Spring RTS Engine

Pre-shading.

Do it!



Spring doesn't like shading very much and the more you do, the better it'll look. Your barrels are not preshaded (and should probably look smoother.) Those triangular prisms, coming off the air pads' sides need to have shadows under them. The sides of your model need to be darkened. Guess on this by looking at how straight it is with the y facing. If it's flat, then it's going to be receiving more light. If it's sideways, it'll receive less light.

If the main barrels are static, do some drop shadows for them. The shadows should be pretty weak because they may throw shadows on a map with powerful lighting.

Also, underneath the main barrels, that triangular intrusion should be darkened on it's sides and edges. Most of the time, an enclosed space like that will not receive much lighting.

Reflections can also be textured. My tank's skirts have a hint of grass green which could either be wear and dirt or a reflection of it's surroundings.

Your treads could use some work, as well. Please don't render things with shadows. It gives us a false look at what your texture may have on it.

Your radar needs transparency and a wire mesh look or a new texture or design.

The white on the front is... not supposed to be there. It'd be nice to have the paint peel off to reveal metal or something, rather than such a bright color.

Hope I was helpful.

cremmus, you using photoshop or gimp?

@ Hoi > Gimp

@ Snipawolf : Thanks a lot !
I'll take care of all the instructions you give me :)

@ Warlod : Ok about white edges

nah, keep the "lines", explicit scratches are ugly and make your model messy

TRO, you have the same issue on your model

It doesn't have to be scratches if you're after something pristine, though I don't think that makes sense in the TA universe - but either way you look at it, metal does not reflect equally across it's surface, it is dappled, and the highlights need to reflect that. Painting vertices is an easy trap to fall into, because it makes things look cool by highlighting the edges of the model - but it is inferior to emphasizing edges using a realistic reflection/highlight method. Also, his emphasized edges do not follow lighting.

these units are at least the size of a car, scratches will not be able to show up as discrete marks in such scale. I think lighter colour reflects scratches well and also emphasizes edges

I don't think that is correct, scratches are easily visible at that size.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uncommon/4 ... 9/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndavis0/209920843/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smartee_ma ... 4/sizes/l/
http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?i ... 7880b8fa4b
http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?i ... 7880b8fa4b

Irrespective of whether they are truly realistic or not, you are still making an artistic piece which is a reflection of reality, not pure reality - for two armies that have been fighting for millenia (or any amount of time, really), some wear is necessary, otherwise the units will appear unreal, and you would be failing in your role as an artist to create atmosphere within the game.

A cursory look at most games will show highly scratched and worn textures; even in movies it is the same:
http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images ... ge_pic.jpg

Scratches are added for coolness, not realism. TA's units aren't scratchable since they're made of monomolecular armor, you'd probably need something harder than diamond to scratch that.

The edge highlighting makes it look like it has its colors inverted.

I reckon future-plasma could scratch future-armour.

They're added for both

I imagine TA as a grungy futuristic world, not a pristine one. As for monomolecular armour, perhaps they have a sacrificial outer coating to prevent rust etc, or perhaps it's just the paint has peeled. That's if you bother with an in-universe answer. The fact of the matter is that pristine units makes for very lifeless art.

Crayfish wrote:I reckon future-plasma could scratch future-armour.

more like burn or melt, no?

BaNa wrote:

Crayfish wrote:I reckon future-plasma could scratch future-armour.

more like burn or melt, no?

That would look cool too :)

Decided to have a Play around in Wings.

So here is the Arm Radar.
Lets see if I can remember how to show pictures.



4 Objects, 190 Faces, 422 edges, 250 vertices.

Im sure there is tons of poor modding practices. So what do you guys think.

There's clipping

You made a cylinder, and then made a cube with 6 sides (lol) then you putted it on the cylinder that results in clipping which is bad, if you want something like that, get a cylinder, select the edges in the middle then in edge mode press '3' (cuts in 2 verts a edge) then c (connect) select the mid faces you just made and use extrude, you might have holes you want to fill between the extrudes, select the 2 faces where the hole starts and use bridge to bridge them.

Agreed on the clipping: I know the intersecting cylinders bit is a pretty cool idea but in practice it's hard to align textures up properly with it and it's rarely noticeable anyway.

Still though, it's clear you've got the gist of a lot of wings' functions - good work! The radar... dishes? (I'm not sure what you're supposed to call them. Wings? Flaps?) They're good. So's the top part: it shows you're not thinking of things in terms of boxes and cylinders. Keep it up!

you'll get better, examples:



lol I made this the 1th day I got wings

later:


after that:

Guessmyname wrote:it shows you're not thinking of things in terms of boxes and cylinders. Keep it up!

But, I like boxes and cylinders

Thanks for the critique and advice. I'll go back and have another crack at it. Good to weed out the bad habits now.

Edit:


4 objects, 248 faces, 518 edges, 282 vertices.
What is the size like?

A few alterations which I think make it look better. Thanks again for all the helpful input.
The two Radar "Dishes" coming out of the side of the top part are just hand aligned. Is there anyway to make them spot on or is it just up to my eye?

Edit Again:

Radar Jammer


4 objects, 252 faces, 520 edges, 280 vertices.

Anything I've done wrong? Please let me know and after that what do you guys think of the models themselves?

Please crop more. I'd rather not go and right click -> view image/picture, but if I don't it makes all the single pixel lines disappear :\