Ship Submission Terms & Conditions

[Dusty Lens]

[color=#33FFFF]Ship Symmetry!
For everyone making the new ships.

There are many ship models being prepared for Discovery right now, and - before it's too late - I wanted to point out one slight difficutly that often arises when the ships are adapted into the mod.

Symmetry.

The CMPs that I receive as ship submissions are often not quite symmetrical against CMP coordinates (the coordinates by which hardpoints are aligned). This causes problems when I create new hardpoints, since I have to manually align them from both sides of the ship. I'm mainly talking about left/right symmetry right now; there were cases when the ship was not aligned at all against the CMP 0,0,0 point (the Battlestars, for example), but I never got such ships as user submissions.

Anyway, here's what I'm talking about. The Virage model by Legeonation. The issue is present in lots of models that I got as submissions, and many models from 3rd party ship packs, so don't consider this pic as evidence against this particular modeller.

Here's the thruster hardpoint. Note that it's aligned exactly in the middle of the ship, near the central axis visible on the wireframe. And note the X coordinate (X is side-to-side axis, Y upside-down, Z from the front to the back).


Here's second pic. What happens if the thruster has X=0.000000.

You can see that it's shifted to the left. This might be a slight change, but for off-center hardpoints the numbers are higher. This could potentially lead to incorrectly aligned hardpoints (cause I have to create 20+ hardpoints for each ship and can easily make a mistake) and will be very well visible for those who will use the ship.

Symmetry issues can also be found on the models themselves, regardless of coordinate axis. This is an example:

You can clearly see that two planes have different angle. This is a minor flaw that no one will probably notice in-game. However, it also makes assigning hardpoints more complicated. And if your ship has wings with different length, or assymetrical textures... this definitely won't look good, unless assymetry is intentional.

Another example. Blood Dragon Gunboat by Vaporlynx.

This isn't exactly about symmetry, cause no ships are symmetrical by Z axis (nose=/=engine). However, the 0, 0, 0 point of this ship is shifted far towards the engine. You can see where it is cause I placed a fake hardpoint there (red box).

What's the conclusion for modellers? When converting ships into CMP format, please try to achieve ideal symmetry from left side=/ to /=right side, and let the 0, 0, 0 point be somewhere in the middle of the ship. Also, check if the right side of your model is exactly identical to the other. I know that it's possible, cause many models (including those submitted by users) come with ideal symmetry that cannot be simple coincidence.

This topic should be stickied:

On the issue of developing ship models where modeling symmetry is concerned:

1: Always work on one half of the model. You can always mirror the model across the X, Y or Z axis to ensure that your ship model is symmetrical on both sides.

2: Check the pivot point of your ship. The central pivot point must be located at the origin or 0,0,0. You might have to zoom in all of the way and manually adjust where the central pivot point lies.

3: UV maps and texturing. UV maps are a project of a 3D model on a 2D plane in order to develop a texture. Sometimes you will have to tweak and or adjust these UV points in order to get your texture to work correctly. The best place I've found for UV mapping tips and tricks is www.3Dtotal.com under their tutorial sections. This website has some really good tutorials that will explain the process.