Wow starfan, that looks great! I can't wait to see what other goodies you have in store for us.

I can see the bridge module and Nacelles have some very tightly-packed polies, so they might be candidates for a bit of liposuction, Kenneth. Trashman and Fireball might be willing to help guide starfan on how to make textures too. Oh, and don't forget about Strings' guide on making textures. Starfan might find that useful. I can't post links while i'm stuck with using my Wii to get online or i'd post it now for him.

top-notch work!

There are about 30 minor race ships now uploaded to SharePoint.
I hope to have the rest of the major races in the next three days.

@MOE: If you would have the guys at PC World link to the pictures in
the Image Library for your shiplist we can keep track of what we have and what
we need.

Don't worry Kenneth, soon as I get it back i'll give the minor race shiplist an overhaul and put in links to any images we have.

I do remember that Mike's christmas update added in a load of images for the minor race ships that I hadn't seen before though. I don't know if they're your handiwork or not. Do you know anything about them?

Those were likely taken before the last lost data hack.
I may have updated a few but not much.

I was able to finish uploading all the models for the major race fleets
(before we suffered another major data dump.) Version one of the
models and their in-game images are now on Sharepoint.

It took a long time due to all the new in-game
images and to gather models from a number of location on
my computers.

Next I will back this up, upload the remaining minor race ships
that I have and then start to work on Starfan2009's Nova mesh.

Dominion was the last Major race to go online at SharePoint.


@MOE, I also updated the Romulan Colonyship III image. It is not a very
good model but the image is a little clearner than the last time you
looked.

Umm its purple, should it not be a Dominion ship you think?

Regards Wolfe

That is the Dominion Battleship II.

This is the Romulan Colonyship III

Remove excess polys and cut it in half. ALWAYS cut it in half (if you can). Even better if you can cut it in specific parts so it's not a single object. That way you can make textures and map it easier, then just put all the pieces together. At least that's how I do it.

Poor Romulan colony ship. Once you were a battle cruiser, now you're demoted to non-combat. At least you're still bigger than the other colony ships.

Thanks for all your hard work, Kenneth. I phoned the tech guys and they said they're still fixing it. I'll get on the image update soon as I can though.

Hi all .. ive just completed the lastest ship.. minor race hazari cruiser, was the most difficult to do so far as i had to imprevise on parts.

Hi trashman yep i always split my models helps alot, texturing i would prefer to leave to more experianced people as im best at the 3d modeling.

Hope you like:

Ooh curvy, sleek, and sexy. You've got another nice model there, Starfan.

Thanks... more to come

That model looks great Starfan. I was able to import the .obj and then export in 3ds.
I did have to reduce the names of the groups to only eight characters. That is a
limitation in 3ds. I may ask you to convert some other models in max to .obj as I find
them again.

I will upload the 3ds version of your cruiser to SharePoint.

My 3ds max isnt working at all, so i wont be able to convert your max files to obj.

Why isn't it working? People on the forums may be able to help if you can describe the problem.

mainly linked to a pc problem ile gte it fixed soon..

The Romulan Battleship:


Still not sue with which version I should go.

I'm open to suggestion.

The lower version has 6 nacelles (2 on wing tips and 4 on the end of each wing, more to the inside. those 4 are still not textured) and a slimmer body wihout the cirver connection in the back

the upper version has 4 nacelees (2 on wing tips and 2 on the inner wings), has a bit bulkier body (wings are more arched, curved upwards) with a connected curved ending in the back (not textured yet).

They both look good to me so a lot of help I am.

I can't decide either! They're both really good. Damn you for being so good Trashman!

Could you perhaps post some more screenshots of the two ships so we can compare them better? Different angles, closer views, etc?

Both v good,

Anyway you could just keep both , maybe alter texture colour on one so it is differant enough to recognise?

Regards Wolfe

We always need more minor races so stretch one out and paint it pink.

Starfan has been waiting for me to work on the Nova.

and .... here ..... we .... GO....



Looks very nice but the poly count is too high. What to do?
When it loads into Mikeshape there are two groups to the mesh. Hid the rear section
group and you see there is overlap and parts of the mesh taking up poly count are
hidden. Just select and delete the unseen parts of overlap.




Now look for areas where there are flat surfaces. If you hid all but the top section of
one nacelle you see a flat surface with a lot of poly. To simplify it select the vertexes
within the rectangular area.



Now take vertex snap together and weld together.



If you can move all round the nacelle doing this it will save a lot of poly count. In the end though it is
easiest to build up the model with an eye on keeping the count under the limit to start with.

I am still working on getting the count down to game ready and texturing will be next.
As Trashman said texturing depends a lot on having groups in the mesh that you can
work with. (Other programs have different ways to do this and texture)

Nova has two groups right now. I would create a new group in Mikeshape this way.

1. Create any shape, like box and place next to the Nova, and this will make a new group.
2. Select a limited area to map with texture like the upper half of the saucer section
3. With my upper saucer section and box both selected click regroup on the group tab.
4. Rename the new group upsaucer and delete the box.
(so you have made a new group with the box shape, put the upper saucer into that group, renamed it after the upper saucer and removed the box)
5. Keep making new groups with an eye to ease of mapping textures, see below.

Now I have a third group that can be textured in Ultimate Unwrap. In Unwrap select the group.
Take 2D tools, UV mapping, planar and you can find the axis to project your 2D image onto the
upper saucer. If you get lucky and find a cylinder, sphere or box there are nice tools there
to unwrap them as well. Otherwise look for areas you can project texture onto without smear.
If the surface gets turned too far off your plan of projection it will smear. Keep that in mind
as you create new groups to map. See the tutorials for you programs and or Ultimate Unwrap
for more detail.

Ask and ye shall recieve:




*yes, I noticed one of the small nacelles on the lower one is turned backwards.I already fixed that.

So, the top one is bulkier (in both wings and body) and has a different ending.
The lower one is slimmer.

So - which body and which nacelle setup should I use?
NOTE - there are 4 possible combinations.

I vote slimmer one on bottom, but they both look very nice.

Check the images on page one of this thread. One can be the Cruiser IV.
It looks like that was it back then anyway. We can bump the current
Warhawk into the minors after a change of skin to make room for the other.

Yeah, we could. But the romulan shiplist looks foll enough as it is.

I'll make both. Since the nacelles are a separate object, one can easily move/switch them around later if needed.

It just occurred to me that the shiplist is in dire need of fixing.

The image for Cruiser IV is the romulan battleship. So something else must be used for cruiser IV anyway.

When assigning ships to a specific class, one MUST take into consideration how BIG it looks. Basicly the windows size. It doesn't make any sense to have a destroyer using a model that looks like a Negh'Var, with thousands of windows.

some ship textures will need fixing. Either that or some ships will need rearranging. Or both.

Yes, it is just version one showing on page one. We know it is full of
problems. Version one is there so we have something to put in the
combat engine to play the game. Now we are working on version two.
Now we see what is available and can fix all those problems. Make it so.

I'm done. Now I just need to upload it on Sharepoint. Which reminds me, I forgot my password. Cant' find the e-mail with the details either

I put it up on Mediafire:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2c93 ... b9a8902bda


Now, I'll see if I can finally get the better galaxy done. I improved the saucer somewhat, but the neck just keeps bugging me..gah!
Hmm..The Galaxy being a Star Trek poster-child and all..shouldn't we have the regular and the Dominion War refit verisons?