Topic: Two WIPs from TVL!! Feedback Requested. (Read 1403 times)

Rogue NineCH · « **on:** August 24, 2003, 08:39:31 pm »

Here are two ships the The Vampire Lestat is working on. They are kitbashes from P81's Excalibur. I like them I think they both look very cool. Post your thoughts, but keep it clean and constructive.

Marauth · « **Reply #1 on:** August 24, 2003, 08:53:30 pm »

I thought I'd preempt anyone who happens to comment by putting this simple question, both ships I have planned as my F-CLX but only one will be chosen and I'll rework the other to be something else, I currenty favour making the Eritrea (the Miranda lookalike) the CLX as I can't really think of any other role it could fit into while the Istria seems more versatile right now. Also I wanted opinion on which nacelle layout of the Istria I should use - the horizontally opposed flat alignment or the v shaped struts with the nacelles upright.

Any way anyone have any opinions on that or the ships please post and don't spare my ego, it's not there to begin with so you wont hurt it.

Oh and though a few of you will have heard of Eritrea not many will have heard of Istria, it's a peninsula on the adriatic coast and formerly made up Provincia Fiume and Provincia Pola in the Italian Regione of Venezia Giulia (or Julian Venice) before the area was given to Yugoslavia and that commie b4st4rd Tito had all the Italians killed or thrown out.

BTW Does anyone know how I can contact Knox1711? I need his permission to use a bit of one of his ships in another ship I bashed and don't have any idea how to reach him

MajorRacal · « **Reply #2 on:** August 25, 2003, 06:12:18 am »

Mssr Lestat

I for one think both the Eritrea and Istrea are wonderful - they resemble in many ways sketches I made of two my ships the Loki and Hercules from many years ago in my FASA playing days (although neither were as elegant)...

Could I ask one small indulgence? Could you create another variant of the Istrea by flipping around the secondary hull and bringing the Impulse Unit down to her underside..? (She'd be a close match for my old Odin class).

MajorRacal

PS - for anyone wondering on my own modelling progress - I've had a major setback in the shape of the Blaster worm, and I've lost everything and will have to start everything from scratch... once I can actually get my PC working smoothly again... At the moment the firewall software is causing considerable system slowdown (which increases over time) and it's making working with 3DS Max virtually impossible... Once I get this resolved, I should be back on track I hope.

Marauth · « **Reply #3 on:** August 25, 2003, 07:56:53 am »

Yeah sure I'll make the variant, but I'm not exactly sure what you meant by 'flipping around the secondary hull' do you reckon you post a sketch? I understand you've got problems with your comp so maybe if you just explained what you mean it'd be fine.

it's Istria BTW not Istrea, I believe in the serbo-croat it's just Istra but I'm not gonna call it that.

Well I must say I'm a little saddened by only getting 1 response

come on I'm not that much of an arsehole that no one posts about my ships am I?

Bernard Guignard · « **Reply #4 on:** August 25, 2003, 08:19:37 am »

Quote:

Here are two ships the The Vampire Lestat is working on. They are kitbashes from P81's Excalibur. I like them I think they both look very cool. Post your thoughts, but keep it clean and constructive.

Hi Guys
I like them both but I'd like to see an aft view or the miranda style. I'm wondering what would it look like if you added ing on the extended hull like the miranda for the shuttle bays.
The other ship I like variant 2 for some odd reason l like seeing my warp engines on a vertical plane as opposed to a horizontal plane but thats my opinon.
Your both doing some great work keep it up and I look forward to the finshed results

MajorRacal · « **Reply #5 on:** August 25, 2003, 08:32:42 am »

By 'flipping' I pretty much mean turning the whole ship upside down so that the secondary hull arches out from the top of the primary hull like a nuchal hump... The Impulse unit is suspended underneath the main hull. the warp assembles are pretty spot on, but ideally should hang slightly below the the level of the primary hull. If I can get a scan sorted for you, I'll forward it to you - if not, and that's not enough to go on just keep asking questions and I'll answer as best I can.

As for the lack of response I doubt it's anything personal - 'mama told me there'd be days like this'

Marauth · « **Reply #6 on:** August 25, 2003, 08:57:15 am »

Thanx that should be enough to go on, I'll have to get this done a bit later as I promised Rogue a Larson retexture and I'll be damned if I ain't gonna deliver it

Bernard, not much I can really do with adding a Miranda style hull to the back, problem is I'd need to rework most of the rear hull as I can't just cut the bits of an existing Miranda and paste them here, 1. it wouldn't really fit the hull 2. it'd look sucky as the two aren't meant to go together and I'd have to retexture it from scratch and 3. the ship already has 2 shuttlebays in the back of the impulse engines slightly above them - check the Excalibur to see what I mean.

Kaenyne · « **Reply #7 on:** August 25, 2003, 11:08:35 am »

Well, if you want one more opinion, I'm leaning towards the Eritrea myself.

Both models are intriging, but there seems to be a lack of Miranda type configurations out there (IMHO) and it would be a great companion ship to the Excalibur.

There was a ship out there (Mackie's Galahad in a Miranda configuration) that a few of us a looked for but to no avail. (I think it has been lost which is a tragedy really). Your Eritrea model, however, would make up for it easily.

And that's my two cents!

Marauth · « **Reply #8 on:** August 25, 2003, 12:29:12 pm »

All I remember is that P81 originally released a USS Reliant NCC-1864-A - Reliant class, it was basically just a Miranda configuration of his Odyssey DN (it was originally a DN with 3 nacelles)

I believe I'll finish up the Eritrea first and use it as the F-CLX and make the Istria into an F-CVX solely because it reminds me so much of the flatbed carrier from SFB, what was the name of that thing? I'll probably have one version as a straight carrier and the other as an SCS. To the resident SFB buffs what seperated the CVA from the SCS stats wise? So I know what I can do to the models to differentiate them from each other visually.

BTW Rogue, seeing as how Mackie's just told us P81 and Knox1711 are cool with bashes as long as you credit them, any chance of you getting my Cyrenaica and Dalmazia up, oh and how's the Oriskany doing, have you managed to get the LODs out of it yet? Oh the Larson's main texture for the rear of the hull and the pylons got [censored] up in a crash during saving so I had to do it again from scratch but I've got something half decent for a first version, I just need to make the blue areas on the pylons blue and it'll be done, then I'll name the ship and send it over to you, sorry it took so long.

Kaenyne · « **Reply #9 on:** August 25, 2003, 12:40:22 pm »

Yeah, I believe the Reliant was the name. It was a great looking ship-too bad.

But you're Eritrea has rekindled my hopes for a really nice Miranda type again.

I wish I could help you with you're stats but I don't use anything other than what is contained in SFC: OP.

Marauth · « **Reply #10 on:** August 25, 2003, 12:48:02 pm »

I don't really think I should release my ships with stats because I lack the patience to extensively playtest them before release, and I wouldn't want to release a ship with totally unbalanced stats. It's kind of a catch 22 that.

BTW the Reliant is sooo easy to bash from the Odyssey, I'll infact have a bash of it in the folder with my Odyssey but it's got LODs and no _brk.mod neither of those things are within my power to fix so I just left it to rot for a while.

Kaenyne · « **Reply #11 on:** August 25, 2003, 01:35:59 pm »

Well, I think since your ship is non canon for SFB and SFC, folks would be fine with creating their own stats through Shipedit anyway. That kind of control is very appealing in any case.

Your Odyssey kitbash news is cool too! I know there were several of us who put out posts (including myself) looking for this particular ship. The absence of a .brk.mod may not be of big concern, but I really have no idea what LODs are. Could you fill me in on that BTW? I'm frequently curious about this stuff.

Marauth · « **Reply #12 on:** August 25, 2003, 01:53:12 pm »

LOD: Level Of Detail, it's a fairly outdated concept fashionable during the early days of modding SFC when people were making ships with around 2000 polies that were considered just too intensive to run. Some modders especially P81 put LODs in their models so that once you got to a certain preset distance the model (and sometimes the textures aswell) would be replaced with another model of say 800 polies and then at extreme distance a model with say 300 polies, this basically saved on performance allowing people with low end machines to still see their nice 2000 poly ship with 512 textures but be able to run the game because the other ships which were too far away to be seen anyway would have switched to a lower LOD. I HATE LODS!!!! M6 can't modify them or remove them so any ship with LODs in it I can't modify fully, check P81's connie, Excelsior, Miranda, Star League, Oberth, etc and you'll see what I mean. I understand that as long as you have a proper 3D package LODs are really easy to removebut I don't have the money to buy one and so far I haven't been able to be bothered to get one off of kazaa

Anyway the Reliant is so easy to make I did it in like 5 minutes, you just delete the 2 top nacelles of the odyssey, flip the rollbar the right way round then join it back to the saucer, delete the engineering hull, flip the nacelles and their supports upside down and affix them to the protruding block on the underside of the saucer, that's the whole thing. Then there's the HPs to set up but that's relatively easy too.

Kaenyne · « **Reply #13 on:** August 25, 2003, 02:20:07 pm »

Thanks for the education there. Now I'm gonna have to look for P81's models in my collection very closely to see what you mean.

Five minutes to make the Reliant A you say? Hmmmm....any takers out there?

Marauth · « **Reply #14 on:** August 25, 2003, 02:33:18 pm »

Well just open the Connie and you'll see straight away, open it in MODViewer and you'll see sometihng like this:

[AutoLOD] LOD count = 3, current LOD = 1, ZBuffer=on, 37.640247, FPS: (here are a constantly changing set of numbers - the FPS count, usually it's in the triple figures)

(This is specifically P81's connie) the words that say 'LOD count = 3' are the important ones, if you were to look at say, WZ's new connie it'd say 'LOD count = 1' meaning there's only one model but P81's has 3, if you zoom out you'll see it change to 2 and then 3, mif you want to see the LODs, just press the 2 or 3 key on your keyboard and the line will change to this:

[ForcedLOD] LOD count = 3, current LOD = (1 2 or 3 depending on the key you press), ZBuffer=on, 37.640247, FPS: (here are a constantly changing set of numbers - the FPS count, usually it's in the triple figures)

Be warned the 3rd LOD is not pretty

LOL

Rogue NineCH · « **Reply #15 on:** August 25, 2003, 03:58:33 pm »

I'll have to look at the Oriskany tonight TVL, yesterday my g/f was complaining about staying inside on such a beautiful day, well let's just say she charmed me into going outside. I swear, if I didn't know better I'd say that there is a secret academy somewhere that teaches women how to get a guy to do what she wants, when she wants, or it could just be that ability to say, "Not tonight honey, I have a headache!"

Anyway I got nothing done for the models, but I had a great time. I'll work on those tonight, and post the two ships you sent me as well. Thanks for your patience.

Marauth · « **Reply #16 on:** August 25, 2003, 04:40:32 pm »

My patience is vast when it comes to stuff like this - I've been waiting for Thu11s Skyhawk since he posted the first WIP shot of it months ago. BTW Rogue check your inbox.

Oh and your gf is more important than us guys on the forum, much as we'd like to convince ourselves otherwise

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