Actually, I tried to make sure the engines were over the center of gravity. That was one of the main goals from the start.
Well, I did just eyeball it, so it probably isn't over the
exact center of mass. I wish I knew a way to calculate the volume of a manifold mesh in blender.
Oh well, let's pretend there's some really heavy stuff on the end of the wings to keep it in balance.
Tha or I can move the engines forward a bit more, or add a thruster in the belly.
It has 14,000 polys because I have subsurf subdivision turned on. I was mainly thinking of applying subsurf and using the decimator modifier in blender to lower the polycount, to try to preserve as much of the curviness as I can. (That mesh you see in the ortho views is the optimized subsurf - original polycount but curvy to fit the subsurf.)
Of course, I'd hold on to the high-poly mesh for renders and pictures and stuff if needed.
Oh, are there any requirements for the weapon mounts? Or any other kind of module mount for that matter?
I was thinking internal weapons bays on either side of the fuselage. Those holes on the top would reach into the bay. Cannons, lasers, particle beams, etc. would mount inside the bay but come through the holes.
If something like a missile is mounted, the bays can open up and the missile would drop down, like in an F-117 or F-22.
I'm not too sure about TR-20s. I could enlarge the gun hole to let them shoot out, they could be put on a deployable arm, or maybe they just can't mount.
As for textures, I need a bit of guidance.
Is the hull built out of alien alloys, or advanced terran carbon-polymers or whatever? What colour is it? Does the forming process create colour gradients?
Does paint stick well to the surface? Radar-absorbing paint?
Is there a defined PHALANX colour scheme? Would the hull be mostly bare metal with paint accents/labels/decor, or would the entire thing be painted? (Like black radar-absorbing paint.)
Would the ship go into space? Does it need RCS thrusters? (Funny thing about that - if the engines
weren't in the center of gravity, it could use gimballing and differential thrust to maneuver in space)
Does it need heat tiles for re-entry? (Probably not, considering alien alloys, but it's still better to make sure.)
Do the PHALANX mechs wash the ship down and repaint it regularly? Or should the textures be a bit battle-worn and ragged?
Edit: Oh, something else. Should the wings change shape? I can probably find a way to bake that into blender's shape keys, in case the wings need to stretch out for slow flight or pull in for quicker flight or re-entry or something.
Edit#2:
I should have checked what it looks like without subsurf anyways.
774 Polygons. Many of those are quads, though. I don't know if quake2 model format supports quad-polygons or if it needs to be triangles.
If I turn it to triangles only, it's 1486 triangles:
It looks pretty ugly with only triangles, though.
