tank destroyer

[yurch]

The Mjolnir is actually fairly small, not sure if it's the most believable chassis for that sort of thing.

I do think an asymmetric equipment game is interesting, and that was my original intent behind some of these designs.

I'm not sure about that asymmetric. Might piss some players off... we do only have one server of 'em.

[adzling]

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 ]

[konstantine]

This project looks great. It leads me to wonder, though: does the ion ablate differently angled armor at the same rate?

[Marco Bergman]

Here's an indication of the texturing sequence I used on the Dropteam textures. (I still had some of these old textures lurking about.)

If I was lucky, I got one of these:

These are nice because the edges are mostly correct and take only a bit of cleaning up.

About half of the time I got one of these:

(This is the cleaned-up version.)

These are not so much fun, because you have to find the edges yourself, which can be very time-consuming. Involves drawing a line for where you think the edge is, opening the game to look at the model ( I use a scenario with all the vehicles inserted as objects and everything else turned off for faster loading.), then correcting the lines and viewing the model... making sure the edges are tidy really matters.

Finally I end up with one of these:

Garish colours are deliberate, to assist noticing edge imperfections.

Now I fill each facet with my secret-blend base texture, and add shading to each facet.

THE SHADING IS VITAL. Sure, the game engine provides some, but preshading the faces is essential to give a proper 3D look. Shade the faces as if the light source is from above the front of the vehicle.

After shading, I go through and highlight all the edges where light would fall - a quick spray with the highlight tool.

Then it is time to put in all the detail. Most of the faces are stretched in some way, so I tend to draw or clone a detail, then apply the stretch to suit, then paste it onto the model. Repeat lots of times. Add highlights and shadows continuously.

Finally, I go through and add all the stains, then finish off with a spray of low-opacity black around hatch edges, etc, and along the bottom of the facets.

This is as far as I went. The files were sent to Gordon, who masked any non-grey bits, then applied a layer of his predefined camo. Finally he added a layer with markings (again, usually stretched.)

All my textures were done as a single layer in PSP4. Everything is hand-drawn. This method of working is a bit slow, and not to many people's taste. I'd suggest cloning and pasting from the existing textures as the best way for most people.

The existing grey textures are available for a while here:

http://www.captskidd.com/dropteam/NewTex_grey.zip

[yurch]

Originally posted by konstantine:

It leads me to wonder, though: does the ion ablate differently angled armor at the same rate?

It does, I think. Therefore, the ion will probably be a bit of a weakness for this unit.

[ August 20, 2006, 08:39 AM: Message edited by: yurch ]

[adzling]

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

[adzling]

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.

[B0nes]

Will the Nemisis tank destroyer have a bigger gun? In WW2 the Germans removed the turret on tanks so they could install a larger gun rather than to improve armour protection or sloping.

e.g. the Panther tank couldn't be upgunned to take the 88mm so they got rid of the turret and hey presto the Jagdpanther.

I'm thinking a 150mm gun. Sights optimised for long range zoom at the expense of short.

If it's too much trouble to design a new gun then stick an ATGM launcher on it with the 120mm. Maybe just 2 to 4 missiles.

What do you think?

[aittam]

ATGM+120mm is a bit of an overkill don't you think?

[B0nes]

Well with just 2 reloads...

The TD probably needs a bigger gun if it's to justify it's turretless design imho. The Apollo is pretty small and it already carries the biggest gun in the game. With a turret.

[aittam]

i'd rather seen developed rockets either for artillery pourposes and for a kinetic weapon for infantry and why not as secondary on a TD

[adzling]

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...

[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

[yurch]

Clay, can I get that polygon->XML deal?

Addy is yurch (at) theonlinegaming (dot) com

[konstantine]

Originally posted by B0nes:

Well with just 2 reloads...

The TD probably needs a bigger gun if it's to justify it's turretless design imho. The Apollo is pretty small and it already carries the biggest gun in the game. With a turret.

I agree, this is a good idea. A turretless 150mm or bigger would be cool, something that is a guaranteed one-shot kill against a Thor unless it hits the turret front. I'm guessing good frontal armor, long reload times, not too slow though (would need to shoot and scoot a lot). Someone build this ASAP please.

[adzling]

ok here's a couple jpgs showing the comparative sizes of the IFV, Light Tank, Medium Tank and Heavy Tank chassis.

One of the features that will distinguish the Mjolnir from the Thor (besides armor and speed) is the the coax (14mm vs. the thor's 20mm) + ammo load-out (mjolnir will carry 20/20/10 vs. the thor's new improved load-out of 30/30/10).

I am still working on the texture maps (and yurch is playing with the scripting needed to get the mjolnir in-game) so still a ways off...

[Marco Bergman]

Originally posted by adzling:

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.

Two things: you need a higher-contrast mask on the camo layer to preserve the details, and the camo layer is fairly highly saturated to allow for the fading effect of the transparent overlay.

Need to look at home tonight to see where I put my instruction sheet, for the actual settings.

[ClaytoniousRex]

can I get that polygon->XML deal?

You can get it here. You need to have the Dot Net Framework 1.1 installed for this to run. There are 6 steps to using this tool:

</font>

• Simplify your model to only those faces that are supposed to count for penetration. For example, if you have unimportant flair elements on the model like the rim of a hatch sticking out or an antenna, etc., remove those from your model. You want the "core" shape that actually counts for this. Maybe there's nothing to do here - just depends on the model.</font>
• Flatten any transforms that you can. Don't risk confusing the utility with scaling and rotations - just flatten everything to identity in your model. If you're unsure how to achieve this with your modelling program, one sure-fire way to do it is to first save your model out to a very simple format which doesn't support any transforms such as .dxf, then load it back in. Now all transforms are definitely gone!</font>
• Mark every polygon in the model as either front, left, right, top, bottom, or rear. You do this by assigning a texture named Front to those faces that should count as front armor (it can be any format - Front.bmp, Front.png, Front.jpg, etc.). Ditto for Left, Right, Top, Bottom, and Rear. An easy way to do this is to assign your Front texture to the whole model and then go in and paint those faces that are something else. This way there's no risk of forgetting to include any faces (and it saves some work).</font>
• Save an ASCII version of your cob file. I don't know if Blender supports this or not so let me know if not.</font>
• Run CobDump and point it at your ASCII cob file.</font>

It will create an output file with the same filename as your input file but with a new extension of ".out". This new file is the XML for the collision triangles. Paste them into your unit's .physicalobjectgroup file.

This is a dumpy little tool (no pun intended). For some time we've been looking at allowing you to simply specify a model (.obj, .cob) etc. in your .physicalobjectgroup instead of listing out collision triangles. So, for example, you could just make a copy of your actual model, remove any "extra" fluff, paint the faces as front, rear, etc., and then in your .physicalobjectgroup just refer to that model. DropTeam would load the collision triangles literally from this model. For example, if you have MjolnirChassis.obj, you could create MjolnirCollision.obj with its faces painted, and in your .physicalobjectgroup you would only need to say:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"><CollisionModel>MjolnirCollision.obj</CollisionModel></pre>

[Gen. Lee Annoying]

HELL YA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[adzling]

yeah clay that would be great, it simplify yurch's work on getting the models into the game enormously....

I have revamped the models so that the "flair" are separate components wthin skecthup which allows me to turn them on and off for export very easily.

[ClaytoniousRex]

OK, the "CollisionModel" thing I described above is now working in 1.1.4. If you haven't already made things work with CobDump then you might prefer to wait for 1.1.4 and get collision triangles "the easy way" instead.

[adzling]

cool this will make things *much* easier clay.

From your post it seems you just paint all the faces that are *front* the same color.

How does Dropteam recognise the colors that correspond to front/side etc.?

Are they preset color values (i.e. "blue" is front, "red" is left)?

I need to understand a little more about the discreet models needed.

Currently I have my models broken up into:

chassis (including wheels and tracks)- center of x/y on origin

turret- center of rotation on x/y

main gun (including coax and mantle if present)- center of pivot point on x/y

my question: how does the game know where to place the turret on the chassis if the origin of the chassis and turret differ?

Same goes for the main gun assembly...

Can you specify such things as speed of turret rotation, max elevation/depression?

I noticed that there are "physical object groups" called out in the dropteam data folder.

I presume these are something that notes that a mojlnir is composed of a turret, chassis and gun and the files are called x,y,z.

What generates this file (or is it a simple text file)?

thnx

[tankibanki]

The x,y,z coordinates of the gun (and I presume of the turret as well) are in the object XML file.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Yes, these are simple text files (XML files) and they are what Yurch has already put together for you. Open one of these files in a simple text editor and you will see that they're largely self-explanatory. They not only say that a Mjolnir is composed of this chassis with that turret and that gun, but they also describe the spatial relationship between these separate objects (where each object is mounted on its parent and what kind of joint links the two, including optional joint limites, etc.)

For the collision models, you need a separate collision model for each facing. So first create your "non flair" mesh of the complete vehicle. Then delete all faces that aren't considered FRONT and save that as MjolnirCollisionFront.obj or something. Then go back to the original and delete all faces that aren't considered BACK and save that as MjolnirCollisionBack.obj. Do this for each of the 6 facings. In the end, you need 6 collision models, each one containing the 3D faces for one of the 6 directions.

Since these 6 collision models will be loaded at runtime to read in the collision triangles, please do the end users a favor - make your collision models untextured and with a simple, flat material color. No need to wasre resources loading a textured model that the user will never see.

[adzling]

ok so here's a question for you Clay;

some faces obviously face in two (or more) directions at the same time.

Does this mean that they should be included in the multiple collision models?

For example a sloped face that faces both front, left and top should be included in all 3 collision models?

thanks!