TCAT 2.0 progress

[phkb]

I've started on refreshing another older OXP. No promises, and certainly no delivery dates! But reskinning ships is kind of fun. Once again, I'm starting a new thread, rather than resurrecting the original.

Anyway, it's been a while since I did one of these, meaning I'm probably a little rusty, so I'd appreciate any feedback.

Here's my first pass on a reskinned Raptor:

[Cholmondely]

Great! And even more so since you claim to enjoy this sort of thing!

What on earth is the white splodge over the front supposed to be?

[phkb]

Apparently that's the cockpit.

[Wildeblood]

Apparently that's the cockpit.

It looks like the escape capsule of an F-111.

[phkb]

This any better?

[cbr]

darker with gradient

[Cholmondely]

2 is better than 1.

3 is better than 2.



A cockpit that massive needs somebody inside it, even if he is a Pink Gin Devotee.

Do all those pink gins influence the flying? And should there not be some minions to act on orders?

[phkb]

Do all those pink gins influence the flying?

No idea. There's a bunch of notices stuck under the wipers, though. Probably means something. Maybe I'll look at them. Or give them to one of the minions.

[Captain Beatnik]

3 looks the best so far imho.

BUT: just how big is this ship? Or better yet: how tall does the pilot have to be to be seen in the cockpit of a ship of this size?

[Cholmondely]

Found this

[phkb]

OK, another try:

[phkb]

So I ran into a problem. One of the goals I set for myself with these 2.0 upgrades is to get any unique ship models looking like they can co-exist alongside the Griff models. I can't model to save my life, but I can reskin stuff with a fair degree of success. If I can put together a new skin, with normal and specular maps, I can at least move the ships a little closer to Griffs spec.

However, one particular model is going to defeat me no matter what I do. It's a Thargoid vessel, called an "Interceptor". Thargoid was clever when he designed this ship. It's broken into three distinct parts: the body, the left engine and the right engine. The engines are fine, and I could work with them easily. But the body is different. Rather than skin the entire ship, he only skinned half, and then the model reverses the skin texture for the mirrored other half.

Does that make sense? The texture file only has one half of the body, and the model just reuses the same texture, but flipped, to skin the other half of the ship.

That works wonderfully when there are no normal maps or specular maps. But things start to look ugly when those extras are applied, because the same rules apply - that is, the normal map gets flipped for half the ship. So what is mapped as a groove on one half becomes a bump on the other and so on.

Anyway, that's a long way to explain that I don't think I can do much to improve the Interceptor as it stands. So I've been playing around with a replacement concept, that I'd appreciate any feedback on. (Cue dramatic orchestral fanfare) I give you, the Thargoid Inter-franken-ceptor:

Spoiler

Why do you think? Will it work as a replacement for the Interceptor?

[Cholmondely]

Seems suitably gruesome to me!

Don't forget that Griff also produced "silverback Thargoids" if you are still looking for textural inspiration.



Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ub-PYD ... T3Xe6/view (silverbacks inside oxp, but with regular Thargoids too)

[DavidKroc]

Found this

Nice find!

I used it to illustrate the size of an average human (1.85m / 6'1) compared to the Sidewinder NG (and vice versa):

[DavidKroc]

darker with gradient

In my opinion, it's the most realistic. When you're flying in space and you're facing the bright sun, you definitely want a very smoky windshield.

And to avoid problems with micro-meteorites, you'll probably also want it to be not too big and very thick.