Making a ship...

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 5:31 pm

But I got a bunch of questions...

First of all, how do I determine scale? I want my ship to be quite large and I have no way of referencing it to anything else at the moment...

Secondly is 351 faces is quite low isnt it? I read the the advised limits for ships but what are most of the ships face counts in the game?

And I probably should mention its being made in Wings3d.

And lastly (for now) what do you think of my ship?

Post by **hurleybird** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 6:00 pm

Cool! Homeworld style!

Yeah, the poly count is a pretty low, but I get the impression tht the ship is supposed to be boxy.

In this case smoothing wont do too much good, but you could add some greebles

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 6:24 pm

Looks nice. A cargo hauler or similar I suppose?
I think those "pointy things" in the front looks odd though, but it's hard to really tell since the picture is rather low in resolution.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 7:11 pm

Nice! But are those ramming spikes or something on the front? Won't do much for it in a space combat situation.

Also, the scale of your model doesn't matter much since a uniform scaling factor can be applied when your model is inserted into the units.csv table. Basically, trial and error against other ships to determine scale.

Or you could do it mathematically by running mesher -dims on your model, but where's the fun in that?

Post by **jackS** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 7:28 pm

however, for reference, 1 game unit = 1 meter. There are both mesh and unit scaling factors, so one can rely on whichever is more convenient (although the unit scaling factor must clearly be applied to all meshes comprising a unit, whereas each meshes internal scaling factor is just that - internal).

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 7:38 pm

Heheh those arent spikes... Thats crazy thinkin guys... No I was going for a sensor/antenea array...

Yeah the ship is kinda likea cargo/warship. Because of it's size it would be able to do large cargo routes, or possibly converted to just cargo routes, but the main intention is to be a Warship.

Yeah smoothing just makes the ship look weird, so I don't think I will even smooth any of it. And I like the boxiness anyways.

I am gonna start working on it again right now. Maybe make a new sensor aray...

Post by **klauss** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:49 pm

Heheh those arent spikes... Thats crazy thinkin guys... No I was going for a sensor/antenea array...

Yep. Those definitely are sensor platforms. No idea why they got confused, they look pretty obvious to me. Perhaps some people expect sensors to look like sattelite dishes.

And yep. Greeble that. Add plenty greebles, and it will look real good. The rest can be fixed with texturing. I'm not a modeller, but I can tell when something looks good or not, and that does have got the potential to look very good.

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 9:03 pm

Yeha i was just jokin, I figured they would be though as ramming spikes...

What the heck are greebles? Are those like widgets?

Well heres is a new pic, much much bigger.

Post by **klauss** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 9:20 pm

What the heck are greebles? Are those like widgets?

Yeah, something like that.
There's a tutorial somewhere, or a link to one. Do a forum search, and you'll find it.

Some other things that may help in making it look nicer:

Add detail on the edges. For instance, if you look at the clydesdale, you'll notice how faces are tesselated nearing the edges, so that edges are smooth and round, but the faces are still flat. In your case, since the ship should be blocky, perhaps some other kind of edge detail would be nice. But still, edge detail would add a lot to visual appeal.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 10:05 pm

http://www.scifi-meshes.com/tutorials/n ... eeble.html

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 5:09 am

Ok cool well since I am still no were near good at this it will take a while to get all the small details.

The details are minumal right now... But they help...

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 11:35 am

Greebles... Greebles? We don't need no stinking greebles...

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 11:53 am

And Klauss said "Let there be greebles."
And the greebles were good!

Holly cow! Not even textured yet and it's looking decent.
I'm sold on greebles.

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 12:07 pm

Hehe thanks.... Especially considering that I only started modeling 2 days ago..

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 2:31 pm

Heres yet another one... I still need to finish the last two but I thought I would show ya guys the other thing I am workin on, something a little smoother...

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 3:39 pm

Wow, that last one could be like a Steltek heavy fighter... Can we use it for WCU?

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 4:08 pm

REALLY!?!? Wow... Yeah sure dude. I may not be done with it though... Small details and such... Although the one in the pic is 2000 polies...

But yeah if you want it now just email me.

the.flowers.of.naivety@gmail.com

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 5:17 pm

Flowers, I've met many people who claimed to be the reaincarnations of Leonardo da Vinci, but now I realize they were all wrong.

Now let me throw some food for the inventor side of your great soul: We have a problem, IMO; maybe you can solve it: Most of the ships in Vegastrike have engines pointing back, but according to their specs, and the ways they handle, they are just about equally capable of deccelerating as of accelerating, or even moving up, down, and to the sides, and at (literally) neck-breaking accelerations (10G's typical). But if engines only point back, they would have to turn around in order to brake. I honestly don't have an answer: Should we give up on accelerations other than forward, and force ships to turn around in order to deccelerate? Or should we change the models to include forward, lateral, and top/bottom thrusters? (Or none of the above? Or all of the above?...)

((Pssst... spiritplumber is a dudette))

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:08 pm

Heh I call chicks dudes... Well some of them, the ones that don;t get offended...

Heh yeah I get what you mean about the engines... I was going to put more engines on my Warship, 1 on top in the front, one on the botton, and 1 on each side, so that it could turn... The second ship I made I put those Thrust Vectoring flaps over the engine, but my "Seltek" fighter has no way to turn or stop... You can't use standard wing flaps in a vaccum...

Oh and that first thing... Was that like... A compliment? If it was then thanks...

Yeah I have caught onto this modeling thing easily...

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:15 pm

Your stuff is great, seriously!

About the side thrusters... A good 100% realistic space combat sim is

http://www.x-plane.com/SpaceCombat.html

by the awesome dude (no offence taken at all ^-^ ) who made the X-Plane flightsim. And you do get to see forward and side thrusters there.

I appreciate how VS is much more realistic than WC, as far as WC goes, it's WW2 in space, so realism is right out of the window -- think the old battlestar galactica, i guess. VS wise... It'd be nice to see side thrusters on at least the big ships.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:33 pm

What else did you think it was?
Yeah, I'm just campaigning, I guess, trying to raise awareness of physics, reality and stuff; doesn't make me very popular; not that it matters.
Personally, I would divide ships into two groups: Those which can enter atmospheres, fly or glide, and land; and those that will never know anything but the void. The former would be aerodynamic, have wings and all that; and the others would not, and in fact there's no pressing reason for them to have front, back, top or bottom: only a matter of convenience while docking. But they could certainly move in any direction regardless of 'facing' direction; and probably would have cameras in various places, so it wouldn't matter much where the cabin is. Space is BIG anyhow; you can even hit autopilot and trust your luck. None of the outer planet probes ever hit an asteroid when passing the asteroid belts... not sure in Vegastrike

Anyways, good work!

Flowers Of Naivety · Post by **Flowers Of Naivety** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:34 pm

Heh nice...

Do you have any thing you want me to add to the ship I made?

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:49 pm

It looks great! The only thing would be the engine exhaust, they have to be convex... kinda like the blunt end of an egg. The Steltek have these flameless thrusters that emit a green glow. ^^'

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 7:11 pm

Well, they look so awsome I'm afraid of interfering with the work of the muses. The last one looks almost biological to me, I visualized its texture as if having subtle hints of veins running under the surface, but I'm not sure whether this came from the muses or what I had for breakfast.

As for the second-last one, sort of helicopterish, I had a sudden vision of it with four short "wings" (not really "wings", and could be cylindrical for all I care), two slanted forward, two bacward, four sets of engines. I don't know if the vision included other things, as I got distracted looking at the four engines

I imagined it turning with speed and accuracy like the ball of a brother typwriter.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 7:39 pm

WOW!!!! You catch on fast, Naivety!

And you do all your own textures...
Okay, it's settled. You're hired.