Do you have what it takes?

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Re: Do you have what it takes?

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Vince T
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Post by Vince T » Sat Jan 11, 2014 6:25 pm

Hmm, if this works it'll fundamentally revolutionize OPTing ...
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Post by Knightsaber » Wed Mar 12, 2014 9:08 am

Been a year since the System Patrol Craft was released. I hope folks don't mind me being curious and you'll have to pardon me as I haven't been active here for months, but can anything be said of the current projects that may be taking place in further updating the game? Any ships presently being worked on? No pressure intended, merely curious.

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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Thu Mar 13, 2014 7:20 pm

General_Trageton wrote:Hmm, if this works it'll fundamentally revolutionize OPTing ...
I haven't notice any problem. So, unless someone remarks a problem, I consider that it works.
But the best way to know if it works or not is to try by yourself.

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Atx
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Post by Atx » Mon Mar 17, 2014 1:44 pm

You actually edited the offending code in the EXE!!!! WOW! :shock:
The Navbuoy is closed...long live the XWAU!!!

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Post by rmorali » Sat May 31, 2014 5:51 pm

I´ve been following your outstanding work in the XWA update for a long time. We had good times playing these models online, believe me or not =)

Keep this dream alive please.

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Spyder
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Post by Spyder » Mon Jun 15, 2015 8:15 pm

I'm interested in doing the Bulk cruiser if it's not already taken.

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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Mon Jun 15, 2015 8:42 pm

Fill your boots, If someone has it already taken, they've been working on it for years and years and years and years and years and years and years and years............... . . . . . . . . . . .
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Kyorg
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Post by Kyorg » Sat Nov 14, 2015 6:26 am

Also working on the bulk cruiser as of today. Is it still open enough that any other work on it is acceptable, or are more than a few folks working on it already? Been modelling in Blender for some 3 or 4 months now, I'm feeling sort of decent at it and was figuring I'd take a crack at more than a personal project. Anyway, just wondering if it's still open. If not, I'll work on one of the other free things that need models. I will warn that I am not great at textures. Not terrible, but not great.

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Mako
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Post by Mako » Thu Jan 21, 2016 4:58 pm

I had a bulk cruiser done awhile ago. never thought it was good enough for here though.
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Post by Tony Knightcrawler » Sun Mar 20, 2016 4:04 pm

If you worked on the Bulk Cruiser, Kyorg, that'd be awesome.

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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Fri Apr 14, 2017 7:30 am

BukCruiserperspective.png
BulkCruiserEngines.png
BulkCruiserRight.png

After about 6 hours of work, I have this to show for myself.

Some creative liberties have been taken due to having few decent quality images to work with. Willing to try and make it more accurate, but my modeling skills aren't exactly great.

That said, I'm heavily basing the model off the Neutron Star Class line, converted into a carrier (hence the hangar bay that is ventrally located) seeing as how the TG opt has a hangar built in, though I felt that the layout of the ship really doesn't make sense for it to be located in the side and decided instead to take inspiration from the dreadnought.

Engines could use more work as currently they are too reminiscent of the dreadnought.

Sitting at about 995 faces, 2,114 tris, 13 meshes. Haven't converted from quads to tris yet.

No promises at all on this getting a release. If/when the model is to an acceptable XWAU standard (whatever that is since I'm not in the know) I'll probably start UV mapping and texturing.

Feedback welcome.
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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Fri Apr 14, 2017 9:06 am

Also a little something else I've been toying with since the release of the S-foils patch and the Hangar Hook.

Heavily and slowly WIP.
Door View
CockpitViewRender.png
Pilot viewpoint (hopefully translates ingame okay)
CockpitPilotViewStraight.png
Outside In
CockpitFrontView.png


First I've always loved the Escort Shuttle, and have always had a problem with the fact it wasn't a player craft.

Second, given the fact the S-Foils patch now gives the ship added functionality I am trying to make a "functional" cockpit so that the ship could be utilized in missions as a viable player craft if one so chose.

Beyond that my motivation for this little project other than to learn modeling and texturing within blender, is to have a cockpit opt available for the E/SHU so it may be utilized to replace the rescue shuttle in the hangar via the Hangar Hook when the player craft is destroyed since the default Lambda utilizes the combat simulator/generic cockpit, which is entirely immersion breaking. I figured it'd be nice to have options for rescue ship and corresponding interiors available on a per hangar/mission basis anyhow. (That and this is small enough for me to manage)

And third it is my hope that I can contribute something to the community even if it's a small one. I would ideally like to donate this work to the XWAU since it uses a modified version of Marco's mesh as a frame for my cockpit interior, if it was desired to be utilized.

Otherwise I'll make my own fuselage mesh from scratch for a general release, which I'm entirely willing to do since I have no rights to the use anything in a release without explicit permission from the XWAU and/or the original model maker. Though, I would ideally like to also make an exterior opt (which would also be donated to XWAU along with the cockpit mesh/textures), and for continuity it would be ideal to use the XWAU meshes toward that end. Otherwise, there's no point in making an exterior as I don't feel like remaking the entire ship at this point in time since Marco already invented the proverbial wheel that is the E/SHU. I would also need some pilot models for an exterior mesh, and I don't believe myself capable at this point of modeling them from scratch at this time.

That said as stated the cockpit walls are a modified Escort shuttle fuselage mesh, with interior meshes and textures entirely made from scratch by myself, with the exception of the chairs which are borrowed (I think from the old sentinel cockpit that never got used for XWAU) and are currently acting as placeholders so I can get a feel for dimensions and layout till I can make my own.

Textures still need work and the door on the left side is proportionally off from the exterior one on the E/SHU and I'll be trying to fix that in the event that I make an exterior for the E/SHU. Otherwise, it really doesn't matter much since you can't see the exterior hull from the pilots seat and the corresponding mesh would be deleted.

Control panels still heavily WIP and honestly I feel detailing and interfaces are somewhat on the sparse side currently. All the displays are currently blank and mostly monochrome since I'm still getting the feel for the layout and design process. There are currently no 3d flight controls since I'm still learning the ropes of modeling, so everything present is 2d. Color and displays will be added where appropriate once the layout is finalized.

Also, I haven't been able to find a single bit of reference material for the cockpit interior of the E/SHU so I'm honestly using a huge amount of creative license and trying to make the layout generally similar to the Lambda from stills I've seen from ROTJ, WEG, and SWG. However, there really isn't much for me to go off of there either since the control surfaces are largely obscured by the actors for ESB, SWG's is entirely different then the movie's. So since I'm mostly at a loss for solid reference material, the control panels are heavily based off of the CH-53E and the space shuttle since they have vaguely similar shapes and layouts, and I plan to Swarz them up heavily of course borrowing inspiration from the Gunboat and Missileboat. I would also likely consider utilizing a similar setup for the Lambda cockpit if I ever get around to that since I would expect the layouts to be similar even though they are produced by two different companies, just judging by how the fuselage and ramp are set up.

The ramp section is subject to complete removal and turned into a texture since realistically you're not going to be able to see down the ramp from the pilot seat I would think, and that would save on the face count. But I won't know for sure till I get it in-game, so we'll see.

Cockpit glass frames "separating" the interior from the exterior still need mapped and textured, rear door to cabin needs textured. Floor needs textured. Additional control boards along the sides need modeled and textured.

Color wise I've gone with a fairly neutral interior in a pallet similar to the GUN/MIS since this is a Cygnus line product, though looking at the movies the cockpit of the Lambda is black, and most control panels between the ISD crew pits, and Falcon cockpit are all black. So yeah, I could use some feedback.

I could really use some constructive criticism and advice on where to go from here.
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Post by Bman » Sat Apr 15, 2017 3:55 am

Nice start Corrann on both models. Go for it. I'm still learning things myself but key is to make the time and stick with your projects. Really glad to see a cockpit for Escort Shuttle.
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Jaeven
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Post by Jaeven » Sat Apr 15, 2017 12:36 pm

Oooh, the Bulk Cruiser. I for one am glad your model is more similar to the Neutron-class from the WEG sourcebooks. I always appreciated the design and found it perfectly reasonable the Rebels would convert them into carriers.

By the looks of it, I'm assuming you've been using the standard WEG ( http://gioco.net/starwars/ultimosettore ... ruiser.png ) diagram as a reference?

It looks great so far, hope you keep at it!

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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Sat Mar 03, 2018 8:35 pm

Screenshot 2018-03-03 12.32.28.png
Screenshot 2018-03-03 12.33.22.png
Working on updating the Luxury Yacht with a cockpit and exterior file.
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Forceflow
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Post by Forceflow » Sat Mar 03, 2018 8:41 pm

Nice, this is looking really awesome!
And I absolutely love the cockpit!
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Sat Mar 03, 2018 8:57 pm

Nostalgia.
It reminds me of Nar Shaddaa Starpad in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. What a carnage!

But your model is way better. Great work!
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Post by Darksaber » Sat Mar 03, 2018 9:46 pm

I'm impressed
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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Sun Mar 04, 2018 2:16 am

Okay, I have two versions for submission.

Base opt uses the XWAU Yacht model, seeing as how it's the same one from SWG anyways, I figured why bother taking the time to convert it.

Cockpit opt, pretty straightforward, uses the SWG interior.

The exterior opt you have two versions currently.

1. All glass is transparent, and you can see the interior of the ship that have windows.
1a. It's a high vertice count opt, it's somewhere in the area of 26k - I don't know if any issues are going to arise from this. I have thus far experienced no issues vs a single TIE fighter reducing me to scrap, because, testing.
1b. The passenger viewing area window trim has some gaps, I'm having a hard time lining stuff up, so if somebody could tidy up the mesh that'd be great.

2. Second version with only the cockpit glass transparent, much smaller file size. No issues with this version at all thus far I've found.

Please test this thoroughly, feedback/help tidying up is more than welcome.

Also, this is up for use with the XWAU if you guys want to include it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dVEKl8 ... sp=sharing

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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:13 am

Never noticed the miss alignment before, it's quite a gap on the windows, I've taken a look and I should be able to fix it or get it closer at least, going to take a bit of wizardry going between Optech and XwA Opt Editor to fix it.

but I'll get it done :)
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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Sun Mar 04, 2018 5:21 pm

Thanks, I've kind of hit my limit capability wise at this point. Even using a bulk of existing assets.

I still have concerns regarding the vertice count, and if you can think of any creative way to reduce it further that'd also be great. It hasn't crashed the game for me or anything yet, but while testing another ship I've been working on this weekend, something with a far lower count crashed every time I went into the exterior view until I cut up and regrouped the mesh. Though the cockpit model for the other craft has one mesh that's over 8k vertices and it doesn't crash the game either. I don't understand how that can be, and will be cutting up the mesh further just to be safe.

Perhaps Jeremy can shed some light on this, because I'm at a loss.

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Post by Bman » Mon Mar 05, 2018 4:59 am

Very nice.
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Post by Darksaber » Sun Mar 11, 2018 8:07 pm

Ok then I've messed around with the Luxury Yacht and this is what I have come up with
01base.jpg
02base.jpg
03Exterior.jpg
04Exterior.jpg
This is what I have written in the latests Readme for the Luxury Yacht
Corran Horn submitted to the XWAU an update to the Luxury Yacht, to include an Exterior and Cockpit for the craft, the base opt is the default XWAU Opt

Corran Horn posted:

The Cockpit opt is a straight conversion from the Star Wars Galaxies version.

The Exterior Opt has two versions.

1. All glass is transparent, and you can see the Interior of the ship that have windows.
a. It has a high vertex count, it's somewhere in the area of 25k - I don't know if any issues are going to arise from this. I have thus far experienced no issues vs a single TIE fighter reducing me to scrap, because, testing.
b. The passenger viewing area window trim has some gaps, I'm having a hard time lining stuff up, so if somebody could tidy up the mesh that'd be great.

2. Second version with only the Cockpit glass transparent, much smaller file size. No issues with this version at all thus far I've found.


I (Darksaber) was curious at what the problems where, it’s been a long time since I have messed around with the Luxury Yacht and never noticed the gaps in the frame before. So before taking a look at the Exterior and Cockpit opts Corran had provided, I set about fixing the gaps in the frame of the base opt. I converted the Opt to Dxf to see what the problems where and correcting those problems with the Dxf. I broke down and corrected each part that was out of alignment, then saved each part as a separate mesh, I then imported this into Optech as a reference to align the textured parts of another version of the Yacht I had opened in Optech.

To save time on retexturing the Opt in Optech, (which I couldn’t have done as the original texturing was, I think UV mapped and I haven’t a clue how to do that), I broken down the misaligned meshes, corrected the position of that mesh, saving it and importing into another version of Optech, repeating this 3 or 4 time to correct the positioning of the meshes until I had a version of the craft that was aligned perfectly.

I then opened a miss-aligned version of the Yacht in XwAOptEditor imported the aligned opt meshes and deleted the mis-aligned meshes. Now I had a Yacht that was aligned ok I changed a few textures as I didn’t like that dark blue windows of the old opt, so replaced that with the lighter blue of the windows that Corran had provided for the Exterior.

The Exterior was another problem, the interior of the craft didn’t quite fit the base model as the interior was slightly to small, around 97% smaller, so I imported the interior into Optech and started gradually rescaling the interior by 100.001% then converting the rescaled opt to Dxf, opening this in Rhino and seeing if I was getting anywhere near the correct scaling size. I had to repeated this around 10 to 15 times, and I finally managed to get the interior within 99.9999% of the correct scale.

I then inserted the interior into the base opt to create the Exterior model, both full interior and the cockpit interior opts. After tweaking a few other things like separating the windows from the other parts of the model, and removing the glass from the cockpit model as it’s not necessary we now have workable Exterior and Cockpit opts.

I’ve tested the Full Interior Exterior opt a few times against different fighters such as 6 Tie Fighters, 6 X-Wing, 6 A-Wing, 6 Gunboats and 6 Missile boats each test the Full Interior Exterior opt didn’t crash the game, but I was viewing a couple of different Station and every now and again it does crash the game, this may be due to the high vertex count?

I haven’t experienced a crash with the Half Cockpit Exterior Opt yet, but the vertex count being under 9k I don’t see a problem.

With this installation I’ve also included all of Jeremy’s Hooks, (Dated 2018 02 03) just to makes sure they are all installed, along with the:-
Triangulation to Infinity Fix
Remove the 256x256 texture size limit Fix
Opt textures count limit from 200 to 1024 Fix.

Think that’s it :D
You have seven options to choose from to install:-

1. Luxury Yacht with just the standard Base with no weapons, no exterior, no cockpit and non-flyable. Default install.
2. Luxury Yacht Base, Exterior with only the viewable cockpit interior, cockpit and it’s flyable but has no weapons.
3. Luxury Yacht Base, Exterior with full viewable interior, cockpit and it’s flyable but has no weapons.
4. Luxury Yacht Base, Exterior with only the viewable cockpit interior, cockpit and it’s flyable with weapons.
5. Luxury Yacht Base, Exterior with full viewable interior, cockpit and it’s flyable with weapons.
6. Lady Luck version Luxury Yacht Base, Exterior with only the viewable cockpit interior, cockpit and it’s flyable with weapons.
7. Lady Luck version Luxury Yacht Base, Exterior with full viewable interior, cockpit and it’s flyable with weapons.

This might seem a little excessive to have seven options for this craft and a few of those options maybe pointless as you pilot the craft but have no weapons

But it's your choice what you want to install, I've just included each possible option :D

The Craft will be available soon, I hope it I have each and everyone approval on the changes :)
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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Sun Mar 11, 2018 11:39 pm

Jebus that's an awfully extensive workflow right there. I certainly would not have had the patience to go through all that myself.

Good job!

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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Mon Mar 12, 2018 12:04 am

lol thanks :)
“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.”
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