Galactica by Steve Wilson, Surfaces

[MichaMedia]

Hello,

all Surfaces of the Galactica Mesh by Steve Wilson are gray, where is the Model with better Surfaces of this?

thx

[Darrell Lawrence]

You using the Lightwave 7 or 5.6 versions?

[MichaMedia]

I use LW 7

The ZIP was from another Website, but with the Link to Colonialfleets, now i am here ;)

I use the Mesh for Battlestar Atlantia, we make a Fanfilm and i have create new Surfaces. (Fanfilm in German Language)

My Surfaces Work:

http://videos.devolk.de/bilder/523_Atlantia_wip02_a.jpg

http://videos.devolk.de/bilder/523_Atlantia_wip02_b.jpg

http://videos.devolk.de/bilder/523_Atlantia_wip02_c.jpg

[Darrell Lawrence]

Not bad... not bad at all :)

The reason there's no textures per sey on the LW versions is because of the conversion and the old textures not exactly being the right ones. So it's up to the scene maker to re-texture as they see fit :)

[Stevew]

Michael
It looks like you hqave a very old mesh. My meshes were done in Truespace, some were converted some not. Here is a link to many meshes that you can play with if you wish
http://www.firedragon.com/~cfleets/downloads/meshesnotforrel/?M=D
Steve
:)

[ernie90125]

Great images MichaMedia.....can't wait for the fanfilm....and please check your Private Messages (upper right of the top of any CF forums page)

[MichaMedia]

@ Steve
thx for the Link, i check it and create a nice ATLANTIA vor the Fanfilm.
And, very nice Mesh have you created, my Monitor is wet from your sweat.


@ Daniel
you have a PM Answer

In short Time, i get a Thread of the Project with Images and Informations.

[Stevew]

There are meshes of many of the fleet ships and all the other's that The Hobb designed and that I created the meshes for. Some sre LW , 3D max but most are Truespace. People have successfully done the translation to LW. Please feel free to use anything you wish
Steve :)

[MichaMedia]

yes sir

I use in a amateur hobby Fanfilm, only. ;)

thank all for the great support.


Where i can find Images of the Bridge, i want create a Mesh by myself, why i coordinate this for Post Production with After Effects and size of our Set room.

Michael

[Stevew]

Look forward to seeing it.
Ken Thompson at Raymer 3D did an outstanding bridge and has piks at his site
S

[MichaMedia]

Yes i have read this thread, but pictures from Orgial is Good, why a Copie from Orginal better is, as a Copie from a Copie and i must see the Light setings from Orginal. unfortunately haven´t this in my brain.

Michael

(Sorry for my bad english, and "unfortunately" say the google Translater, i don´t know this Word.)

[kingfish]

Steve's models rock. I redesigned Pacifica around one of them and even decided to use it on my puter as the background image. :thumbsup:

[Deadly]

Stevew,

Some very nice work on the link you provided. I do a fair bit of ship modding for X3 (and the older X2), and would like to play around with some of your work to see what might fit into the "X Universe".

Do I need to request specific permision on a mesh-by-mesh basis...or can I just browse through your collection :Nsmilie:

I always include full credit to the author, even if I just use the work for inspiration.

[Stevew]

Deadly
I posted the link for anyone to use any meshe that they want to use.
Credit is nice but not required, I just love to see what people can do with the meshes. There are many to choose from so please use what ever you wish and as many as you want
:) :salute:
Steve

[Deadly]

Many thanks...

Quite a few members of the X3 community are hard-core BSG fans, so I'm looking for inspiration. One "hot" request is getting a Base Star ported to X3...and your mesh looks like a promising place to start.

It will be awhile, since I typically like to add to and extend ships to take full advantage of the X3 engine and DDS textures...but I'll be sure to post some screenies once I get something in-game.

[Stevew]

Love to see what you guys can do. What is X3?
S

[Deadly]

X3 is the latest in a family of space sims. It boasts a very powerful graphics engine that allows fairly high poly counts, and uses shaders and DDS textures.

Here is a link to the thread for my mod...it has some in-game screen shots of the ships (I ported some ships from my X2 mods, and have not yet converted all the textures to use DDS). X3 DDRS Mod (http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=126698&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0)

[ernie90125]

Deadly....I viewed your screenshots through the link.....a very impressive idea and work. I'm not a gamer, but it will certainly be interesting to see BSG ships being intoduced to another community. :thumbsup:

When the BSG ships are imported.....can video/audio be captured and edited together as a fanfilm ? I hope you might accept this as a challenge ;)

Ernie90125
(Webmaster of www.battlestarfanfilms.com )

[Deadly]

There are already couple of people doing audio/video capture to make "fan-films" using the X3 engine.

One project that I know of (I did the custom ships for it) is combining the rather cool in-game X3 graphics with some station footage captured in/from the Quake engine (custom map, of course)...so I know it's possible.

Let me get a few more BSG ships into X3, and I'll see if I can talk some of the more "creative" types from the community to help out on a fan-film

[Stevew]

Very interesting. Do you have to convert meshes or does it support some native formats?
S

[ernie90125]

Great Deadly...will look forwards to it, and best of luck with your work.......

[Deadly]

SteveW,

It uses a proprietary format...but can be directly exported/imported from/into 3dMax. Unfortunately, the overall X3 environment is extreemly complex, with lots of tables and files containing run-time information.

One of the X3 community is a really strong coder/developer, and has created some very powerful tools, as well as a fairly sophisticated set of MAXScripts to allow the importing and exporting of graphic objects. It is especially useful, since the X3 shaders and DDS textures are preserved.

I often use an existing mesh as a template, although there are a few "original" ships in the bunch. However, since the poly-count does matter, I generally have to rebuild or recreate elements of any mesh I try and use as a base. I find that a poly count of around 10k for smaller ships, and 30k-40k for larger "capital" class ships seems about right. This is not as bad as it seems, since it is possible to get away with a much lower poly count by using DDS textures in the X3 render engine to create "virtual" detail.

The model of the Roger Young is a good example. While it is based on a model created by Gerard Dolan & Marc-Laurent "Magma" Magnier, I literally had to create a new "simpler" mesh object for each element of the ship, since the original ship had a very high poly count. While it doesn't look all that hot in a 3dMax render (especially when compared with the original!), it does look quite nice in-game.

So, as you can see from the RY example, the downside of simplifying a mesh and using DDS textures to simulate detail is that without the additional mesh elements to provide real "physical" detail...the renders outside of the game (e.g.3dMax) don't always look that good :Nsad:

I t looks like I will be doing a serious stress test of the X3 engine when I put the initial BSG Base Star into the game...as it will probably have around 60k poly's :D

[Raptor]

... However, since the poly-count does matter, I generally have to rebuild or recreate elements of any mesh I try and use as a base...

I Know what you mean. I'm trying to create a BSG mod for the old (1995) Flight-Sim Freespace 2. Even with the Source Code Project:tm: bumping the poly limits, the numbers matter. Through with the HT&L setup we're using now, the number of textures is more important.

For us over at Hard Light Productions (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php), 2K-3K polys per fighter is the max (the Viper I've made is 1771) And while one chap working on a NuBSG project has his battlestar sitting at 10K+ polys, I'm not going that far...:nervous:

[Deadly]

Hi Raptor,

Yeah...it's a real project trying to make sharp looking ships for game engines.

I'm working (part-time, I'll admit) on getting the Scout down to 50K polygons.

Since the original mesh has 2m+ polygons, and I really do like the way it looks as it is currently built...I've got my work cut out for me.

At this point, I've temporarily halted work on the new mesh, and have started experimenting with using custom DDS textures to recreate much of the detail. The X3 render engine does a pretty good job with the DDS textures, but unfortunately, Egosoft have not yet released anything about their usage of shaders.

If I can get the DDS textures right, then I should be able to greatly simplify the mesh.

[Stevew]

Sounds like you guys are haveing fun :) One of the problems that make the poly count high is the was I had to convert from Solidworks to TS. I had to use STL files and it is a messy format and leaves a lot of unwanted poly's. If you know of a way to take Solidworks models and convert them better, I would love to hear about it.
S

[Star Dragon]

WOW! I just went to the X3 link and nearly crapped myself! (linky bookmarked...)
One of the main reasons I avoided X2&3 was that a neophyte modder like me gets lost with it and it didn't seem mod friendly. (plus I am a control freak and want to decide what happens, and when, like with F.R.E.D.)

I'm hoping to make a music video with the "Rock BSG theme" and some TV footage combined with gameplay. However now that I've switched over to the "better engine" the texture kimit kils me (from 60 to 16 textures). Poly limits for FS2 got multiplied by a factor of 4 or 5 but now many of the "low poly" models won't work cause they got way too many texturs and so will not benefit from the new engines' glow and shine maps.

So it looks like I will be using lesser footage from reatil Fs2, and some from FS2 SCP3.6 I know people will see the difference, I just hope they find it entertaining enough to forgive the quality.


I always liked a lot fo the X-series designs... I would like to play around with some (as I got max7) if you think it would be alright with egosoft (for personal use)

Incidently Omniscaper is up to 37k with the FS2 Galactica... It's insane.

[Raptor]

Hey Star Dragon! Long time no see... :salute: :D

Okay, so my data was incorrect. Omni is insane isn't he? Too bad he's doing a nuBSG mod, rather than original.

Still trying to get my BSG mod off the ground (have you checked out HLP lately. Percifically, the 'HLP Installation' thread? I posted my contribution a little while ago. Got an 'in' joke in there... ;) )

Say, That X3 thing all about capturing ingame footage to create mini-fan movies? Thinking about makeing a trailer (once mod runs again...:mad: )

[Deadly]

OK...I finally got at least one of Steve's ships into X3. It took a huge effort ro get the poly count down from 444k to 64k, but it loads and flys great! (Not to mention that is the classiest ship in the game :salute: )

I spent more hours on this than I care to admit, but to be honest, about 25% - 30% of the effort was getting the DDS textures right.

Here is the entry for the Ranger from the online announcement for my DDRS mod...of course, full credit is given to Steve both online, and in the readme file that is included in the mod package.

M6 (Ranger) Sold By: Argon - The Argon took a radically different approach when creating the Ranger, and made it in the image of a small capital-class ship rather than a large fighter. The result is a very powerful and heavily-shielded M6-class ship, with reasonable speed and handling characteristics, and outstanding firepower. This powerful ship carries 8 front lasers and three double-laser turrets located port, starboard, and aft. It carries three 125MJ shields, and offers a single external docking slot.Just click on an image for a larger wiew....

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/wolf/images/X2_Pix/D_Ranger1-small.jpg (http://www.flatrock.org.nz/wolf/images/X2_Pix/D_Ranger1.jpg)
http://www.flatrock.org.nz/wolf/images/X2_Pix/D_Ranger2-small.jpg (http://www.flatrock.org.nz/wolf/images/X2_Pix/D_Ranger2.jpg)
http://www.flatrock.org.nz/wolf/images/X2_Pix/D_Ranger3-small.jpg (http://www.flatrock.org.nz/wolf/images/X2_Pix/D_Ranger3.jpg)
...and here is a view from the bridge of the ship:
http://www.flatrock.org.nz/wolf/images/X2_Pix/D_Ranger4-small.jpg (http://www.flatrock.org.nz/wolf/images/X2_Pix/D_Ranger4.jpg)

Ah...just a quick note on the lighting. Each sector in X3 has it's own characteristics...like the color and brightness of the sun, nebulas, dust clouds, etc...all of which effect the appearance of the ships. In a different sector, the Ranger might appear with a gun-mettal blue tint, or dustyt red...ect.

[Raptor]

Nice work there Deadly! :thumbsup: I personally don't like the 'Ranger' design, but I fully see the work you've done.

Sadly my own efforts are nothing in comparison. I've got the 'Guardian' and 'Protector' in-game and working, but the texturing sucks big time :cry:

Still, I'm hopeful that a real texturer will come on-board and help me out with that...:nervous:

[Stevew]

Hi D
I have no words except WOW and
:salute: :salute: :Nsalute: :Nsalute:
and also More More

[Aussie86]

absolutely fantastic

[Inzane]

Drooling

[stratus]

I'm new here, but I have say these are *very* cool executions. As a Lightwave user, i always appreciate a well-made mesh. Nice work.

[Deadly]

Thanks for the "kind words"...'course it helps to start with a high quality model when porting to a game like X3 (yeah Steve!).

I still have the Scout project under action, but it is going pretty slow. Steve's original is just over 2m polygons, and I really can't put anything into X3 over 50k-60k...and that is the absolute maximum.

I'm using 3dMax, and am having to rebuild much of the Scout using spline modeling. I'm no modeling wizard, but still, I keep plugging away at it in my spare time...and will get it done eventually ;)

[Stevew]

Thanks D I can't wait to see what you can do with the other meshes
:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Airwolfnight]

Hi friends

The Model of the Atlantia and the other Ships are great.^^

My name is Kim-Andreas and Im the Leader and Storywriter for the german BSG Fan Film Battlestar Atlantia.

Sorry my english is bad. :cry:

The Atlantia has the other name, now. Pegasus is the better Idea for this story. The Atlantia is destroyed, the Pegasus not.

In this Story found the heavy damaged Battlestar Pegasus the Planet Earth and build the new age in the history of earth. Ex- Commander Cain is the President of Earth, now. The new Commander of Pegasus is Commander Walker. The Silver Spar Squadron is under command of Captain Ringo and the Pegasus has a new squadron.

New and old Enemy, new friends and one Mission. Save the Earth and fight for Freedom

greetz :salute:

[Tensin]

Thanks for the "kind words"...'course it helps to start with a high quality model when porting to a game like X3 (yeah Steve!). Small world :)

[Stevew]

:) :) :)

[olmecslayer]

Hi. I am new to this forum. I just want to say that I have tried some of these models and they are realy great. Very detailed. I am the author of a program called 3D Sci-fi Movie Maker which can import 3d studio models and animate them. If anyone is interested in trying out some of there models in this progeam, go to my website:- www.galacticsoft.co.uk. There is a 3d converted that will quite happily convert lightwave and most other formats to 3ds.

I would be happy to hear any feedback from anyone.

Steve,

[Star Dragon]

Hey Deadly,

That looks amazing. IS there a chance I can get permission for use and a 8k (or less) version?
Raptor might pass on it ;) , but anything TOS related is on my shopping list!

Regardless, keep it up! looking forward to seeing more of your X3 works.



(BTW) is that olmecslayer guy's 22 posts here all copies of his program advert?

[Raptor]

Hey Deadly,

That looks amazing. IS there a chance I can get permission for use and a 8k (or less) version?
Raptor might pass on it ;) , but anything TOS related is on my shopping list!

Regardless, keep it up! looking forward to seeing more of your X3 works.



(BTW) is that olmecslayer guy's 22 posts here all copies of his program advert?

Yea, I'm not keen on the design itself. Great work still!

Besides, I'm still struggling with the Guardian and Protector designs. I would show some progress pics, but their nothing compared to the work I've seen around here. I really need to get someone who can texture... :(

[xodiaq]

www.galacticsoft.co.uk. There is a 3d converted that will quite happily convert lightwave and most other formats to 3ds.

I would be happy to hear any feedback from anyone.

Steve,


I'll be glad to let you know how it works in a windows emulator! (Im on a mac...)

[Cujo31]

This looks really nice. I have never worked with X3 before, but I did manage to convert and get a Viper and Cylon Raider into "starshatter" to use instead of their normal ships.... That sim was cool because when I bought it at GenCon a year or so ago, it came with all the tools you need to mod the game... they even encourage it :P

Nice work sir...

Keep it up :)

Cujo