born Luxury Yacht.

For concept of scale, I envision the forward "glassbottom-style" viewing area (the blue region) to be ~9-10 meters wide - an opulent observation area, just large enough to hold a "small" cocktail party.

To add:

Retro thrusters on both the rear and foward "wings".
Additional attention to rearmost section between engines
Possibly an additional horizontal support at the top of the viewing area.
Additional details - sensors, transcievers, airlocks, etc to help define sense of scale.

Turn indented portion of lower hull into attachment area for a tightly coupled custom pinnace (~20m long). (the yacht will never see dirtside, nor, unless it's in dire need of maintenance, even the inside of any 'common' dock.)


Additional modeling:
-- Model pinnace.
Make a few (compatible) variants of the yacht and pinnace - for the ammount of money someone would be shelling out for one of these, they'd like to be able to choose between a few different models.
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Post by tiny paintings »

Awesome! Luxury yacht it is! With 50 meters long engines it will be a nice compliment for rich people with lacking self-esteem ;)
I'll try to come up with a few more (3 total?) designs. I have one idea of a variant with more glass areas, meant to be gardens/pool/sports areas. Does transparent textures render correct in VS?
Other ideas are welcome.

With the current scale the ship will be about 180 meters long (based on that the glass 10 m wide). The dostoevsky in the picture below is roughly 30 meters long (for reference, how long is a dostoevsky/normal small ship in VS?). IMO this would be the ideal pinnace/yacht scale ratio.

Image

What company manufactures these crafts? I think adding a logo/modell no/company name somewhere in the texture would be nice detail.

If anyone knows where to find information regarding adding getting this ingame and how to do the engine-glow I'd appreciate some pointers. I looked in the wiki but didn't find anything, old forum threads?

I'll add this to the list in the wiki.

EDIT:
Here's a pic of the retro thrusters:
Image
It weighs in at 3300 triangles :roll:
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Post by hurleybird »

Hummm, I take it that unlike most military designs, this ship will have windows? I think that this is vital to establish sense of scale for the viewing area, which otherwise could easily be mistaken for a cockpit.
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Post by klauss »

Just a suggestion, quick since I must leave: why don't you model a bar inside the view area (for the cocktails), for the top-level LOD? That would convey its size without needing windows (although I like windows).
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Post by tiny paintings »

@hurleybird: yes it will have windows, the good kind ;)

@klauss: it's a good idea but I think it might be hard to pull off. anything I put in there will look rather small since it's supposed to be 10 m wide. I had a thought not like yours when thinking of the gardens i mentioned - that IMO could look really beneath a transparent texture, which brings me back to "does VS do them okay?".

@jackS: should the yacht have any arms or does it rely on escort craft / fleeing (nice to have those big engines ;)) to protect it from pirates?
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Post by smbarbour »

My two cents: Good ECM and HEAVY shields, maybe point defence for what ECM doesn't stop. Perhaps a small (1-4) contingent of fighters.
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Post by Halleck »

tiny_paintings: I wrote a short article on adding engine glow via units.csv, it's in the wiki HowTos section (Engine glow is added after-the-fact, it's not a component of the ship model). Also, look in that section for documentation on how to get models into the game. If you can't find one, please tell me and I'll write one.

You don't have to worry about the nitty gritty if you don't want to- send the finished model my way (along with textures and a specularity map if you can make one) and I will get it into the game for you. Of course, it's a good skill to be able to get your own ships into the game, so if you still want to learn how, I'll help you. :D
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Post by hurleybird »

If your doing several variations, you can do a version without arms, a version that is heavily armed, and any amount of variations indbetween. I'm sure that some (but not all) rich people would be interested in the extra security, especially rich cmob-boss types :)
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Post by tiny paintings »

I said I'd add this to the wiki list didn't I? Well, no can do as I cannot log in - it says I should use my forum username & password but that doesn't work so well. Maybe someone else can add it, or tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Yeah, ECM and nice, expensive shields are probably enough for most people.
Of course, if _when_ I buy one I will be sure to mount one or two of these puppies 8)

Image

Image

Would be great for scale perception but cost lots of polies.

@halleck: Thanks! Seems easy enough. There is no "how to put your unit ingame" per se, but there seems to be scattered information enough. I'll get back to you if I have questions.

@hurleybird: Good thinking! Why didn't I think of that?
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Post by hurleybird »

Would be great for scale perception but cost lots of polies.
Just make LOD's of the turret meshes.

In any case, poly's dont matter so much as you probably will never see more than two of these at a time.
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Post by jackS »

Windows are wunderbar.
I'd leave weapons emplacements off of all but 1 variant, and make that 1 variant clearly the "Most beloved possession of a petty dictator of an insignificant moon"-style variant. Most customers wouldn't be sailing their yachts through pirate infested regions, and if they did, they'd arrange for protection that did not involve besmirching their paint-job. To survive the unexpected encounter, there are the tried and true methods of payoffs, and of running screaming for the authorities, hoping that one's shields hold out :)

A Dostoevsky (at least in current CVS, I tweaked the ship sizes a bit a week or so ago) is ~26 meters long. Thinking some more, I was thinking that the pinnace should probably be a fair bit bigger than the 20 m I first suggested, as it would likely be designed to seat several guests (with luggage) and the chauffer. I was thinking of making it nestle into the curve behind the forward underslung region, rather than attaching it at the back - at the least, it would probably be a bit forward of the dostoevsky in the picture so as not to cause the passengers to have to disembark near the mechanic's and servants' quarters ;-)

Transparent textures - I believe the interior would need to be a distinct mesh with the current engine setup, but otherwise are great :)
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Post by Halleck »

That is a WICKED turret mesh! We've got to get that baby into the game. I'm sure it would look great on other ships too.
Also, good job budgeting the polygons.

Priv remake has cockpits with stuff in them (check the tarsus).
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Great job with the retro thrusters! The whole ship looks 7 times better and more interesting with them. As for windows, IMO, there should be two rows on each side above the wings, and one more row in the front bulge under the wings, if my math is right.
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Post by Halleck »

Halleck wrote:Also, look in that section for documentation on how to get models into the game. If you can't find one, please tell me and I'll write one.
I decided to make good on my promise. Here's HowTo:Add Ships.

Hope this comes in handy as a general reference! (Also, can some folks help with cleaning it up a bit? Thanks.)
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Post by tiny paintings »

Great initiative halleck :)

I just skimmed through it and most things of interest seems to be there. I have one request (anybody feel free to contribute :)) though - some more information about LODs. More specifically what to name them, and what I have to do in order to get them working - is it just a matter of naming them right?

Here's a candidate for the armed variant:
Image
I cheated a bit and subdivided and rendered it make it better looking ;)
It's basically the yacht as you've seen it before with a commanding bridge and modified front wings. They are now shorter and more distinct, and also not really wings anymore but thrusters. The cocktail lounge is still in place for "small" classy events but now the petty-little-dictator-over-an-insignifficant-moon also has his own bridge where he can make himself look important.
c&c please!
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Post by klauss »

Transparent textures: theorically, as long as they're always fully-opaque or fully-transparent, it should work. In practice, the engine doesn't enable alpha blending for normal meshes, so it's a no. BUT, you can have mesh parts which are transparent. Just not the entire mesh (or better said, it could be the entire mesh but it wouldn't be good for performance). Basically, do this: draw the entire thing opaque, without the transparent things, as one object. Then, have separate meshes for the transparent items. When you convert to XMESH, you have to assign a blend mode of "SRCALPHA INVSRCALPHA" to the transparent meshes, and the usual "ONE ZERO" to opaque ones. Transparent meshes are sorted and drawn in a specific sequence relative to opaque meshes so that they render correctly. That's why you shouldn't make the entire thing use transparency: it would hinder performance by treating the entire thing as order-dependant.

At some point we will add an "ALPHATEST" option so that you may use transparent meshes which are fully opaque or fully transparent without requiring order dependency (so you can use them as you wish). But that's not done for now.
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Post by Halleck »

Glad you like it!

I don't know how to implement LOD's, so someone else will have to add LOD instructions to the article. I think it does have to do with names though.. 1_0, 1_1, 1_2 or something. And you append them with the method described in the "multiple xmeshes" subsection.
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Post by klauss »

LODs can be named whatever you like. Find a model with LODs in game (most Rlaan ships) and convert them to BFXM. You'll see a lot of 0_1, 0_2, 0_3 files which are the lods, (n_l with n=number of mesh, l=LOD level), but that naming scheme is arbitrary since BFXM does not have names for them. When you write your own files, you can do whatever you like. You just need to convert all to xmesh, and add the LOD entries to the xmesh, and perform the "mesher .xmesh .bfxm xbc" step. I'm not sure, but I think it reads the LOD levels declared in the mesh automatically. If you had multiple meshes to add, each with its own LOD sequence, you repeat the process with "xba" instead of "xbc".
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Post by charlieg »

Great model!
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Post by MamiyaOtaru »

jackS wrote:Windows are wunderbar.
I knew it!

I must use this quote out of context someday ;)
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Post by tiny paintings »

@Halleck:
Image
Image
Look at that sweet puppy! 60 admonishers you say? No problem, sir!

Development of the yacht and the pinnaces sort of came to an halt due to lack of inspiration... things will come when I come up with a good enough design.
In the meanwhile I've been trying to learn how to UV, texture and LOD things... The result is what you see above - the textures aren't serious attempts, merely excerices (made it in like 5 minutes... uh... not really ;)) to view my sweet turret ingame :)

Also, what's up with specularity? I've got almost black specmaps (for the ship it is) but they still shine like hell. What material properties from wings get exported? Do both material spec. and the spec map apply?

EDIT: Here's a better up-close picture:
Image
Last edited by tiny paintings on Thu Jul 07, 2005 10:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by klauss »

A few tips on specular maps:

Better way to handle them, is to convert to xmesh and edit by hand.

There, you have:

texture="" (diffuse)
texture1="" (specmap/PPL)
texture2="" (damagemap)
texture3="" (glowmap)

Also, material has some attributes:
reflect="0/1" most noticeably

Now, diffuse is applied as the base.
If reflect="1", specmap modulates the environment mapped reflection, and specularity is applied at full strength in the back material (depending on VS config). Thus, if you have reflect="1" and don't want specularity, set
<specular red="0" green="0" blue="0" alpha="0"/>
in the material. (Unless you enable "specmap_with_reflection" in vegastrike.config, cvs version, that will make specmap modulate both: envmap and specular, and looks neat - try it: in graphics, <var name="specmap_with_reflection" value="true"/>).

If reflect="0", the specmap will act as you expect, and no specularity will be visible on a black-specmap surface.
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Post by tiny paintings »

Clarifies things a bit. I already had the specmaps in the xmeshes, but not the material spec. set to zero.

One more thing: it looks good for me now, but won't it look crap on non-PPL capable cards? I would want the material spec. to be active on those cards - or does VS handle this for me already? I hope it does.
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Post by klauss »

No, it doesn't.

You can't have it working well on both without the "specmap_with_reflection" extension, which is one of the reasons I added that extension in the first place.

One workaround, is to disable reflections if you like the specmap better.

If you have reflection, the specmap modulates that and NOT the specularity. So, if you don't want specularity, you have to turn it off. Now, if you just want specularity at some points, you need PPL. But you can't have both reflection and PPL specularity, so it's quite a pickle. To add to the mix, if you set the specularity color to black, you won't have specularity even if the user selects PPL without reflection.

For what you say, it seems you want "specmap_with_reflection": you want reflection, but also a specmap. Perhaps "specmap_with_reflection=true" should be the default. It's a little slower, but it's not very noticeable. I didn't make it the default since I wanted to keep it unobstrusive. I guess it depends on what hellcatv feels on that matter.
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Post by hurleybird »

I just want to say 'that's an awesome perspective on the first screenshot' :wink:

If only it was fully textured with some AA :)
Last edited by hurleybird on Fri Jul 08, 2005 7:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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