My New Fighter-Ship
Amabilis Forum: Model Feedback: My New Fighter-Ship
andnbsp; By Gary (202.152.22.84) on Tuesday, June 05, 2001 – 04:19 am: andnbsp;
Here are a few images of a new ‘space fighter’ ship I made earlier today — please let me know what you think. It’s inspired by one of the models Les put up here recently, but I took the basic shape in a different direction. I made it to import into a game, but currently it has too many polygons to be used in StarLancer, however I plan to make a ‘lite’ version to accomplish that task soon. All comments are welcome!
andnbsp; By Les Patterson (208.21.197.52) on Tuesday, June 05, 2001 – 09:01 am: andnbsp;
Gary,
That is one fantastically cool ship! I really would like to know more about where you got the textures also. These don’t look like what we see in 3DC. Did you create them?
I know that people write all kinds of mods for these games, so are you sure there isn’t one that would allow more polygons per ship for use in StarLancer?
andnbsp; By Simon Hachey (65.12.159.54) on Tuesday, June 05, 2001 – 02:49 pm: andnbsp;
WOW! That is one cool ship! 2 questions. How many polygons is it, and how did you texture it?
Simon
andnbsp; By Gary (202.152.22.84) on Tuesday, June 05, 2001 – 08:23 pm: andnbsp;
Well, I think it’s about 2000 polygons — there isn’t a total poly count function in 3DC is there? If so, I haven’t found it; I just click all the objects and try to add it up in my head. Most of the polygons are in the cockpit structures, and the final segments of the horizontal thrusters (which have several curves).
Most of the textures I use I took from other people’s StarLancer models, freely available for download by all at [img:6apapz4f]http://www.lancersreactor.com,[/img:6apapz4f]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.lancersreactor.com">http://www.lancersreactor.com</a><!– m –>,
just go to the custom ships section. There are some people there who specialize in textures, and make custom textures for each of their ships so that things like the ‘plates’ of the hull fit perfectly, and the markings are appropriately placed. My texturing skills are weak, and I usually just use modifications of that same texture you see above for all my ships. I’ll have to re-do the texturing from scratch in MilkShape for the StarLancer ship, since 3DC’s 3DS exports never seem to retain texture information. Does anyone know what’s up with that?
Gary
p.s. Les, StarLancer will accept higher polygon models, they just start to slow down the game, which is very annoying.
andnbsp; By Andrew Sobala (213.122.21.156) on Wednesday, June 06, 2001 – 02:44 pm: andnbsp;
Wow, it looks awesome.
On texturing, do you have to put a texture file with the same name in the directory with the 3ds file for a proper export? I don’t know, I try to avoid the 3ds file format.
andnbsp; By Gary (202.152.22.84) on Wednesday, June 06, 2001 – 07:43 pm: andnbsp;
I try to avoid it too, because the textures never transfer. I’ve tried putting the textures in the same directory and every other trick, but nothing. One program I use tells me andquot;Can’t find texture coordinatesandquot; when I try to open a 3DS file exported by 3DC. This has made me think perhaps there’s something wrong with the exporting? It seems like the .3ds format certainly has the power to retain texture information properly. I was going to ask Richard about that. Have you ever had any success with this?
andnbsp; By Alex Grigny de Castro (24.132.1.94) on Thursday, June 07, 2001 – 12:48 pm: andnbsp;
Some imports in 3DC loose information, I don’t know about the 3DS one. You could try to change from 3DS to DirectX *.X using conv3DS, and importing in 3DC. You must have BMP’s for the *.X import to work. Hierarchical trees do not convert well with conv3DS, all meshes get heaped up in the middle (yep, it’s a Microsoft product, what do you expect). You can download conv3DS from my url:
[img:6apapz4f]http://members.ams.chello.nl/a.grigny/3ds2x.zip,[/img:6apapz4f]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://members.ams.chello.nl/a.grigny/3ds2x.zip">http://members.ams.chello.nl/a.grigny/3ds2x.zip</a><!– m –>,
it has a windows interface made by me (3ds2x.exe)to help converting, and full istructions on how to use conv3ds.exe via a dos console.
Alex
andnbsp; By Richard Borsheim (Richard_Borsheim) (24.76.55.123) on Thursday, June 07, 2001 – 08:00 pm: andnbsp;
Hi all,
The import/export features of 3DC are documented in the 3DC Help under andquot;Menus, Tools and Other functionsandquot; -] andquot;Importing and Exportingandquot;
Richard
Amabilis Software
andnbsp; By Gary (202.152.22.84) on Thursday, June 07, 2001 – 08:51 pm: andnbsp;
Richard,
I realize the .3ds export function doesn’t support the texture mapping, etc., I think we were just trying to find a way to trick it into working. The thing is, for transfering out of 3DC, many programs only accept .3ds of all the formats available in 3dc. It seems as though .3ds, as a format, can support tex mapping, so would it be possible to add it at some point, or is that impossible?
Gary
andnbsp; By Richard Borsheim (Richard_Borsheim) (24.76.55.123) on Thursday, June 07, 2001 – 08:58 pm: andnbsp;
Gary,
I would like to add it, and likely will someday. It is the most commonly used format.
It is just a matter of getting to it. There are a lot of things on my list.
Richard
Amabilis Software
andnbsp; By fish-face (158.152.151.247) on Friday, June 22, 2001 – 11:15 am: andnbsp;
Woss this StarLancer business? can I download from somewhere? the ship is GREAT! wow. you’ve managed to make it very realistic.
andnbsp; By Gary (202.152.22.84) on Tuesday, June 26, 2001 – 10:54 am: andnbsp;
Thanks! I’m afraid Starlancer is a commercial game, although you can download a demo of it at the usual game sites. To import ships you’ll need the real thing, although it was a commercial failure, so maybe you can pick it up cheap.
Gary