Make a 2048x2048 texture, resize later when needed.

1024x1024 should be more than enough, but whatever...

Starting to get a grip on the applications. It is beginning to look more like I intended.

Not a bad start.

Looking forward to when it starts looking like this quality

Dude... have you checked out the BotF UI Screenshots on that site? Most of them are quite different than the ones in the game. Makes you wonder about what kinds of features never made it to the final release.

...is what I am working towards. It is learning to break up and fine tune the selection of polygon groups, drawing the textures to finer quality and aliening the application of texture that I am working on at this point. It is a slow learning process with a day job. It is good release is not until well into 2007.

I see what you mean about texture being the hard part.

Mstrobel is write though. What made it into the original game did not look that good.



We can do better.


Sorry. I had to do that. Now I am marked for death on Romulous.

Working hard but most to the time is still spent learning the finer points of the tools. That art work form BOTF has helped a great deal. It give me a lot of ideas for the general look and application of the texture. thanks. I hope to have some things to post in a few days.

Nah, I think Skeeter said that you can go up to a maximum of 2048x2048.

You can always shrink them down later if necessary. that will help give the illusion of highly detaile dships then, without having to model in those details.

Yeah, no reason not to make your textures as high-res and detailed as possible. It's always possible to scale them down, but you can't make a blow up a low-res texture very well. Who knows what the capabilities of the next-gen graphics cards will be?

Per the Starbase post in Community Forums this will now be the starbase one model. The texturing is still underway. This is NOT the final draft. The sleek looking lines are taken to look more high tech as the starbase vs the outpost.

Romulan Starbase with docking arms...



The lower tech Romulan outpost one.

I have seen mention of using up to three texture files for one model. Are we limited to one texture .bmp file?

The Romulan Outpost One En Face



The Romulan Outpost One Cephalad vantage point



The Romulan Outpost One in profile

Lookin good, cept the long bit on the top down view.

fixed

My proposal for the Romulan Heavy Scout - slight skin for distinction of lines

En Face view



From the cephalad view point



At an angle

Something kind of like this for the Romulan Starbase

Too low poly and not a good design to be honest. Sry dude for being blunt here. Remember romulans love curvy designs, tho its best to avoid curves, i dont think u can with the romulans.

NP. I appreciate the advice. It helps me in the process of bringing my work up to speed.

More like this version?

Personally can you just keep it as one of the outposts or starbases and remove the nacelles plz. As it really is not a design for a ship at all.

You're the boss. The project needs some degree of single vision. Let's make it the Romulan Science Station then and I will go with MOE's suggestion on the Starbase.

Fine then. Post up some pictures once its lost its Nacelles and textured, then i'll add it in as the Romulan Tal'Shiar Experimental Laboratory.

If this is OK I will texture it. (do not want to have to re-texture after request for model changes)


Romulan Science Station, Tal'Shiar Experimental Laboratory

Also I am going to buy an unwrap program now. The demo for Ultimate Unwrap does not seam to work on the ms3d file type I have in MilkShape or am I confused? I did not find other programs listed looking around here or did I miss something?

Milkshape 3d, save your model (export) as .3ds (3d max for jig). You can use this format in ultimate unwrap3d proggy.

Check your email soon.

Thanks again for your help with the tools I needed. There are some work and family issues that will have we on the road. The laptop will help we get a little work done but I will likely not post again for a week or more. Happy Quanza.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article/26395.html

A quick technical question. I have used Unwrap to create a nice flat 2d of the groups for texture. Can I, Should I, import the file back into MilkShape 3d so I can then use the Texture Coordinate Editor window to make the connection to the 3d model? -- Or does it just stay in the Unwrap program to do that once I have painted the 2d like the bee's knees? I do not see how I connect the nice unwrap I did on the 2d with the group as seen in MilkShape projections that are not unwrapped. I do not see how to move back to MilkShape with what I have done in Unwrap.

Do all ur texture mapping in unwrap 3d. As in do everything you can in milkshape as in mesh completion. Smooth groups etc. Once mesh is done, save and then only do unwrap 3d to make uv maps of ur ship which you can do multiple texture groups etc in unwrap3d. So like erm sort out ur texture map export it to bmp, load it up in paint shop pro or photoshop etc do ur texturing there. Then simply open the bmp you saved in unwrap3d and apply. Then its all done.

http://www.trekmania.net/conference/botf_tutorial.htm

http://www.members.lycos.nl/jonim8or/shiptex_tut.html

Should help.

I see. So going back to MilkShape, or the like, would be about as useful as a third sex.