New ship by BobtheTerrible

[Marcel]

Ok, thanks. When I'm ready I'll play around with it. Also, thanks for the tutorial you wrote in the wiki. I don't want to hijack this thread any more than I have, so I'll start another if I have anything worth discussing. Go BobtheTerrible! Get it in the game!

[bobtheterrible]

Hi Marcel, no worries about thread hijacking, if the information that comes out of it is useful to people then its all good :) Im happy you like the ship! As for getting it into the game that wont be my call - but either way the plan is to build a complete model and make it available to anyone that wants it.

I have made some updates to the model and have a couple of questions to those with more experience :)

[Blender file}
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0_sTZ ... sp=sharing

• greebing. Yes, sorry I have been greebing. It is not final - Im just playing around with ideas. I wanted to fill the empty hole at the front with 'stuff'. If anyone has any better ideas about what I could do here then please chip in, I wont be offended :)
• tidied up the the rear of the ship near the hatch
• added a circular docking collar (just a beveled cylinder)
• portholes!! I have put some port holes along the spine of the ship keeping in mind the direction-of-thrust-issue raised by nozmanjer
• blending. Ironically I went with the opposite of nozmanjers (and my own!) suggestions about blending the three components (nose, body, engines) of the ship together
• cleaned up as many double edges as I could find; tri-ed as many oddly shaped ngons as I could find; zeroed zeroables
• general tweaking

Questions:

• intersecting meshes. I have left a number of intersecting meshes in this version. Does this cause any issues in the game? Im guessing you want to keep this to a minimum as the game engine then doesnt have to render components that cannot be seen.
• smoothing faces around cutouts (like the portholes). Ive noticed as soon as you try to cut into a smoothed face the smoothing goes funny. I guess this is a limitation of of the smoothing algorithm but does this cause issues in the game engine?

Bob

[nozmajner]

Hi
I had a bit of time to glance at your model.
Some problematic areas I found in yellow.
Some thoughts:

• Front greebling: the antennas and their base are nice in my opinion, they don't feel too random. Maybe a bit of asymmetry could make it more interesting. Those circular things (eh, tits, sorry ;P) feel quite out of place. They can easily be seen as retro thrusters.
• Those elongated portholes felt a bit odd at first, but I think it's working. The strange shading around them is because of the triangles. You don't need to worry too much about them, they won't be noticeable when the model gets her texture.
• The back of the ship looks much more better this way. Maybe the fins could be a bit narrower, they seem a bit cramped with this width.
• The docking collar felt strange at first, intersecting with the structure, but I think it looks nice this way. And compatible with the Malabar which is a nice touch. I'd say try enlarging the structure on a copy to properly accommodate it, so we can compare the two and see which looks better. The collar cylinder is a bit poly-heavy, you can easily reduce it to 16 or 13 (halp) vertex per circle, and simplify the rounded bevelin too, without sacrificing much fidelity.
• I'm a bit snob when it comes to avoiding intersecting geometry, because it wastes texture space and can create flickering. I think it won't be too problematic in most cases, but most of them isn't that complicated to weld together properly, and won't create that much more geometry (not that much in this case). The docking collar/fuselage intersection could be problematic though, I'd fix that for sure. I think the other places can stay the way they are now, and if they introduce any glitch, then you can get rid of them without upsetting the unwrap too much.
• I found some ngons and too thin triangles, I highlighted them with a separate material.

I might be able to do some short modeling session streaming workshoplike thingie this Friday or Sunday, if you guys are interested (provided that timezones won't screw with it). I have a bunch of sketches I could start working on. @Marcel: even if you are just beginning, it could be helpful, since you can ask right away how or why I do something. And questions make this kind of thing far more useful.

[impaktor]

As for getting it into the game that wont be my call

Make nozmajner happy, and I think the ship will make it into the game.

Keep up the good work with both reviewing and improving the ship.

[FluffyFreak]

As for getting it into the game that wont be my call

Make nozmajner happy, and I think the ship will make it into the game.

Yeah at this point it's just a matter of polish and then the ships going in I think.
The stuff you and noz are discussing isn't game breaking and it's more about refining the final look of the ship.

Far as I'm concerned I'm looking at an almost finished ship - it needs some spec's and setup for the game to load it but it's probably a good time to start testing that out soon.

[bobtheterrible]

Hi Guys,

Well, if you are happy to add it to the game then so am I, it would make all the effort thats gone into it worth while! :D

I know there were a few issues surrounding the overall style - it dosnt quite follow the design of the other ships so I would be happy for others to decide upon manufacturer. In the mean time I will have a think about some possible background and stats for it.

Ok workshop. Fri evening is possibly the best bet for me - any time after 6pm UK time if that is possible. I could possibly do Sat however there is a good chance I wont be available (possibly including Fri as well). I will have to confirm although I should know by tomorrow. If you can also let us know the potential medium for the workshop I can register/test in advance.

Cheers
Bob :)

[nozmajner]

I assumed from the beginning that you want it to get in the game. :) (and a retrospective sorry, I can be a bit of a nitpicker sometimes.)
I think we can come up with a CIW yard for it. As I said before, it has some things that could relate it to Kaluri too. Some things are not, but overall it's not that far from the other ships.
Fri evening might not be good for me, I have to help out a friend, fixing his computer.

[bobtheterrible]

I assumed from the beginning that you want it to get in the game. :) (and a retrospective sorry, I can be a bit of a nitpicker sometimes.)

I thought it would be cool if I could get into the game but I wasnt going to assume it would be! As for the nitpicking - it has all been very much appreciated and helped me learn a lot so no worries at all :)

Ok some minor cleaning up and greebing:

[Blender file]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0_sTZ ... sp=sharing

Some size comparisons of the docking collar - small, large or larger?

Large docking collar


Small docking collar


Greebing... greeb greeb greeb.....
(I take in nozmanjer's suggestion that a bit of asymmetry might work and I agree with this however Im currently mirroring and will make things less symmetrical when ppl are happy with the direction Im going). I have remodelled the er... circular thingies to make them less er... well.... The aerials are probably too polly heavy and will reduce on the next iteration....


As always comments welcome!
Bob

[bobtheterrible]

Apologies for the spam post. I have ben meaning to do this for a while - I have tweaked the engine nacelles to bring them more in line with the rest of the body (I havent relocated the engines yet). Personally I think it balances the the shape of the ship out a bit better but open to opinion... If good I will include it in the main blend.

nozmanjer - Im now free Sat during the day, if you wanted to set up a tutorial let me know :)

[Blender file]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0_sTZ ... sp=sharing

[nozmajner]

Hi! Yes, this craft marches into the game nicely. It has a couple stops until the destination, but it's certainly heading towards the target. :)

• Yes the nacelles look better this way.
• The proportion of the heat-sinks is better too.
• Docking collar: I was talking about enlarging the base of that area, but I just tried making it larger, and it ruins the shape and proportions, so never mind that. I think the previous one (the one before my suggestion) is better.
  
• The greebling on the front is as good as greebling can be if you ask me. Those things on the bottom part of it look nice, and seem to have function. The new cylindrical stuff looks much better. The central part is a bit too busy, but it's working.

Yeah, tomorrow is good for me. What time? How about a GMT 2PM start, and a couple hours duration? (although I have to test youtube's screencast feature. I think we will need hangouts for it.). I don't have a mic (and my spoken english is substandard I'm affraid), so comms should be on IRC.
This one seems to be a good candidate for it: