aittam Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Originally posted by ClaytoniousRex: The shadows are not showing because you don't yet have the collision models. Once you add those, the shadow will render. sorry but you are wrong there, the shadow won't show because it's a vampire unit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soddball Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Your turreted tanks have a huge shot trap. A round striking the underside of the front of the turret would be deflected down into the top of the hull, where the armour's weaker. Take a look at the curved mantlet of the early Panther for an example of this. Later Panthers had the design changed. You can see the influence of this on the design of modern tank turrets - no shot trap. Cute models though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdevlin Posted September 18, 2006 Author Share Posted September 18, 2006 Hi- Thats a result of the turret design, correct? If you have the time, could you take one of my renderings and draw an arrow to the problem area? I'll take a look and see what I can do. -Joe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdevlin Posted September 18, 2006 Author Share Posted September 18, 2006 This is a panther ausf G - I think the shot trap had been corrected by then. Still, this is the area in question, right? and here it is on my models: I believe that the problem can be addressed by filling in the superstructure on the superheavy ( the idea is admittedly incomplete ) and by redesigning the turret. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soddball Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Originally posted by jdevlin: Hi- Thats a result of the turret design, correct? If you have the time, could you take one of my renderings and draw an arrow to the problem area? I'll take a look and see what I can do. -Joe You're absolutely right and you've drawn the arrow in the right place, too. When you look at the Panther G image you've posted, you can see the mantlet (armoured front of the turret) is curved. The Panther G Late model you've posted a picture of had the problem resolved (although not all Panther Gs had this fixed). Here's a picture of an early Panther with the original mantlet and a red line showing the inevitable consequence of the shot trap. There were 2 solutions. Firstly a 'ridge' on the top of the hull designed to deflect rounds upwards, and later a complete redesign of the mantlet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soddball Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Looking at your pictures (very good, btw), I think the middle tank is going to be fairly easy to fix. A basic redesign of the shape of the turret to remove that shot trap will be comparatively easy. The superheavy tank may be a problem, however. I can't really tell from the pics you've posted, but I think the slope of the top of the hull may prohibit easy removal of that shot trap. It may be worth mounting the gun directly in the hull in a fitting like the Jagdpanther had - that way you'd be able to lose the shot trap and retain the huge gun. Then again, who knows. One other thought - some WW2 tanks often carried multiple turrets or a mix of weapons. This was discarded because of a number of reasons, including the inconvenience of carrying double-lots of ammo. The last tank I can think of was the early Centurion, which had a 105mm gun and a 20mm Rarden cannon. Whilst awesome looking and potentially cool, crews grumbled about unreliability, loading, more complexity, etc, so the idea was abandoned. (Looks cool though, and it depends how much the sci-fi leans towards fi and away from sci . Just so long as you don't go all Warhammer on us and fit 38 turrets with a bazillion different guns, I promise I won't cry.) Oh, btw, thanks for reading. I don't deliberately set out to make people's eyes bleed. Honest. I just got a bit waffly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdevlin Posted September 18, 2006 Author Share Posted September 18, 2006 Ha! I guess the superheavy does have a little bit of that "imperial armor" flavor doesn't it. The first iteration looked like a Baneblade. Anyway, no problem - and thanks very much for the feedback, Soddball! I'm trying to keep this idea somewhat realistic, as realistic as you can get with an 18 foot tall AFV. I'll post some results of the redesign tonight! -Joe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdevlin Posted September 18, 2006 Author Share Posted September 18, 2006 While I'm here - does anyone have any advice on animating treads? -Joe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdevlin Posted September 19, 2006 Author Share Posted September 19, 2006 Heres another group photo with a couple of variants. Included is the newer turret design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adzling Posted September 20, 2006 Share Posted September 20, 2006 hey jd i like what you've got going there. it would be cool if you brought them along as a completely parallel force choice...i.e. another strain of humans...rather than simply adding them into the existing afv choice. i could see their roles (going from left to right) -light tank destroyer -light tank (same role as the paladins) -infantry fighting vehicle (carries a 76mm or 20mm or something similar..mebbe this strain of humans uses 90mm gun in this role...and a squad of inf.) -medium tank (could be fitted with a variety of weaponry for different roles....atgm turret, 120mm cannon whatever) -super-heavy tank (something the basic human strain doesn't use). I like this idea because it introduces force assymetry into the game... I'm travelling right now hence the lack of posts... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdevlin Posted September 20, 2006 Author Share Posted September 20, 2006 Hi- Just thought I'd post an update of where I stand with this project and see if I can't pose some questions. I'm having no problem getting a chassis into the game now, with texture. I've also imported thye Valkyrie and have played a few games with it. 1> As i understand it, the "Contacts" tag defines where "the rubber hits the road" so to speak - where the contact points for the treads are, for example. Is this correct? Is the hull included so that you don't have to do collision detection between a model and the ground? 2> Has anyone succesfully imported a turret? I made a turret ( the simplest turret possible - a blank cube ) and the way they import makes me think that the normals are getting flipped - the texture appears to be on the _inside_ of the cube. Also, my attempts to include collision models for my turret failed - I was hoping that the flipped normals were a strange result of not including collision models. More on this later, I suppose, when I've had a chance to mess around with it some more. 3> I have a few questions about collision models. do the collision models for the game include the tracks? it seems to me that they must - if shadows are generated by the inclusion of these models, then you wouldnt have shadows for the tracks otherwise. The collision models don't need to actually correspond to the shape of the base model file, do they? Finally, if I created a model, cut it up into sections for collision models, and then adjusted the offset of the base model, that would screw up the way the collisions looked but not the way they worked, right? 4> Treads? How do you animate them? If its really simple, the illusion is very well done. It appears to me that the game animates each track seperately. Or is it really just a move animation and an idle animation, where the move animation shifts the tread texture around the tread for x frames? 5> Finally, I have a couple of community requests. If anyone is itchy to try out texturing and feels like giving me a hand with texturing these things, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm not a very good texturer. Also, I'm looking for someone to help me playtest this. If anyone feels like giving a very rough cut of this mod a try, then send me an email and I'll send you the files. Thanks for reading! -Joe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdevlin Posted September 20, 2006 Author Share Posted September 20, 2006 Originally posted by adzling: hey jd i like what you've got going there. it would be cool if you brought them along as a completely parallel force choice...Thanks adzling! I think that thats the way that I'm headed at the moment... but who's gonna be the good guy? I was definitely thinking about working on some new weaponry for these guys. I'd like to see at least one autocannon thrown into the mix, because i'm a sucker for autocannons, but a 90mm or some such for the medium is ideal. The 120mm seems a little too large for it. -Joe [ September 20, 2006, 08:30 AM: Message edited by: jdevlin ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilibird Posted September 20, 2006 Share Posted September 20, 2006 I've gotten the turret in, though not textured. I used Sketchup to do that, though it would appear as though it is not possible to create a UV map by using sketchup. So I guess I'll have to figure this blender mess out. I at least made it crash this time And I'm more than willing to help ya out should ya need it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poesel Posted September 21, 2006 Share Posted September 21, 2006 jdevlins files are now available here: Valkyrie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdevlin Posted September 22, 2006 Author Share Posted September 22, 2006 heres an assault gun / tank destroyer variant of the superheavy chassis. i think it looks a little more realistic, but it also looks a little less distinctive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts