3D Model Showroom

Hey Why, I noticed in one of those threads that you were having probs with importing guns. Try the newer CMP Importer v2.7 here in the downloads section, by P!p3r. Just checked with the liberty cruiser gun (in the ship’s dir) and it imports flawlessly. As do the Dyson and Nomad turrets which show up as triangle soup in HardCMP.

Good fleet shot there, nice mod of the lrg base too, looks natural. Only thing - perhaps a window / barrier of some sort at the end of the “dome” area to seal out space. The HQ vid looks great, quite comparable to the Macross fleet shots, or BSG even I don’t think the contrails are missed, I mean they’re more an atmospheric thing, in space they just don’t make sense anyhoo.

I dug the new series, but some of their mixing 2d with 3d looked a bit off. Particularly the transformation and fight scenes. Those were some of my fav parts in the first robotech or macross series; very fast flight & transforms, and missile volley / evasions.
Ya know, that damn Frontier theme song was often stuck in my head too -as were most of the others.

PS: Lightwave’s OBJ format for MS import works better than 3DS imho; no leftover DOS 8.3 naming restrictions. The only thing you have to change to get them in as intended is by planning ahead and separating sections like how Milkshape works with Groups (1 texture mapped on each mesh). Unfortunately, that can lead to over 18 groups on large, complex models

@Mini_Me:

Hey Why, I noticed in one of those threads that you were having probs with importing guns. Try the newer CMP Importer v2.7 here in the downloads section, by P!p3r. Just checked with the liberty cruiser gun (in the ship’s dir) and it imports flawlessly. As do the Dyson and Nomad turrets which show up as triangle soup in HardCMP.

PS: Lightwave’s OBJ format for MS import works better than 3DS imho; no leftover DOS 8.3 naming restrictions. The only thing you have to change to get them in as intended is by planning ahead and separating sections like how Milkshape works with Groups (1 texture mapped on each mesh). Unfortunately, that can lead to over 18 groups on large, complex models

I’m not too fond of the whole Milkshape conversion mess. And putting models into Freelancer has never been a top priority for me, but this is duly noted.

Good fleet shot there, nice mod of the lrg base too, looks natural. Only thing - perhaps a window / barrier of some sort at the end of the “dome” area to seal out space. The HQ vid looks great, quite comparable to the Macross fleet shots, or BSG even I don’t think the contrails are missed, I mean they’re more an atmospheric thing, in space they just don’t make sense anyhoo.

I really wanted to make sure that the model looked like it belonged in the Freelancer universe. So what better way to ensure that then to “kitbash” Freelancer models together. The ships geometry comes from Newark Station and Juneu Shipyard. The bottom half of the central section is the only original geometry. Also the dome area is completely sealed off. It’s just that unless it gets hit by the light just the right way it is tough to see, particularly in video. Contrails I didn’t do because I honestly cannot think of an effective way to do it ;D

I dug the new series, but some of their mixing 2d with 3d looked a bit off. Particularly the transformation and fight scenes. Those were some of my fav parts in the first robotech or macross series; very fast flight & transforms, and missile volley / evasions.
Ya know, that damn Frontier theme song was often stuck in my head too -as were most of the others.

I loved Frontier. After the second episode I was completely hooked. I had heard good things about it, and when I finally got around to watching it, (Coincidentally only about 3 weeks after the show finished airing.) I was completely blown away by the quality of the show. It is definitely a show for Macross fans. I thought the animation was terrific. Off the top of my head, I had no issues with the 2D/3D mix at all. The only time I thought it looked a little off sometimes was in Macross Zero, but they have improved greatly since then. At the moment, Frontier is definitely my favorite “serious” anime series.

Sorry to get away from your discussion, but I wanted to show off Redwolf’s (part of WCDI team) latest ship for our current project (not Griff’s CEP). We still need a texturer badly though. And for future questions, those pilots are the default pilots from FL; same sized.

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk27/alfaastrix/Hadron Universe/Show Off/Cockpitinterior.jpg?t=1226904176

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk27/alfaastrix/Hadron Universe/Show Off/FullEx.jpg?t=1226904195

Nice ship there, im slightly worried about the polygon count tho lol can see a number of places where it could be optimized alot

Where is says Ed: 0 - # is how many pollies it is (for those not familure with Blender). This ship as of right now is at 18656, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. If it does, we can render it down.

Otherwise, what ideas do you have in mind for “optimizing”?

Give me a minute ill highlight some areas

1. These areas can be greatly cut down, just the ends (the cylinder shape with the extrusion on it) you could cut the poly count in these areas by half what they are - easily)

2. The “fans” could be cut in half easily too.

3. Unless the side of this panel has some surface structure as to what i cant see, taking out every other line (edge) could make it smaller all the way round.

4. The inside area wont be seen from the outside, why not make it so its almost a flat panel? - if its seen thru, then it shouldnt make a blind bit of difference i would have thought lol.

18k not a problem!?! Is this ship supposed to only be used by like one person in the whole mod or what?

18k is usually like a HUGE station. 10k or less is for caps, 2k or less for fighters (and those are not conservative numbers at all). Trust me, anything more than 2 or 3 will get you a LOT of complains from people who get lag.

Plus, I don’t believe the 18k is worth it. You can always do a normal ship in less than 2k. The other 16k are added fluff for the most part, a large portion of which can be done with textures.

Of course, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

Yeah, just look for areas that are FLAT. There are a few more areas I see which could be reduced to 1 polygon / 2 faces. Pretty much all the … um gun-like structures. Unless they have curves along them. Look along the sides of the body as well, many of those could be reduced, length-wise, merging polygons. Take into account also that curves in-game in FL’s engine won’t show up as well as in the much better lighting of a 3D program’s rendering. FL’s lighting just is not anywhere as precise as a modeling program, so some curvature can be less complex (engine intakes, radars, etc).

Great looking ship / design either way

Ok…so from what I’m getting is that the ships need to be dubbed down because otherwise lo-end computers will have problems? Or is it that any computer would have problems?

Also, from what I believe, and I may be wrong, but when the texturing is being done, could we not make the cockpit area transparent so you can see it inside when you do a turret view? I mean that’s why it was done like that, otherwise the cockpit would have been left out dropping about 2K to 3K pollies.

And on a final note, I thought Freelancer could render up to 65355 pollies per object, so why would 18K be a huge problem besides what I already mentioned?

The minute you get three of them on screen its gunna be POW bye to FL and hello CTD

If I say your bunker can resist to the power of 1000 nukes, will you REALLY want to test it out by launching 1000 nukes at it?
Your laptop has a 4-hour battery life. Does it really always hit that 4 hours?

Those are arbitrary SOFTWARE limits, given because there is a limitation in how the engine was built in itself. It in no way relates to how the engine would perform on the machines running it. At 18k, every machine will lag. The engine just is too old and the amount of polygons is too large. Plus, in all honesty, I don’t see any reason why this ship has to be SO detailed. I mean, you can easily fake quite a few things with textures and what you can’t fake, you at least don’t need to make silky smooth… And yes, you can make textures transparent.

If you want to have fun, take an asteroid field and ramp up its “fill_dist” to 10k. That might show you what “too many polies” can mean in the end.

18,000 is a lot, but your friend has built that in quad poly, when that imports into milkshape the poly count will double as ms3d only uses tri poly as does FL.

I don’t usually chime in into modelling discussions but feel i’d like to make a point here. For a start 18k is just silly. FL hates anything over 5k and its really not needed unless you want to impress people on some modelling website.

Here’s a link to prove my point,
http://www.3drt.com/3dm/gunships/gunships-showcase.htm
Use the arrow keys in the bottom left to see other models.

The models in that showcase are between 900 - 2000 polys, one multilayered 512x512 texture which kind of illustrates the fact that for FL you can do a helluva lot with textures to mimick detail. Just look at the models Coxxon did for the various BSG mods including mine, those are another good example. Why model airducts when you can use a texture? The argument is valid that if you can model it then do it, but for FL you need to consider the game engine which is why doing details with good textures is the way to go.

After looking at that link, and studying the models a while, I now understand what you meant by use the textures to basically fake pollies. I’ll talk to red about that more and see what we can do, though I want to run a few personal tests first to see just how high polly acts. I tried what you said FriendlyFire and my frame rate dropped to 1/2 frame per min. Was VERY annoying.

Either way, I still say there’s a sufficient way to get higher polly ships to run smoothly, except on space heaters (Griff). I do know from talking to Lancer Sol. that dividing the model into parts (18 max per cmp) allows it to render faster as well as allow you to beat the 65,355 pollies per ship. Like I said, I’m going to run some tests…

65,355 iirc that is the number or total on screen at any point? ive slept since finding out the awnser

Not total on screen, but total pollies per part of an object. At least that’s what I’ve been told to believe from many sources. The total amount of pollies a single .cmp file can hold if devided into all 18 parts is 1,176,390 pollies. But your frame rate will be more shot than a target at a firing range by then.

The max pollies per scene is rendered by the DX level input into game, and what your computer can handle. The resolution of the textures depends on what your computer can handle as well. Really, that’s all I know and it’s not much.

I still don’t get why you want to raise the roof instead of just trimming down the bush…

You will never get proper performance with a high poly ship, no matter how you put it. GPUs can only handle so many polies before they get a brain fart and you know that as well as I do, so I’d really suggest you stop avoiding this problem and fix it instead. Anyone who’ll play your mod will thank you for that.

yep FF is right

lol…I know I’m being difficult, but in the end, isn’t the stubborn way always have the best results? I mean with your analogy, maybe by raising the roof instead I can now have a second story. Extra bedrooms?

And I know what happens when your computer brain farts. I’m getting that a lot trying to play Fallout 3. Every 3 to 5 hours my computer decides to tell me no.