FreeOrion

one thing i would love to see in game (assuming it isn't done this way) is something akin to the armored core series where when in this case building a ship you would have grapix(3dmodels) that correspond to certain ships systems, the most visual obvious besides such things as ship class and size would be engines, other features such as weapons (not necessarily each and every one but say class of weapon, missle, beam etc.) could modify the look of the ship, as well as armor etc. .

the basic idea i have in my head is something to allow various combination's of ship parts that allow a wider variety of looks for ships.

drawing off my experience of MOO1 as i kno next to nothing of this project at this point, it was rather boring seeing the same ship time and again, and no visual way to differentiate between some ships except by name.

also a question are lod's (level of detail) models implemented in this game as that would allow for some additional refinement up close while still giving a more generic look from a far.

obviously one doesn't want a bizion ship models in a game but a modular approach may give some flexibility to looks and still keep the # in a reasonable level.

just a thought.

There will be different kinds of hulls, each providing a certain number of slots(2 types) and each hull has an integrated engine. Weapon systems or other ship parts, won't be visible on the outside of the ships. But the player will most likely still be able to scan for internal systems and the UI will provide this information to the player(probably using icons).

I'm going to try to tie the hull designs to the alien races as much as possible, meaning different races will have quite different looking hulls. This is especially true for constructed hulls. As suggested in a recent content thread, less ordinary hulls could be available as well: asteroid hulls, organic hulls, etc. Also, some buildings will be visible and can be targeted in combat: shipyards, asteroid mines, etc.

In regards to LODs, I've been told the engine does this automatically, we've still to test this though.

sounds cool from the other post seems to support some of the more advanced features, my main experience with 3d stuff was doing some planes for Microsoft combat flight Sim 3, using ack :: gmax :: and just some basic uv mapping options, in that, turns out this supports quite a bit more advanced stuff then what i thought at first but, im more then willing to experiment with some of those tools im a quick learner and i feel that at least 50% of modeling is artistic talent the rest is applying that talent in a meaning full, ie learning the software and tools needed to put that on the screen.

in short it might take me a min to get some of the more advanced stuff down but I'm up for the challenge. mainly in the area of the more advanced/automated type uv wrapping and normal maps most of this I've done manually in the past.

that ship u posted was way more detailed then what i was expecting, (which i regard as a good thing) the way i take it looking up some stuff most of the details are from a higher poly mesh referenced by the normal map, which is just something that is kind of blowing me away at the moment... lol ... but i can defiantly appreciate the advantages of that method, in terms of detail verses poly count. regardless if i ever contribute anything that is something that i will defiantly learn as it seems to be a very powerful tool.

don't mean to come off as an amateur as i feel that i have ample talent in the artistic part of things, which by the way is partly my motivation for seeking out a developing game, what better way to learn, the other part is for portfolio reasons .