Topic: Low Polygonal Escort Class (Read 6264 times)

JB_Wonderboy · « **on:** February 21, 2009, 04:01:03 pm »

Greetings all, I am JB, I recently reinstalled SFCII and thought, my god it has aged, and after veiwing various forums including this one, I drew enough insperation to decide that I should try to recreate my fav ship.

That said, I wanted it to be less than 1000 Polys.

I got it done in 251 Polys (502 tri's)

It will use 2 x 512 texture sheets (not including the illum map) and willl have specular maps, and normal maps to boot. I'm aware that sfc does not support these but I will Bake the results to the texture for an SFC release, an in turn teach myself how to normal map.

I am going to unwrap now, and should be starting the textures within the hour, the mesh is clean and one object, all verts and edges meet and flow as they should.. buld time was approx 3 hours.

JB_Wonderboy · « **Reply #1 on:** February 21, 2009, 05:46:01 pm »

Mapping completed, texturing shortly.

GotAFarmYet? · « **Reply #2 on:** February 21, 2009, 05:46:16 pm »

Cool deal always wanted thi8s ship in a low poly model so I could run fleets of them by making them my fighter model

Going to be interesting to see how you get it all into 2 small texture sheets.
Even though the game doesn't support spec maps you can make them you just unselectthem when you export to SFC and reselect them to export to other games.

Dated or not it is still one of the more enjoyable trek games to play, as you don't have to be a keyboard warrior to play it

JB_Wonderboy · « **Reply #3 on:** February 21, 2009, 06:31:25 pm »

Thanks for the tip, I have decided to go with a single 1024 sheet instead of 2 x 512's, but with some clever mapping to use the space to its best advantage, I will release, various texture sizes with it. 1024 being the largest. Whats the best file format for compression of textures?

Dizzy · « **Reply #4 on:** February 21, 2009, 08:15:38 pm »

Pretty damn good job using so few polys

marstone · « **Reply #5 on:** February 21, 2009, 09:22:03 pm »

Quote from: Dizzy on February 21, 2009, 08:15:38 pm

Pretty damn good job using so few polys

I will agree. Fine detail for so few. I don't think I could make a disk with only that many polys

GotAFarmYet? · « **Reply #6 on:** February 21, 2009, 09:31:23 pm »

SFC only sees PCX and BMP

BMP gives you the most options for colour and depth resolutions
If you limit your colour selections you can move it down to 32K colours or less and it will lag the game even less. Some ppl have used large areas on a 256 colour map that was basically white to reduce the impact of a ship and made a details map to cover samll area where they wanted high details. Resolution size can also be adjusted to improve quality or decrease resources needed.

Kind of a balancing act to get it right and work for the details you want. One large map should not impact the game engine much at all. Raven uses 1 1024 and usually 1 512 or another 1024 and that is it. Really comes down to how detailed you want the look to get, less details equals smaller maps or less maps and usually both.

Tus-XC · « **Reply #7 on:** February 21, 2009, 10:00:22 pm »

Quote from: GotAFarmYet? on February 21, 2009, 09:31:23 pm

BMP gives you the most options for colour and depth resolutions
If you limit your colour selections you can move it down to 32K colours or less and it will lag the game even less. Some ppl have used large areas on a 256 colour map that was basically white to reduce the impact of a ship and made a details map to cover samll area where they wanted high details. Resolution size can also be adjusted to improve quality or decrease resources needed.

just a correction, while SFC can read higher color depts resolutions, it will only display 8 bit. so if you have a 24bit texture it will downgrade it to 8bit and display it as 8 bit in game. It is better to do that yourself since the game engine doesn't do a very good job and does no dithering (thus giving you that gradient look)

Starforce2 · « **Reply #8 on:** February 22, 2009, 12:12:58 am »

wow..that's a nice defiant for such a low poly level.

JB_Wonderboy · « **Reply #9 on:** February 22, 2009, 06:09:06 am »

Thank you all for your praise, and especially thanks for the information, it will prove to be usefull, I will have this model finished up today

JB_Wonderboy · « **Reply #10 on:** February 22, 2009, 07:53:16 am »

Good afternoon everyone.

I have just realised the mesh is 502 polys $:-\$ oops

I started the textures last night and have spent an hour or so finishing up the topside, what you can see in the render is the BUMP map I am creating, so the actuall textures have not started yet, but I will texture the JB_Defiant fully bumped, then move onto the Diff map.

JB_Wonderboy · « **Reply #11 on:** February 22, 2009, 02:26:19 pm »

Nearly there, still need to work out the normal maps after bumps are done, and the bumps need shading before the normal maps will be effective, I'll work it out

Bernard Guignard · « **Reply #12 on:** February 22, 2009, 02:29:31 pm »

Very nice work there

dogfighter · « **Reply #13 on:** February 22, 2009, 03:09:46 pm »

thats cool stuff wonderboy. im looking forward to her release. any plans to do more tng ships? i once tried a glaxy class - and i utterly failed. those big tng models do need some polies to look good. but your defiant looks awesome for only 500 polies. what program do you use? i still need to learn bumpmapping and alpha mapping but i didnt have the time to get into the more sophisticated stuff on lightwave. most tutorials are in english and me not being a native speaker have a hard time to follow sometimes.

ed:)

JB_Wonderboy · « **Reply #14 on:** February 22, 2009, 03:51:48 pm »

Thanks, at the minute i only plan on creating DS9 to go with it, as a low poly package, but to be honest im using this low poly stuff to learn more really.. but im having allot of fun with this so we shall see, but the release of this will have the shuttle and a DS9 too, runabout? possibly.. not sure yet.

I have worked out normal mapping

this is a render of the ship, and the normal map, no more bump mapping

ahhh if onlly sfc supported it, but i will still bake the textures for an sfc release.

yochenhsieh · « **Reply #15 on:** February 23, 2009, 07:15:10 am »

Unforunately SFC games don't support bump mapping. But you did a great job for the mesh with only 500 polygons.

For the Diff textures, you may use
bitmap(.bmp) files - 24 bit: best quality, but larger size. Commonly used in community models.
bitmap(.bmp) files - 8 bit: this is the format used by Taldren on stock SFC2/OP/3 ships. With proper numbers of texture files, the difference to the 24 bit files is not notable.
Pcx files - 8 bit with RLE compression: minimal size, used in SFC1 stock ships.

For the illumination maps, only 8 bit grey scale bitmap(.bmp) files should be used. The difference of color depth of illumination maps in the game is not notable. It also saves memory usage.

Note that 8 bit means 256 colors. SFC1 does not support illumination maps.

dragoon · « **Reply #16 on:** February 23, 2009, 08:39:02 am »

Galactic civilisations supports normal maps........

It's great looking work, especially when considering it's aim is to be low poly. Can't wait to see the finished ship

JB_Wonderboy · « **Reply #17 on:** February 23, 2009, 10:06:33 am »

Thanks for the comments and the info

Quote from: dragoon on February 23, 2009, 08:39:02 am

Galactic civilisations supports normal maps........

It's great looking work, especially when considering it's aim is to be low poly. Can't wait to see the finished ship

I was not aware of that.. Im looking it up now, thanks.

Tus-XC · « **Reply #18 on:** February 23, 2009, 08:45:23 pm »

Quote from: You-Cheng Hsieh on February 23, 2009, 07:15:10 am

Unforunately SFC games don't support bump mapping. But you did a great job for the mesh with only 500 polygons.

For the Diff textures, you may use
bitmap(.bmp) files - 24 bit: best quality, but larger size. Commonly used in community models.
bitmap(.bmp) files - 8 bit: this is the format used by Taldren on stock SFC2/OP/3 ships. With proper numbers of texture files, the difference to the 24 bit files is not notable.
Pcx files - 8 bit with RLE compression: minimal size, used in SFC1 stock ships.

For the illumination maps, only 8 bit grey scale bitmap(.bmp) files should be used. The difference of color depth of illumination maps in the game is not notable. It also saves memory usage.

Note that 8 bit means 256 colors. SFC1 does not support illumination maps.

*points to post earlier* based on bit o research (ie testing) SFC - while being able to handle 24 bit files it won't display 24 bit files, but 8 bit. Its better for you to do the conversion to 8bit and use proper dithering than to let the engine do it and have your textures look... meh

yochenhsieh · « **Reply #19 on:** February 24, 2009, 01:35:20 am »

Quote from: Tus on February 23, 2009, 08:45:23 pm

*points to post earlier* based on bit o research (ie testing) SFC - while being able to handle 24 bit files it won't display 24 bit files, but 8 bit. Its better for you to do the conversion to 8bit and use proper dithering than to let the engine do it and have your textures look... meh

That's not required. All SFC games can display 24 bit colors in game without any quality reduction, at least on my laptop.

If you have problems having SFC displaying 24 bit textures, it might be caused by your hardware or video drivers. BUT I am very sure that 24 bit textures have NO color dithering or gradient look for all 4 SFC games.

The only problem is that 24 bit textures take more space and resource, while the quality improvement is sometimes not very notable.

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