You have a point matress, although no one has mentioned the manual yet.

Here's a conundrum. Which ship do you name "Kenneth_of_Borg"? The Borg don't recognize individuals, and what other race would name a ship after the Borg?
Well, we'll just do it anyway.

CB

We used the USS Moe rather than the Matress of Evil. There will be a USS Bashir and I guess my ship will be the USS Kenny. That way we can scream "They killed Kenny! YOU BASTARD!" when it goes down.

USS Kenny it is! I love it!

You could always name my ship the USS Overlord. Or even the USS Erooe. Lets see how many people figure out that link.

...Although technically it should be RNS not USS...

This is about as complex the mesh for the Conestoga can be under 3,000 poly. I will refine it a bit more as the UV map is developed. The texture image should look a little distressed like it has been in service for a while. I want to stay away from vivid colors with a more scratched and pitted look. I can afforded a little more detail in the nacelles. They look overly smoothed by the render program.

Retexture of Sharepointed NX-01

Very nice.
I replaced the old files and uploaded it to the SharePoint rar files for models.

I have the Conestoga class USS Zeleni ready for texture. It should be online in the next two days or so.

How is work coming on that big Romulan Senate project?

I have no idea what else to do, any suggestions?

Did you make a model for the senate in the end? That would help with the lighting. But anyways, we shouldn't be talking about it here. People don't know about this feature know yet. And now they're gonna be asking questions as to why the senate is in the game.

We are talking about the images. The images are not secret. How they are used is a secret. We are not talking about how they are used even if someone asks.

There is a great deal of detail that could be added to the senate image. It still needs a city skyline outside the walls of the senate grounds and before the hills in the background. The reference images show the level of detail work that was built into the model used in the Nemesis movie. It likely took model builders a few months of work to reach that level of detail. My model is very crude in comparison and only intended to be a framework for the detail. If we were going to animate the model as with a fly over used in Nemesis it would have to be fully built as a model. Being a static 2D image in the game we can save work and finish it in 2D.

You see the landscaping bushes, people on the walkways, steps on the stairs, walkways, windows and the like in the movie version of it. Drex files has a version of it. Doug may let us use his image for our game if making our own is too involved. Can someone ask him? I would still like see it form the opposite direction as used in Nemesis. The mountains would be behind it. Would Doug let us use and mod this image to add our hills and ship?

Here is the Conestoga with a UV texture map applied. All you do is paint inside the lines on the UV image and it maps onto the mesh in a program like Ultimate Unwrap or our Combat engine. I will try to .rar up the model to SharePoint tomorrow. If you want to work on the texture but need help with Ultimate Unwrap or whatever let me know.

( the model is mapped in 3D using XYZ coordinates so U and V are used to map the 2D image texture onto the 3D model. That is why they call it a UV map. You use the UV image below as a layer in Photoshop and paint in the detail)

Just one question whose name will be on NX class, and whose will be on the Conestoga?

And what format will they be? .tga with light maps as alpha channel? or .bmp with separate light maps?


EDIT: same quality bmp lightmaps + textures for the NX clsss are 7,44 Mb, while tga with lightmaps as alpha channels sre 5,00 Mb, so tga should be our first choice.

The Federation Colonyship I was previously named the USS Zeleni. I planed to keep that name. There has not been a name yet for the NX Class, the Federation Cruiser I. Would you like it? Just add your name into the texture file if you do.

We know that our first version of the 3D combat engine needed the texture files in .psd, .jpg, .png, .tga, .bmp or .pcx format. Mike had originally suggested .bmp as a universal form. Tga is an old format but I see no problem with it at this point. My UV map image is set at 1024 x 1024 and Mike has said that the game will scale that down as needed for weaker video cards. The lightmap naming convention, if second image is needed, is not set yet as we do not have a new combat engine. In the past we talked about just putting an "i" at the end of the texture file name.

If we use tga and add lightmaps as alpha channels we could reduce the texture filesize by at least 25%, the only difference is that separate light map has three channels Red-Green-Blue and depending on image size every channel has certain size ( 512x512 - one channel has 256kb, the texture will come out as 768kb) but since the lightmaps are Black and white there is no need for RGB channels and we are wasting space, now if we integrate lightmaps into tga textures as an alpha channel, they will only use 256kb, and the quality will stay the same.

And yes, if NX class isn't reserved I will put my name on it (what registry, NX or NCC, in any case it will be either NX-13 or NCC-13)

I have seen people moving away from the tga format but we can always change it later. Tga should be OK.

I guess the ships were NX-# and then Name in Enterprise. It looks like they are all USS after that unless someone knows better. I am not sure what to do for the Conestoga Class Zeleni.

Who was it that was asking Doug Drexler for permission to use his stuff? I see that the Romulan Senate as a model was subcontracted to a cgi company so it may not be that Doug is the right person to ask. I can start by asking him who to ask. It seams best to find out here who already asked and how he was reached and can I do it without being a pest.

I was the one who was asking for permission to use his stuff, but he is busy because he has just started working on a new internet project, and he anounced that he will not visit his own blog until the end of this month, so we really can't reach him right away.

About the .tga we should vote on it, but I believe that we could save a lot of space without losing the quality, I have been dealing with .tga images for some time now and I believe that they are our best choice.

I'm not sure what you mean by what to do with Conestoga class, they registries were SS - XXXXXXX, but that was before starfleet. If I'm correct you start the game as fully formed Federation, although you control only Earth, so all ships should have NCC, but that's just my opinion.

I will leave a question for Doug on his blog thingy.

I am sure the tga will be fine. We will not know more until we get into building the combat engine.

You know more about the format for naming the ships so lets go with what you said.

NCC-12 VJEKOSLAV:

How cool is that? Nice ship you have there.


I uploaded your ship to SharePoint and also put in the new working copy of the F Colony ship I, Conestoga. The texture file is in .png so just convert it to tga and reassign the mesh groups to the new file name.

Do you have access to SharePoint for file uploading? If not let me ask Mike again. Now you really need it.

At some point in the far future we need to make that a higher ploy mesh on the NX 12.

I don't believe I have access to sharepoint. About the NX, I hope my textures won't be useless then.

We should be able to reapply the current texture on Cruiser I to a new and similarly shaped higher poly mesh. In any case it will still have your name. I will ask Mike to give you a login for SharePoint.

My progress on the USS Zeleni so far:








Any suggestions?

The pictures are low quality because they are in jpg format, the real texture looks better.

That looks good to me. I do see that at StarTrek.com they call the ships USS NAME but on the ship why not just the name like we seen on the NX-01? USS always seamed out of place to me anyway or is that a pre Federation thing? We will want to set smooth on the mesh groups where it helps make it look better as well. I will do that later. I need to cut the size of the dish down a little.

Look for the "Two-Sided" check box on the properties of Unwrap for the exhaust cones in on the back of the ship. That will show the texture on the inside and outside surface of the cones. If you do not find it do not worry. I can do that later.

I think the dorsal (up side of the ships main body) vents could be a little more golden brown. The large windows up fornt could use a little more frame with less window and we can add some redish glow in the lightmap. There should be a blue glow strip on the sides of the naselles at some point. There is some nice detail seen in the attached image.

It's a problem with the Blue glow because when I add it, it's on the inside of the left nacelle, and on the outside of the right nacelle.

The USS on both ships is because the USS is registry that was introduced after the Federation was formed, and if I'm right you start with fully formed Federation, so all ships should have NCC registry.

I see. The UV mapping at that point will have to be reworked. It is not a big problem. I can take care of that after you do the texture. Just leave it off for now and we will see if Matress picks up on it. OK with the name then.

What about the texture color and lighttness? I still need to add the "lights" that are over name and federation symbol (I replaced Earth symbol with Federation, I hope everyone agrees)

Adding the light effect at areas where lights illuminate is a good idea. I can work on the metallic shine and color in blender after you are done. The Fed symbol looks OK. This would be after the first Conestoga mission as was the case in the Enterprise episode anyway. I can just make out the name SS Conestoga on the side of the ship in that drex image above.

New version:

Shouldn't the ship have red and blue glows?
Yup, I picked up on it.

I have made the lightmap but the program just isn't showing it.