FreeOrion

I have a few questions.

What should and shouldn't the models have on the already? (engines, weapons, ect.)

Is there a chart where I can see how big each size of ship should be compaired to the others?

And is there a number of polys each ship size should have?

Thx.

PS Miu: I had problems with geocities. do you want me to send my star sample to ur e-mail.?

_________________
"The one perfect impossibility is perfection."

Personally I think we should aim for about 500 polys per ship at most. That will allow a good amount of ships on screen IMO.

500? But I think that leviathens should have more. And then I heard something about auto degredation or something, that lets us have better models.

Is there a good offical number for each size?

Edit: I was thinking about starting a conoly ship landing animation. Should it look like a certain group's ships, or just like a general look? And how long should it be? Or has it been assigned or has anyone been asked to do it?

_________________
"The one perfect impossibility is perfection."

Yeah I guess Leviathan's should be like 1500 max, but IMO the smaller ones should be like 500 average. Btw what does auto degradation (or whatever) do? Does it automatically reduce/increase objects poly count when you get closer/farther? I know BF1942 does that, but it sounds a but complicated......

I will say this just one more time. We can take high-poly models and tesselate them down to lower-poly models, but we cannot tesselate low-poly models up to higher polygon counts. Make high-poly models. I am the lead programmer. I know what I'm talking about. If this message sounds pissy, that's because it is. This is at least the third time I have said this.

Sorry.

Ok, I just need to find out what parts of the ships that I can include in the models and I can start to update them.

I already knew about the tesselate thing, but is there still a max we should have to something? I don't understand the system either.

I guess scaling could be done later, it is a simple procedure.

_________________
"The one perfect impossibility is perfection."

Here's the way to think about it: Make your models with enough polygons to fully convey the shape you want, and no more.

We'll worry about efficiency of rendering and having enough ships on screen at once in a few months, when we come to it.

Hi.
In general quidelines, we've agreed that 5000 polys would be good. (If you haven't read updated version, go read it now.) Anyway, do them with all the detail you want, and that should be more than enough. Read some tutorials about box-modelling and low-polymodelling if you feel that you get well above that with your models.
As there is quite many things still uncertain about battle-engine and ship-models, I would suggest not working on them, or at least making any more new designs before thigs get more clear as there's possibility of doing work that would be unusable in game.

Shipmodels should be complete, with all parts included. Though no point modelling gunturrets and such because they are too small to be seen, but if you want, but you can still edit them in by using textures. We quite certainly are not going for modular shipdesign so that it would show on 3d-models, so no need to worry about that. Just make the models and textures feel big, unified, original and cool. Think about the race they belong and how they reflect the characteristics of that race.

about sizes, here's something that may change but give's you idea:

cutter, defence platform 30-50m
frigate, 70-100m
cruiser, starbase 100-200m
battleship,battlestation -500m
titan,star fortress -1000m
leviathan -2000m

Miu
FreeOrion Graphics Team Lead

_________________
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

I claim no graphics expertise, but aren't these numbers a little extreme? I mean , if the projection of the leviathan takes up about 80x40 pixels on your screen, then a cutter is just 2x1 pixels.

Also, if we are doing it in 3d, then a player is going to see a Leviathan being about 64,000 times the size of the cutter. I'm pretty sure the in-game volume differences won't work out to be anywhere near that extreme.

If the plan is to scale up the smaller sizes to be more in line with game volume and cost, why not allow people to design them in more consistent scales to begin with?


I'd say maybe:

Cutter - 300m
Frigate - 500m
Cruiser - 800m
Battleship - 1100m
Titan - 1500m
Leviathan - 2000m

The 'volume' that people see would then be around: 1, 5, 20, 50, 125, 300

Yes, thanks for correcting, when writing that I was thinking it in 2d. Those numbers sound much more resonable

edit:
I generally like the idea of categorising ships by volume more than just dimensional size-limit. This courages away from cubical/spherical styled design that moo2 suffered. Though it's unpractical to follow this at exact amounts, it works well as quideline.

Miu
FreeOrion Graphics Team Lead

_________________
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

Don't forget carrier fighters.

_________________

50m. But modelling these in much detail is vain as in battles there will be hundreds of these flying around, models must have very low polycount. ~20 polygons is max. And that might get scaled down

Miu

_________________
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

Seriously, for fighters I think we should just use elongated sphere's or something.