well is my first impression that you've changed material names in nearly all the ships correct?that would be bad news for my extensive rehardpointing,although i did learn a few time savers that will make repeating the process much easier

Edited by - Cold_Void on 10/24/2005 12:15:22 AM

@Cold_Void:

Erm... yes. Unfortunately, that would be correct. If you'd like me to send you the CMPs, I'd be amenable to letting you fix them up, so long as you're not doing anything that would require redefining the vast majority of INIs. Please note that the HpLights have been removed on purpose for the next version of Toolkit. And that certain things may be subject to changes- I'm still debating how I'm going to implement the final versions of Missiles.

that would be quite excellent thank you,do you need me to send you an email from my address or do you still have it? - i'm no big fan of the lights myself,never saw why anyone would want to buy them either ^_^ as long as the subgroups haven't been renamed i don't see any reason the INIs should need any adjustment except for lights - mainly what i'm doing is turning engine hardpoints to thruster(afterburner) and placing the engine points on root(destroying an engine and opening the NN = crashola) as well as enabling all the engine collisiongroups so these new afterburners can be destroyed

my own implementation of missiles is using gun classes 5-6 for missile/gun mounts and 1-5 for purely guns,the idea being to reduce missile spam(which could be VERY bad with my multifire spread launcher)while still allowing gun nuts to equip every slot with guns

Please send me an email, if the address listed here on TLR isn't correct. I'll send the CMPs and a couple of the new MATs, so that you can get an idea of what's been involved. I am... pretty positive that I renamed some Parts in the earliest ones I did, before I realized that I didn't need to alter *everything*... so I'll have to re-check that and see if I need to do some from scratch. No real big deal, honestly- the CMP alterations are pretty straightforward... it's the MATs that are a big pain.

With one important exception. The Kusari Elite (that'd be the Dragon that's not the Blood Dragon version) was altered fairly extensively, in an effort to fix name collisions between it and its more illustrious cousin. This has worked, to some extent- now the Elite doesn't turn into a Blood Dragon Dragon (lol) seemingly at random, like it used to, except at ShipDealers, where it has proven remarkably resistant to being fixed, and will only stay a Dragon if the Blood Dragon version is offered alongside it. Very strange problem there, haven't quite figured out why it's still colliding yet, but it's probably a bad INI reference somewhere.

i accidentally opened a second to/bcc tab and i couldn't close it so i left it blank and smtp can be picky,so - all i want to know is;
did -
you -
get-
that-thing
that-i
sent you?

edit: He got that thing i sent him!! (ok,i watch entirely too much cartoons heh)

Edited by - Cold_Void on 10/25/2005 9:40:58 AM

this is a model i started today, keep in mind that it is in very early stages of development. so don't be quick to rip it apart

Needs some greebles to make it feel more like a "real boy", but it's looking like it's going somewhere

here we go again i think it looks a little better it looked kind of plain before now it looks sort of like a mutated f-117

Can someone say ---Stealth Fighter---
Looks good. Can't wait to see it finished.

I just completed a tutorial for photoshop designed to compliment the texturing tutorals by Argh and Harrier. I used an old model I made some time ago. Here is the finished ship.

@Argh How do I upload the tutorial to TLR.





Edited by - jsncalif11 on 10/30/2005 1:21:31 AM

@Arton Alpha:

Yup, that's starting to look like it might be a spacecraft Needs more greebles, though- small boxes, winglets and other odd shapes to give it more detail and break up the monolithic shapes of the raw polygons. Greebling is both the blessing and bane of modeling- do it poorly, and your model is inefficient and lousy looking. Do it right, and your model looks reasonably realistic at an efficient polycount. It's the last step before you're really ready to skin. Professionals tend to greeble as they build the geometry, and are usually working from concept drawings, so that they know what they're building and can concentrate on the technical side of things.

In this model's case, you're going to have to be careful, because you already have geometry cutting through itself. This is actually good practice, if you really know what you're doing- it can often save a lot on polycount. But, on the flipside, it makes skinning it more complicated, because the parts that cut through each other need to be accounted for. Not to pressure you overmuch, as you're still just learning, but I'd suggest... that in this case, you just stop where you're at, and try skinning this thing, either using the methods outlined in Drizzt's tutorial (where he talks about using MS3D's vert-mapping features) or the methods in my "How to Skin" tutorial, where I take a whole-object, seamless approach using uv-maps. Either method works- for very low-poly things, either method is reasonably fast.

I'd try to skin this, though, because it will teach you a lot about the challenges that you will be facing later, and it will give your brain a new way of looking at your work. Plus, if the final results look reasonably cool, you'll have a nice screenie or two

@Jsncaliff:

1. Very cool, me likes

2. I guess it depends on the format of the tutorial. I did mine by uploading all of the relevant files to my website, then putting up links in the article. ImageShack allows you to do links (thumbnailed, even), so that's an option for everything but larger materials, such as the original PSD (which I assume you're providing, since it's kind've hard to follow a PS tutorial if you can't see the Layers) and the model.

If you don't have website hosting, then you can put all of the materials into a zip file and upload to TLR by sending it to [email protected] by various methods. For myself, anything smaller enough to email gets sent via my Gmail account... anything larger gets FTP'd to my website and hosted there. You can always make the file into a multi-part RAR and send one part per email, which is a pain on both ends, but does work. If you don't have that option... let's see... there's a service called sendthisfile.com (and several variants offered by other companies) that allow users to send large attachments for free, I think. I dunno how those guys make money, but that's apparantly what they offer to do. So that's another option.

Finally, you've gotta write up the article and put it on TLR somehow. My solution was to just write and edit the whole thing and then request that it be stickied. Posts don't get stickied unless they're considered uber-special, though, so don't be surprised if it doesn't. I would be more than willing to edit the first post of "How to Skin", though, so that it included a link to your finished tutorial, so that people could get everything they need to get started skinning right off the bat, and quit wasting their time with cruddy methods and poor technique. 99% of skinning is knowing how to do things... 1% of it, at least at first, is making good art. After that... it all comes down to skill, of course.

Edited by - Argh on 10/30/2005 1:53:16 AM

@ Argh. I tried to email you that tutorial. It was a hair too big for Gmail and Yahoo so I figure I'll just upload all the pics to my photobucket account and do the tutorial like a new topic and just link the photos. It's gonna take a bit of time though to get everything positioned right.
I would post it to my website but it's been down for several months and I don't think I'm gonna bring it back up any time soon.

@ everyone else. Here is a little ship I just finished up. It's suppose to be like a starter ship. It don't hold but two guns and no thruster, but it has little cargo pods for mining. If anyone want's it just let me know.

warning: first skin attempt ahead, unprofesional quality and may cause blindness click link at your own risk link

Two guns and no thruster? I think I'll stick with the Crap...err...Starflier