Spring RTS Engine

So, I picked up wings3d and made this model.





It has 188 polygons, is that too many? too few?

Anyways, I just wanted to post it here and get some feedback. Now I just have to figure out how to add color and export it to spring format...

Is it a missile or a plane or..?

its a sub! the small hole on the front is the torpedo tube, and the big hole on the back is the engine.

dont bother with texturing or exporting yet, make more models

Nice work! It's an alright first model.

Two things I'd recommend:
1: Try to get away from primitives. Try to use complex shapes, as opposed to cubes, spheres, cylinders, and pyramids. Primitives are good sometimes, but try to incorporate them into a bigger design, as opposed to basing your design around that simple shape. interesting shapes are nice to look at. for example,
vs

The second one is a lot more complex, and consequently looks a lot cooler.




2: Planning out a design beforehand might help you out. Try and look at how and why parts of your model are shaped as they are.

There are exceptions to both of these, and they're nothing compared to the best advice I can give you: Practice. The more stuff you make, the more you'll improve, and you'll eventually get comfortable and find your own style. Just keep at it.



As for texturing and exporting to Spring's S3O format, check out the wiki and the tutorials subforum for some helpful guides, and the people in #moddev on the lobby are always glad to help (ask nicely, though ).

Good luck, and happy modeling!

the front part reminds me on a tunnel creating machine.

MidKnight wrote: 2: Planning out a design beforehand might help you out. Try and look at how and why parts of your model are shaped as they are.

There are exceptions to both of these, and they're nothing compared to the best advice I can give you: Practice. The more stuff you make, the more you'll improve, and you'll eventually get comfortable and find your own style. Just keep at it.

I can totally vouch for that. The first like 20 or so models I made for Conflict Terra were doodled and drawn out on paper first, at least to some degree, before I actually took it into Wings. And it really shows.

Opening up Wings and just creating whatever comes to your mind can work sometimes, but for me at least, it rarely yields awesome results.

That said, kudos on your first model. My first model in Wings was a horribly deformed cube that made me vow to never touch 3D modeling again... needless to say, that wasn't the case

Thanks for the advice! I made it a simple(ish) cylinder because that's how real submarines are. I'll try to make a hovercraft next, or maybe a tank.

Well, it started as a hover, but my next model is a gunship. I call it the Emperor, because it's inspired by Supreme Commander's Czar experimental gunship:


Here is my model:

its good to start with modelling for the spring community and also to get to know the programms, but in further steps you should look at some modells of mr.d (core vehicles remakes) and cremus (arm buildings), you could import them to wings. so you could see how to add details. also think about the textures - e.g. this hover ship from SC is really simple but has a good texture

How do I get them in wings? Is there somewhere I can just download those models in .wings format?

cremuss' models are in blender, so you're unlikely to have any hair left when theyre finally in wings.

Converting a model to .obj is no problem in Blender, and I'm sure Wings can import that.

u can always open models in upspring and convert them into obj if u got any problems

last time i checked cremusses models i could import them (model: anni)

Wombat wrote:u can always open models in upspring and convert them into obj if u got any problems

enjoy your broken mess

blender to wings works fine, same the other way around. keep in mind that you got to redo the smoothing groups/edge hardness either way

Im on linux, but apparently upspring only works on windoze.... *gulp*

I wouldn't exactly say it works on windows either.

upspring works fine for me in wine