Luis, is that you in the Petrola interview describing the UI and the $2,345,000,000.00 ship?

Hi

No, it´s not me in that interview, it´s an old friend of mine

I use to play almost every day for half an hour, but I´m really bad on it, already lost a dozen vultures trying to complete the advanced combat training missions

My character is called "Will Flee" (something that he does very often)

Don´t worry about the stations, I just said to Incarnate I would like to update them, it´ll be a long time since they find some time to really touch on it, you know it involves a lot of coding and balancing stuff to add or modify anything in the game

I would like to havew different ships for each faction as well as different space station modules, and, different weapons and, to make the weapons really visible outside the ships as the player install them

but I´m just one guy to do all these, besides I´m just working on it part time for now and, I believe I did a lot of stuff already (there´s no more than four months since I effectively started working on VO)

given time I expect us to have all this stuff plus more all the cool things John and the others are working on

thanks for your support

to make the weapons really visible outside the ships as the player install them

I had an idea exactly like that, but didnt know how to word it, so I put it off, I guess you did it :).

Lookin forward to the new ships! :D

Luis, could you ptovide us with some examples or renders of the models you working on? I know Incarnate (Johhny boy ^^) said you guys had another few ships in development, and I gather the space junk and relics are probably quicker to complete.

Anyway.. mind givng us a few basic renders or screens of your work? Im eager to just get a taste of it as its likely to influence my slowly beginning modeling training,

.... Err Maya is just way to damn complicated ^^, or it could just be me. >.>

OH and as a quick question, what renderers and modelers do you perfer and which would you suggest to use for constructing Vehicles and larger objects? I currently own a copy of Truepsace 6.6/ Zbrush 2/ Poser 6/ and Maya 7.0, which would you say has less of a learning curve, or could be easier to build an understanding of modeling to general?

Thanks, and if you cant answer them ^^ No big deal, I just bought some instruction *Gnomon* DVD's on polygon modeling 101, done by a semi famous Sean Mills, which should cover most of my Maya troubles.

Hello (again)

Well, I think you´ll have to request Incarnate´s about posting any images of work in progress, but, the way things are progressing I think will have it in game very soon or Soon(TM), hehehe

By the way, I like Maxon´s Cinema4D for modeling, but, actually, the way I model stuff I could use any package, including free ones, by plotting each vertices and connecting them, do not use anything more complicated than that

Something that I use often is a more "iteractive" approach to modelling

for example: I draw a crude sketch in paper, go to the modeler, create a model based on that sketch, giving "volume" to the shapes I have in mind, give it a very bright material, so I can render only the outlines of the model, print it and than draw it again, over the printed material so i can pay attention to details, once its done i can model the final thing, which will or not really resemble the stuff I did on paper.

To be sincere, I consider myself to be efficient in modeling stuff, my aim is always on productivity, not artistry.

but, that´s it, someday i´ll really try to make some really memorable models

In the past I used Imagine, Strata Studio Pro, etc...

Uhoh, Luis has been introduced to the "soon(tm)" >_> <_<

!!

I wish I could be at your level Luis, I can only make models from ideas, and as I can't draw well I can't draw designs and plan them well. So all the designs I do come from my head and if the design in my head lack details... then I'm screwed. Good luck with the VO models!

Thanks Luis, I do mostly concept art, been trying to learn how to turn them around into a model, so thanks for your help and insight ^^

Hi everybody!

well, freehand drawing skill really are a must for everyone who wants to model stuff, even more if they want to create their own concepts, the good news being that everyone can aqquire it by practicing.

one more thing, about the way I´m modeling my stuff now:

It was John who suggested me to create high resolution models to use to bake normal mapping to the final game models, but, at first I tought it was not going to be a good idea, as you could have noticed, my two first VO models were created the "normal" way, by modeling it, mapping and painting the skin, the TPG cruiser and the Raptor

then, I decided to give it a chance, by creating the hirez meshes and baking it on lorez ones (as could be seen on some pictures john posted on the news section)

There are a lot of advantages in acting like this:

1) it avoids distortions on the skins, of course, baking correctly is not easy and I always have to touch up some things by hand on a graphic editor

2) it makes it possible to in a near future update the models for more detailed ones by just adding details to the hirez mesh, refining the lorez one, remapping the modified parts and re-baking it

3) it gives more freedom to the modeler, since he or she doens´t have to deal with polygon count while modeling

4) once the modeling of both hirez and lorez meshes are done, your work with skinning is almost finished too, since one can bake almost everything from normal to diffuse, transparency and other maps one could want.

sure, there are drwabacks to this technique, distortions you must learn to avoid or minimize, the technique itself is not really easy to master, etc...

but, I truly reccomend giving it a shot

Regards