people without windows suck

strangelet · Post by **strangelet** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 3:05 pm

hello. i'm strangelet. some of you may remember me from such background art as Mariner Base and Lawrenceport.

I'm here today to tell you about an opressed minority within our community, and how YOU can help make sure this person (tiny minority) is able to enjoy the same opportunities as other less OS challenged individuals.

...

basically i dont have all the fancy editing stuff you guys use to convert your ships and other models into vegastrike. so i need someone to do that for me.

i can upload models and tex in a variety of formats, 3ds (4) obj, dxf (dunno bout UVs on that one) lightwave etc,

and textures will mostly come absolutely preprepared.

since all i'm making is the geometry and the textures i'll need this person to set up the ships, add weapon points and all the other gubbinz they need, and do the xml thing (NO idea) to get them into the game.

anyone with time on their hands?

i have but 3 ships at the mo but more on the way... plus mah starfortress

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 3:47 pm

if you output 3ds files with less than 8 character names for texture I can convert some things for you

etheral walker · Post by **etheral walker** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 3:48 pm

didn't read all your post: I do prefer lwo files

Post by **jackS** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:42 pm

Can't wait to see some of those in-game

Just as a general note to any artists reading -

If you're holding out on offering something up because you don't know what to do with the unit file - don't worry about that as much as you might think

if you can get weapon, docking and subunit locations at least vaguely oriented relative to the base model, then we (whereby "we"(the devels) probably means "I") can fix them up from there

Particular stats tend to get clobbered during playbalancing sweeps, so agonizing over, for example, how much mass to give your vessel isn't worth the time (for mass in particular, we just run a script)

Also important to remember for the detail oriented, 1 game unit = 1 meter, which comes in handy when you're trying to guess at the appropriate scaling factor. Likewise, for larger craft with docking areas or the size of missile launchers, note how big the object is that you're using as your baseline for any "fits in tube" situations - the goddard class is notably larger than the dodo, which is notably larger than the franklin, which is notably larger than the lancelot which is notably larger than the dostoevsky - but the dostoevsky isn't notably larger than a capship missile (although the dimensions are rather different)

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:09 pm

Out of curiousity what OS do you use strangelet?

Post by **hellcatv** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:22 pm

our main exporter is in Wings3d, an open source app that works nicely under Mac OS X, under linux, and under windows (I've tried it under the former and latter ones)

I think you should be fine no matter what since it would probably also work on SGI or other boxes with OGL cards

strangelet · Post by **strangelet** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 5:24 pm

i'm gonna upload mah starfort in lots of flavours of 3d, plus tex etc.

i actually use wings 3d to rip the models out of VS... i have every ship in the game lined up in front of me in my big ol project file and i intend to texture them all (intentions are a wonderful thing - we'll see how far i get) and do a few dif colour schemes on the most common.

i'm also remodelling the low poly bases, ive done the starfortress (you saw that in the contest minus the antenna arrays) and today i made a hi and low (1000 and 5000) poly Research station from the old model (pix to follow when basic tex is on)

i relly think there should be some kind of art/model checklist up on the boards... how about this -

make a new sub board and put up a post for each unit in the game (a blank post) - people who are working on a unit can post in that thread (wip shots and declarations of THIS IZ MINE MB!) and others will be able to synchronise more efficiently.

you can communicate requests and preferences in these posts, and mb shots of the units as they stand

you'll also get a much better overall picture of the work that's going on, and the automatic alerts on the board will tell people what's recent etc without maintainance...

if not that, then SOMETHING! it's a bit dodgy working on something not knowing if somebody else has been commissioned to do it or has already done it off their own back.
also it will eliminate people doing the best looking models over and over...

another thing - is there a documentation on -

putting on nodes for weapons, camera etc...
splitting the model up for various texture reasons
getting units into VS once theyr'e finished in 3d
???

Post by **jackS** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 9:37 pm

strangelet wrote: i relly think there should be some kind of art/model checklist up on the boards

agreed - but I didn't feel like throwing something out too piecemeal - perhaps it should be... I'm not past convincing on this point

I was working on one a while back... grad school took priority for the last few months. I'd say this http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/* ... df?rev=1.7
contains only ~1-2% of the information it should (albeit a much greater percentage of the types of craft desired

)

I will concentrate on making this a useful document for artists as soon as we get this next release out (solving the "one thing at a time or nothing gets done" problem I'd probably otherwise experience) I'm also still exploring the level of detail necessary to describe the ships in question. I've managed to locate a scanner, so I may actually make some attempts to (crudely - I lack skill in this department) sketch in addition to the textual descriptions I've been working on.

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 12:07 am

You could use the wiki to do the checklist. That way it'll be more mallable so you can order tasks by importance and status.

strangelet · Post by **strangelet** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 5:02 am

5am WIP!

and... these are some i've UV'd ready for texturing

onwards and upwards

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 6:00 pm

Images aren't being displayed.

strangelet · Post by **strangelet** » Sun Jun 13, 2004 8:47 pm

they are now

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 1:48 am

Wow.

Of the highest quality.