Coalition Ships

[RingoW]

@ Xing: First try to take a look here:

First Aid for Developers

Thats why it is pinned. If anyone is missing an important link, feel free to add it.
In my second post is a link to a tool compilation. There you will find a good tutorial.

AoM

[Gamazson]

I really like these Xing, however I recommend working on the textures/model around your engine intakes on the larger ships. They look a little plain. You are putting allot of work into these ships and they are growing on me, don't let anything be half-assed. We have 4-5 months until mod work even begins again. Make these a superior product!

-NEXUS

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AKA Nexus

[Xing]

Don't worry, I'll try to work on these during my december vacations if I can

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[Xing]

... I do hope they get lancers online soon because tutorials and the softwares are all on it...

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[LancerZero]

It is possible to save an entire web page, including sub-pages, to your hard drive. I don't know how to do it, but ask around in the Media forum, and I'm sure someone can help you. Of course, that'll only matter if LancersReactor ever comes back up...

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Current Stories
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Silvy's Story(upd.2-29-08) | Conrad's Flight & Fight(upd.1-14-08)

[Xing]

well, since TLR is down for the moment, I tried to understand a bit more how by sympathetic japanese software works, and managed what I guess is err... the damned file needed to texture a ship up...

As someone previously suggested, I am indeed reworking up all the models.
I am beginning with the Soviet model,
Notice the slight modifications, the back of the hull among all, who was adjusted - previously it was highly irregular. Also the lower side wing supports have been modified, now much more extended toward the outside, like the Liberator. The size of the side wing has been revised, they are shorter.


So, if anyone wants to texture it up on photoshop or something, I am giving you the - anyway, what I guess is the bmp equivalent of a MAT file...
Have fun, I'll try to work out a texture on my side as well.

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[RingoW]

Imposible to paint, because no one than yourself knows where wich part is located.
Also for all the single faces you don't need an uv map. You can give them a procedural texture. Means just create a square or circle and paint it and asign them to the faces. You can also use existing FL panels for exhaust nozzles and weapoplates. Aditionally you can use a tile mapper to adjust the texture. Hm, hard to explain.

Use an uv map for huge surfaces like main hull and wings only.

Respectfully
AoM

[Xing]

ah thanks AoM. You always have useful advices ^^
and uh yeah it's a bit hard to figure out what is what in that mess...

Soviet class Coalition VHF
The pride of the coalition getting a new paint job =P

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[bluntpencil2001]

You're doing a kick ass job, man.

It's great to see you progress as a ship-builder.

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[Treewyrm]

I recommend to align uv elements in such way there is little to no unused space left. Group identical/symmetrical so that they use same space on the texture. It's a common approach when skinning models. Your current map is a terrible waste of space, there are many identical elements, too much unused space and even overlapping.

Now, in Freelancer developers used different approach, a somewhat similar to what can be seed in level design in other games. Basically using several small seamless textures to cover various surfaces with them. This method allows re-use of texture in many models that share the same surface material/ornament type, while custom uv map is usually being used in single model only. Plus there are other concerns such as texture size. You can't make just any large size, the larger it is the more memory it will use, as a result when another player approaching that ship will notice big lag while his computer loads your massive texture into the memory.

Here is my recommendation and I suggest you follow it: make 3-4 small seamless textures (64x64 or 128x128, DDS DXT1 with mipmaps) and use them cover surfaces of your ship. Some people make huge single texture for entire ship, from optimization standpoint it's quite wrong. And games, unlike renders, require a lot of attention to optimization both as in model polycount and textures as well. Now sometimes, just sometimes single texture can work fine for a ship when it has small amount of surfaces and generally ship is small by itself. But that is for as long as you know what exactly you are doing and how are you going to arrange your surfaces on uv map.

There are number of tools available around to create seamless textures, for example Texture Maker and Genetica. Of course we shouldn't forget about photoshop although it's not designed for that task (but can work fine as well). If you don't want to create new textures (why making more redundant textures?) use existing ones, with creative approach it can do wonders and will make your ship look better and more Freelancer-ish as you will not have to mimic freelancer textures on your own, you just use them and that's all. Given that you're not a texture artist I suggest to go with Freelancer textures instead of your own.