Hi there,

Firstly to answer your question, I am unfamiliar with wings 3d but most modeling packages have a triangulate option this will cause each poly to only have 3 verts.

I took a look at your model and have a few points about the problems you have encountered.

-The problem you are having are because you have many 'N-Gons' in your object, an n-gon is just a poly with more than 4 verts. there are ngons in the circular parts of your turbines and in other sections throughout your ship.

- Your choice of software wasn't the best, I am unfamiliar with wings 3d but it advertises itself as a subdivision modeler which is a technique for film/animation rather than games. If you don't mind relearning some things I would recommend Max, Maya or Blender if you are looking for a free option.

- you have polygons overlapping other polys and polys inside the centre of your mesh. which will have a negative impact on lighting.

- there are also polys inside the centre of the mesh.

- the normals of the object were also locked and smoothed when I looked at it which will give the object a strange appearance in game.

The design of your ship is quite nice but you will have a lot of trouble trying to import it into an engine as it is, it isn't unfixable but I would recommend that you think about starting from scratch and using your old model as a guide. You will learn more and your end result will be better.

Wings3D is a great modeller and you're doing a great job! Nice ship! There is a triangulate option if you export to Wavefront .obj (File -> Export -> Wavefront (.obj), then select the small rectangle to the right of the export type -> Tesselation -> Triangulation).

Thats a lovely design

Cool design Daveangel.

I've a question for anyone. Does anyone think Truspace or Bryce would be okay for modeling ships ?

I've considerable past experience with both but are unsure at this moment if the output is okay for what this game needs.

Thanks,

jt

Guys, thanks for all the advice. i've got rid of some of the internal shapes, and - deepseaweed, thank you i'm flying around a naked model at the moment <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_biggrin.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':D' />

Once i work out how to skin this badboy i'll offer it up for a mod.

Thanks again.

Here is the cleaned up model. Triangluated.

No textures yet, if anybody wants to have a go at that they are more than welcome!

Truespace yes, if you use polys, Bryce no (it's for modelling terrain if I'm right).

Basically you select a region of faces of your ship, let's say the top, then right click -> More... -> .UVMapping and add them to AuvChart1-9. If you're finished with all your parts, you select Continue -> Unfolding (or one of the projections). You have to try a bit. Just know that you can't unfold a closed geometry (but Wings will tell you <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//wink3.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' /> ). Right click on the map to export the texture etc. It's a long time since I did that the last time and it didn't like it very much. You could also try to do the textures with Blender. I would do the triangulation at the very end.

Perhaps this link may help: http://www.pagodapro...UV Mapping.html.

That is a very nice looking design <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

I am liking Wingds 3D, it seems like a nice solid, simple (no frills or gimmicks) modeler, like Lightwave used to be.

Truspace is a great program, in the 90's I worked on 2 computer games at Leaping Lizard in Gaithersburg using Truspace, a game called Raider and Warhammer 40,000: Dark Crusaders. (because Truspace was cheap, and this was before games cost 30 million to develope like Halo did. In fact I think Truspace may be a free download now)

about having too many verts... hmmm. 3 or 4 verts implies that each polygon face should be a square or a triangle (so no 5, 6, 7 or more sided polygons). Now sqaures can cause a problem sometimes if the verts are not all on the same "plane". like a "jagged" square, with each end having a differet "z" value. OK, the term I was looking for is a non-planer polygon. it's best to avoid the square 4-sided polygons, and stick with Triangles. (most hardware cards, I think, automatically convert everything into triangles anyway. )

oh yeah, my profile pic came from that Warhammer game, which I think sold 5000 copies world-wide. yeah, that's 5k, not alot and almost all of those were sold in Italy. Germany banned the game, becasue Germany banned alot of violent computer games in the 90's

thanks for this thread

I've been looking into modeling for games. The other game (Sim) I play is Steelbeasts and if I recall correctly those same software pkgs are the same they recommend for their models. I'm going to have to get into this. I have a zillions hours on AutoCAD 3D and woud love to buy Rhino3D for my personal use but those (according to the SB community) are not good for games.

Oh, and by the way I agree with others ... the OP's ship design is very nice.

Have a nice day

Luxology modo would be a very nice modeler if you have some money to spare. ( http://www.luxology.com Can't add link here on mobile ?!)

Thanks for all the guidance so far...

I'm looking to animate in the landing gear next (starting with the sidewinderMk2 AKA Valkrye). I'm downloading Blender to help with this, but will need to tie the gear function of pioneer to the model. I can see in the lua the code, but can anyone give me a few pointers to what i need to do?

Thanks

Dave

oops

My first model, it's a raceing ground space car, single seat. Um, let me know what's wrong with it, and then I can try and get a model actually into the game.

[attachment=1355:racecar4.png]

I used the Lanner_2g texture that's already in the pioneer game. I decided to use a pre-existing texture, becasue if something goes wrong, I can be pretty sure it's not a texture format. the model is made in Wings, and I think I've exported it to a.obj file.

the car should be about 12 feet tall in game, if I got the scale right.

Wings is a great program, by the way.

Here are the files for the race car, the .obj file can't be right, since it's only 1k in size, but that's what it gave me. I also included the wings file, if that helps anyone with any feedback they can give. Wait, I just figured out why it was 1k, I hadn't selected any geometry when I exported it. ok, one problem solved. [attachment=1358:racecar004b.zip]

Next step is getting some bump mapping and special effects going. Oh, and anything I post here or for Pioneer I reliquish any ownership to and provide to whomever, I dont even need credits or anything so feel free to use it. (like, I hope the guy who painted the lanner_2g texture didn't mind I made use of it)

credits for the lanner goes to UncleBob, i guess he didn't minds about that.