Area carrier early mesh

[Ares]

To all parties in this little verbal war cease and desist i have considered moving this thread to the graveyard during the last couple days where it is read-only.THE WAR IS OVER.

Enjoy the Choice

I'm done with the war anyway. he isn't going to listen to me i would still LIKE to continue working on this project, if i can even make posts here.

[chuck_starchaser]

To all parties in this little verbal war cease and desist i have considered moving this thread to the graveyard during the last couple days where it is read-only.THE WAR IS OVER.

Enjoy the Choice

There's probably no one in the world I'd like to piss off less than Loki, so this post gives me great pause. It's true I've gone too far, partly to deserve what I got 3 years ago; partly to make a few points that it should have been obvious since many posts ago will simply not be taken. I withdraw from this thread unconditionally now.

[HoodedWraith]

While I agree with the less... inflammatory comments Chuck posted about the fact that the concept should have stuck with the general concept put down by the vehicle designer, I do like the basic shape of the craft, especially if it were to be made somewhat smaller (like a heavy fighter/light cruiser) and the hollow central portion converted to a spinal cap ship weapon mount. While it lacks in detail, the 'wings' certainly do have a fluid look that I like (though I would suggest definitely making the central body more fluid, maybe adding some details like PD blisters or something).

My suggestions are as follows then:

First off, try hopping back from a standpoint and modelling this as an independant vehicle. Don't push for a faction/class right away. This will save you from looking like you're attempting to throw out a designer's work; and believe me, as someone that does design work for his own PnP gaming company, that's about like walking up to someone, kicking them in the crotch, and then proceeding to belittle their family. It's just not kosher.

Second, that central tube doesn't convey the fluidity that the wings/venting system/etc do. If you rerole it into a heavy fighter/suppression vehicle, then redesigning that around similar lines to the flattened rear(?) of the vessel would gain you a lot of points in that regard, especially if it housed a rather large beam weapon (let's face it, spinal mounts aren't really that good an idea for any mass driver, because ammunition takes up space. On the other hand, if you take from the Honorverse, you can treat it like one of their Shrike class Light Attack Craft and give it a small number of cap killers [three or so]). The beam weapon in particular ties in with the next note.

Third, if those aren't wings, then as a structural note they might function very well indeed for heat radiation, especially if you're packing something built for a capital ship and don't have room for proper heat sinks. Should you decide on something like that, texture accordingly.

That's just my two cents.

[Ares]

@ Wraith: ya i've had that thought as well, since noone seems to like it in this catagory anyway. that as well would give me a bit more freedom to greeble out the tube part.

@ Chuck: again about the original concept, firstly you have to admit the concept is vague to begin with. we can't even figure out wich end the front is! lol. I would find it rather unlikely though for those to be fighter launch tubes, even assuming there burly any bigger than the fighter itself it would push the size of this thing well-beyond any regular carrier designation and could only classify it as a dreadnought. Assuming mostly hollow, with that massive a size i can't figure it would hold any less than 500-750 fighters. and for normal purposes, i can't POSSIBLY imagine that would be cost or resource efficient. it would be like taking a semi with 4 or 5 trailers fully loaded (road train) down to the store to get a gallon of milk. I cant imagine you could really justify carrying anymore than 100. and even that is probably overkill for anything but a all out war. It would make the super-carrier from WC3/4 look like a toy. While my concept may be flawed, you can't possibly think that that is a good idea for there bread-and-butter old commonplace carrier. even assuming i underestimated the size severely, it's still not a efficient or realistic design.
THat and if the Aera could commonly carry tht many fighters around in a ship/mobile base that common, they'd have taken over the entire galaxy in a matter of weeks.

[klauss]

I must support Ares in this tiny remark of his: the concept sketch (I don't know about the description) does lack a few pointers, like what's the front, what do the features represent (ie: what are those extrusions? engines? weapon mounts?), etc.

I should try to write something in the wiki about the requirements for concept art when I find the time.

In any case I wouldn't call it vague. The shape shows quite some detail in the sketch, at least enough to notice Ares' model does not follow it by a long shot.

[chuck_starchaser]

@Ares:
I said I wasn't going to post, but since you're asking me a question, I will: I agree with some of your reasoning, and I have personal reservations about the sizes of ships in Vegastrike; not from any point of view of what is "realistic" or "efficient", but more from the point of view of modeling. One of the hardest things in modeling large space vehicles is conveying their sizes. The problem can be divided into relative and absolute sizes. For relative size, a good rule of thumb is to give larger ships higher poly counts and larger textures than to small ones; so, this is the easier problem; and yet, in Vegastrike it is make horrendously difficult by the huge differences in relative sizes. For absolute size visual references, the problem is gargantuous, because you can't put houses or buildings or bridges or elephants on them. There are very few absolute elements one can put on them, namely windows and air-locks. But if a ship is 5 kilometers long, like the Clydesdale, a 1 meter window or hatch works out to 0.02% of the length of the ship. Forget about a hand-hold... And the problem is then exacerbated yet again by ships officially not having windows at all.
And this is why I advised you to start small, and leave large ships to the pros. Large ships are problematic to model by the square of their sizes.

But, whether we like it or not, the fact is: VS' ships are huge; and if a Clydesdale is 5km long, I bet the Agesipolis is at least 10km long. So, yes, those tubes could indeed be launch tubes.

In any case, the sketch is there for a reason; and if we were talking about sketches by a dead person who lived 500 years ago, reinterpretation might be justified; but JackS is alive and kicking, and all it takes is asking him a few questions to find out which end is the front or back, or what the features are, or what its size is. Though, as Klauss says, there should be a bit more of formalization to the specifications.

[Ares]

Klauss: I did say that i didn't exactly follow it, but either way even if i do endup following it much more closely i think the concept will require some modification either way to be a bit more realistic.

Chuck: I didn't say you couldn't post, all that was said was the flame war needs to end. Regardless i will probably be sending a couple PM's when i get out of class. If that's supposed to be accurate scale, that's gigantic. It shouldn't be quite as hard to display scale though with aeran ships at the very least, the wiki states they don't use windows. Makes things a little easier. My comments on it were more general musings then what is necessitated to build one.

[chuck_starchaser]

It shouldn't be quite as hard to display scale though with aeran ships at the very least, the wiki states they don't use windows. Makes things a little easier.

I abstain from replying, lest I be lynched by an enraged mob of pacifists.

[loki1950]

I have split out the Off topic discussion on scale now in the blue sky sub-forum

Enjoy the Choice

[Fendorin]

oh is interesant question?

i think if Deus Siddis wanted more "space opera" game ( speedy, dogfigthy, mega huge ship... not realistic with the kind of knowledge we have, is because like every body have some interrest to the Sci fi is like a nice dream)

Before know the Space possibility ... the human dream about become god, become emperor, do some miracle like walking on water (or be the son of the god)whatever...find eldorado, changing lead in gold, find the treasure of christ soldier, find the graal, be immortal, and someone tought have a second world inside the earth with all extinct animal, find King kong in Java island,
.........

also i think more people want dream than Deus siddis

for me i wait when in VS we can conquest a system , sold it,give it for recovers good point with a faction,take some tax on the marchant guild trought your own system, terraform and improve your moon/bad planet inside your own system, installing station, entrance in confederation assembly , entrance in politics, pay pirate for protect you, devellopping a business, corrumpt faction,be corrumpted by a faction......

otherwise for me VS haven't enought Faction but because is a game is not open for generating faction......itself create itself ship with nice design... blablabla........


maybe for have a better feeling of speed/movement in VS :
-the ship after destroying should stay more longer until you leave the place far away..
-the reactor should have a long light effect like a curving beam
- the explosion more lighty and product some cloud gas stay untill you left the place
- the asteroid field/belt more bigger ( for slalom)
- garbage was a good idea ( when you it a ship :hop! two little mesh is create ,like a little part of the hull)
in fact just have some "auxilliary point" for give you a kind of speed feeling


we have a long possibility for dreaming....

[Oblivion]

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/galle ... alNumber=1

Ares, the model has an unnecessarily HIGH number of polies. Alarmingly high in fact. You can easily optimize it without damaging the shape.

How much is the polycount? Remember this is a game, not a movie. Take into account processor speed.

And I must say that it doesn't look Aeran. What did JackS say on its design?

From the wiki:

Code: Select all

Primary distinguishing color ranges: Beige/Tan/Mustard-yellow over white/gray/brown basecoats

Common accent colors: Purple, grays, browns, white

Primary lighting color: Cyan

Frequently visible: well defined front/back of ship. unibody construction/tightly-fitting armor plates. Radiators, sometimes with retractable cover-flaps. Extensions, especially on larger vessels (where they are generally topped by turrets):

    extensions are vaguely teardrop shaped in cross section, the non-pointy end thereof being somewhat flattened, rather than fully round, and generally facing forward. Extensions reduce slightly in diameters of cross section as they extend from the ship, but terminate in a flat, cross-sectional face by the time the area has been reduced by ~1/2 or so from the base of the extensions. 

Rarely visible: boxy corners and subcomponents, modular design, piping, windows (even Aeran civilians aren't much for star-gazing)

Seen inside, but not out: obviously separately designed mechanisms, modular internals (Aerans practice modular design, but they like to hide the fact that they do).

Moving parts(non-turret): radiator covers

Capital vs. light craft: Light craft are more heavily bilaterally symmetric than capital vessels. Capital vessels are more likely to have numerous tri- or radial symmetries. For radial symmetries, multiples of 3 are common. Light craft tend to have both front and back extensions that, although vaguely winglike in shape, are not wings, and are fairly thick in proportion to the size of the craft. The extensions are proportionately much smaller for capital vessels. Larger capital vessels tend to have forward facing spinal mounts of architecturally significant size.
[edit]
Cultural Aesthetics

Aerans like clean, uncluttered structures. Aeran ships are often described as having an overall appearance much as if they had been carved out of a single block of wood or sculpted down from a large stone rather than looking built up piecemeal, as some human designs are. 

Also please follow concepts (if there are any), no matter how much you dislike its design. Concepts are there for a reason.

[Phlogios]

I wouldn't say that the poly count is too high; just a bit unevenly distributed in the first draft.

Oblivion: We have pretty much left the poly count limit behind, at least it's a lot higher than before. Modern GPU's can handle millions of polygons on-screen. According to Klauss, though, there's a limit of vertices/polygons-whatever per mesh where the speeds go down really fast. Chuck estimated a new safe poly count limit per mesh at 10k (I think). The model can be split into many LOD-able meshes, each with a max of 10k polys.

Ares: Poly is short for polygon, which means that it has many edges. Both quads and tris are polygons.

[chuck_starchaser]

Just a numerical correction: What Klauss was talking about was a limit of "indexes", which I take to mean, if a vertex is split internally it needs two (or more) indexes. And this limit is 64k for modern gpu's; could be 32k for some not so modern, and worst case is 3 indexes per triangle; so the safe-side rule of thumb we arrived at was 32k/3 ~= 10k triangles per mesh. But I don't know how quads figure into this equation. I heard recently that gpu's work with quads and quad strips; whereas my previous understanding was that all quads were triangulated on the fly; --and Brad Mick always triangulates his meshes prior to export so as to have control of the triangulation.

[Phlogios]

Oh ya, didn't really remember.

[klauss]

Quads are part of the OpenGL standard, but I haven't seen one OpenGL implementation that doesn't triangulate them. In theory, a quad can be drawn without triangulation with far superior texturing quality (because of proper texturing coordinate interpolation in the absence of triangulation). But GPUs don't do that, they triangulate.

Now, who knows, maybe some über extension on some über modern card now makes quads a builtin primitive. But I wouldn't count on it.

Quad strips, however, do have their own representation in hardware buffers and require two indexes per quad (plus two starting indices per strip).

Let me say, however, that OBJs don't carry out that information, so all that gets converted into triangles when you export to OBJs. Quads are left as quads, but I don't recall implementing quad stripification. And since DirectX does not support quads (weird huh?), then Ogre doesn't as well (Ogre devs have decided to leave out any feature that isn't portable across APIs). So we're better off triangulating everything.

[Oblivion]

Quads or tris aside, it really does look like it has way too much unnecessary smoothing to me.

Isn't it always a good idea to optimize everything with the least impact to aesthetics? This can be optimized without even changing its shape.

[chuck_starchaser]

Let me say, however, that OBJs don't carry out that information, so all that gets converted into triangles when you export to OBJs.

I don't understand. Blender's OBJ exporter has an option button [Triangulate], --which I never use.

[Ares]

wow, i dont reply in a day or so and my thread gets semi hijacked. well this thread has been off from nearly the first post. lol.
Either way.
That pic linked to was my first draft of it, and since has changed drastically. If i do finish that mesh as i originally planned (which is kinda up in the air right now), the poly count triangulated is doubtful it would exceed 6 or 7K.
I haven't PM'ed jacks yet, had a lot of stuff to do with school/work, and I've been trying to just PLAY vs some too... such a vast improvement over previous versions.

[pyramid]

I quite like this early model idea in the form of this incarnation.
Even at this stage it hints on interesting forms that the vessel could take considering the constructive critique that has been provided throughout this thread in sufficient amount.

Being this idea presented here, obviously, not the one intended for the Agesipolis, I have extracted the juice from this slurry plant and joined it into the proper Agesipolis concept discussion thread.

Correspondingly, to avoid any future confusion that might arise from the subject of this thread, and being the name of the beneficiary vessel of this idea unknown at this point in time, I'd propose to change the subject to something representing more accurately the existing contents, be it "Unnamed Vessel Early Mesh", or anything of such resemblance.

Further, to all modelers, the advice, besides abiding to concepts already presented, no matter how rudimentary primitive they may seem - or at least discussing them to hearts need -, is to study particularly the 3D Models page for any actual work required and desired, before endeavoring on journeys that create conflicts with already existing work and ultimately lead nowhere.

Finally, I'm with Ares in the matter, and with Chuck in the manner, because creativity must be venerated and encouraged as the ultimate divine form of communication and, logo, socialization, according with the ability of the artist, but its sacrilege by arrogance must also be prevented. Better an anarchy of sages than democracy by plebs.

[chuck_starchaser]

Finally, I'm with Ares in the matter, and with Chuck in the manner, because creativity must be venerated and encouraged as the ultimate divine form of communication and, logo, socialization, according with the ability of the artist, but its sacrilege by arrogance must also be prevented. Better an anarchy of sages than democracy by plebs.

I'm not sure I get it, but it sounds good (not too familiar with ancient Roman sociology).

EDIT:
Now I get it, on second or third read. Indeed! That's been the pitfall of modern art.

In any case, a change of name is the simplest solution.

[Ares]

ya... i've come to the decision it will most likely be re-branded i didn't intend on taking on a tAask THAT big... lol. and i also wanted to illustrate i havent vanished i'm just easily distr- OOOH! SOMETHING SHINY! (j/k)

[Ares]

I'm not dead. just house-sitting right now so don't have the mesh available

[Ares]

Since it seems now this is going to be a support ship, can we do partial transparency in vegastrike? i think i giant focusing crystal thingy would look nifty were the flight bay used to be.

[Nózmájner]

Focusing crystal?
I don't think that would fit in the aeran taste. And I can't recall any mention of such thing in the descriptions. (and belive me, I've read trough that a few times, since right now I'm working on the aeran concepting)
If you can reason it really good and fit it in the existing style, then I'm completely not against it.

[Ares]

focusing crystal might not have been the right term.... but just a large transparent lens type emitter thing. just use a alpha channel perhaps?