Ufo Design

[Guest drewid]

heres th battleship idea.

 

I'll figure a way of getting the triangles on the big section ths same size as the smaller. Max ties lat and long divisions, if if I make more round the equator it also sticks in more rows

There's probably an easy way round it but I'm too tired to think of it right now.

 

I also need to try joining the spheres and losing the overlap without resorting to booleans. (boolean BAAAD).

[Breunor]

I meant that if you could blast away parts with weapon fire, you need repeatable chunks of wall/roof/floor like we talked about earlier. I'm drawing a blank on whether a blaster bomb could destroy the outer hull of a ufo or not in the original, but I can see a case for not allowing it. The hull has to be pretty tough for space travel and those random space rocks that hit it going mach 5000.

 

But if you never could and never will be able to damage the outer hull, then definitely we can reduce some polys as we go. My web page has a Xenocide section, I'm putting what goodies I have up there. These latest items should be up tonight. (well, they are, but just not linked yet)

[Breunor]

(Breunor and Drewid post at same time, then...) That's a really cool battleship design! Could you start selecting triangles that are visible from the outside and hiding them, leaving only the triangles along the 'seams' and interior/excess ones. Then you can weld the verts along those seams and delete the inside polys, then unhide it all. If that doesn't make much sense to you, that makes 2 of us... but I have a feeling it would work in a roundabout way. You should be able to make an interior by duplicating each section, reversing the vertices and scaling it down a bit, then copy the sections around to make the ship. I'd put in the floors as well before duplicating, but like the other suggestions you're well aware of all this

[red knight]

Hey RK can we afford to have the ufos double skinned. It would give ttthe illusion of wall thickness when we blow a hole in it.  Bit wasteful though.

Yes why not... i had read that GeForce FX can handle tons of polygons, who knows what will be the standard in 2 years... go for it, we will worry later for slower hardware (i will from the start until i get a new Video Card, that is pretty expensive around here)...

 

BTW I really like that Battleship, it looks unearthly and scarry too...

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Deimos]

heres th battleship idea.

 

I'll figure a way of getting the triangles on the big section ths same size as the smaller. Max ties lat and long divisions, if if I make more round the equator it also sticks in more rows

There's probably an easy way round it but I'm too tired to think of it right now.

 

I also need to try joining the spheres and losing the overlap without resorting to booleans. (boolean BAAAD).

Now that looks like a battleship. It's got design reference from the original but is different enough to be original, nice. I'd been reading some ufo sightings accounts and there are quite a few that mention 'mushroom' shaped craft. How would the interior design work?

 

It looks like each of the 'spheres' should be a seperate room. I think that each of the craft should as well as looking different, represent a new tactical challenge as well. There are FAQ's on how best to attack a certain type of ship and I think we should rewrite the handbook on tactical challenges for each of the craft, to give not only all us expert players a new challenge but everyone else too.

[Guest drewid]

I meant that if you could blast away parts with weapon fire, you need repeatable chunks of wall/roof/floor like we talked about earlier.

He HE - I've thought of a way round that More on that when I've done a test or two.

 

-Drewid

[Guest drewid]

OK. This is a rough test only. This a why I asked rk about double hulled ufos.

 

at the moment it's just a brainfart. There are a lot of questions

 

Bruenor said rk could blow an alpha hole in a model. this is the same thing but the inner skin gives an illusion of the wall having some thickness.

it's the same hole in both.

 

this inner skin could either be in the model or made to appear only where there is a hole. (not sure how).

 

Unknowns are:

Quite how the hole blowing thing works, do we need texture for all the ship walls

so we can blow a hole in one particular section. or does it work another way.

How will this work with the iridium surface texture?

How will this affect line of sight?

How will soldiers know where they can get in if the hole is just a texture?

Do we kill polys that are totally alpha'd?

 

It's a bit special case tho, and I haven't tried it moving yet, (which might make it look pants).

[Breunor]

Actually, what I remember RK talking about was applying an alpha layer texture which was transparent and contained "holes" or scars, fire damage, etc. This would be on top of the existing texture, which would show through the transparent alpha layer. So a brick wall becomes a scarred brick wall. There was talk about destroying objects a poly at a time, but the consensus was that the models are destroyed a group at a time, which is defined when the model is made. So as a section of wall takes damage, at a certain point it is given the alpha layer to denote the damage, and eventually it takes enough damage that it's removed from the scene altogether. So each wall section would need to grouped together, and include side edges to prevent "hollow walls". I suggest you take one section of the battleship, center it on the origin and scale a duplicate down enough to create some thickness. Then remove some chunks of wall and see how it looks. I think it would take a LONG time to create all those edges, and of course it increases the polys substantially. The walls don't need to have much thickness, it's really there to provide interior texture, right? So by minimizing the thickness of the walls the gap within shouldn't be noticeable.

 

Something else to consider is the physics of unit movement. Can the units move up slopes/angles, how steep can they be, etc. I'm sure they can and the TUs will be adjusted based on the angle of the slope, but this can help with ship design. These ufo designs all have plenty of curves to them. I'll try a design this weekend to test the scaling issue, you all should be able to tell where the design came from...

[Breunor]

Here's some shots where there's 2 hulls without the polys sealing the edges up. I have a feeling we'd get in trouble trying to use this design, but what better to blast holes in? As you can see, you have to get right up on it see a major problem. But as mentioned beofre, no hull damage=no problem I guess. This allows textures on the inside easy enough. I just scaled each part to 99% of the original and reversed the vertexes. This type of setup provides 90% of the look with 20% of the effort, a good trade-off I think. I'll play with the earlier scout design and try making a more finished scout model. anybody who's working on ufo textures for the insides, could you send me any samples and I'll stick 'em on here. I'll play with those iridium texture samples as well, see what w get...

[Breunor]

Here's the scout with an inside hull, using some of the tile texture on the bottom shot. It's hard to see in this pic, but as you pan around it, you get an interesting shimmer effect. I applied it to every piece from above, so some of the vertical pieces aren't textured right, just a quicky shot again. The model's currently a little over 500 polys, even after putting consoles and such inside and smoothing things out, it should be under 1000. Since this is a tiny scout, I don't know if it needs more detail or not. I'm wanting to enhance the angular effect, like Drewid I'd like to see its edges in certain spots. But I can also see the point for very smooth, polished look as well.

[Guest drewid]

I like the way the scout is going, and the shape of the viewport flush to the front like that. it looks more integrated than the other version.

 

I've used the blowing holes in textures thing before, but it means swapping materials on the affected polys and manipulating the UVs. adding new polys behind the holes and mapping them. It's not a simple system by any means so I guess we _should_ avoid it. (KISS)

 

The shimmer you are getting is probably z-fighting. the depth buffer on your graphics card can't make up it's mind which poly is in front and tries to draw both (effectively something like that anyhow). It would do the same with my idea as well thinking about it. another reason to avoid it I guess.

 

hmmmm wall thickness

 

If we can work out a block system then the 'destroyed block' could include wall thickness round the edges anyhow.

Do some simple logic so that if you blow out two panels you don't get a 'pillar' up the middle

 

hmmmm Still need thinking about.....back to the blocks possibly

 

-Drewid

[red knight]

There are some well known algorithms to destroy geometry, however i couldnt find if they are suitable for realtime rendering and how difficult they are to code (i had only checked one and it is offline and it seems very difficult to code, so i think that is not an option).

 

Another way we can try is the folowing...

 

Complete unharmed block (everything cool)....

Texture Based gunfire (using a second texture)

models of the same block composed of inner blocks that can be thrown to the air after an explosion (as chunks of debris).

 

The rendering loop would execute something like this for every block... Sorry but i would have waste a lot of words trying to explain this in a different way...

 

Algorithm RenderBlock
{
  if (unharmed) { renderBlock };
  if (under gunfire) { apply damagemap texture and render };
  if (blown after explosion)
     {
          for each innerblock
         {
              if (inner block sustained too heavy damage)
                   kill innerBlock (do not render it);
              calculate the force applied to the inner block by the explotion;
              move the inner block;
              render innerBlock
         };
     };
};

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Breunor]

Not sure what you mean about the pillar. On the house models, each section of wall is complete by itself, it has polys on all edges except the bottom. So if you blast its neighbors, you still see a solid section of wall sitting there. All the polys for that section are grouped together, so if it is destroyed, they all disappear. I think I'm misunderstanding what the pillar reference is.

 

As to the shimmering, it's not caused by the polys overlapping, but rather the level of detail in the texture. While the original texture is small, I compressed it down to a point where you only see the original when you're right on top of the model. As you pan back, the tiles merge together and it makes it "shimmer" as the differnt colors shift between pixels on the screen. It does this as you move left or right as well. I think I know what you mean about Z fighting, I've seen that when the polys are right on top of each other. But there's enough seperation in this case to prevent that. If I'm missing the point on this please let me know, but I got this effect before I put the interior hull in place.

 

I think we can avoid having to do complex coding to remove and redraw things so long as we can group walls into consistent chunks. Perhaps we should have an 'official' vote or poll as to whether the hull of any ship can be destroyed, or is that a given that it cannot? If it can't then we just make sure the polys can be removed in a way that allows the engine to provide a good view when a unit's inside the ship. Right now most of those polys are pretty jagged, and it starts looks pretty rough when you take a few out. I'll play with it to make sure it's scaled right and post some shots with walls occluded (if that's the right term).

[Guest drewid]

what we could do is have damage texture on the sides of the next block along. normally it is hidden, but when block A is blown away, the side of block B is revealed showing the damage.

 

 

shimmering - Ah Sorry I got the wrong end of the stick there. OK. I don't know which is the official term for this I've heard it called boiling, shimmering, sparkling,or even flimmering, but I know what you mean now.

 

We don't yet know how much z-depth we have in the final viewport, so I don't know how far apart the planes will have to be to avoid z-fighting.

 

z-depth - I'll explain for any reading who don't know what we are talking about,

(it's worth knowing. If you know it already skip this bit. )

 

AYMK the Z buffer is basically used to sort the drawn polygons into the correct depth.

Z depth is defined by how much space there is between the front of the nearest possible object and the back of the furthest. It is usually set at the start of rendering a camera view. This distance is devided by the number of "slices" available depending on the hardware.

If this distance is to great, or the polys too close together, then the hardware gets confused and can't decide which poly to draw where. this produces an unsettling saw-tooth effect in the affected area.

 

I think you are right about having a poll . Though I guess given a choice, people will want to blow holes in Alien Saucers.

 

As for removing polys to get a view inside, maybe we should have a bottom section and a top section to each floor, and just hide the top section?

 

Looking forward to see your tests.

 

regards

-Drewid

[red knight]

The Z-Depth will be 32 bits...

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[revenant4]

I just want to say 2 things...

1. Breunor that is a cool lookin scout ship...much better than the little pods they had in X-COM but then we're using a much better graphics system.

2. DrewID those battleships are perfect...if I can make a suggestion though...when you guys decide to start skinning the battle ships I think they should have battle scars on the them from various weapons...of course this would only be in the case you seize a landed ship and not one that you've blown out of the sky...

 

-just some thoughts

[Guest drewid]

I think they should have battle scars on the them from various weapons...of course this would only be in the case you seize a landed ship and not one that you've blown out of the sky...

HE HE.... Nice Idea. Big Grin

[Breunor]

Well, I didn't have the scout ship at work, but I did have some pics of the yf-23, so I decided to play with an interceptor design. This model pretty much follows the jet's lines, and since it's very angular in the first place, it didn't take many polys for this.... 160! Isn't that about how many we're using for a foot or ear on the soldier models? There isn't a texture on this yet, so the texture mapping still needs to be done, but could this be used as one of the north american interceptors? I really like the idea of the plane varying depending on which continent it was purchased in. If you all feel it should have landing gear, I'll work on that. I guess it should, since you could see it in the battlescape if the aliens attack your base. Any comments? Constructive criticism?

[Breunor]

btw, the canopy is transparent, it just doesn't show in those pics. The polys where the engine intakes and exhaust are, I reversed the vertexes to make it dark, those would need to be reversed again and textured. The 3ds file for this can be found here, and the Milkshape ms3d file can be found here. Anybody can take these and do whatever they wish to them, it's fine with me. I'm hoping an artist will take it and texture it... hint hint!

[Breunor]

Added landing gear and updated the files linked above. Polys jumped up to 516! :crying: I could square wheels, right? Oh well...

[Guest drewid]

That is FANTAASTIC

Makes my painting finger itch. but I don't think I've got the time right now.

 

I will take it to stick in my baseview proposal doc tho

 

Heres a trick with wheels. make them hexagon or octagon.

then put a double-sided square on each side with an alpha wheel texture on it like dis.

 

The size of the texture depends on how far away you are seeing it from.

If it is going to be 32 pixels on the screen then there's not much point doing a 64 square texture

[Breunor]

I made some changes to the landing gear, took off an extra piece and reduced the sides on the rest. Total model polys went down to 367. I have no idea how to implement your suggestion of the alpha texture Drewid. Any references to alphas that I've made has been passing along comments somebody else made.The closest thing I could think of was making a transparent box with a black texture on the sides that looked like a wheel. If that's not how it works, could you post some steps for it?

[Deimos]

Wow!

 

Imo I don't think we'll need the landing gear visible as I'm not sure where we'll see the craft 'landed'.

 

If we're having an animated interception screen (instead of the radar blip we courrently have) the view I reckon would be a rear 3/4 view (kind of like in firefox the film) chasing the ufo's. Any extra detail we'd see there would be in the form of missiles being launched but they'd be a seperate model anyway.

 

That's something that would look pretty amazing, instead of the range indicators that we have currently we could use a 'locked on' icon that turns red when the ufo comes into range. Also instead of just having the cautious, standard and aggressive attack, doing what they do currently, the cautious attack could 'peck' at the ufo so it landed heavily rather from damage to the control surfaces than an actual crash.

 

Standard attack would hit it heavier and there'd be a chance the Elerium would blow and an aggressive attack goes all out to to hit the craft on it's reactor causing a spectacular mid air explosion and wrecking any chance of getting any elerium from the craft. That would also have the advantage of less aliens to kill on the ground.

 

What would also make the experience more enjoyable would be to hear the pilot in control of the intercetion craft taking your orders and talking his way through the interception. Maybe like if he enconters a battleship the player would hear "Look at the size of that thing" or somehting similar. On a small scout or 'trashcan lid' ufo's the pilot would get cocky and say something like "you're going down alien scum".

 

How about after a couple of ufo's outrunning the pilot they'd want some payback so the player would hear "you ain't gettin away from me this time" or if they get shot at "you did not fire that green shuckeroonies at me" or "is that all you got?" (ok so we wouldn't use those actual quotes but you get what I mean )

[Breunor]

The only spot where you would see the landing gear would be in a base invasion, you'd at least see the front gear under the nose if there's an interceptor in the hangar. Another option for the interceptor screen would be the xenocide pilot's view, you'd see the ufo out there and the instrument panel which has the radar and different options. As you fire, you'd see the weapon models flying towards the ufo and the resulting explosion or miss.

[Breunor]

With Deimos' permission, I made a skyranger model based off his drawings. The consensus is to call it XC11 - nickname right now. I found it a funny coincidence that at this screen shot, the model was 160 polys - the same as the interceptor was. This model still needs the internals done, as in where the soldiers are standing. Also needs to be scaled, which isn't a problem. After it's scaled, I may need to go back and add verts in areas to smooth things out.

[Guest drewid]

Hi bruenor.

 

Another cracking model;)

 

What are the dimensions of these craft? (just thinking of hangars and suchlike)

[Guest drewid]

Here is a clip from the baseview doc I'm writing :-

 

The hangar has a steam assisted launch cradle for the rapid deployment interceptors. On launch the cradle raises to an angle of 80 degrees, and a combination of high-pressure steam, the planes own engines, and strap on solid rocket boosters launches the aircraft at the required speed to obtain airspeed without a runway. Because of this all hangars are fitted with blast doors, and the floors and up scarred and blackened. Equipment is kept in a blast proof enclosure along one wall.

The facility also includes maintenance area and reinforced and shielded fuel storage tanks

 

Troop carriers do not use this system, and so require a floor-lift and a short VSTOL ski-jump runway (like the sea harrier). all incoming aircraft are stopped using a carrier style arrestor-hook system.

 

[Breunor]

btw, there's still thrust vector nozzles going on, for vtol capability, and the interceptor, er, XC1 will have 2 weapon pods in the nose cone, showing the various weapons that will go there. I'll need to ask mikker is some of those weapon models are done...

[Deimos]

With Deimos' permission, I made a skyranger model based off his drawings. The consensus is to call it XC11 - nickname  right now. I found it a funny coincidence that at this screen shot, the model was 160 polys - the same as the interceptor was. This model still needs the internals done, as in where the soldiers are standing. Also needs to be scaled, which isn't a problem. After it's scaled, I may need to go back and add verts in areas to smooth things out.

Sweet. If it's only 160 polys then you've got a few to waste. I know there was some discussion on the HWP's that they'd be using the same amount of polys as the trooper models, so would it be possible to use the same 1500 polys for the XC-11 Mamba (aircraft designers always name their craft after some kind of animal so why not a big black snake )

 

Do you think you'll be able to introduce the double cockpit and detailling such as airbrakes? Seeing as the XC-11 is going to be a VSTOL craft it's gonna need huge panels to help slow it down Apart from in the Xnet database the only time the XC-11 is going to be seen is in battlescape and then it's going to be landed so this one is going to need landing gear and air brakes open if it's possible.

 

If the interceptor is going to be called XC-1 (one) then maybe the XC-11 should be (two)?

 

Drewid, here's a link http://www.voodoo.cz/yf23/info.html to the dimensions of the YF23, which is AFAIK is the base design for the XC-1.

How about Striking Cobra for the XC-1? Or XC-1 Mongoose (snake killer)?

[Breunor]

Not a problem to add the extra gear and split the cockpit viewport up. This is just the basic shape so far, once internals, gear, and more detail is added it will likely be close to 1000 polys. I had to scale it a bit taller to fit soldiers inside, otherwise it would be really wide and long if kept at the same scale. The YF-23 version of the interceptor is naturally angular, so lower poly count there doesn't detract from the look. I could implement similar look engine/wing shapes into this XC-11 design to help tie the level of technology together.

 

We can assume that the vtol tech used on this craft is more advanced than current tech like the harrier, and that computerized stabilizers that are built in allow for landing gear similar to the skids in the landing craft in Aliens (Alien 2). They were flat pads that retracted flush into the hull. The craft could easily hover-taxi itself out of a bay before taking off full speed. All you'd need is reinforced grating for the bay floor so the air can flow through, rather than blowing anything not nailed down into the corners

 

Something to consider (depending on how many animators there are to spare later on) is to make the Xnet database shots animated, so in addition to rotating the object, it could go through some of its basic motions. In this case, the landing gear extends and thrust nozzles aim down, then rear gate lowers, closes, and then it takes off again. I'm sure I'll have space between the main bay and the engines to fit the parts for the gear up into the hull. One thing I'm noticing, is that the engine intakes are pretty far back for a vtol design. All the thrust nozzles would normally be positioned after the intakes, in this case all the lift is towards the rear. How about if I move the intakes further towards the front? If people don't like the landing skids, I'll put wheels on it instead, and then the wings could be made to fold up when in the bay to conserve space there.

 

Another thought/idea for transport design would be similar to a C-5 or C-130 hull, which lends itself well to this, but a delta wing on top instead of the long wing, and having the bays open in the front as well as in the back. If we want to create several versions of stuff depending on the continent purchased, this could be another design somebody could play with. There was a nicely rendered shot of a skyranger posted a while back, it could easily meet most of those ideas with a modified wing. It could have 4 external turbine engines mounted to allow them to pivot straight down for vtol liftoff.

 

As to naming convention, my take on XC1 and XC11: Fighter/interceptor craft could be XC1, XC2 for advanced; Transport could be XC11, XC12 for advanced. If there were more designs added they could even be numbered to match continents: XC1=Asia, XC2=Europe, XC3=North America, XC1-2 is advanced Asia fighter, etc. Anybody who's interested, send me what you consider a complete list of names for the current craft in the game, and I'll put them into table format in a single spot and post them to this web site for review. Once we have several proposals that everybody likes, we can vote on it if need be. How does that sound to everyone?

[Breunor]

btw Deimos, that web site you just posted is where I got the background images used to model the XC1 from! So Drewid, the dimensions listed there are going to pretty close to what I made (I hope!). It's a small world, after all... ::

[Breunor]

More than 2 brain cells fired at once, and I made a box to represent the space for 14 soldiers in a 2x7 formation I made it 2.5 meters/100 inches high, as that's what I've beased all the building sections on as well. So if anybody's working on HWP, make sure they are under 2.5 meters tall!

 

This required some changes to the hull shape to accommodate this space, and I finally noticed the canopies (there are now 2) bulge out from the hull Deimos. Couldn't see it before, but looked close and noticed a different shade of black on black. If this is wrong, let me know. I angled the front of the craft a bit for flare, this will allow for engine intakes in that recess as well. The front profile is a bit taller than the original, but otherwise no change there. I constructed the hull so that the top can be removed right down the middle, makes for a very clean view when soldiers are being moved in the battlescape. Once I have it closer to completion I'll post some shots of that as well.

[Deimos]

I agree with your post Breunor, the intakes for the engines should be closer to the front. I was thinking more about aerodynamics and airflow than keeping it floating at ground level.

 

However with that in mind I have thought about it, how about keeping the intakes where they are (good for high speed flight) and introducing some stabilisers at the front. They could be driven by the main engine and use ducting to direct the flow. That would keep the balance of the ship whilst hovering.

 

Also if you note most of the 'weight' of the craft is towards the back. IE the crew compartment, engine assembly and fuel tanks (I imagine they'd be in the wings) This 'back' heavy design wouldn't need much thrust at the front to keep it level.

 

In flight the design would naturally fly at an angle of around 10degrees giving it a huge amount of lift until supersonic speeds are acheived. It would however be quite unstable at lower speeds and would need computr control over the flight surfaces and thruster control and pitch. So in any animation all the control surfaces would continuously adjust.

[Breunor]

Well, tell me if this looks OK then before I go much further with it... A 2x7 meter cube fits inside the hull. I'm doing just one side of it now, just mirrored it for these shots. Also hid the top to show the view in the battlescape (at least of one side). Is the intake too far forward in this design? Right now there's no exhaust ports, working on the under-wing versions and then will make the rear thrust exhaust. If this looks OK overall and just needs tweaking, I'll finish it up and send it to you for those tweaks. I thought about the idea of ducting and thrust port towards the front, and it didn't sit right with me. You're right about the center of gravity being towards the back, it's not like we're submitting these designs to an aviation board...

 

It's my fault, but I didn't keep the ealier version with the intakes further back :crying: , and it was a pain moving them up and tying it together. But now that there's enough polys to go around I should be able to make some adjustments easily enough to get the intakes further back. Then you can tweak from there.

[revenant4]

That is a nice lookin interceptor...you guys look like you're making great progress w/ these models...

[Deimos]

Bruenor, looking at it I think that would work better with the intakes where they are especially at low speed

 

It's looking really good now and it kind of reminds me of an old sci-fi tv show I used to watch as a kid called Star Fleet. It was a puppet show with a really cool ship in it. I don't remember much more about it, other than there was a bad guy called Cmdr. McCara that had this weird metal catapiller type thing across his eye.

 

I digress, I think with the variable thrusters (like the harrier ones in the ref pic I sent) if we have two sets one set near the rear and one nearer to the intake, maybe just under the wing it would stop the problem of the craft tipping forward? Like you say it's not like it has to be submitted for flight testing Are you still using Milkshape for the model? If you are and you want me to skin it up when you've finished it can you unwrap the UV map and I'll have a play. I had problems getting the XC-1 unwrapped, probably just me being crap. I'll go look at the tutorials and my reference book again

 

Revenant, the design you see isn't an interceptor, its a replacement for the skyranger transport craft. We've nicknamed it the XC-11 Mamba.

[Breunor]

I'm glad you like it Deimos, as I've been adding to it I've made thrust nozzles, one just behind the wing's front edge and the other just before the rear edge. Great minds think alike, eh? I'm going to add the rear thrust and interior sections tomorrow, hopefully work is slow The thrust nozzles are almost identical to what you sent me, and also happened to be similar to the dropship in Alien2. I used the landing gear with wheels pic as well. The front gear will fold up and forward into the nose, while the rear gear will fold up sideways into the body. I'll probably have to adjust some verts to make hatches in those areas, no biggie there. The fun stuff will be adding bones to the model and attaching the gear, nozzels, and bay doors and get them to animate correctly...

 

I'm still using Milkshape to model, I did apply a texture to it and use the texture editor to scale it. If need be, I can remap the texture to the default and resend it to you. I'm stretching the truth when saying I "textured" it, since I just selected the entire hull and stretched the texture over the whole thing. It's like painting something by dipping it in a bucket of paint!

 

Revenant4 may be referring to the XC1 posted earlier in this thread, not sure. Greetings Revenant4, happy gaming!

[Guest drewid]

It gets better

The double cockpit looks really mean.

I reckon the intake should be tilted backwards a bit, it looks a bit -happy?- at the moment IYSWIM?

 

The alien dropship was a cool design. it has big chunks of Apache Gunship about it. Part of the reason it works so well is that most of the hardware (guns/ tanks/ ships) in it are based very firmly in the real world. Worth bearing in mind.

 

I see what you mean about Star Fleet. (The ship was called the zero-X and could turn into a big robot, and there was a kzinti type cat/bear type thing and a space galleon is all I can remember).

[Breunor]

The intake points down a little I guess because we talked about the plane flying a little nose up, so the intake would be heading straight forward then, but primarily that's where the vertex was at, and it pulled all the faces up at an angle! I'll see what I can do about that. Here's the almost-complete version, it's about 1300 polys now, a lot of that is in the landing gear, those wheels are not optimized in any way (10 wheels, 12 sided cylinders, =480 polys!) It has 4 thrust nozzles detailed in the pics, those will be able to swivel for the animation. The rear landing gears just fit into the hull without poking out anywhere, and there are panels that slide back into place to fit flush with the hull. The rear hatch splits into top and bottom, resulting in a short ramp down, and a small overhead section (sorry Deimos, having the whole thing swing up looked very strange, but if you really want it, it's an easy switch). That's the only spot left in the modelling, when it's done I'll take a detail pic to show how it looks open. The only other thing is a "cockpit", just some faces to hide the interior of the hull from view through the transparent canopies. All the moving parts are grouped for animation, but I have no clue how to do that yet.

 

The only thing I didn't implement yet are flaps and the rear thrusters (which I forgot). Does it need brake flaps? If it's a vtol, I don't know what benefit that would provide. However, if it's a desired option for the animation, it's easily enough added.

[Breunor]

Here's a couple flat-shaded pics of the profiles:

[Guest drewid]

That's fantastic. It looks like a really tough functional transporter, like the plane equivalent of a Mac Truck.

 

Could you do me a render, top down with the top removed, so I can try it on the equipping screen.

[Breunor]

I'm heading out the door, so all I have is the following shots. I'll do a top-down shot with the cover off later tonight (hopefully), I can apply some generic texture to the outside to provide some contrast. This is pretty much done in respect to modelling, now it needs skeletal parts for animating and some texturing added. Total polys is 1340 something, still needs a few to cover up the inside of the cockpit. I moved some edges on the intakes. They were totally level, but the angles of the faces gave it that slanted look. That is diminished now. The exhaust in back is pretty simple, if it needs more detail that's not a problem.

[Deimos]

Breunor, that looks fantastic. Exactly how I'd envisioned it would look. I'm speechless (wordless).

 

I think with the opening hatch it looks fine as it is

 

Even though it's a VTOL craft it's still going to need to slow down from cruising speed. I envision the element of suprise will still be important so the craft ill come into the LZ at high speed, pop open the airbrakes and open the vertical thrusters. Imagine an emergency stop in a helicopter where the nose of the craft is almost vertical to slow it down. I was thinking the same sort of idea for the XC-11. One minute it's not there and the next it's all sound and fury and before you know it 14 angry guys with rifles are impolitely asking you and your mates to get off the planet.

 

I'll be posting some preliminary designs for the avenger replacement soon. I've no idea what it'll be called though. About the lightining and firestorm, I was thinking maybe the design that Drewid posted earlier in the thread would look good as a Firestorm. The 'flight of the navigator' style ship is the one I was thinking about. The lightining, I was thinking we go all retro 50's style with it, the classic flying saucer or we could use one of the shapes that are on the black projects link in another thread.

 

Drewid, it's all coming flooding back now. I found a link with pics if anyone's wondering what the heck we're on about. http://www.jediman.free-online.co.uk/child...tar_Fleet.htm&1

[Guest drewid]

Hey - the black dude with the Jimmy Hill chin is wearing camo armour - I've been sussed

[Breunor]

Ahhh, that makes good sense Deimos. I'll add some flaps around the center of the hull and along the back edge of the wings, I could hide some pistons under them that extend up for hydraulics. Something I would like to add to the model (which will affect gameplay a bit) are external flood lights. All planes have external lights, why wouldn't this one? It would provide say 4 flood lights, acting just like 4 light capsules placed right next to the ship. You still have to bring lights with you for further out, but this would be far more realistic IMO. I don't think this would unbalance the game in any way. While this isn't the spot to discuss/determine this, I think it would be safe to add the lights at least for the Xnet shots, and once everybody sees how cool they are, it will certainly be added into the battlescape! :devilsmile:

 

Drewid, I've got the shots you requested, could you email me what format you want them in and I can either email them back or post them to my web page and you can download them. Here's the compressed version:

[Deimos]

Hey - the black dude with the Jimmy Hill chin is wearing camo armour - I've been sussed

Heh, he's even got an X on his shoulder

[Guest drewid]

sticking my oar in again. You know that effect that you got when the model was in 2 halves and you mirrored it to post up the picture.

I really liked that sharp ridge effect that it made down the middle. It looked really "stealthy".

I don't suppose you'd want to seperate the two halves into 2 smoothing groups to see what I looks like?

 

(Tell me to stop polishing someone)

[Breunor]

Between the camopy and the back of the ship I think there's 3 verts, I could unweld them and increase their height alittle to enhance that. I'll take a look at it as I finish up the brake flaps. I don't mind the suggestions, so long as it doesn't degenerate into, 'a little to the left, no, to the right, a little higher now...' I'll have flashbacks of furniture moving!

[mikker]

In reply to da wulf Breunor:

 

nice!

 

Do you need 8 weels? It would lower poly if you made, like 6 weels instand. Same with vents.

[Guest drewid]

Between the camopy and the back of the ship I think there's 3 verts, I could unweld them and increase their height alittle to enhance that. I'll take a look at it as I finish up the brake flaps.  I don't mind the suggestions, so long as it doesn't degenerate into, 'a little to the left, no, to the right, a little higher now...' I'll have flashbacks of furniture moving!

you probably wouldn't even need to move the verts, just make the different sides different smoothing groups should do it enough.

 

Furniture moving is "actually that DID look better in the other room after all."