Stupid modelling questions

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aegidian
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Stupid modelling questions

Post by aegidian »

1. What size should ships be (modelling in Wings3d)?

More accurately - what's the scale used? What does one unit in Wings3d equate to in game world terms?

2. Are any of the original models available in .wings format? I'd really like to retexture (and remap uv coords) some of the original stations.
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Post by scheherazade »

well, i can't tell really.

though you COULD just snap them to a size of a power of 10, and then easilly scale them in the .xunit file

like so:
<in the model, the ship is size 10 units nose to tail>
then

you want it 35 units long

<in the .xunit file set scale to 3.5>

this way you can later adjust the size without a calculator.


by that i mean if you made the model 37.2 units long and you wanted it to be 29.8 units long, you'd have to rescale it in wings, or do some long division and put in your result as your scale.

-scheherazade
aegidian
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Post by aegidian »

Err thanks, but that's not really what I wanted.

What I'd like is to be able to judge what size to make my ships so their scale is 'right' when seen alongside the ships and stations already in the game.
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Post by pontiac »

Yeah, that's a little problem.
But maybe somebody can make a model-compare mission/system where you add your models you want to compare in the file and they are there close to each other (not moving , like stations)

But i don't know if this is possible with mission/system files.
Does anybody know how to do this?

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aegidian
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Okay, I had an eyeball at the files, how does this sound?

Post by aegidian »

The wayfarer has a bounding box for its hull and wings approximately 62 x 14 x 42 (|x| |y| |z|) units.

Putting a model ship I made next to it (a small scout shuttle intended to be 3m x 2m x 6m taking one unit in Wings3d to equal one meter) - I think I need to scale my model up by a factor of three to make it look right next to the wayfarer.

That would make the wayfarer's size about 20m x 5m x 14m and a relay station (83 units |y| x120 unit scale = 9960 units) 3310m from top to tip.

Do those sizes seem right?
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Post by KleiZwei »

About them turrets, I've modelled a ship with 6 across the top and all of them are WAY too big... bigger then the ship even... now the problem is if I scale the ship, the guns will sink into the center of the ship (correct me if i'm wrong). Which leaves me with the alternative of rescaling the ship in Wings...
aegidian
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This should probably work...

Post by aegidian »

Edit the unit file.

Add or change the <Unit scale="X"> tag at the start where X is the factor you're scaling up by, then find the <subunit file="turret" ... > tag and edit it multiplying the x y and z coordinates by the same scale factor.
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Post by scheherazade »

if you want to know hte scale as in

units per metre, then you gotta ask hellcat

though this is something i've always been nagging him to make solid

i think he said 1u:1m, but it doesn't feel that way... i donno.

we need a solid unit scale definition. and we need to enforce it.

unit scale should be one of the primary things in any game. it usually is critical. and i'm really surprised at how little it is documented and enforced. i've never seen this kind of lax scaling ever before...

-scheherazade
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Re: This should probably work...

Post by pontiac »

aegidian wrote:Edit the unit file.

Add or change the <Unit scale="X"> tag at the start where X is the factor you're scaling up by, then find the <subunit file="turret" ... > tag and edit it multiplying the x y and z coordinates by the same scale factor.
Are you sure about this?
The unit-scale don't scale the turret positions?
I didn't test any turrets ingame (just the source), so i don't know :roll:

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aegidian
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Post by aegidian »

I said 'probably', if the turret positions suddenly fly off into space he can always scale them back!
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Post by dandandaman »

Anonymous wrote:if you want to know hte scale as in

units per metre, then you gotta ask hellcat

though this is something i've always been nagging him to make solid

i think he said 1u:1m, but it doesn't feel that way... i donno.

we need a solid unit scale definition. and we need to enforce it.

unit scale should be one of the primary things in any game. it usually is critical. and i'm really surprised at how little it is documented and enforced. i've never seen this kind of lax scaling ever before...

-scheherazade
yeah...VS is a bit odd with the way it handles units....I think it's because of all those random scale variables in the config file ;-)

not much we can do about that unless we want to rebuild half the data (systems etc) with a uniform scale...:-/

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Post by aegidian »

The systems aren't a problem - everything looks tiny next to a planet even if they aren't 'real planet sizes'.

But a merchant capable of carrying 2000 cargo SHOULD look bigger than a hunter with virtually no cargo space and carrying fewer weapons. Plus there's the whole 'fitting intpo the docking bays' issue.

The ships *should* get re-scaled (no need to remodel).

I have an idea this could be done quite easily, gimme a week and then I'll see if I haven't found a solution that'll impress.
scheherazade
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Post by scheherazade »

if all the ships were normalized to X units, then you could use a multiplier in the config really ez.

this should be the practice.

weapons/upgrades : 1 unit
fighters : 10 units
cap ships : 100 units
bases : 1000 units

(note the difference comes from precision loss. if you have something with lotsa detail shrunk too much the points start to shift, so too much shrinkage is bad. you can't just shrink everything to 1 unit or whatever.)

and unit config files should be used to change scale via multiplier.

this way everyone knows what the scale is just by looking at the unit config file.

-scheherazade
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