Rlaan concepts

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Rlaan concepts

Post by Kangaroo »

<comment>

#Anyone who has any rlaan model concepts please share them

<end comment>

I'll make this thread only for rlaan models, as I intend to work on them for some time.

I'll post here my Rlaan light bomber and soon will make my first concept of a rlaan base (the one I'm working on now)

I hope I understood you right, Oblivion...
Did you mean the ship to look like this like this?

I guess I shouldn't have used raytracing there... :oops:

If anyone needs it, here is an archive with the .blend file and the texture
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Post by Oblivion »

better. The wings need support "poles" and not uniform all around. The cockpit area needs to be less dark.

will dig around a bit. See the Rlaan shipstyle thread in the documenting the universe forum. Don't believe most of the rap about "living" ships, (they're not), but most of the itsy bitsy comments on the style tehre is accurate I think, tho unfinished.
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Post by Kangaroo »

Thanks, will see it later. Gotta go to school now :roll:
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Post by Kangaroo »

Forget about what I said 'bout that rlaan base. I just can't seem to make a decent texture for it. :(

I guess that'll have to wait. Meanwhile, I had an idea of how a rlaan cockpit should look like, and will concentrate on doing that.

:?

Now I realise that modelling is actually 10% work in the modelling program and 190% in drawing programs. And it just happened to be that I'm not very good at drawing :evil:

btw, that rlaan ship was 15 min work in Blender and 8 h work in Gimp
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Post by Oblivion »

15 min work in Blender and 8 h work in Gimp
:P That's reality. I realized that quite recently too, about the time I started contributing to VS and seeing the ingame textures.

I once textured by creating simple materials out of simple bitmaps. Well, life got more complicated now...

;)

Best of wishes on the rlaan cockpit. Make it organic. It doesn't need as much textures as when creating ships, but it does need a bit more detail than the current cockpits (with the immediately recognizable galvanized iron texture, lol). Tone down the spec mapping and remember that the cockpit is internal. The front should imitate some sort of viewscreen (which would actually be horizontal on the gorund given the eye positions of the rlaan, but for our sakes rotated of course).

Have a peek at the rlaan writings thread and maybe you could incorporate some chickenscratch glyphs on the meters or something.

:wink:
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Post by Kangaroo »

Just one question - should I make the back of the cockpit? I mean, will the option of viewing all sides of the cockpit be implented soon?
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Post by Oblivion »

:roll: weeell. I dunno. Klauss would probably want full 3d cockpits for teh Ogre port. But I think you should hurdle that when it comes. So all to current standards for now, and we can see at improving them in teh future. :wink:
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Post by Kangaroo »

Then another question - How much in percentage of the vision am I allowed to obstruct with the cockpit? I'm afraid that my current setup won't do. (about 50%)
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Post by geoscope »

Based on some of the existing cockpits, 40% viewable area seems to be acceptable. Although, personally I prefer cockpits with at least 60% viewing area, particularly to the sides.
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Post by Kangaroo »

geoscope wrote:Based on some of the existing cockpits, 40% viewable area seems to be acceptable. Although, personally I prefer cockpits with at least 60% viewing area, particularly to the sides.
Emm, there is an incompactability between a rlaan's eyeset and human's. Rlaan prefer seeing things by looking up and down. :P

Will include more side view, though.
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Post by Oblivion »

Rlaan prefer seeing things by looking up and down
Not quite.. Rlaan prefer to see things by looking down and sideways all around.

Anyway, Rlaans do not have a cockpit with an outside view per se. Their cockpits might be really deep inside the ship, maybe even a central chamber. The dark "Cockpit" area might also be a site for the pilot pod, but then notice that they have no transparent windows or such. They may have instead external eye components (umm.. organic camera thingies?) to see outside things.

Rlaan display screens are also either flat on the ground (they read it by walking over it) or slightly slanting not rising more than a standard human's shoulder (they read it by passing it).

But for playability's sake, it would be safe I think to make the "windows" (actually screens) vertical to the viewer, as it is possible that the Rlaan pilot pod can change its orientation according to the pilot's species (which I assume is human, if Vega Strike players are indeed human , lol).

So there.. :P
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Post by Kangaroo »

Umm, the progress of the cockpit is slower then I thought, so I'll post a wip of how does it look like now. Later I'll make a glowmap.

Image
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Post by Kangaroo »

:( :| :) :D :mrgreen:

Finally finished the diffuse texture!

The cockpit is 1290 quads and has a 1024x1024 texture.

Quick renders of the result: (The diffuse map was also used as a specmap there)

1
2
3
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Post by dandandaman »

Very sweet :-D

My only complaint is that those little mound things either side seem to have no real reason for existance, rather than to take away FOV. Just a question though, is this meant to be able to fit a Rlaan pilot too? If so, then it may be a little on the small side ... but that's for jack to rule on :-)

When you consider it done, post the files ASAP :-D

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Post by Oblivion »

:mrgreen:

SWEET indeed!! :D

I agree with Dan tho.
The mounds on the side do make the squeeze a bit tight tho, especially for an rlaan. Maybe a bit of scaleing on those?

It also occludes part of the view, narrowing the vision a great deal, not good if your chasing something. But otherwise..


8) 8) Uber-Cool!
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Post by Kangaroo »

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

Fixed the moulds a bit:
Image

Although I have some problems getting it ingame. Don't know if it's the Blender obj export fault, but I can't seem to guess the right alignment of the cockpit. When I will make it right, I'll post a .bfxm with the textures.
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Post by Oblivion »

:D Beautiful, tho I do hope, the central viewing point is nearer to the front (?), You don't see much on the periphery. But then again.. moving closer to the "windows" would also mean losing sight of those lovely glowy thingies. :wink:

Cockpits have something to do with vertex (face?) sorting.. or something.. defining what vertex gets rendered first... klauss would know. Plus you also need to define the corrdinates of the pilot.
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Post by Kangaroo »

All that you mentioned is done, but right now I'm testing the cockpit ingame and it seems I screwed the normals somewhere... :?
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Post by Kangaroo »

Here is the comparison between Blender and VS:
Normals in Blender
Normals in VS
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Post by Oblivion »

If the normals were alright in Blender, it's probably umm.. the pilot position? Maybe it's too near the front, hence it merges with the inside of the mesh (i.e. past the nromals)... or soemthing.. :wink: sorry I'mnot too good at that stuff. Ask Klauss.. Getting late. Have to going.. good luck with the problem. :P
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Post by Kangaroo »

Still no luck :(

I think there was an option of making an object's faces double-sided per material. But I need to know how. Please, anyone who knows how to do it, tell me! (Tried Wikipedia and other sites, no luck)
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Post by klauss »

You can try two things, with mesher:
If you add -flipn, it will flip normals. It sometimes is necessary with objs, I don't know exactly why.
If that doesn't work, do it with blender.
If you don't want to, export it to xmesh, and edit cullface="1" to cullface="0" - that will disable culling.

Polygon sorting is no longer a problem, BTW.

Cockping alignment is also a bitch - the camera will always be at 0,0,0, facing towards the +z direction, with a FOV according to the config file (right now, it's 37.5). Make sure you see the outside the way you want with such a camera, before exporting.

BTW: flipn flips lighting normals, I don't think it does culling normals. Flipping culling normals you do with Blender, though I bet I could add the option to mesher, it's just swapping abc by acb (on triangles). Do pay attention to how lighting ends up if you disable culling, as it may very well be backwards - if it is, use -flipn additionally.

BTW2: I wouldn't mind an animated glowmap here :D (hint hint)
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Post by Oblivion »

animated glowmap here (hint hint)
hint hint some more :D
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Post by Kangaroo »

:roll:

Are you sure?
1024x1024 animated glowmap?
Or did I miss something?
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Post by Oblivion »

umm...

Klauss, glowmpas usually take less memory than the diffuse map itself, hence animating it wouldn't hinder the engine now would it?

And Kangaroo, try resizing the glowmap to 512x512. Just two pictures alternating would be cool 8) . Use GIMP's cubic rescaling to retain quality.

Res wouldn't matter for glowmaps, probably, as the maps still remain squares.
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