adzling

hey marco can you get me some info on how gordon overlays the camo onto the grey uv map you provide him? I have a nice grey uv map done which borrows heavily from the grey textures you kindly provided. I just can't figure out how to overlay the camo texture without using some form of transparency adjustment......which doesn't look right as the colors get all washed out and the details fade-out. tnx

as far as the Nemesis goes i'm only considering adding increased HE ammo load (from 10 to 20 perhaps) as the armor thickness combined with sloping should make it more survivable than a thor (from the front) so it should be able to duke it out toe-to-toe effectively. yeah i would anticipate some good optics (zoom perhaps one level down from the thor, again between the thor and apollo). + it has a much lower silohouette than the thor so there's some advantage there...

actually the Mjolnir is more of a medium tank or as yurch puts it "light mbt". we'll work on making sure it's balanced the armor will be somewhere between the apollo and the thor (although it's sloping will help in a level field) and i am expecting the speed to be somewhere between them. the "Nemesis" t.d./sp.g. is built off the same chassis and will have simiilar armor thickness and speed to the Mjolnir although the way the armor is sloped should have better survivability facing it's target. The gun traverse is limited but one of the + side of having no turret is that the gun can depress to -45 which should enable some indirect fire with the HE shells. considering the apollo is considered a light tank in dropteam the slot seems to be filled already ;-P an IFV wouldn't be the same role as the current paladins just with tracks i guess. that wiesel is cute....can they fit infantry in there?

hmm ok so things are getting a little complex with all the file shuffling from sketchup to formz and out to .obj files and uv maps. The uv map file that formz generates looks like this: Obviously not so good as all the facets are completely disjointed; not conducive to painting the texture across faces obviously. However I can use formz's unfold command, export as a .dxf and after some editing in vectorworks end up with a pretty good starting point for getting the textures into the uv map. Looks like this: Then I would have to cut out the faces, paste into the formz uv map at the beginning of thise post and apply those uv maps to the formz model and export as a .obj and .mtl files and everything should be fine. This is not the smoothest workflow obviously. <scratches head> Need to think some more on this.

thanks marco this helps enormously.....and double thanks for the neutral grey textures!

ooh an OGRE i like that ;-0 first the Mjolnir and Nemesis....then the ODIN here's the final conceptual for the Mjolnir. Barring technical issues this is the unskinned geometry. [ August 19, 2006, 11:04 PM: Message edited by: adzling ]

yeah i want to get the scale right before i hand it off to you right now i doubled the size (so the chassis is @ 12.5 meters long) problem is the height for the medium tank then comes in at a whopping 4.9m!!! i wonder how tall the apollo/ thors are?

tnx i was noticing that on the uv maps in dropteam...you should look at those things marco is freaking genius......the detail he puts into them reminds me of when i used to build scale models....weathered metal.....grease stains etc...

hey now darky banko and i have done that exactly once now.....and when we did we turned our computers back to back......however it was so funny when you started whining about banko that we couldnt help but lafff. we like keeling each other as much as the next man are you trying to imply that one or the other of us was a "mole"? hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahha rofl hey you should go back and re-read that thread.....people weren't villifying you....they were merely arguing your point because they disagreed. now if you can't understand that (which it would seem is the case) then perhaps you should take my advice and go back to the corner with a juice box and have quiet time-out. I actually thought that's what you were doing and were gonna come back and play once 1.1.3 came out..... hell i'll still gladly play against you (or with you for that matter) just quite your kiddy yelping.......discusssion's fine......kiddy yelping no....bad darky.....

ok here's how the things starting to look with the woodland camo texture note: i don't think it makes sense to pursue my current strategy for texturing this model. what im doing right now is cutting bits out of the .png texture files that come with the game and then applying them as decals over the base camo texture in-model. The problem with this is that it is laborious and will have to repeated for each and every camo scheme. desert.woodland.ice ack any hoo it gives you a sense of the amount of time battlefront spent in building the initial texture set....gack the proper way to do it would be to compose the texture in layers with them all sharing the same "3d" components (hatches et al) as alpha-mapped files that let the underlying camo texture show through. then you only need to map them to the model once and simply change out the underlying camo pattern to suit. problem is that would entail a H_U_G_E amount of work as i would have to replicate each "painted" 3d component.....believe me there are a massive amount of these elements embedded in the texture files (hand-holds, vision blocks, decals, vents etc). So unless i can get the original source files from battlefront (and i understand that may not be possible) i may just tough it out....or put this on hold until i can figure a better way to deal with this....any bright ideas are gratefully received. a couple of other niggling visual things... 1) if you look closely you can see the camo pattern repeat/tile and that the camo pattern on the hatches et al don't match the surrounding camo patterns....oh well 2). If I was modelling this as a real object (i.e. i was building a real tank) i would put some rounding/chamfers on the edges to make it look more realistic (no surface mates 90 degrees to another without some kind of break or round) problem is that round would be very small (like 5mm or less) and would greatly increase the polygon count on the model for little gain. I'd like to check out how the original modelmaker dealt with this but...well...that's gonna have to wait until i can figure out a way to get the existing 3d models into my 3d package... [ August 17, 2006, 05:42 PM: Message edited by: adzling ]

well cool i like mjolnir as it would be the "hammer" the thor the "anvil" hehe still a mouthfull tho'.

it looks as though we are going to have to wait for clay to get the .obj file format supported in-game. I tried opening some of the .cob files with Blender and while I was able to open them there is no decent way to import them into sketchup. The come in at the wrong size and with useless facetting. omfg blender sucks so hard i felt my soul disappearing as i used it... the good news is that i think i can extract some of the texture info i need from the .png files included in dropteam's data folder. stay tuned for some textured renderings later today.

aah ok i suspected as much re: size. i will adjust the size of the vehicles accordingly i'll look at that blade and see what would be the best way to make it work hmm i'm surprised about that textures, i would have expected a base camo that gets used as an underlay for the varoius other details that are painted over it. that would seem like the best way to maintain camo consistency across vehicles. I'll see what i can extract from the afv's as they are. hey yurch as far as the names go i like mjolnir for the medium tank but people might have a hard time trying to pronounce it. I think Odin is pretty good though, easy to pronounce, catchy name. I realize it's a little off when you think of the relative power of the gods in the pantheon (odin being the #1 main man which you would think would be the Thor's duty) however i do think the medium tank will be more versatile than the Thor and so may end up getting used more. So I think we should call the medium tank (or light MBT depending on how you see it) Odin. Not sure about the s.p.g. yet......still thinking

well as far as the mortar goes i think it would be overkill for the tank destroyer. it has such a high gun elevation that it seems a shame to waste it and the game has no self-propelled gun to speak of so a dual-use tank-destroyer/ s.p.g would seem to make sense. the HE shells can stay as is i think just requires upping the ammo load from 20/20/10 to 20/20/20 i think and allowing the t.d. to fire in indirect mode with the h.e. shells. as far as the yurch-mobile goes making the sub-glacis (there must be a more accurate name for that bit of steel) part of the gun makes sense as it would then move with it... roger about the raised reactive/active armor (a la chobham) if you want me to stick a 60mm type mortar on the turret i can build it into the rear of the turret, there should be enough space in there... the lumpy thing on the right of the turret is the commander's hatch and vision blocks for when the on-board camera's get shot-out. the lumpy-bit at the front left of the chassis is the hatch and vision block for the driver. i'm not sure how the game deals with elements like those. for example if I add driving lights to the front of the tank will the game treat those as simply a vertical armor face and penetrate through them by-passing the underlying armor plate? Or is there a way to make eye-candy geometry exterior to the main armor plates that won't let an accurate shooter exploit them?

ok here's a final stab at it a lot of the final subtle details will be added via texturing (i.e. some hatches etc) rather than geometry I will add smoke launchers to this as well you're now getting a gun depression of -17.5 degrees and elevation of about 25 degrees and yes that's with a pivot point set back from the apex of the turret geometry (hence the glacis sub-plate that moves with the gun) interestingly enough all this fiddling with gun elevation is making me think that tank destroyer could fill a dual role of direct fire and indirect fire (i.e. self-propelled gun). With an elevation of 45 degrees that afv could shoot over a lot of hills and other obstructions. This would fit with it's role of sitting back at long range and plinking at targets....we could give it an increased HE load with the capability to indirect fire those HE shells. Wouldnt be as powerful as a true mortat carrier but the 120mm HE should work nicely to remove turrets and inf from a distance...any thoughts on that dual role? It would still suck big-time if anyone gets within 2000 meters of it as the whole vehicle would have to turn to bring their weapon to bear meanwhile that 20mm is ripping them a new escape hatch there's also some room adjacent to the gun for the coax let me know if there are any other details you'd like to see on the model and i'll consider whether or not it makes sense to add as geometry or texture map. once i get the obj model for the main 120mm gun and coax from clay i'll drop that in place of mine... i really like the way it looks, very agressive....i'm not looking forward to you killing me with my own creation tho! haha

hmm good suggestion check out these revised images note: per turret previous location gun depression max was 10degress now its 15 degrees the tank destroyer has depression 1o degrees, elevation 40 degrees and traverse of +/- 15 degrees. Both of these figures account for some realistic depth/length for the breach mechanism of the guns

ok here's a first shot at the medium tank (or light mbt) based on the merkava you'll note it's based on the same chassis as the tank destroyer (notice a theme here?) i made a change to the shot-trap on the front glacis that yurch pointed out.....reducing it from about 20cm to about 2cm (i think). even though they both use the same chassis the destroyer should carry more armor as it doesnt have the extra weight of the turret and mechanism to deal with so it should retain an advantage when deployed correctly. next is to add a dozer blade to the destroyer....this just makes so much sense to me i have to add it when i get relative gross dimensions on existing afv's from clay i'll tweak the some more as i suspect that the afv's in dropteam are a *little* over-sized by comparison. the height of the medium tank is 2.4 meters and the destroyer is 1.9 meters which seems about right for them compared to current afv's. note: the legs of drive in the medium tank poke through the bottom of the chassis only because he's a mannquin, a real bloke would be sitting with his legs forward like a race-car driver [ August 16, 2006, 03:33 PM: Message edited by: adzling ]

huh?

rgr all that yurch, yeah the thore sides suck, strafing them with a 20mm is pretty deadly. I'm sure i can get some really nice sloping going on the challenge is to make the internal components relative size reasonable enough as in physical terms they are the only constraints on internal volume. power output/ weight power ratio would be helpful info to determine those factors. in their absence we'll have to settle with tweaking the vechicle's size, speed and armor ratings to make it play-balanced. aittam i can't see the mortar launcher....i see the smoke launcher at the front but the 60mm on the mk4 is meant to be able to be reloaded from the interior!!! you have any kind of afv you'd like to see? when i'm done with yurch's light mbt i'll build you one too adz

cool thanks for the input chaps as soon as i get some rough overall dimensions on existing afv's + camo textures (sans baked-in handgrips, hatches et. al) from clay i will adjust the overall size and then we can get on with the rest of the in-game scripting. i can easily do some damage model versions.....right now i think the only damage that is represented by swapped out model is a destroyed turret correct? in this case i would see the area around the gun/ ammo exploding outward leaving a big hole in the side/top of the afv. next up im happy to model you a light MBT per your post yurch.....if you have any visual starting points (i.e. afv like you'd like to see ripped-off) post 'em. I'd also like to do a small tracked carriage that could mount some of the existing small turrets (76mm, 20mm or similar small weapon). i.e. sheridan type thing sans the aluminum armor

hmm that s-tank on wikipedia gives me a few interesting ideas.... considering the limitations of the tank destroyer chassis (i.e. no turret) i wonder if it would be within the realms of game balance to include a fold-up dozer blade on the chassis as the s tank has. It would fit in well with the role of the vehicle as a defensive asset. thoughts clay?

Aittam my thoughts are the rear clamshell doors swing open and the driver/comander seats swivel to let them enter. I don't like the idea of my preciou crew having to clamber on top of the tank to get in and out....while under fire or after they get knocked out... The cupola is placed where it is because it would also function as passive vision blocks (i.e windows) with 360 view in the event that the camera sub-systems fail. haha thanks for the battery info im not really clear on the relative sizes of these thing's in the AFV's as they currently stand. Keep in mind that this AFV is pretty small compared to the other one's in-game. It's about the size of a 76mm paladin chassis as opposed to an appollo. I think anyhoo. hey thanks for the ponter's clay, I'll check out the s-tank and see what's useful. Do you have some over-all dimensions for the various AFV's currently in-game (like height, width, length)? Yurch are you interested in helping me with the scripting/ internal component placement etc. needed to rig the model to make it work in-game? That part isn't very interesting to me, I just like to make perty pictures...Oh and drive them around the battlfield keeling things

as far the armor facings go this can be a bit of problem as some of those armor plates face in two directions (i.e. front AND side). yes that sloping is pretty severe.....somewhere mid-way between the apollo and thor makes sense as there's not a whole lot of room in there for big powerplant. this might also be a good reason to limit it's speed to halfway between a thor and an apollo. but the added armor should be compensate by a lack of turret....it should be fairly easy to get in close and zap it as the once your within 500m or so there's now way this vehicle could turn fast enough to track the target......so it's all about keeping your foe at a distance.....and being able to survive at that distance.... i'm not to worried about the flat armor between the top and bottom hull wedges. There needs to be some balance and if someone gets close enough to target that strip of flat armor they're probably better off driving around the back or side and shooting it up from there. pity about the sub-systems being defined as spheres only as that is a little sub optimal for squarish afv's.... yeah and the gun will need some traverse side to side...something like 15 degrees left/right and as much up/down as a thor would make sense. play balance with a vehicle like this will be little tricky as it will require looking at the trade-offs between mobility, protection & firepower. It's effective firepower will be greatl reduced without the turret of course....and this would be magnified the closer you are to your enemy...

oh that's a 120mm cannon it mounts the green is the engine and the orangey bit is the battery. i don't know if clay has established a power/weight ratio but if so i can tune the size of the interior components to match. + I want to add a magazine for the ammo but i'm not sure how big that stuff is and i don't even know if the magazine is an interior component in dropteam!!! clay? As i go forward im creating these models in sketchup and exporting... which is nice becuase it means i can very easily build up a library of components (wheels, 14mm mg, cupola, 120mm gun, crew, smoke launchers, etc). At some point I will post these to some place where interested folks can d/l them. sketchup is a pretty good tool for this as there's a free version of it available from google. + if you have the pro version (as i do) then you can use actual real topography from all over earth (and soon the moon!) to build 3d topo maps.....can't wait to get those in-game. Hey clay you want some REAL topo maps of Europe for the upcoming ww2 add-on? I'd be happy to build a few for you

hey here's the work so far on the tank destroyer i've been blathering about. no turret but what the hey....it IS a tank destroyer not a tank! make 'em cheap and make 'em plenty.... as Stalin said "quantity has a quality all of it's own" there's a couple of views + an xray view showing crew, battery and engine location note it has a commander operated 14mm mg in a remote cupola mount (for those pesky inf) it's kinda based off the israeli merkava in that the engine is placed up front to maximize crew surivability with the doors at the rear for easy crew exit. + the battery is slung as low as possible to stop yurch blasting it out all the time. the main idea with this vehicle is to reduce silouhette as much as possible while sloping those forward facing glacis plates as much as possible (im assuming the game engine realistically handles relative armor thickness). I've tried to avoid shot-traps as much as possible hence the rather unorthodox geometry but hey if it keeps the crew alive an extra 10 minutes it's worth it! I'm not sure how the game models armor thickness.......anyone shed some light here? Is it by geometry (i.e. polygon y & polygon x) or is it simply by facing (front/left/right etc)? It would be a pity if the game simply modelled based on facing as a vehicle with radical sloping like this would be pretty handicapped by it (notice how small that flat top armor area is?). as it is the vehicle is under 2 meters tall while retaining .33 meters of ground clearance (typical for many AFV's). I'd see this vehicle with similar armor thickness (or possibly even slightly superior) to a thor with vastly improved sloping resulting in a much higher survivability from the front and sides when on level ground. It would be pretty vulnerable to top shots as it moves around slopes but still superior to the completely flat top of the thor chassis. The rear is squared off to reduce the vehicle's profile but has the detrimental effect of facilitating quick rear kills...oh well can't have everything. [ August 15, 2006, 05:58 PM: Message edited by: adzling ]