Nyp (and whatever other models I come up with)

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

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Oblivion
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Post by Oblivion »

yep it is. :)
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Post by Tarran »

I can't access that tutorial.. I get this access denied thing that pops up and points me to the main page
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Post by loki1950 »

@Tarran you have to log in to there site for access so create an account on the main page.

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Post by Tarran »

so, as you folks know, I've been doing pretty dismal with my uv's. I've been working on that a bit..

below is an escort/fighter from a set (its an idea I had for a cruise ship, shuttles, fighter craft, maybe some maintenance and escape pods as well, not sure.) Its a simple model, so figured that would give me more time to try to improve my hulls.

skeel
Image
Image
Image


I'm having this problem where the skin is coming out like I'm on 256 colours.. or at least portions are.. currently the only thing I can think of is to do the skin in 2048, rather than 1024.. oh, and I messed up the nose.

-=added on=-
I figure once I get my hulls skills to an acceptable level, I'll go back and redo the tug.

-=additional=-
how does one do the cockpit glass, so that it looks like glass or the equal there of?
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Post by DualJoe »

I don't know if I get what you mean with your skin coming out.
If you mean it's not looking as good as you'd expected, that's partly because wings3d only shows the diff-texture without shading. Wings3d won't show how the models will look ingame.

The glass should be a seperate object from the model in vegastrike with a different alpha value. You can delete the glass in wings3d if you want to see the cockpit interior.

Come to think of it. Maybe now is the time to export the model to an app like Blender for the rest of the work. Wings3d is a great tool for modeling, but that's also where its functionality ends.

About the resolution of the texture. Some professional artists told me to make the original texture as highres as you(or your pc) can handle (keep those safe) and then downscale the final result.
The second golden rule is to make the final texture twice the resolution as what the model will be seen at.

For example a screen-resolution of 1024x768 and the model filling half the screen that would mean a minimum texture-res of 1024. And that's assuming you've got an optimal uv-unwrap. There are some reasons for using a lower resolution. On fast moving objects you won't see much detail anyway. Limitations in hardware and storage space also restrict how far you can go.

If you still have questions about texturing, I could write a simple tutorial on how I made the textures of the Hornet. That is if people are interested in reading it.
I may not be the right person to do it though. The Hornet is my very first texture job and I'm in no way an expert. On the other hand, I can relate with people doing their first texturejob.
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Post by Tarran »

oh, the skin coming out.. for some things I was doing, it seemed to show up as a lower resolution.. (when I viewed it in wings) like as if I was in 256 colours versus 32m

ah.. blender.. I have that on my machine.. my usage goes something like this.. open it up.. try to work with it.. get frustrated, go back to wings.

I was also hoping for someone to look at what I have here, and such and such would improve the feel of the hull or the plates.. ect..

my resolution is 1280x960.. so I guess then the 2048 is the way to go for me.

I thought v35 of wings had shadow support.. I'll have to look at that.. or I'll have to break down and use blender..

-=added on=-
does blender import wings uv maps as well as models? if so, what format should I export to?

as far as the cockpit portion goes, do you just make a copy of the section where it is in your model, and then build it from there?
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Post by DualJoe »

Tarran wrote: ah.. blender.. I have that on my machine.. my usage goes something like this.. open it up.. try to work with it.. get frustrated, go back to wings.
Same here until I finally looked at the documentation. In hindsight it was actually ridiculously easy to get the hang of it. Now it's the other way around. I start up wings, immediately run into limitations, get frustrated, fire up blender again.

Browse some pages here and here or download the free magazines and I'm sure you'll get the hang of it in no time.

The upcoming release has a number of options you really don't want to live without. If you can't wait till then you can try some of them with a development version.

I recommend exporting to Wavefront .obj and yes you'll keep your unwrap.

Blender's uv-tools are excellent by the way and improving with every release.
A lot of max and maya users are using Blender for unwrapping or used it's code in plugins. (legal because Blender is GPL) Another reason for using Blender is smoothgroups. I haven't used wing3d in a while, but I don't recall it supporting those.

EDIT
If you're feeling lazy there are a number of videotutorials for Blender available online.

EDIT2
About the cockpit: depends on what you want to do. For the ingame model, just do it like you did the rest of your ship.
For the cockpit-view AFAIK vegastrike doesn't support 3d-cockpits yet. So you can render the views from your cockpit and use the resulting images.

The ogre-version will support 3d-cockpits, maybe even completely roamable shipinteriors. You'll probably will have to make more detailed interiors, but those can be made seperate from this one.
For the Hornet I made two cockpits in the exact same place, but on different layers in Blender.
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Post by light_gemini »

Tarran

That new texture looks good :D I would like to see the tug model with a similar texture.

DualJoe

If you can use some of your time to write a blender UV tutorial it would be a great help for us. In fact I think why could start a new topic about UV maping and texture making, with tricks and samples of our work so we all can improve our skills and the looking of our ships. Any one up to it?
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Post by Tarran »

the new topic sounds kosh.. so does all the material on blender .. I have the dev version on one machine, and a really old version on the other.. I'll be burning the dev and trying it on my machine.
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Post by DualJoe »

Check out the article on uv-unwrapping in this feature. All you need to know to start texture-unwrapping in Blender.

I'll make some small tuts on how I did the hornet texture, will take some time though.
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Post by Tarran »

say.. Dual..
are nodes like zbrush/tattoo, or is that more like an enhanced version of colour to material?
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Post by DualJoe »

I'm not familiar with Zbrush/tattoo.

The Nodes in Blender are the new way of editing materials and/or compositing renders. I've seen people do some impressive stuff with them, like creating their own subsurface-scattering-shader (humanskin and wax materials) or depth of field and such.

Haven't done much with them myself yet, so you'll have to figure them out on your own. Since dev-version now can do texture-baking it is something to look into.

One thing I did use the nodes for was to make the depthmaps for those greeble-stamps in the Hornet-thread. I let the normalmap material render to the RGB-channels of the image and mapped the z-buffer to the Alpha-channel. The result was a normalmap with the heighmap in the alpha-channel.

The dev-version does have zbrush-like sculpting with multiple levels of resolution. In the default scene select the cube find the add multires button and add about 5/6 levels. Then go into sculpt mode and play around Zbrush-style. I'm using it to make a damaged and scarred version of the hornet.

Maybe best of all is the new retopo-tool by the same coder as the sculpt-mode. It lets you trace over a model you've selected as a target and it will snap to it's surface. This means that you can make a high-detailed model and don't bother with topology. When it's done use the retopo-tool for a version with good topology. It's also great for creating low-res versions of the model.
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Post by Tarran »

zbrush is a corp 3d painting program, Tattoo is a open source 3d painting program. I've heard its a little buggy.. there's also sharpconstruct (a combination division modeler and 3d painter.) I haven't tried sharpconstruct though.. its freeware.. a sourceforge project.. but I've heard its a little buggy too..
Do you hear, that whisper, calling unto you
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As have your brethern before you
beckoning, to sail to those distant lands
Come
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Upon the coldest sea
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Post by DualJoe »

Will check out tattoo.
The guy that coded sharpconstruct is the same guy that coded sculpt-mode in Blender this summer. He figured that adding sculpting features to Blender would be easier than maintaining a complete 3d-package on his own.
Sofar sculpt-mode is pretty stable for me and it integrates well with the rest of Blender.

If you're into opensource checkout denormgen for high->low normal-map generation from Blender. It's the easiest normalmap-tool I've used sofar and the fastest. AFAIK it only runs under linux though.

EDIT
Can you post a link for tattoo? All the links I can find are dead.
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Post by Tarran »

apperently I was wrong, Tattoo is shareware.. I have the link for downloading the shareware version..

http://www.shareit.com/192949-1.html

however I did find these two other programs
Hexigon2.1


and haven't looked at this one

-=added on=-
uh, blow this off (except that first link)
Do you hear, that whisper, calling unto you
O'childe of the shore
As have your brethern before you
beckoning, to sail to those distant lands
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Upon the coldest sea
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