LoTekK

The mirroring is basically because the camo patterns are symmetrical (or at least, symmetrical enough to not warrant doubling the required texture space). Decals and whatnot ("Army", serial numbers, etc) will be on a couple of single-sided quads flush with the surface of the body, and will be set via setObjectTexture. edit: Though to be honest, for some reason the thought of using the previously-unused texture space to un-mirror the fuselage texture hadn't actually occurred to me. Brain fried. Anyways, this layout is about as efficient as I can possibly hope to get it before thoughts of defenestration set in:

Well unwrapping this bastard was quite the learning experience. Anyways, optimized the hell out of the mesh, in particular finalizing the mesh and getting rid of the edges running down the centerline of most of the components and the main body. I think I'm at under 4100 tris without weapons, and 4900 with weapons. Most of it is unwrapped, aside from the cockpit frame (which is proving quite the nightmare), and still finalizing the layout. Whoops, got a little too careful about the layout, evidently. Ortho wires and UV for anyone interested: Ortho wires Ortho with UV overlay I'm either going to reorganize the current UV layout to give some components more texture space, or I'm just going to stick the cockpit UVs in the same sheet. Just curious, are there any reasons not to put the cockpit textures in the same sheet?

Well that's looking real nice. Good-looking mesh, and real nice job on the textures so far. Any chance of a wire shot?

Why not use the D50 to take pics of the D100, and vice versa? For scale, if you or your friend smokes, a pack of Marlboros would be perfect. If not, I reckon a CD/DVD or DVD case would be a good bet.

The images look similar to the ones below, but a significant amount of optimization has been done, allowing more crap to be modelled on. I'm currently at just under 4200 tris without weapons, and 4997 tris with a full weapon rack. Once the main stuff is finalized and I weld the two halves together, I should be able to shave off a significant number of tris when I gt rid of most of the edges running down the centerline. Ortho wires Just started unwrapping various parts of this bastard, and I've gained newfound respect for vehicle modellers. I'm about dying from all the crap that's gotta be unwrapped in a single model. Any suggestions would be welcome.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. And don't worry, the nitty gritty animations and eyecandy will be held off for much later. @djfrogstar: He meant ^2, as is fairly standard with just about any realtime engine.

@djfrogstar: Wow, 3k for a prop is pretty excessive, imo. For reference, my photographer model is sitting pretty at just over 3k without accessories. The EOS is currently 1.7k including the mountable flash, and lens with hood (and this is prior to any sort of optimization). @pandalefou: That would probably be helpful for at least a couple of the pics. And once again, much appreciated. Hmm. I'm not sure if I understood correctly. Did you upload pics and then take them down? Or am I missing something? Wow. Awesome.

Depending on whether you want to count the weapons (FFARs, Hellfires), I'm either slightly over my 4k tri budget, or significantly overshot. And I still have that thingie going from the engine to the tail rotor left to model. What the heck is that thing, anyways? A fuel line?

Good to see this here. You could up your tri budget, but do so sensibly. I would set a target of 3500, and figure it out from there. For the Tiger I'm working on, I was given a budget of 4k tris, and that's a larger vehicle, with lots more doohickeys sticking off the silhouette. Remember that the more tris you throw into the vehicle, the fewer you'll be able to get into a scene at one go. To put it in real terms, you could stick four 3500-tri vehicles in a scene with almost the same tricount as three 4500-tri vehicles. So remember to weigh the benefits, and make sure you really need the extra tris before upping your budget. Looking forward to more progress. Oh, about the O2 import issues you mentioned in the CGTalk thread, I can't see what the problem is. Maybe I'm just blind, though. Could you explain a little further?

@DBR_Onix: That info should prove fairly handy, and I'll be sure to hit you up once I get around to coding the thing (hopefully soon; I seem to be spreading myself a little thin right now ). I'll email Keg, but as you said, it's not very likely that he'll give out the source. But at the very least he might have some insight into how to go about that. And the VB stuff sounds nifty. I'll probably check in with you about that, since my VB isn't exactly up to snuff. @djfrogstar: Yup, small world indeed. The stuff you've got modelled and textured for your own project is looking pretty spiffy. We'll have to see about pooling resources or something. As for your questions, yeah, O2 will import the UV data along with the mesh. This is how I've been working, since I use Wings3D. I don't know that there are any real hard numbers concerning polycount, just common sense I reckon. Though I believe I've read somewhere that O2Light will CTD after 20k tris. Not that I imagine needing anywhere near that amount. For help with importing your data, check over on the O2 Section of the forums. There's a lot of useful information there. One thing in particular to search for is "KFData". @benus: Yeah, I honestly don't really know why I gave him bells when I started modelling him. Aside from the fact that I like slightly flared pants myself. I'll probably adjust the mesh so that they're not so long, and tone down the flare. @pandalefou: Reference pics are always welcome, and the wider the variety of cameras I can throw into this, the better (assuming I can handle the workload, of course ). Lenses especially, and if you can get narrow-FOV shots of the equipment, that would be ideal (the lack of perspective distortion means less work when using them for textures). I unwrapped the head model to match the UV layout used by Llauma's v2.0 head model, so the majority of the textures will come from the facestex pack. However, I will indeed be making a few face textures specific to the photographer. Old will be fun to do, so yes, that's in. Middle aged and young, definitely. I don't see a user-friendly way to have focus/zoom adjustment animations, so those will probably not be in. An alternative would be to have the idle animation constantly moving his hands, but that would look a little silly (I've tried it, and it looks fine, but looks pretty stupid to see the guy constantly adjusting ). The other alternative would be an action menu item to call the animation, but I don't see that as being very useful or user-friendly. Functional flash? Check. Got some ideas on how to get that working. I've also already got one mountable flash modelled, and I've got some ideas on how to get it user-mountable (probably using magazines or muzzles, a la the M16 mortar). Integrated will also be in, depending on the camera (I believe the Nikon D70 has a flip-up flash, for example). Oh, I forgot to mention this earlier, but Sniperwolf was kind enough to send me a compact digital camera he made some time ago, so cheers for that. I'm thinking I'll model a couple of similar compacts to use as backup cameras, either for photographers, or as mission items for blackop/Bond style missions. And now I'm off to bed. I'll see if I can set aside some time tomorrow to work on this some more.

3827 tris, 2156 verts. Still got a bunch of areas I can optimize this sucker, but I need rest. Ortho wires Detail wires

Been sidetracked a bit helping with the head textures, as well as that ARH Tiger for the ADF mod, but I'm hoping to pick up the pace again around the end of the week. Y'know guys, dictators don't have to be crazed, power-mad, violent fools. @Bloodnick: I'm not sure I see the need for animations for the cameras, though I'm definitely open to suggestions if you can think of any. Though If you mean new character animations, then yes, those are currently being worked on piecemeal, and will be added with the photographer class. @cl10k: Go show off that Vodnik here, dammit.

Anyone have any decent pics of the interior of the Tiger cockpit? I have a few good shots of the instrument panelling, and a couple of really small shots of a couple different angles of the cockpit, but nothing fantastic. Hence, I'm currently having some issues building the cockpit area.

Agreed. Though it's given me the impetus to model a complex mechanical model, which I've never done before. Good experience, at least.

Apparently there have been issues getting permission. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be attempting this model, since I typically stick to organic modelling.

Wow, IM. I remember they published a bunch of sims back in the day. I think the earliest one I remember (and one I have very fond memories of) was Tornado.

Currently about 2500 tris, 1300 verts, and still missing some stuff.

There are a couple of shortcomings of using the default face mapping, chiefly among them is that the topology of the head would be limited by the texture layout if there was going to be any hope of fixing seams. In other words, you'd be modelling your topology based on the texture layout rather than the structure of the human head. In the case of the default texture layout, that would mean cutting a long line of edges down each side of the face, and another two down the back, and making sure they're essentially radially straight. Another is the fact that since the side textures are mirrored, you lose the ability to have assymetrical textures. The main thing is, with organic models, the fewer seams you have, the better. This is especially true of heads, where the opportunity to hide seams with geometry is very limited. From experience, I can tell you that that is one of themost nightmarish ways to model, at least for organic models.

Hmm. Guess I'll have to do some testing once I'm ready to start configging the camera properly.

Eh, figured, what the hell. Guba, a little older, a little harder, a little meaner.

Haven't had much time to devote to these today, but worked on Guba a bit. Still need to fix up the hair at the back of the head, but haven't figure out how to cut his hair, so to speak.

If you mean texture space for the interior of the mouth, it's already there (bottom right corner). If you mean the mouth area (lips, etc), I'd have to strongly disagree.

xicht_x: edit: I've done some repainting on the ears in all the flats. Not reflected in the Bulldozer shots. Also, what are people's thoughts on painting in more detail into the textures? Primarily the hair, though also highlight and shadow information on the faces and whatnot. This'll require more time, obviously, but doable if the demand is there. Think I'll focus on Armstrong, Troska, and Guba next, and work on upping the detail on those. Does anyone know the exact texture names for Armstrong and Troska?

xicht_y:

manhunter09: The timer thing may actually be possible, now that I think about it a bit. I'll take note of it, and should be able to implement it once I get around to the scripting side of things. Seems relatively simple, actually, come to think of it. Y'know, if I figure out how to hook into the post options available with DXDLL, it may actually be possible to do some limited on-the-fly color filter stuff. I'll take a note of that one as well. Good idea. Gedis: I gather you mean adding a workable camera that uses the scripts that will be implemented in this project? Sure, that shouldn't be a problem, I reckon. And thanks for the compliment.