@Argh:

Thanks for the feedback! That first shot of the Razorbeak was before I got the glow and glass area working, they look better now, but I still don't understand exactly what the glow areas add. What is the effect suppose to be and what is the difference between setting it higher (i.e. closer to 1.000000) or lower (i.e. closer to 0.000000)?

Thanks for the complement on my textures. I actually was afraid that this would be my major handicap, but I found some great links here to texturing tutorials offsite that have helped me immensely. Also, I just got my copy of Photoshop in the mail, so I'll be learning it over the next week, so hopefully my textures will continue to improve. I did those textures in "Ultimate Paint," a cheap, but decent paint package.

I'm also getting better at using the UV mapper, knowing how to divide up the pieces and represent them on the BMP. Still having trouble getting cylinders to map right, but getting there.

Again, thanks so much for your tutorial. It was complete, concise, and easy to follow since you put in every step of the process.




http://www.evolvedones.com

@Silent Jay:

To see what Glows can do... check out the in-game screenies of the Bandit (page 5 of this thread), or open up my XML Toolkit Mod and buy any one of the new ships (I suggest using OpenSP Lite, so that you can start whereever you want and can have however much money you want). Basically, glows override the FL shading engine, which you can use for anything that's lit either from the inside or indirectly. I do it with engines, lit windows, and other features that need to be lit up to look realistic. If you look at the way I painted the DemoShip in MS3D, you'll see that the engine is very carefully shaded, using gradients to really create an illusion of indirect light on the sides of the engines. This effect is subtle, and takes some practice to do right, but it's really quite spectacular when you get it right.

I mainly do this with Groups, although a project that I'll be releasing sometime next month will involve using a Et texture (I'm going to show folks the alternative method to using super-giant-rez TGAs that I found). If I were you, I'd save Et textures for areas that just cannot be done with Groups, though, because they're very computationally expensive to render, compared to Groups with a simple one-color alpha (DDS DXT1 textures have an "alpha" of pure white, just like anything else that doesn't support layers).

The amount from 0.000000 to 1.000000 is the amount that the Glow overrides the FL shading engine. Things with a Ec of 1.000000 will not be shaded at all, whereas things at 0.100000 will just glow very slightly. So you can adjust it with great subtlety and really make things look exactly like you want. I usually use a value between 0.800000 and 0.600000 for my ships, because 1.000000 usually looks washed-out to me. But you can always re-adjust the TEXTURE to make things darker, if you have the Ec between the two values- that's how I get my engine glow areas really precisely adjusted... One last note: make sure you KEEP that number of digits after the period, btw- these are floating-point numbers, and they need to be specified to 6 decimal places.

Edited by - Argh on 8/10/2005 10:37:38 PM

Thanks, Argh! That gives me a much better understanding of the glow effect. And it is SO impressive when done right (i.e. the bandit pics on page 5).

Here is the Razorbeak with the glow and glass set right, or at least better than they were:

Click here


http://www.evolvedones.com

Edited by - Silent Jay on 8/11/2005 7:07:44 AM

Yeah, that alone makes that ship come to life a lot more. Although, if I may be permitted to nit-pick, I think that it should use the red engine flame from the Rogue ships, not the white one associated with Liberty, to match the engine glow color

lol I haven't gotten that far yet! I just figured out how to make icons for my ships (thanks to Osprey's excellent tutorial!). Maybe later this weekend I'll get around to changing the flame.

Hi!

I just have to say that I'm only an ini coder and do not understand much about modelling, but I think it is right, if I also comment the models.

Mace: In my opinion the Zeus Freighter is just great. Of course it is not perfect or has amazing specialties (like glowing parts), but it really fits into the FL universe, looks definitely like a large freighter and is therefore a great addition to the game.
I look into the moddeling forum sometime to see some new models, but there are so many models, which are well made, have no visual glitch and even special things on them. However they look totally different to the original FL ships, or have much too strong colors (like your Racers). Therefore the perfect models get just an average personal rating from me, because they are made for FL but don't fit in the game. So, go on with ships like the Zeus, it is really great.

The Racers however have in my opinion too strong colors. Maybe you can try to change these a bit (like Argh already said) making them a bit dirty and the colors more like vanilla FL colors.

But again, great work!

Silent Jay: I like your ship designs. They are not too close to FL, but still in the FL style and fit perfectly in the game. The new version of the Razorback looks quite professional and also the Jesterblade is a nice ship.
The Gnat might be a bit short. I'm not sure about this, but it looks not totally like a ship, but also a bit like a small box, flying in space (sorry if this sounds rough, but I'm not a native speaker and don't know how to say this). Maybe it would be good to add a vertical wing to the back. But that is just my idea.

Good work, keep modelling!

Black Eagle

@Silent Jay: the easiest way to make Icons is to us FLModel Cloner, trust me

Oh yeah... and on page 6 of this thread, I've updated the Rogue VHF project. Can't wait to get the other versions done... I've done all the hard parts already, so this should be very quick...

Edited by - Argh on 8/11/2005 3:33:36 PM

@Black Eagle

Thanks for the feedback! The Gnat does look boxy and fairly ugly because it's meant to replace the Starflier as the starter ship, i.e. the one you want to get out of ASAP!

Ah, okay. Then it's just perfect. I would try to get out of it quite fast

this is another model i started a few days ago (i've been sick so i've had some time on my hands ) link but i'm out of ideas and it looks like it's missing something. suggestions anybody?

@Arton Alpha:

Well... here are my thoughts:

1. It's very low-poly, but it has serious welding problems- those verts that look partially black are polygons that shouldn't be welded... trust me, they'll look terrible in-game.

2. The cockpit's utterly impractical. Imagine trying to actually see out've that ship. Then again, in the FL future, I find it hard to imagine that people would actually use their eyeballs to do much in the way of piloting, but that's just me.

3. A good skin's really, really necessary to get the most out've something that low-poly. See my skin for the Xeno Purity (I think that's Page 2 or 3 here) for a shot of a very low-poly ship that's basically made to work by skinning it very carefully.

@Arton Alpha: The ship looks nice maybe a little more detal on it and maybe reduce its width a little more. Other wise it looks fine, but as Argh said the shin will make or break that little fighter. though it is a great start. In the future don't be afraid to make a model into many pieces. not that it looks as if you are but many modellers seems to fear having to merge many pieces for no good reason.

i've just started making models and haven't explored into skinning, also i've made changes to the front end i'll post a screen shot on my site in a while
new screen shot up with some changes here

Edited by - arton alpha on 8/17/2005 7:07:22 PM

@Arton Alpha:

I'd either:

(1) shorten the nose on the Y axis so the there is enough slope to give room for a bubble cockpit , or

(2) extend the tail fin (vertical stablizer) forward on the Z access and convert it into a cockpit.

Without a defined crew cabin, even one without glass, the ship looks like an unmanned drone. Of course, on the RPG server I play on, several people have flown ships claiming to be intelligence drones simply scoping out other player's loadouts without attacking them.

Keep modelling!

@Argh,

Hey, I wanted to ask you if Spheremaps in Milkshape work in Freelancer. I haven't tried it, but if coupled with a standard skin, it might give the ship a reflective look. Just curious.


http://www.evolvedones.com

Edited by - Silent Jay on 8/18/2005 1:09:13 AM