Completed Pioneer Models

[Marcel]

Thanks again for the critiques. I see what you mean about the pad surface. The asphalt pebbles are the size of river rocks. I'm looking at free to use for any purpose texture sites for something better. As for the vents- I mean elevators, yeah, everyone sees them as vents. It's the same texture I used for the mushroom station doors. I'm going to try splitting the doors into two panels and using a metallic texture. More polys and texture calls, but why not. I have a low poly version of this that could be used for low end machines. I'd like to incorporate Geraldine's lights too eventually, but right now after putting this together I'm kind of burned out on it. I've taken a break from station building and have been flying around the Sol system in ad9fa61. Mars looks great, Jupiter looks blue.

[UncleBob]

Well, the toughest call will be how many pixels the total texture area should get. Depending on that, you can either go for an asphalt texture if you have enough pixels available to actually make it look good close up, or you'll have to take something more generic with almost no identifiable small details and do the rest with some paint and lighting.Since landing pads are the buildings we'll see close-up on a regular basis, I'd say a total texture area for the surface of at least 1024*1024 is minimum. I don't know exactly how the mip-mapping works, but if possible they should have a texture area of 2048*2048 that gets loaded when the ship touches down (so it'll only be processed for that one pad the player actually lands on). That doesn't mean that you need to make such a big texture, you can still tile it. This would allow you to get some amount of detail into the texture without those details getting ridiculously blown out of scale close-up...

[fluffyfreak]

People always wildly overestimate texture size requirements. You'll never ever see a 2048x2048 texture at it's top mip. Mostly likely you'll see the 512x512 when you're sat looking at it on screen. Think of it this way, my 24" DELL widescreen monitor is 1920x1200 which means that I might see the 2048x2048 mip level IF I'm looking directly downwards at it as close as I can get balancing on my reverse thrusters... Here's a rule of thumb I use; If it's bigger than 50% of your target resolution, you'll never see it. So taking my 1920x1200 monitor that makes 1024x1024 excessive. 512x512 is probably what you'll see, and using 4x the memory for 1024x1024 will only give you a tiny little difference. Probably not worth the extra memory footprint.Just my professional experience.

[UncleBob]

Quote:
Here's a rule of thumb I use; If it's bigger than 50% of your target resolution, you'll never see it.
That is a good rule for an object that is usually only visible as a whole on the screen. The rule breaks down if you only have a part of the object on screen. Still, yes, 2046^2 is about the upper limit to spend on something like this. It would serve to make a realy nice, detailed surface of the pad, that will look good even very close up. Which is what I would aim for doing a landing pad. Also, I was talking about total surface area in pixels. I don't know what surface area the pad has in meters, which would be necessary to estimate the needed pixel area a bit more accurately. And of course, I wasn't talking about making such a huge texture. There's still tiling, but you have to know what surface area a pixel will cover to know how small your surface details can be.

[fluffyfreak]

It holds pretty well actually. Lets say you have something like the Eagle. Even if you treat each side as needing a 512x512 texture you can still do that in a single 1024x512. That can include all incidental detail too by packing things like wheels, laser cannons, gratings etc into unused areas.I spent some time profiling one of the games I worked on once and it was a real surprise for everyone what mip levels we were really using. The artists had spent ages arguing, demanding, that they be allowed to use higher resolution textures. It turned out in the end that we never saw those mips... ever. The low quality was caused by the texture sampling used.That title ran in 720p, so maybe my home PC would have seen a single mip level higher.Like I say, just my experience.

[Marcel]

Here's a 512x512 texture projected full size on the pad that was reduced from a 3888x2592 photo.[attachment=1025:pad_Asphalt0002.jpg][attachment=1026:pad_Asphalt0002a.jpg]Still too rough and blurry. I need to find a texture I can tile.Edit: Here's a similar tiled 512x512 texture.[attachment=1027:pad_512_seamless_texture_07.jpg]

[Marcel]

[attachment=1028:pad_512_seamless_texture_07a.jpg]Here's a 1024x1024 version.[attachment=1029:pad_1024_seamless_texture_07.jpg][attachment=1030:pad_1024_seamless_texture_07a.jpg]I don't see much difference, so I'm thinking 512 would do. Either one is a nice improvement.

[Geraldine]

Yep, that is certainly looking better and thats a nice touch with the Starport Name in the tarmac. Great work Marcel!

[Marcel]

Thanks Geraldine. It just occurred to me that for the 1024 version I should have made the tiles half the size of the 512 version to display more detail. It may make the asphalt pebbles too small to see. I'll give it a try and see if it's worth it, then I'll go work on those vent things.

[Geraldine]

Actually ..... I was having a think about the vents. There is a really great reason for them to be there, to catch the exhaust from ships taking off and landing. Don't real life launch sites employ just that sort of thing to vent those mega hot gases away?

[robn]

Yes, real-life launch sites have vents and pipes and whatnot to get rid of the hot gasses. I fear that they wouldn't help much with with our ships though as they put out enough power to wipe half a small planet from existence at every launch.

[Marcel]

They're not vents, they're elevators ELEVATORS! How can I make you see what's in my mind? I know, I'll just have to do a better job! Muahahahah! >cough<Ahem, uh, the 1024 textures miped into mud. Here's what I came up with, the 512 textures shrunk a bit.[attachment=1031:pad_512a_seamless_texture_07.jpg]The tiling shows a bit, but it's an artificial surface. The asphalt spreader made it that way. Yeah, that's it.[attachment=1032:pad_512a_seamless_texture_07a.jpg]I also replaced the tower base texture.[attachment=1033:pad_512a_seamless_texture_07b.jpg]Here's where I found the texture. It's free to use with a plug. http://www.freeseamlesstextures.com/texture_gallery/index.htm

[Guest]

Marcel,These are looking quite snazzy!!Makes my original 'programmer art' ground base plain and boring.Love your work!

[Marcel]

This is your original 'programmer art'. Without your sketch I wouldn't be able to fill in the details! Thanks! :DBtw, I just replaced the grav.png texture on the other groundstations, too.And I also want to mention that spacestations13a.zip works in alpha18.This one's for UncleBob.[attachment=1034:pad-Lanner.jpg]

[SolCommand]

The base looks fantastic, good work !

[Geraldine]

Marcel wrote:
They're not vents, they're elevators ELEVATORS!
Yes I know that Marcel but,...............there is still good reasons to have vents if you want to, especially so after robn's comments about how powerful those thrusters are. Health & Safety regulations you know, cant have you melting those poor nearby office drones everytime you fancy stopping off for quick diet steak hamburger.

[robn]

Elevators are pretty cool: http://www.moddb.com/mods/elevator-source

[Marcel]

So, you're going to add that to Pioneer then?

[Geraldine]

I've been in elevators like that! Just try any Glasgow scheme with a high rise

[Marcel]

Here's what I've been messing with, trying to make those vents look like elevators. When closed, they're in the up position. They drop down to be loaded/unloaded.[attachment=1038:pad_elevator01.jpg]I'm also thinking about where to add the vents for all you environmentalists out there. They have to be located where no possible ships' landing gear will be.[attachment=1039:pad_elevator02.jpg]I'm going to shrink the diameter of the lamps. I'm thinking round vents about the size of the current lamps around the periphery might look ok.Edit: worked on it a little bit more. Since I have one attachment space left, here's the latest.[attachment=1040:pad_elevator03.jpg]