Having ships change shape, for example based on their AI status could be quite cool. Get effects like the X-wing opening its wings to attack, or like the F14 changing geometry at a certain speed. although its hard to see why you would do that in space/vacuum.
Do any ships (in fact even the x-wing) in oolite do this? I dont remember seeing it, and I am not sure if its currently possible?
Looks very Cool! I like how fragile it makes the ship seem, especially if the cockpit bubble was made of glass and you could see the pilot sitting inside similar to Scarecrow's 'Seraphim' model! you'd basically be sitting in something like a hangglider strapped to the front of a huge rocket
Some basic animation is possible, but nothing keyframeable, I'm not sure if a ships altitude property is bindable to a shader, but if it is you could model all the unfolding panels as seperate subentities and give them a vertex shader that rotates them depending on the ships current altitude value, that way they could gradually unfurl as they move into the planet atmosphere, add some heat glow and it would look pretty cool i reckon.
Last edited by Griff on Tue Feb 10, 2009 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
I'm not sure if a ships altitude property is bindable to a shader, but if it is you could model all the unfolding panels as seperate subentities and give them a vertex shader that rotates them depending on the ships current altitude value, that way they could gradually unfurl as they move into the planet atmosphere, add some heat glow and it would look pretty cool i reckon.
If only someone really competent could be motivated to produce a prototype of that ...
I have a vertex shader already written that rotates polygons based on engine power, i was going to make some of the vents on the ships animate depending of how fast the ship is moving, i might go back to it - it was a bit fiddly, everything had to be subentities and the rotation pivot had to be a 0,0,0 in the model and then shifted back into place in the shader, a bit of a pain to sort out