That dreadnought's a neat design, but (just at a glance) I'd say that it's maybe 7K polys already o_0 Texturing it would be less painful than many here have suggested, but only if it was sectioned by hand- you're going to have a lot've the upper/lower surfaces that are going to need to use spheremapping to unroll the verts properly... that said, I'd probably do each major part with a planar map or three and very carefully set it up... and relax the edge verts so that the distortion isn't too obvious.

On the whole, it's a very beautiful form, but I'm not sure it's optimized very well, and it's going to require a great deal of skill to texture well...

The station... well, personally, I'd weld the rounded edges and see if they'd look all right, and then go from there. MS3D's 3D preview is actually a fairly good gauge as to how welding's going to turn out in the FL game engine imho, but those angles look sharp enough it's probably going to be pretty iffy, and you're going to end up with some issues there.

Also, the station pretty much begs for some very carefully-contructed glowmaps to make it really work. DDS DXT3 textures can work surprisingly well for this, because if you work carefully with the base texture/s you can make the alpha channel for the glow work... by making the alpha very, very simplistic. If you try using 16-bit alphas you will be sorely disappointed... and I'm not even going to start talking about what I think of using a gigantic TGA for this kind've thing

hmm dds maps, i have never used dds i always tga but split the mapping into lots of little bits, i hail from the old days when a 256 x 256 tga was the typical map style and size, so typically my shipd have anything upto 7 textures per ships, for the glows i always try and use optical effects to create a glow look, maybe its time i started looking at dds file i dont know

Using DDS can cut down your file sizes and memory usage by 75% or more

whats the best programs for converting tga's to dds files then? i use paintshop pro most of the time but not sure that handles dds files

There's a PS plugin... goto nVidia's website and download the latest version. It should work with PSP or any other paint program that's compatible with PS filters.

@Cold_Void:
Actually I assembled the max build pieces in milkshape and fully optimized, the image is partially optimized, full is for the completed detailing, it is only about 6,000 pollies and is very well formed and detailed. So it will fly considering the verts are at less that 4,000. She is good. The station is rather low to at about 8,000 pollies, I know a bit more than most like but the detail adds to the experience, at least that what people tell me. And also when I am done with the detailing I will carve the form of the dreadnought up and reduce it into the playable range without a full optimization...that is my hope at least

Edited by - ImperaTodd on 7/27/2005 10:17:43 AM

@Argh:
Great ideas but unfortunately skinning is not my forte, i can build and detail likeno one's business, but skinning still if fights me. Though any advice is much appreciated, i will research more into skinning and see what i can do. the dreadnought's geometry was a lot of hard work so i want it to look its best.

Edited by - ImperaTodd on 7/27/2005 10:18:18 AM

imperatodd et al,
when a moderator requests you change the pictures to links as Harrier did, especially when it is in the initial post of the thread, please listen and change them. Large images clog up a page and make loading time longer for our friends on dialup. I'll change them for you this time but next time please post links instead of images.

edit: there, most of the images have been changed to links or thumbnails, please do this in the future, i can guarantee you noone wants to spend their time changing your posts.

Edited by - parabolix on 7/28/2005 7:40:36 AM

Here is the format for clickable thumbnails (example shown below) which I think is the best option.





For those that use this code is generated for you automatically whenever you upload a picture. All you need to do is copy and paste .



Edited by - PantherX on 7/28/2005 6:13:11 PM

here is my current WIP. Its Orbital Frame Anubis from Zone Of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (a PS2 game)


I got all the main weapons done so far, missiles, gun and the special attack (torp)

I am currently working on 0-Shift. Which is basicaly a worp jump at sublight speeds. I got horizontal 0-Shift done just got to fix forward/back and vertical (anyone got a link to a tutorial for vertical strafe??)

anyways here is the model pic:



Edited by - Leonhart on 7/31/2005 12:01:57 PM

What do you all think of my new and still under construction farcape, andromeda, cetacean inspired ship? It is a little rough but nearly done, but I am almost happy with it.


















Edited by - ImperaTodd on 8/3/2005 4:36:22 PM

very nice but rough like you said

rough drafting the maps on the gunstar:
front
back
side
bottom
top

Edited by - Cold_Void on 8/3/2005 8:39:35 PM

@Cold-Void, your gunstar seems to be at a good start but a little more symetry would do wonders for . but not bad at all.

i don't know how it could get more symetrical - the whole ship excluding the fuselage consists of 1 quarter duplicated & mirrored three times i'm working toward accuracy to the original ship as seen in the Last Starfighter so i'm not going to consider adding any extras

Edited by - Cold_Void on 8/4/2005 5:58:54 PM