Messages

106

Artwork / Re: Hyperion Class Armed Dropship

« on: May 10, 2012, 12:07:50 am »

Many thanks MCR that has helped greatly, texturing is my big weakness atm so it might just be supplied with the base map and possibly a glow map.

I plan to try and learn how to do a start to finish job myself, but I will be sure to ask questions when I hit the inevitable, usually with my hard head.

I seem to recall having an old model or two that might work...will have to check.
Headdie is on this, but it wouldn't hurt to have a backup, just in case..

Ohhh ye of little faith

In all seriousness might be a good idea, though I plan to post the model soon as a community backup, especially given the progress below.



Based on the side by side I reduced the model size by about 25%, shunted the engines forward a little and moved the cockpit back a little



Also I made the bay doors much wider so that it corresponds with the firebird



lastly I trashed the old troop bay and made a much simpler box one extruded where needed with completely open sides, the bay is now a solid 4 person or one 2x2 UGV due to the size of the bay and if needed it can easily be expanded due to its shape.

My next potential issue with the size is the overall width, a potential fix I am thinking of is to partially fold the wings but H-Hour initially commented about the wings being useful for cover and I would like to run with that idea, especially given the squad size deployable so any other ways to do it are very welcome.

107

Design / Re: Design: Aliens

« on: May 09, 2012, 09:30:13 pm »

I was thinking the time delay was before the poison/toxin killed the affected soldier (on top of them going nuts) but a couple of turns time delay before starts to kick in might be more realistic.

108

Feature Requests / Re: idea for automission / forced play

« on: May 09, 2012, 09:25:43 pm »

gets my vote.

109

Design / Re: Design: Aliens

« on: May 09, 2012, 06:54:07 pm »

Indeed the Chryssalid (the ******* ******** ) was an iconic enemy in UFO:EU, no mater what, everyone feared coming up against one, especially in the dark and early in the tech tree.

Perhaps change things around a little, for example make it more of a fragile creature and change the effect so that instead of injecting an egg it injects a venom that disorientates the victim for a time causing them to fire on anything that moves, be it alien, goodguy or civi, then after 5 turns the venom kills the soldier or have it cause so much health damage per turn.

It could also open up a research avenue to develop a counter toxin

110

Artwork / Re: Hyperion Class Armed Dropship

« on: May 09, 2012, 06:38:05 pm »

I think it´s great. Just hope it is not getting too big.

yer I am a bit worried about that myself, does anyone have or know where I can grab a copy of the Firebird that I can directly import into blender for comparison? I am struggling to find one

111

Artwork / Re: Hyperion Class Armed Dropship

« on: May 09, 2012, 04:16:58 pm »

I should stop getting distracted and leaving posts unfinished. 

I know that one all too well mate

and time for a little update with pretty renders.
Outside

***the transparency in the canopy is for rendering purposes, for simplicity of the model it will probably just be a solid "glass" colour come final release to reduce the model load on the game***

Troop Bay

I downloaded the male soldier mesh from the git repository for scale purposes.

I am currently experimenting with the side door version as i think it has the most promise.

Believe it or not i have got problems with a oversized troop bay, scaled so that the pilots are justers in terms of fitting in the cockpit, the area i had in mind for the troop bay could have fit 8-12+ soldiers in it

By introducing benches, resizing the main fuselage down to about 70% of its original width and placing a pillar down the centre I finally have a 6-8 seater.

To be honest I think the narrowing of the hull has made the lines work much better as well so winner all round imho

still to do
* Join the passenger bay mesh to the rest of the hull
* Tidy up some nasty geometry I was hiding with smoothing
* UVmap and Texture (blegh not my favourite part of modelling)

As always feedback, suggestions and comments welcome

112

Artwork / Re: Hyperion Class Armed Dropship

« on: May 09, 2012, 09:09:52 am »

Side doors should not interfere with the engine layout as the main engines are right at the back and the forward engines are currently little recesses where the forward fuselage widens into the main section.  The only issue might be the wings, though an idea that has just come to me would be to fold the wings in some way.

While weapons are not shown I like it to be so that you can look at something like this and be able to see where important things are like engines and on combat craft where weapon points are, even if it's just a bulge where a cannon mount ends for example, it is far from critical but helps detailing the thing in a meaningful manner.

113

Offtopic / Re: Hi

« on: May 09, 2012, 01:48:14 am »

"I'm thinknig the Pitbull or Tornado crafts in your deviartart gallery look like possible matches." But if you've got another idea, go for it. Key is that it should be able to be a fighter jet that can store 5 or so soldiers as well. Oh, and it should if possible have vertical take off and landing.

The Pitbull might have licensing issues as the concept art is not mine and was created for another person, the use of the Pitbull on DA was per the concept artist's permission.

The Tornado on the other hand is all mine and fair game, to that end I have created http://ufoai.org/forum/index.php/topic,6632.0.html to discuss how best to use it and document the development.

114

Artwork / Hyperion Class Armed Dropship

« on: May 09, 2012, 01:11:04 am »

My hi thread yielded this

Cool stuff. Some of your ships look like they might work as our Hyperion-class Armed Dropship. It's a mixed dropship/fighter we plan to include but lack a model. It wouldn't require any animation, just a texture as well as some changes to the model to create an "interior". I'm thinknig the Pitbull or Tornado crafts in your deviartart gallery look like possible matches.

"I'm thinknig the Pitbull or Tornado crafts in your deviartart gallery look like possible matches." But if you've got another idea, go for it. Key is that it should be able to be a fighter jet that can store 5 or so soldiers as well. Oh, and it should if possible have vertical take off and landing.

To this end I have opened this thread to explore this possibility.

Unfortunately while the Pitbull probably has a better form to work with on this, it is a product of someone else's concept art which will complicate licencing as the concept art was for a company iirc.

Leaving the Tornado


To provide background on the model it is an original concept by myself, intended as a medium aero/space fighter with 4 light cannons mounted in the structure top centre of the model, a medium cannon mount lower centre circular structure on the front view and missiles mounted in the tall rectangularish structures either side of centre mass.  Engines in the rear rectangular structures which join the wings to the main fuselage.

Now for a few ideas.

The changes to make will depend mostly on how we arrange the cargo bay, do we have a "traditional" rear cargo door for deployment or use Firebird style side cargo doors, or a variation where they open forwards where the missiles are now?

For the engine layout as this is a terrestrial tech VTOL craft it will probably want the engine structures I have near the front making more prominent and adding vertical thrusters to the rear engines.

Lastly weapons how does the team see this thing armed, will it be similar to the Stiletto? or less powerful?perhaps 2 light and a medium weapon mount with the medium where the light cannons are in the original concept and new mounting points for the lights on the centre fuselage somewhere?

Also as is demonstrated in the attached model is that the lower hull is not currently brilliant for this roll and will need filling in. what are everyone's thoughts on that do I fill it in following the existing silhouette or change it moving everything towards the rear for example.

What are everyone's opinions on this?

115

Artwork / Re: Light UGV you might be interested in.

« on: May 08, 2012, 10:58:47 pm »

Looks pretty cool. Are you able to animate it? UGVs (and units that take 2x2 grid spaces) are still work-in-progress, but having a complete, textured and animated UGV would really help the testing process.

Let me know if you have any questions about the animation process. I'm not great at it myself, but we can help as best as we can.

Saw in the other thread you haven't done animation. Here's a bit in our wiki about exporting animation with Blender to our MD2's. Not sure how much help I can be as I have used mostly 3dsm. But Destructavator has done animation with Blender. He might be able to help or suggest some tutorials.

Just to confirm for animation you are wanting armature/frame animations?

if so then, http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Tutorials/Your_First_Animation/2.Animation which I found through the links at the bottom of the UFOAI wiki article is brilliant for setting it up.

I am hoping to have this think animated soon so fingers crossed.

Nice to see you finally dropped by headdie. 

Looking good.
I think you can get away with a bit more polies in the wheels btw.

Yes it is about time

I have been working on this on and off since the discussion we had, it sits a bit higher than I had originally planned but I did that so it looks better for ground clearance.

On the wheels, I am playing it fairly safe on the polly count for now and while I am not final on the texture i don't mind making mesh adjustments

There is also this Talk page about the UGV´s in the wiki.

Cheers for that, certainly a few things to think about.

116

Offtopic / Re: Hi

« on: May 08, 2012, 08:35:12 pm »

Hell yeah, i love the people of Hardlight Productions for making my fav. space sim looks awesome!

Yer, I had FS1 when it was new and shiny and grabbed 2 about 2001ish, Its awesome what the guys there have pulled off both visually and code wise.

Cool stuff. Some of your ships look like they might work as our Hyperion-class Armed Dropship. It's a mixed dropship/fighter we plan to include but lack a model. It wouldn't require any animation, just a texture as well as some changes to the model to create an "interior". I'm thinknig the Pitbull or Tornado crafts in your deviartart gallery look like possible matches.

Cool, which ones catch your eye for that, I certainly don't mind rebuilding something for the project's needs

117

Artwork / Light UGV you might be interested in.

« on: May 08, 2012, 06:02:20 pm »

In trashman's I come bearing gifts... thread there is mention of the possibility of introducing UGVs at some undetermined point in the future and I got to thinking about ideas for that.

Current line of thought is this



It is a light recon drone favouring speed over anything else, while fairly resistant to terrestrial small arms anything alien, pyro and/or explosive will generally rip it to shreds. for defence and infantry support it has a turreted cannon, similar in capability and roll to the infantry heavy cannon seen in UFO: Enemy Unknown and can rip through aliens seen early in the game but quickly becomes obsolete as the aliens start deploying armour and possesses slow rate of fire along with restrictive ammo capacity.  As a Recon drone I think it's night vision should be better than a soldiers.  As I currently plan it the drone takes up 2x2 in the dropship so players deploying it should consider the loss of their ability to deploy half their team (in the opening craft), though in situations where there is sparse cover or difficult visibility it might be advantageous.

Although wheeled rather than tracked I see this using tank steering,
1 for simplicity in developing its movement as it would be similar to a soldier's
2 it would allow the drone to turn on the spot which when dealing with light cover means you dont have to leave it to turn around.

I have attached a text file with a description of sorts that I have been mulling over as I have worked on this.

looking for input on improvements and if this is something the project is interested in.

Currently the wheels, turret and turret barrel are separate objects from the main body, though a texture exists the UVmap needs work and the texture is just a simple AO bake so now is a good time to make mesh changes.

In terms of license when one is needed I usually release on a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. (wording from deviant art) but as I am donating this to UFO:AI I have no issue with releasing it under another licence if needed

118

Offtopic / Re: Hi

« on: May 08, 2012, 05:59:24 pm »

I have posted a few bits on Deviant art http://headdie.deviantart.com/gallery/ , my tool of choice being Blender 2.49

I generally model mechanical objects, starships mostly to date but other machines have been interesting challenges including weapons and robots.  as for animation, I have not tried it before, if someone can point to a good blender tutorial (Preferably 2.49 as though I have 2.62 I have hardly used it as the Collada scripts are useless for FreeSpace Open work.) then I would be interested in giving it a go

119

Offtopic / Hi

« on: May 08, 2012, 04:08:19 pm »

Thought I would introduce myself a little as I have just signed up.

I have downloaded UFO:AI from time to time and have enjoyed playing it greatly so respect to everyone who has been involved, but never really bothered with the forums.

A little while ago TrashMan posted to the Hardlight Productions forum that the project could possibly benefit from input from more people, especially as there are a number of X-Com fans amongst us and a good number of ppl with skills in many of the game development related disciplines.  Personally I am a amateur (emphasis on that) modeller and not to bad at understanding text based table files (in the FreeSpace open engine anyway).

So that just leaves me to say Hi All!