OK I'm playing around with a related series of ships the "scout" ship of which in wings look like this :- (please ignore the messy bits still very early days)
When I render it with opengl in wings it looks like this :-
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Does the wings opengl render give a realistic impression of how a ship will look ingame? specifically the "roundedness" etc. It would be nice to know as in order to get any ships converted from obj to dat I have to go through a process of giving the files to a guy at work who can barely switch on a computer, letting him take it to his mums mac and then trying to follow my instructions to get them converted...
Id rather do a whole series of ships at once rather than testing every ship, but need some idea of how a finished ship will look in game whilst im designing it...
Not sure the ships look very "elitey" but I like the idea of swooping circular eqipment sections, and "pod" cabins
Actually the rough idea came from a range of sources, the tie fighter, the klingon bird of prey and a kirathi??? ship from wing comander. all kind of rolled into one to come up with a family of ships with familiar design elements.
So far Ive got a scout, a heavy fighter and a small \ med trader.
Does the wings opengl render give a realistic impression of how a ship will look ingame?
No, it does not. Wings is a subdivision surface modeller; it is intended for modelling smooth objects by approximating them with a mesh. You can see how the outline of your ship has been changed where more polygons have been added.
You can get a better approximation of the in-game appearance by triangulating (face selection mode, Select-Select All Faces, right click->Tesselate->Triangulate) and making all edges hard (edge selection mode, Select->Select All Edges, right click->Hardness->Hard). However, edge hardness also affects UV map layout, so until you finalize the textures it’s best to use hard edges to define cuts in the UV map.
So to get more "rounded" objects I need to increase the "sections" and "slices" when creating the shapes? which will increase poly count and have some impact on performance?
So to get more "rounded" objects I need to increase the "sections" and "slices" when creating the shapes? which will increase poly count and have some impact on performance?
Yes. You can’t have more rounded objects without increasing polygon count.
I need a mac to be able to be able to convert models regularly so I can test out performance on pc's ...
Dont know what sort of rigs the "average" oolite player is using. No good benchmarking on my home rigs as they are all pretty high end (1xe8400 w4870 1xe8400 w8800gtx 1xe6600 w8800gtx.
My work rig which Im doing all the actualy "work" on has a 7600gt card so would that be a realistic level to aim for or should I be looking for performance effects on an old 5200fx or something?
You can use python to convert on the PC. One of the model builders should be able to explain it. Try a search of the boards, I'm pretty sure there's a thread explaining how to convert on the PC.
OXPS : The Assassins Guild, Asteroid Storm, The Bank of the Black Monks, Random Hits, The Galactic Almanac, Renegade Pirates can be downloaded from the Elite Wiki here.
re: making objects appear more rounded, you could try using the the 'smooth' option in the shipdata .plist, it gets oolite to recalculate the lighting on the model a bit differently than normal, works great on more 'organic' shapes like asteroids, but also looks cool on sphere's, cylinders etc. I've been trying to find the tutorial thread for smoothing objects but it might have fallen off the end of the forum, i've got it saved on my home pc's HDD so i can paste it up here later this evening.
smooth
Determines if the model will use glLightModel(GL_FLAT) or glLightModel(GL_SMOOTH).
If true, then lighting effects will be interpolated across the polygons of the model, giving a more 'rounded' effect.
Asteroids, Boulders and Splinters use this effect as do some other models.
re: making objects appear more rounded, you could try using the the 'smooth' option in the shipdata .plist, it gets oolite to recalculate the lighting on the model a bit differently than normal, works great on more 'organic' shapes like asteroids, but also looks cool on sphere's, cylinders etc. I've been trying to find the tutorial thread for smoothing objects but it might have fallen off the end of the forum, i've got it saved on my home pc's HDD so i can paste it up here later this evening.
smooth
Determines if the model will use glLightModel(GL_FLAT) or glLightModel(GL_SMOOTH).
If true, then lighting effects will be interpolated across the polygons of the model, giving a more 'rounded' effect.
Asteroids, Boulders and Splinters use this effect as do some other models.
ah so I can do the conversion on the pc if I get hold of python first? that would be good news, Ive actually been looking at the prices of macs here just to be able to convert files...
Also with smoothing you have to be very carefull, at some 90 and above degree bends you might not want it to smooth, while oolite offers no way of setting smooth groups.
The best way is to break these "groups" into seperate Sub-entities the Scarlett "shuttle" in the keelback thread is a perfect example of how to avoid this...
My goodness I have a .dat , no mac required. Now to get this thing flying...
These links are coming usefull...
Short term Im just going to use the cobra plists, just to get this thing airborn, longer term I will probably use slight modifications from adder and krait values to position bits where necesary...
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...
, no mac required. Now to get this thing flying...
its my first ship and its flying 
