Important to remember is that just because the ship is large, doesn't mean the engines will match. Actually in theory, the larger the visible engine contrail, the less efficient the engine is; you're seeing useable energy being bled off into space. It's hard to see in the image, but the ship has a series of (relatively) small thruster assemblies all the way across the back hull: a pair at the extreme edges of the "wings", a large central set of three, flanked by one each on either side of the upper engine block. Beneath this is the main engine unit, with five thrusters on top of the assembly and five below, visually blocked by the structure of the ship. You have to remember that this ship is still 5 km in length, so each of those "small" engine glows are actually several stories tall and projected several hundred meters out behind the ship.

Either way, I'm glad you like it!

PS - Happy 13th page, everybody!

Ok, I see now! Its just in most ships that I have seen and as generally represented, engines are HUGE, but you have a point in that those would be huge indeed! Man I'm excited! Also, EVNova has been updated to work on new Macs!!! THAT IS SO AWESOME! I can start playing again! EEEEEEEEEE!

So that would mean most/all of the Arpian ships have highly inefficient Ion engines. Weren't they supposed to be REALLY technologically advanced?

Well, if you want to look at it that way, yes. Maybe they had really good engines, and then just had a special projector to show cool engine glows?

Or maybe you are trying to defend their shortcomings. But they were advanced..... Oh well, I like engine glow...

Come now guys, no fighting. The Arpia ships are advanced but also quite a bit smaller than most NDC cruisers, so it makes sense that a ship with lower inertia justifies proportionally larger engines to take advantage of the superior maneuverability. NDC ships are designed to work as flying artillery platforms, so they use energy-efficient, slow-burn engines to make minor course adjustments and let fly their volleys. They don't have to be maneuverable. For speed, they rely on their impellers. The Arpia cruisers are dogfighters in their behavior, and so, they can make better use of less-efficient, but more powerful engines for combat.

I have to hand it to you, you have a knack for making a really technical sounding explanation for things. That should mean this plugin will have everyone saying "yeah, that could happen."

I was just teasing Jalisurr, I know all of it has a reasonable explanation! And Delphi does have a way of taking something and making it easy to understand.

Delphi, will you explain the string theory to me? Or do you know the question to the answer to life the universe and everything?

I have a new ship for you guys, though it's not nearly as beautiful as the Alexander. The Auriga has it's purpose though; its tough armor and rugged design make it perfect for patrol duties in dangerous space, regions such as asteroid fields and dense nebulae. In war-time, the vehicle is designed to have a heavy weapon of some sort placed into the center of the primary hull, turning it into a rather hefty firing platform, though it has almost no turret emplacements, making it vulnerable to assault from small cruisers. In the game the ship will only support a maximum of one turret, but up to three guns and plenty of available mass to fill those slots with strong artillery weaponry.

In the hopes of keeping things balanced, the next ship I make is going to be a cruiser-hunter, fast and agile, and armed with high-speed turreted weaponry, but almost incapable of delivering a powerful artillery shot due to its limited fixed gun space.

Either way, hope you enjoy it, and I also hope you didn't think I died or something horrible like that!

I also just noticed that miles back on page 12, EKHawkman asked about the Nichron weapons and if they'd been rendered and inserted yet. The answer at this time is no, but not due to lack of effort on my part; they have to be a signature element of the NDC and I want to get them just right. I've been experimenting with the idea of each shot from the cannon actually being a stationary sprite that appears like a small burst of energy, with a zero-inaccuracy submunition that erupts from the muzzle flash in the form of the nichron bolt. If I can do this, then each shot fired won't just simply be a little bolt spawning from the front of your ship like typical Nova style, but rather, a powerful explosive eruption truly representative of the energies being harnessed therein. It can even be used to simulate the effect of a weapon that requires charging up to fire, if the muzzle flash only submunitions at the end of its animation, which can be whatever length is chosen for the sprite. Otherwise for an instant-fire weapon, the dud sprite will actually be only one black frame, which submunitions into the real shot and simultaneously decays to a custom explosion sprite so they are synced. In the end you get the shot coming out of a burst of energy at the tip of your gun barrel, and looking ultimately very cool.

In short, I want to create a decent-looking muzzle flash, and so far things are looking good.

Love your models. I'd love to see a game with all your ships together, it would be awesome.

Just out of curiosity, are you using the LASIK method when you put your ships in game?

I'm not honestly sure what the LASIK method is. I use a very primitive method of object rendering: I manufacture the core model in SketchUp 5 Pro, export a raw .obj, import the model into Bryce 5.5, add smaller details using primitives (engine glow, running lights, etc.), and then render a full spin animation. It's pretty cut-and-dry. I rely primarily on sheer model complexity to create surface detail instead of letting textures do the work for me, largely because I'm terrible at texturing but obviously fairly good at digital sculpting. I'll refer you to the previous ship I modeled, the Alexander Class Dominant*. I think it's on the previous page.

By the way, all these ships will eventually make it into the game; it's just taking me an eternity to get anything done. Life is busy as is, and I am only one man. Also, the idea-well runs dry fairly often, and it takes a lot to get me inspired to create a new ship design. I'm open to suggestions in the form of sketches and/or descriptions of functionality, if anybody is interested! I need some "filler" ships for the cruiser-sized ships, so post your ideas and I'll see what I can work out of them! Just remember a few criteria:

• Think bulky and boxy - Go and watch Alien or Alien: Resurrection and look at either the Nostromo or the USM Auriga for inspiration if you need to. NDC ships look like giant flying industrial cities, so think of it like you were designing construction equipment.
• Functionality over form. The ship doesn't have to feature a gigantic deck-spanning tropical garden or smooth, curvaceous ocean-liner streamlining. Think of weapons first, then how you're going to get them around (engines), and lastly, where you're going to cram the people running them both.
• No need for symmetry in space.

---

*super-heavy battleship; largest ship class in game.

In my opinion, you're not missing much if you don't LASIK. I tried it once and found that it did make the ships, I don't know, jump out a bit more, but it sacrificed a lot of the subtlety of the textures. Especially anything that has gloss. Maybe I was just doing it wrong. <_<

LASIK is simply put this:
- render sprites at twice the size you want (e.g. if you sprite will be 32x32, render it at 64x64). I actually render mine at 10 times the final size, because I want to check if textures/details keep preserved.
- apply an unsharp mask in Photoshop with settings: 300%, 1, 0.
- resize the image to 50% (so it will be your final size).

It mainly brings out some of the detail lost during resizing, but it depends on your taste really.

This post has been edited by ReinierK : 03 September 2009 - 09:33 AM

As ReinierK said above, LASIK is the technique the original graphic developers of Nova used to get their ships to look so crisp in the game. I personally like the effect, as it's hard to get 3d programs to render items very small while preserving the proper amount of detail (it ends up looking way too anti-aliased), but you can simulate the correct balance in photoshop.

I asked because it looked like you weren't using it for your in-game shot. I recommend you test it out and see if you like the effect. Either way, it already looks beautiful.

edit: Is the unsharp feature actually necessary?

This post has been edited by Insomniac : 07 September 2009 - 02:35 AM

Well, I've always used double-sized (or larger) sprites when I render. For instance, this is the original full-size overhead render of the Alexander.

Photobucket compresses the images to an extent, meaning they lose a lot of their sharpness when uploaded, so the forum isn't necessarily the best medium to showcase the high-resolution graphics. I assure you, in-game the ships are very crisp and clean, though I do like this unsharp mask that's being recommended to me; it brings out quite a few of the more subtle details that would otherwise be lost in the natural shadows on the model surface and adds to the feeling of visual depth. I think I'll go back and see what I can do with it on some of the other ships.

Yeah LASIK is really worth a try... You might want to settle for a lesser value for the mask (around 200 instead of 300) for larger models I think... I mainly see great bennefit with smaller models.

Also, what program do you render your models in? And what is your light setup?
Blender seems te behave a bit different with spotlights in my experience and it seems that you don't use a sun light in your setup (left part of the model is brighter than the right part).

If you're going to use Photoshop, use the "Bicubic - Sharpen" mode when scaling it down. It makes the final product looks much sharper without the banding effects you get with an unsharpen mask. Experiment with it a little and see what you like.

So, I figured out how to texture individual surfaces in Bryce today. That's right, the impossible just came to reality. In fact, I would argue that through this method, the texturing capabilities of Bryce, combining materials with surface details, is one of the most powerful tools I've stumbled upon. I realized that when producing a ship in SketchUp, it is possible to disable perspective view, enter the preset top-view, and take a screenshot of the ship's upper deck and capture a perfect paintable surface for texturing. After coloring the captured shot using photoshop or another graphics program, you can transfer it onto the model by setting a preset material in Bryce for the object's base, and then setting a secondary texture made from your custom bitmap and set in it's orientation to "Object Top". With a bit of work, I'll now be able to add painted texture details to any model I so choose, though things will obviously be rather simple at first. I DID make it rather clear I am not very good at this.

Either way, it looks pretty good so far, and I'm looking forward to using this some more in the future. It can also be used to add individual panels and such while preserving the base texture, because the secondary texture mode supports transparency, allowing me to create a "detail texture" over the base material, comprised of small, separate, simple designs and effects.

Also, I'm doing more work on weapon muzzle flashes, and with the pulse cannon now in the works, I can promise you this plug is going to be a real light show when you fight.

Oh and PS: I hope you like the ship. I finally designed the engines at the back.

The texturing is done excellently, though I liked the levitating plates a bit better.

This post has been edited by king_of_manticores : 10 September 2009 - 08:59 PM