Share your archived Non-SW Custom OPT files

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Re: Share your archived Non-SW Custom OPT files

jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Fri Apr 24, 2020 2:57 am

Mediafire link to the Space Above and Beyond opt files. I'll put it in the OP as well: http://www.mediafire.com/file/0cn4d6wzk ... WA.7z/file

Here's a couple better screenies of the hammerhead than the ones I posted originally. This is a lower count model, as well.
Screenshot (88).png[/attachment ][attachment=0]Screenshot (89).png
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jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Fri Apr 24, 2020 3:10 am

And the Navy version:
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jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Sat Apr 25, 2020 2:45 pm

New space carrier, built from scratch WIP. Double hangar configuration, and yes, those are launch tubes on the side that lead to the center of the vessel, using version two of the launch tube I showcased in another thread. With Blender you can create arrays and stack as many of those things as you want, any direction you want. Very versatile software. Don't know if they'll be in the finished product or not because they kick the poly count way up. Textures are placeholders for the time being while I sort that out. Modeling is pretty much done.
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Post by jmarso » Sat Apr 25, 2020 2:51 pm

Screenshot (95).png
Double hangar configuration. The lower hangar is supposed to be the 'grunt's hangar' for lack of a better term, while the upper hangar handles VIP and flag traffic, since the vessel is intended as a group flagship and the upper hangar links directly to the island and flag country.
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jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Sat Apr 25, 2020 2:51 pm

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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Sat Apr 25, 2020 4:33 pm

Slow down man, slow down! You're going to start running into QA issues if you keep pumping out new stuff so fast. My advice would be to take a minute and see what you can improve on a handful of models in regards to model quality, texture quality, and configuration; whether that means reducing poly-counts where possible or adding more details but shrinking textures down to 512x512 to reduce filesize and increase performance for instance.

I haven't done anything beyond look at screenshots of your stuff but I'm seeing that you're all over the place thematically, and I think you're stretching yourself too thin. I've done this myself, you don't want to see my project folder it's something like 20gb of files. Most of which are not going to ever get released or completed.

Right now I'm working on three things and due to my limited time constraints one of them will probably be released initially without additional proof of concept features I've been wanting to include for some time; these features are not necessary to have in place to release. One of them is nearing end of the major parts of development but I'm stuck on animations for the moment due to trying to get rotations to work in two different directions and at least one of them is at a weird angle. Then I still have to do up FG textures and build an exterior and cockpit model. The third requires UV mapping and texturing.

Otherwise, I have a handful of things I could (and may) release sooner rather than later due to not being intended to be used as flyable player craft so there's a lot of stuff I flat out don't need to do developmentally, but I've not had any time to update those to the current graphical tech and most of my time has been going into the current fighter I'm working on if and when I have time.

And I still have to learn how to configure the .exe installer, and set up DC/AC cockpits (or beg/bribe DTM in his "spare time") once I do get my main project mostly finished.

Never mind the daunting task of going back through all past releases and getting them configured for the current tech, even if that's only getting the materials for the textures assigned so they can benefit from the current shader system; that may not happen ever if any time soon barring anything perceptively "important". I could probably spend all my free time over the next year updating all of those and not work on anything new ever!

Pick a theme, one faction, and pick one ship from each class in that faction and go through one by one until they're where you want them to be. Then pick the opposing faction and do the same. Release them as a pack and add new content one or two at a time.

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Post by jmarso » Sat Apr 25, 2020 6:43 pm

This is all called 'alleviating the boredom'. I'm a commercial pilot and thanks to this Coronavirus crap I've had waaaaay too much time off this past month. It is nice, though- I'm learning a whole new set of skills here between Blender, Gimp, and so on.

XWA OPT Editor is, so far, the only tool specifically for XWA opt editing that I've been able to make heads or tails of. Before a month ago, if I wanted to put a new ship into the game I had to find an opt that someone else had made- it's very liberating to be able to make your own, and thanks to the relatively new world of 3D printing, there are TONS of 3D models out there pre-made as free downloads that can be imported and converted. Texturing and poly counts are turning out to be the big roadblocks. Poly counts can be easily fixed (usually) in Blender, but texturing is turning out to be tougher.

I've found Blender to work great for importing models and putting textures on them, then using XWA OPT Editor for scaling and hardpoints, and to convert a model into an opt. What I really need to do is get this texturing process down and figure out how to do flight group textures and such.

Mostly I've just been playing around. I started with the idea of reviving by old BSG total conversion, but now that I'm learning all this other stuff I'm angling towards making something new. With all the tools and hooks available now, the sky is the limit! (After you learn how to use it all... :? )

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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Sat Apr 25, 2020 8:52 pm

It looks like your mesh decimation on the Hammerhead got overly aggressive in the neck region.

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Post by jmarso » Sat Apr 25, 2020 9:20 pm

Yeah, that's a tough model because it was way too detailed for game purposes to start with.

Part of the problem too is texturing- the panel with the squadron patch never color-matches right, so it makes that big off-color triangle on that side. That has to do with the texture plate I'm using, and that frankly needs work. Out at the wing roots you can see how warped the model is as well.

Texturing is really what's dragging me down right now. There's a lot of stuff I want to do before I get busy again, and I haven't had the patience so far to really sit down and dig into this topic. What I like best is finding a free, easily convertible, already-textured model to port into the game. Free being the operative word.

The answer here is probably to make that model a project unto itself, and go in and meticulously rework a bunch of areas. My skill with Blender isn't that refined yet; at least not so that I wouldn't make a total hash of it.

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Post by jmarso » Fri May 01, 2020 5:13 pm

Okay, here's the carrier in probably what will be its final form. Spent a lot of time staring at the retribution from COD Infinite Warfare but this was as close as I got. I broke down and spent about twenty bucks on a cheap sci-fi texture pack online from 3DTotal.com because there is no way I could do them all myself. Lots of stuff in the pack, but a lot of near-repeats. The cool thing is that for most of them you get the bump maps, normals, and speculars as well, which is a huge time saver. Then, as you'll see, I took some of those textures and doctored them up with decals and such. Still pretty amateur work, but it's my first scratch-built model. I did wind up just painting the launch tubes on- the real deal built as an internal array was kicking the poly count WAY too high. The model overall is low-poly and could use a lot of detail work, but it is what it is for now. 1600 meters long in game.
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jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Fri May 01, 2020 5:15 pm

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Post by jmarso » Fri May 01, 2020 5:17 pm

Lower hangar looking aft
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Post by jmarso » Fri May 01, 2020 5:20 pm

Upper hangar looking forward.
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Post by Tuskin » Fri May 01, 2020 7:42 pm

jmarso wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 11:47 pm
For giggles, here are some screens of some of the stuff I've been tinkering with.

This first one was another free model download off the internet; it came as an untextured fbx file which I imported into Blender and textured. (Texturing is my new course of self-study along with basic modelling.) Tools used included Blender for the actual shading, GIMP and Paint (mostly the former) for texture editing. From Blender I export as a wavefront OBJ/MTL file; sometimes you have to tweak the MTL file a bit to make it all work right. Then import it all into XWA OPT editor to scale it, add hard points and engine glows, and then save as an opt. Last step is to drop it into the FlightModels folder, paste in a copy to rename as the exterior.opt file, and then use MXvTED to build the ship's stats and weapons and such in game. I've been on a steep learning curve the past few weeks; y'all are a huge help when it comes to questions about this stuff.

First offering is called the 'Eagle', based on the name of the model This craft is modeled as sort of an assault gunboat equivalent:
The design from comes the 'Elite' game series
https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Eagle_MkII

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Post by jmarso » Sat May 02, 2020 3:35 am

Okay, I promise I'm going to stop with the hammerhead screens, but I finally got the model reskinned and smoothed out and it's looking a LOT better. Learned a couple tricks aside from just hacking down the poly count. As you'll see from these pics, the re-skin with a real texture (one of the bought ones I used for the carrier, seen there in the background of one shot) fixed the issue of discoloration where the markings and decals are applied. Used the same texture on both Navy and Marine versions this time, but altered the metallicity and roughness to make the Marine version a little more 'gray' and the Navy version a little more 'blue'
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Post by jmarso » Sat May 02, 2020 3:36 am

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Post by jmarso » Sun May 03, 2020 1:59 am

Tuskin wrote:
Fri May 01, 2020 7:42 pm



The design from comes the 'Elite' game series
https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Eagle_MkII
Ahh! It's a pretty nice design; I'm not surprised it's from an actual game.

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Post by jmarso » Sun May 03, 2020 2:01 am

Got some real textures on the Saratoga. She's looking a lot better dressed now. Did the same with the Aliens dropship and the ISSCV from space above and beyond. The Sara was the real challenge, though. Blender screenshot- this was what got exported to the obj file for conversion to an opt.
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Post by jmarso » Mon May 04, 2020 12:03 am

Chig mothership. Ignore the text tag in the second pic; I had just targeted something else to get the brackets off the mothership. First time I played with using illumination maps in XWA OPT Editor. Worked pretty well, I think.Gotta, say, that model took all of 5 minutes to build in Blender, and then most of the rest of the morning to texture. (I had to make maps of that hatched pattern). You can tell that back when the show was on in the 90's, low-poly, fast, and cheap were all the order of the day for the FX department.
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Post by jmarso » Tue May 05, 2020 2:48 am

Massive rework of the Chig fighter. When I went to take a look, thinking I'd clean it up 'a little', it rapidly became apparent how messed up the overall geometry was. It was a sketchup --> collada import originally, and those tend to be the worst anyhow. Went over this thing darn near vertex by vertex, and re-did the textures. Still not perfect but good enough for government work.
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Post by jmarso » Tue May 05, 2020 2:49 am

One from in-game, although not the best angle.
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Post by jmarso » Wed May 06, 2020 5:15 am

Chig Bomber, seen in a couple episodes of the show, most notably the one where the 58th used it to pull off a Trojan-horse version of the Doolittle Raid. The back part was pretty easy- I noticed looking at pictures that it's just a Chig fighter flipped end for end and grafted on. I already had the Chig fighter, and the rest of it is a very simple shape.

I gave these guys a pretty decent hull and shielding, along with a rear gunner. Even with some wingmen, a flight of these things flying together is pretty hard to take down- sort of like Me109's against a formation of B-17's.
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Post by jmarso » Wed May 13, 2020 5:47 pm

For the time being, I've removed the mediafire links to the opt packages in the OP because several of these opts needed rework due to texture file size issues. Eventually the links will be restored to the OP when the new files are uploaded. In the meantime, please disregard the various links in other posts in this thread.

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Post by jmarso » Sun May 17, 2020 5:08 pm

'Redtail' Chig interceptor seen in the episode 'Ray Butts'. I took a stock chig fighter and scaled the length up 10%, and the other two dimensions down 2%, and gave it the recoloring. In game it's faster than a standard Chig fighters, very slightly less maneuverable, with a slightly lower shield rating.
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Post by jmarso » Sat May 23, 2020 5:54 pm

Chiggy Von Richtofen's prototype, final form. Not 100 percent happy with the textures, but this craft only shows up in three missions and the player isn't going to have time to get a close look, unless it's right before they get smoked.
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