Ship/Station Modelling Requirements

Thinking about improving the Artwork in Vega Strike, or making your own Mod? Submit your question and ideas in this forum.

Moderator: pyramid

Post Reply
Zeog
ISO Party Member
ISO Party Member
Posts: 453
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 10:30 am
Location: Europe

Ship/Station Modelling Requirements

Post by Zeog »

I'm thinking of contributing ship/space station models to Vega Strike (or a MOD). Unfortunately I don't know what exactly needs to be done in order to contribute a complete model. Therefore I need some answers to those questions: (I know that some are FAQs but not all are answered in the wiki, which sometimes seems to be a bit out-of-date.) Also I want to make the contribution process a little clearer for artists.

Model
  • Is there any limit for a full detailed model (vertex-count, poly-count)? What is it for a small ship, a big ship, a space station, something small flying around (cargo items etc.)?
  • How many low detail versions (LODs) do I have to provide? What are the size recommendations for those? What filename should they have?
  • Should the full detailed version and the low detailed ones share the same textures/maps?
  • What else should I provide? (shield-mesh, shield-texture?)
Textures/Maps
  • Which image formats are supportes and recommended?
  • What is the maximum size of images/maps? Should I always provide as detailed textures as possible?
  • How many texture files may I use, what filenames should they have?
  • What maps should I provide (specular, glow, ...)? What features are currently supported? What should be the filename for those pictures? What does a certain black/white value mean of such a map?
Work Flow
I don't want to convert around with mesher. I just want to make my model and skin it with my favourite 3D-art program (blender, wings3D, etc.). When it is finished (fully uv-mapped and skined with all possible maps and looks fine with my favourite 3D-art program) I would very much like to hand it over to you guys to port it in whatever way necessary to your game-format (hopefully not destroying any uv-mapping). Are there any known problems with that, e.g. when a model is uv-mapped and skinned with blender, does the model look similar in vegastrike and when rendered with blender? I don't want the game developers to have to tweak my model and put further remodelling/retexturing work into it, they have probably already enough stuff to do.

Blender specific
How do I indicate mount points for guns and thrusters with blender?
How do I indicate docking points?
Does the ship need to head a specific diretion, have a specific size in blender?

Copyright stuff
Under what licence do I have to submit my work? Do I get mentioned in the credits?

Please also tell me what I forgot to ask in order to provide a complete model.
And finally: Where do I have to send the finished model?

Thanks!
dandandaman
Artisan
Artisan
Posts: 1270
Joined: Fri Jan 03, 2003 3:27 am
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Contact:

Post by dandandaman »

First of all, sorry about the state of the wiki wrt this stuff .... we *are* working on it ;-)
Second, good to hear you're interested :-) It's probably best to talk to jackS about what type of ship you want to contribute, as we kinda have a list of things we need these days :-) (Although in the wiki, it isn't terribly well documented).

Third, I've tried to answer some questions, but it's late and I'm tired, so I've skipped over some of the ones you probably want more ;-)

With respect to vertex count/poly count .... it's at your discression. Basically don't limit yourself on necessary detail, as LOD's can make up for any excess. We probably want one LOD <=500 polys, a couple more before you reach 10000, and then one for every extra 5000? I dunno, some more artsy people should answer ;-)

Same texture maps is good (I *think*) ... as it reduces the texture memory needed (again I *think*)? Shield mesh is good, so is a collision mesh (collision may as well just be one of the lower LODs).

Image maps ... bigger is better (as we can keep the originals and use scaled down if it's too big for current vid cards). .png or .jpg are supported (we prefer to receive .png so we don't lose quality through whatever, but if it's big it doesn't really matter).

We support specular, glow, damage, (and soon normal maps too) ... I think that's it?

Filename's whatever, as long as it's logical, don't limit yourself to black and white....colour is good :-)

We normally receive stuff in .obj format and take it from there, don't worry about that stuff (as for tweaks....we can send back screenshots for you to tweak textures until you work out what VS likes :-) )

We can add mounts/thrusters/dock points ourselves.....but giving us the model coordinates where you want them will be a huge help :-)

The dataset is all under the GPL at present, so we'd like your stuff to be under that too :-) And if we actually have credits (don't recall seeing any in recent years), then i guess you'll be credited with the work you get in :-)

As to where to send them, that can come later :-)

But yeah, talking to jack to make sure your ship/s whatever have a place is your best chance of getting something in :-)

Hope that helps :-D

Dan.a
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
Halleck
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1832
Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2005 10:21 pm
Location: State of Denial
Contact:

Post by Halleck »

The ship should be facing along the z+ axis, but I think blender flips the axes when exporting to obj... just get it to us as an obj and we can orient it as needed. Size isn't an issue, we can apply a scaling factor to the mesh if neccessary.

Also, glowmaps are broken, but you may as well make one so we can put it in once glowmaps are fixed. Also, I think bump mapping is a planned addition, I haven't heard anything about normal mapping.

I know some of the naming scheme:
shipname for diffuse (texture) maps
shipnamePPL for specular maps
I've never used damage or glowmaps. Maybe call them shipnameDMG and shipnameGLO or something. It doesn't really matter, we can easily change them later on once we get it into xmesh format.

JackS has stated that top-level models should be as detailed and as high-poly as you want them to be. I'm not sure about LOD polycounts.
I don't think it matters what you name your LODs either, since we can change them when we work with them in xmesh and bfxm format.

You can actually make detail textures if you desire, but I think that the majority of the model should have a common texture. You can use multiple textures for different parts of the ship if neccessary.

A shield mesh would be awesome. We already have a few shield textures you could use, but if you make one for your shield mesh, it would be appreciated.

Docking and mount points are indicated by giving us their coordinates on the mesh. I'm not sure how to do it in blender, but there must be a way to get it to display the coordinates of a selected vertex. While you're at it, it would be nice if you could also jot down engine points and a point for the cockpit to be located.

No need to worry about mesher, just send us the stuff as .obj+.mtl and we'll take care of it.

There really isn't a credits list that is up to date. I don't even think strangelet is credited at the moment, which should give you an idea of how old it is. It might be a good idea to add a credits list to the wiki.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Post by klauss »

Glow maps are fixed in cvs, I think. I don't remember if they were fixed the last time hellcat applied my patches. But if it isn't, I'll take care of it.

About LODs, they can have their own textures. I think it would be a boon, IMHO, since it would allow to only load low-res textures until the big ones are needed (mipmapping doesn't help with video memory requirements, so a LOD with a 4Kx4K texture still takes up 72Meg space, uncompressed (probably around 10Meg compressed). A low-level LOD with a 256x256 texture would require only 288K (48K compressed) - much, much less.

Also, when the GLSL migration is over, there will be probably many more creative options for shading effects, not just normal maps. So, just stay up to date with the news about it, and don't limit your creativity. If you envision a model that would look great with XX, but you only have specmaps and glowmaps, sadly, you'll have to create a version using just specmaps and glowmaps, but still pay attention to the other one, as someday (after GLSL), you'll be able to have it ingame. Even, try rendering a preview of it: a certain level of eye candy will be precious fuel for developers.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
Post Reply