Wing Commander (Saga) Evolution-Shoots

Yeah, my guess would be that those holes are just something that showed up when you had to take a high poly count model and optimize the living shit out of it.
 
Now I wonder why on Earth they would do that. It's almost the same as the Victory model save the textures. Unless they made it from the CGI cutscene model. But to me it'd seem easier just to take the old Viktory model and reskin it.

If that poly reducing thing ius true it'd be awesome if Truespace was that accurate when creating lower poly models; that would making LODs far easier. But every time I use it the model comes out as garbled mess meaing that we have to do all of them by hand :(
 
Yeah, that's what I mean... unless they created all the low polygon models by hand (which they might not have bothered to, since they were going to need higher-detail versions anyway), the missing polygons/messed up normals are probably a glitch in whatever they used to do polygon reduction (specially since considering technology back in the day, they probably were interested in saving polygons as much as possible).

And yeah, Truespace's polygon reduction tool could suck the sweat off a dead man's balls. Scalability is a very big reason why I'm in love with NURBS now.
 
Eder said:
And yeah, Truespace's polygon reduction tool could suck the sweat off a dead man's balls. Scalability is a very big reason why I'm in love with NURBS now.
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Well, that was one metaphor I could have gone through life without knowing....thanks Eder! :cool:
 
***bump*** :D

cruiser.jpg

sheffield.jpg
 
NURBS stands for Non-Uniform Rational (something that starts with B, I guess) Spline... modelling jargon...

For today's gaming purposes, NURBS models are non-polygonal things that can be converted to polygons in as much or as little detail as you want to, while still remaining very close to the original shape (something which polygon->polygon conversions can't do well). Will be fun to see some games using NURBS directly, in the future, though.

Dundradal said:
Well, that was one metaphor I could have gone through life without knowing....thanks Eder! :cool:
Click to expand...
Eh, that bit was a quote from a great, great movie. If you go through life without hearing it from the original source, you're actually missing out on a lot. :p
 
Eder said:
Yeah, that's what I mean... unless they created all the low polygon models by hand (which they might not have bothered to, since they were going to need higher-detail versions anyway), the missing polygons/messed up normals are probably a glitch in whatever they used to do polygon reduction (specially since considering technology back in the day, they probably were interested in saving polygons as much as possible).
Click to expand...


Not exactly.

Origin artists built a high polygonal model in Alias. For the actual space flight engine, the model went to one of the EOR artists (EOR was Origin's in-house object-building software), and they used that as reference to build a much simpler version of the ship, and the textures from that. Each ship had two actual versions - the high end, glitzy Alias mesh, and the 200-face polygon EOR version that you actually see in the space flight. The more elaborate ones you see in the cinematic cut scenes.

That is all :D
 
@Eder
What program do you use from NURBS modeling? I allways had the problem that NURBS models might look good, but use up to much polys for my taste...maybe its only the program I use that can't do the conversation right.
 
I use Rhino3D (an outdated version, even... the new ones must be even better), and I can get most models down to 10 k polygons with impecable detail (using a bit of fine-tuning in the conversion - default parameters are a bit wasteful).

For simpler models it works better... that Shok'lar looking thing we have in Standoff was done entirely with NURBS then converted to polygons, and I managed to get it reduced to about 1300 faces.
 
Me too, but of all the ships shown here so far, I think the Sheffield has seen the least improvements - Saga's first model of it was already pretty good.... it looks to me as if it could still be used, with just some retexturing or something (unlike the Kilrathi cruiser which has noticeably gained a lot more detail).

But hey, as long as you have Lynx around working for ya, get those models redone! :p
 
Everyone want's to change my sheffield :(

Actually It was one of the first models I build for this mod, the "Final" version was just retextured to fit the other confed's style (and it has new turrets and antennas)
 
@Eder
Hey another Rhino modeler...at least someone who like the program...most people I know don't like it...but I don't know why.
I just learn how to use Max and compared to Rhino modeling is unnessesary complex in my opinion...at least compared to Rhino.

And let me guess you use the Rhino trail version with a little patch?
I have never taken a look at the newer version, cause why should I the program is small, has no system requierments that are mentionable and exept for textureing that I can't get running its quite a program..even capable of running just from a CD.
 
gevatter Lars said:
And let me guess you use the Rhino trail version with a little patch?
I have never taken a look at the newer version, cause why should I the program is small, has no system requierments that are mentionable and exept for textureing that I can't get running its quite a program..even capable of running just from a CD.
Click to expand...
Actually, I did try a newer version once, but I was kinda disappointed by it (didn't see any really useful additions, but the interface was a bit different), so I reverted to using the old one again. The only thing it lacks is decent mapping abilities. :(
 
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