The Journeyman is finished for the time being, though I had to ive it a temporary fixed-wing design, until I can devise a clever-looking mounting pylon for either side. Surprisingly, after all the attempts I made at this endeavor last night, the sleek fixed strut looks the best compared to the heavy mechanical systems I was messing around with earlier. Since you never actually get to see it's engines in the landing position, I may just keep it this way, for simplicity's sake, especially since I know I've already gone to far more detail than I really needed on this model, when you consider it's size on-screen.

Either way, here it is, shot from its aft left quarter panel again, the best angle you can get of the ship, if you ask me.

Cool! I used to use sketchup too, but I've moved on to Cheetah 3d (which is what I'm using for my TC now).

Say, I was wondering, how do you go about making your textures? I just slap on a handcrafted panel texture.

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 24 August 2007 - 11:49 AM

@shlimazel, on Aug 24 2007, 10:49 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Say, I was wondering, how do you go about making your textures? I just slap on a handcrafted panel texture.

I do my textures in a material-based way, using Bryce 5.5. First I put down a base layer for the texture, and then add a duplicate mesh over top with any additional texture details I need, like a universal bump map. If I need an additional specific detail on a certain part of the ship, I'll duplicate the mesh again and do the necessary work. Things like hull decals/insignias/battle damage and such are added after this layer through 2D shapes positioned on the hull wherever I need them, of course including the process of removing sections of hull through boolean rendering if I need to break off one of the ship's wings or whatever, or just put dents in the hull. I made a rather deformed mesh a while back of one of my cruisers, with the whole structure bent in the middle, and because the material remains consistent across the whole shape, with bump mapping suggesting panels and texture, when I used negative boolean spheres blended with the main hull, it made these perfect pock-marks, making the whole ship look like it'd gone through a meteor storm or something. It was purely for fun though.

That's an interesting technique; thanks for sharing it!

This is gonna be good. I can tell. When is the release date? Do you know how close to being done you are?
Also, can you give us an idea of how much you have done?

@cosmic_nusiance, on Aug 24 2007, 11:57 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

This is gonna be good. I can tell. When is the release date? Do you know how close to being done you are?
Also, can you give us an idea of how much you have done?

All full TCs require 3 major components.

1. A functional universe.
2. A deep story, possibly two or more.
3. Ships and graphics.

In it's current incarnation, Delphi has probably a 40% functional universe (lots of planets, most with landing graphics, but no specific trade routes, and some descriptions need extra work), a 15% complete story (about half written, but none put into missions yet), and about 4% completion on ships and graphics, simply because there's just so many to do. I'm keeping up a steady pace as usual though, and I'll keep putting out new content as it becomes available.

If there are three stages of development to a TC as well, first being Encyclopedia (universe and culture established, but no story or true interactivity), second being Novel (written, functional universe but no graphics), and third being a true Game, Delphi is into the late Encyclopedia stage with most of its history and static elements written and established or at least put down on paper somewhere for quick addition later. Writing the full story and the required missions/outfits/rewards/etc comes next, with ship resources being written into the later half of the Novel stage. After that the graphics will all be balanced (don't want huge fighters and tiny cruisers), applied to the already existing universe, and tested. Of course, I tend to swap between writing the story and putting ship graphics in, so both the story and graphics are sort of being developed simultaneously, though it's already pretty obvious that this means I'll be doing a lot of graphic work when I have to make the final changes to make it all work.

Hope that gives you a broad, general idea, in so many words.

Personally, I'd put Graphics as a seperate, 4th component. I base this on the fact that I have everything minus graphics for Colosseum and I still can't find anyone willing to do them. It's quite frustrating, I can assure you.

Anyways, everything you have so far looks nice. I just wish it was all in color, though I guess can wait for that...given I really don't have a choice.

I have a good feeling about this... But aside from the ominousness of me tonight, looks good, very promising, keep up the good work!

More new stuff for you!

Here's a few sample shots of what could either be the Renon Class Police Boat (I ditched the old model), or possibly the Horizon Class Civilian Cruiser (it'll need a new color scheme in this case). Either way, you'll notice that it uses the same engine configuration as the Journeyman, mostly just because of modular design and the already-determined efficiency of the Journeyman Thruster System (JTS). The up-scaled engines provide more than enough power to make this light cruiser (or police vessel) a formidable opponent if you find yourself on the wrong side of the battle. Either way, I kinda like the way it fits inside a square, but not quite. I'm pretty sure, though, that Nova will like it for its it's sprite dimensions as a result of this, I can almost promise you.

Front 3/4 view, sorta.

Other side of the front, lower-angle to give you a better view of the ship's industrial "curves".

Almost top-down view, to show you rough ship dimensions as they'd appear in Nova.

Forgot to mention: if anybody wants pointers/tutorials on modelling in Sketchup, just let me know, and I'll start posting the modelling procedures in this thread as I did on EV-Nova.net.

Thats quite a nifty model.

Is there a way to switch from cell rendering to a more standard raytrace in sketchup, or would you have to use a different piece of software for that?

--BP

As always, your graphics are impressive Delphi. It's a shame that your 20+ page topic on EV nova.net is history, there was some cool material there.

@blueplanet, on Sep 8 2007, 05:55 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Thats quite a nifty model.

Is there a way to switch from cell rendering to a more standard raytrace in sketchup, or would you have to use a different piece of software for that?

--BP

Unfortunately Sketchup only handles cell rendering. The closest approximation to raytracing that you could achieve in terms of visual effects would be to texture your model and turn shadows on. Because Sketchup is designed for architectural design and evaluation, it's a good program in which to design ships, but it lacks the output methods to create anything any more sophisticated than 3D blueprints on its own. Because of this, I use Bryce 5.5 to texture my models, at least for the time being. I still haven't figured out Blender, and likely never will. 3D programs and I never seem to get along all too well.

That reminds me, I do need some people to help with the texturing in Delphi, if they are willing to offer their talents. I recognize that my own texturing efforts are weak at best, and could lend themselves to serious improvement.

If anybody is willing to put their hands on my models and add some textures, to whatever is their liking (within a certain domain of NDC style, of course), PM me and I'll get them out to you.

I can try my hand at it. I've never really gotten into seamless tiling except for a few weeks trying to make a wall texture for Marathon. I can do some sweet metal stuff, though. I also know the basic techniques used to make a tile seamless, so it's just a matter of honing my skills.

EDIT: Oh, BTW I don't have a modeller, so I can't actually put the textures directly on the image, but I can make them.

This post has been edited by Cosmic_Nusiance : 08 September 2007 - 10:48 PM

First off, this is the same StarSword who was on the EV Nova.net boards (R.I.P.).

I'm still making that EVN compilation music album; Tom BC told me of a link to the theme music, which you guys posted on RapidShare. I've had much better luck with RapidShare lately than I did back then; do you guys still have the link to the file?

I'm putting a lot of work into larger cruiser designs this week/month/year (whatever :p) so as you should already know, these generally tend to take a larger amount of time to create. I've started to discover the abilities of Blender, so I may be putting this to use in the future. Either way, I haven't dropped off the planet or anything like that, although I may be known to take frequent trips to the people on Neptune for technical advice. Oh yes, they visit earth quite often.

Anyhow, I'll post when I have something.

I'm glad to see you are still going strong! I'd thought you'd stopped working.

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 26 September 2007 - 12:51 PM

Thank goodness your back. i was starting to wonder if i'd ever get more information on this TC. (off topic kinda) hey if you see the ?neptunians? again tell them to take me with them

Um, Delphi, yes please on the tutorial thing for sketchup. This would be my fourth free modeling program, and I can't really use the other three. Maya is a demo and has that water mark thing, wings 3d is not very able, and blender is completely confusing. I've managed to make six weird little green lights, and that's it.

@0101181920, on Oct 8 2007, 05:57 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Um, Delphi, yes please on the tutorial thing for sketchup. This would be my fourth free modeling program, and I can't really use the other three. Maya is a demo and has that water mark thing, wings 3d is not very able, and blender is completely confusing. I've managed to make six weird little green lights, and that's it.

Blender is a smashing program, if you just give the program a chance to prove itself. I used wings3d to make ships before, but then I really sat down and tried to learn blender. You can't learn to use blender alone, but you can watch video tutorials (I've seen all of them, I only extract what I need though, too much information at once sometimes) and read the free books out there. I model ships quite fast now.