Can i contribute?

[stringue]

Thanks for a cool game! I was looking for a frontier style game and came across this, I have never moddelled b4 but after reading through the (v good thx!) 'how to guides' spent the past few days learning how to model and texture, and got a ship into the game.

I don't know if theres a place for it tho I saw the andolian archimedes cruiser (old) and I was making an archaic ship:







It was I suppose a heavy cruiser in its era, it has a large weapons aperture forward based on current airborne laser technology, and enough forward space for the weapon to cater for high power output, and a very agile turret at the front (tho i cant make it fire off boresight more than like 50 degrees in game tho have changed xx_cone units.csv settings:( ), other details i tried to stay loosely 'realistic', regards !

[dandandaman]

Nice ship! You'll have to wait for Jack to get back to get a definitive answer/critique, but it certainly looks like it's well on the way

Dan.a

[Lord Q'Daan]

You've never modeled or textured a model before? Oh hell, it's another DamoclesX. This guy showed up on the Starshatter boards when it was in beta, saying the same thing, and produced work comparable to yours, except less creative (nice design BTW). Now he's on staff making the expansion.

[Anax]

only suggestion i'd have would be try to thin and grey those black lines a bit more - they're a little detracting and make it look a bit cartoonish

otherwise, cool design

[stringue]

Thx for ur replys!
Regarding black lines I have reduced their size and colour somewhat:



I think the textures are ok for a first attempt but they do look a little cartoony as the outlines for various details are a few pixels wide:



And they seem to of got 'blown up' several orders in size, I will see if making them 1 pixel across or thereabouts looks much better..

[charlieg]

Ooo if they were bump-mapped, the panelling effect might look awesome.

[chuck_starchaser]

Very unique look!
Until the Vegastrike engine supports real bump-mapping, even static bumpmapping, as comes with Gimp, would probably help.
I'd use single lines for between the pannels, have Gimp generate a bump map, then widen the lines from the original onto another texture, and use that as the basis for the specular map. That way, the Gimp feature would look either like ribs or canals, depending on the light source; let the observer guess; and the specular map would show no specularity at the seams, thus avoiding a perceptual clash. Just my 5c.

[stringue]

Thx for the ideas, I had a go at bump mapping tho I can probably do better:


And in game (with the panels outlined in black spec map):


I will have another go at bump & spec mapping this in the future, after looking at some other models on the net I feel like trying to model a really high poly 1km + spaceship as this 1 is only 1560 polys and 100m long, thx for taking time to look! have uploaded this to try in game (not quite done yet as cant purchase things 4 it, ) & screens to:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/linda.allnutt/daedulas/

[tiny paintings]

A nice first ship. Looks more like a cargo hauler than a combat ship to me, though.

Ugh... I still can't see any bump mapping? If you meant the manually drawn black shadows... well, to be blunt, they just look bad (and obviously hand-drawn with a mouse). If you insist on doing the bump map-effect manually at least use paths (or whatever it might be called in your program of choice). Someone already mentioned the "bump map" effect in gimp and I agree. Here's an example from my wip:


The manuevering jets looks good. IMO the plate outlines need to be toned down, a lot. And you might want to leave solar panels (or is it something else?) off your next ship since they would be of little use with the powerful reactors available in VS.

[stringue]

First attempt at bump mapping went a bit wrong lol shouldnt have posted it, have had another much better go:



The panel on the rear is a thermal radiator, i tried to add some coolant line things to it as well, it disipates large amounts of weapons heat or heat gained from a close solar orbit.

I've seen ur textures on the forums b4 - they are really good! I updated the 'noise' on mine and 1 or 2 scorch meteoroid impacts here and there, will add some other things hopefully soon,,

[Anax]

hmm yeah you need to replace ALL the black outlines with a darkish grey - that black is still really overpowering.

Also, you shouldnt need 2 lines, as seen in one of your above posts. There should only be one line between plates - you draw the seams, not the edges of the plates

cheers

[stringue]

Redid panels and effects to make them more seamless, and greyed the line:

[charlieg]

Looking good!

[jackS]

An interesting first model, and I'll be looking forward to seeing more.

It's not going to be an Archimedes though. The 'Old' notation in my entry for the ship is on a timescale of how current a military craft is based on the conflicts it was designed to fight vs. the current threat model, so it's a decades old design, not a centuries old design.

If (and this is the reccomended approach) you'd like to work on particular ships (such as constructing an Archimedes model ) please contact me (now that I'm back from vacation), and we can discuss appropriate visual aesthetics for whatever entry you'd like to work on.