Raider

Development of artwork, requests, suggestions, samples, or if you have artwork to offer. Primarily for the artists.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Skaro
Pupating Mass
Posts: 94
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:27 pm
Location: Stuck in a wormhole

Raider

#1 Post by Skaro »

Here's a lowpoly ship I've thrown together. It's a fast hit and run ship usually classified as a raider.

I don't know what the exact polycount limit will be, so I've made it in two versions:

1. A lowpoly ship with some extras to make it look less bland (783 triangles)
2. A lowpoly ship with purely textures to emulate the extras (202 triangles)

Just compare:


With extras:

Image

Image

Image


With Textures

Image

Image

Image


The amount of polies is eventually going to matter ingame, since you'd be able to have much ships in a single battle if they are all rather lowpoly.

Anyway, I've tested the design ingame and it works pretty well :roll: :lol:

Image
A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down. --Murphy's war laws

User avatar
utilae
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 2175
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2003 12:37 am
Location: Auckland, New Zealand

#2 Post by utilae »

Looks awesome.

Similar to a Shadow ship (babylon 5).

May be used by an ant or spider race.

User avatar
Skaro
Pupating Mass
Posts: 94
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:27 pm
Location: Stuck in a wormhole

#3 Post by Skaro »

utilae wrote:Looks awesome.

Similar to a Shadow ship (babylon 5).

May be used by an ant or spider race.
That's nothing look at these old models:

Image

Image

Image
A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down. --Murphy's war laws

User avatar
pd
Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1924
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:17 pm
Location: 52°16'N 10°31'E

#4 Post by pd »

Please get used to filling the background with something else than black and try to light your meshes properly. I find it hard to get a clear image of your designs.

User avatar
Skaro
Pupating Mass
Posts: 94
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:27 pm
Location: Stuck in a wormhole

#5 Post by Skaro »

pd wrote:Please get used to filling the background with something else than black and try to light your meshes properly. I find it hard to get a clear image of your designs.
The lighting is standard, though my favorite skin (the black one) make them hard to spot (seeing how it came from a shadow battlecrab).

I'll give it a white background or base grey skin next time.
A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down. --Murphy's war laws

User avatar
pd
Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1924
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:17 pm
Location: 52°16'N 10°31'E

#6 Post by pd »

I can see what it is, it's a light source directly behind the camera. This is the worst you can do to your models. It makes the rendering appear very flat. You should use lighting to show the form of your models in the best possible way. I recommend reading about lighting theory. You could start with searching for "3 Point Lighting". Books about studio photography are great for this and will teach you all you need to know(and more).

User avatar
Skaro
Pupating Mass
Posts: 94
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:27 pm
Location: Stuck in a wormhole

#7 Post by Skaro »

pd wrote:I can see what it is, it's a light source directly behind the camera. This is the worst you can do to your models. It makes the rendering appear very flat. You should use lighting to show the form of your models in the best possible way. I recommend reading about lighting theory. You could start with searching for "3 Point Lighting". Books about studio photography are great for this and will teach you all you need to know(and more).
I normally don't alter the light unless I'm working on a specific scene that requires it (like let's say lights in a apartment).

Anyway it's not really the lighting, it's the texture, it's got a pretty high specular levels with some addittional glossiness. This was mainly done to make a dark and shadowy ship somewhat visible in some scenes while rushing by the camera.

I used to have a movie about the "Stealth ship" (the top one of the three "shadow ships"), it shot a unsuspecting freighter apart in a quick and fast movie. Though I lost both the model and the movie after a harddisk failure. Those three screenshots are the only things that still remain of my shadowfleet.

But thanks for the advice anyway.
A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down. --Murphy's war laws

User avatar
Zanzibar
Psionic Snowflake
Posts: 470
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2003 10:35 pm
Location: Earth

#8 Post by Zanzibar »

What would be cool is if you could model the already used in-game ships so that they can be used later on... sorry that I lost the original model files... :cry:
Image

Image

User avatar
pd
Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1924
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:17 pm
Location: 52°16'N 10°31'E

#9 Post by pd »

I normally don't alter the light unless I'm working on a specific scene that requires it (like let's say lights in a apartment).
Every scene requires it. As mentioned, you want to show of your designs in the best possible way. There is no reason why you wouldn't want to take advantage of lighting.
Anyway it's not really the lighting, it's the texture, it's got a pretty high specular levels with some addittional glossiness.
Lighting is much more important than materials, believe me. And I'm not only speaking about those dark ships, I'm speaking about your work in general.

I don't want to put you down or something. Actually I welcome your efforts for this project. But your work is not yet the quality I would like to see achieved for freeOrion. I suggest posting your work on CG related boards as well to get a larger span of critics.

Also take your time with textures. Texturing for low poly stuff is actually still like modelling. You can add smaller details here. Putting a small tileable texture evenly all over the mesh just does not good look. You need some variation. You need areas with many details and areas with less details.

Learning and executing all this stuff needs time. You can't rush it.

User avatar
Skaro
Pupating Mass
Posts: 94
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:27 pm
Location: Stuck in a wormhole

#10 Post by Skaro »

pd wrote:I don't want to put you down or something. Actually I welcome your efforts for this project. But your work is not yet the quality I would like to see achieved for freeOrion. I suggest posting your work on CG related boards as well to get a larger span of critics.
Well, I'm a member at scifimeshes, and I did post there 20 or so models in the past. But unfortunately most of those posts were lost due to a board reset some while ago.

pd wrote:Also take your time with textures. Texturing for low poly stuff is actually still like modelling. You can add smaller details here. Putting a small tileable texture evenly all over the mesh just does not good look. You need some variation. You need areas with many details and areas with less details.
I normally detail models quite a bit with plating, I've still got a early WIP of this for one of the models I lost some time ago:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/ ... ruiser.jpg

You can see the first stage of paneling on the front part of the ship. It later got some details added on top and some large guns added to the raised platforms. This model took me three months to complete, but I could only enjoy it for 2 weeks.

Anyway, most of my experience with texturing comes from a fan made game called Battletech Simulator. I made all the terrain textures except the original 4.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/ ... land01.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/ ... barren.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/ ... /lava3.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/ ... final2.jpg

Additionally I made all the walls, gates, towers and early barracks for that game:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/ ... arrack.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/ ... Wall01.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/ ... e/fort.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/ ... rtress.jpg

Although all of these had a specific faction texture added to them for the over 30 different factions in the game.

And I made a highpoly version of the Timber Wolf to top that off:

Image

The next stage will involve adding Beta Galaxy textures to the model like so:

http://www.camospecs.com/Unit.asp?Actio ... UnitID=576


So yeah, I know a few things about modeling and textures.
pd wrote:Learning and executing all this stuff needs time. You can't rush it.
Yeah I know. I've only posted WIP's so far.
A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down. --Murphy's war laws

User avatar
pd
Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1924
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:17 pm
Location: 52°16'N 10°31'E

#11 Post by pd »

Forgive me, if I'm not impressed.

What did the guys over at scifimeshes tell you?

I don't think you can compare creating terrain textures(usually by mixing some photos and procedurals) with painting textures for low poly meshes.
So yeah, I know a few things about modeling and textures. (...] I've only posted WIP's so far.
I suggest you bring some of your pieces to a nice finish then. At the moment everything looks amateurish.

Post Reply