A little Easter egg from MSDS for all Descent fans!!

[[]V[]essenjah]

Happy Easter everyone!!

This is a model that is from a project I have been working on for over a year with MSDS on. All I will say is that MSDS is working on something cool. This model was developed and textured by yours truly and converted utilizing Descentrace's MS3D2ORF converter written in part for this project. Kudos also goes to Capm for hosting this image!!

[[]V[]essenjah]

Looks like I get the nobody cares award.

[fliptw]

easter eggs require effort to find...

[[]V[]essenjah]

The Easter egg is the 2900 polygon fully bump-mapped (can't see it in this render), plus interior cockpit, pilot, double layered engine glow, super detail textured, Pyro your staring at.

Not the cheesy two second eggs I slapped in. (If you can call them that.)

BTW, this model probably took me 3-5 weeks total to develop with nearly every second of free time spent on it.

Not to mention it will include a 2500 poly super-detailed cockpit with vamped HUD graphics to go with it.

[Vindicator]

Not the cheesy two second eggs I slapped in. (If you can call them that.)

Looks like Weebl and Bob after an Easter makeover.

Me want... egg?

[Pun]

I'm sorry, but that is butt ugly.

[Tricord]

BTW, this model probably took me 3-5 weeks total to develop with nearly every second of free time spent on it.

You could have spent that time more usefully. If it takes that long, I doubt your skills are up to whatever you are being so mysterious about. People like Kuman slap that together in like 20 minutes or less. And they're human too

[Dedman]

I'm sorry, but that is butt ugly.

You could have spent that time more usefully. If it takes that long, I doubt your skills are up to whatever you are being so mysterious about. People like Kuman slap that together in like 20 minutes or less. And they're human too

Damn! Feel the love!!

[Capm]

Yea no crap. You guys are lucky we're doing anything at all.

[Hattrick]

Heh,

Tough crowd.

I cant calculate the time it would take me to make that. I can say that me drawing a good stick figure would take as long as it took messenger to make this model.

nice Job dude!
keep at it!

[JMEaT]

Nice job on the model, messenger. A lot better than I could do!

[Duper]

Nice job on the model, messenger. A lot better than I could do!

x2

[CDN_Merlin]

And to think people b***h at me for being honest when it comes to someone elses' stuff. Bunch of hypocrites.

[Tricord]

Hey, it's very nice and all... But next thing we'll be congratulating you for cooking dinner or crossing the street.

[snoopy]

Good job Messenger.

(You see, guys, if you positively reinforce him, he won't become discouraged and quit, then, eventually, he'll get a lot better- but as the saying goes, practice makes perfect- consider this practice...)

I'm sure there some room for improvment on the model... I personally see some things that I would do differently.... but at the same time, I can't do anything nearly that well in the first place... so way to go man.

[Ferno]

You guys remember the GX I made.. took me two weeks from scratch to render.

[[]V[]essenjah]

You are trying to compare an artist with a $4000 program to an artist with a $20 program.


This model was developed using vertice modeling as apposed to the current spline modeling.

Also note that this ship was developed for a game engine that is 5-6 years old.

Building this is akin to building it inside D3Edit.

I can see a few things I would like to change but I can't such as rounding out the edges on the wings.

I made the sides concave as aposed to the original convex look in order to make it look like it had a bit more muscle. I figured the GL would probably look best as a more organic shape.

Kuman also would not BUILD a model like this because he does not do low poly modeling as a apposed to high poly modeling. It is like comparing apples to oranges.

If I had a copy of 3DS Max currently (which I have been trained to use it), it would probably take me no more than 20 minutes to an hour to model it. If I could skin it in Photoshop, maybe a couple of hours. However D3 only allows for 128X128 textures as apposed to the current standard of 1024X1024 32 bit textures.

Keep in mind also that this model was built completely vertice by vertice. If only I had a spline editor. :\ The body was hell to make without such a tool.


Attaching each part of the ship up to combine it into a whole would have been a simple matter of using booleans.

There is also no such thing as square polys as apposed to triangular only polygons used by Milkshape 3D.

The reason James Kuman who I am friends with, can do what he does is because most of the stuff in 3DS Max is automated. This thing I had to draw face by face.

Not to mention instances would have made it far easier being that this model is symmetrical. Thus reducing this model by half and allowing to model both halves at the same time.

I also do not have the use of dynamic geometry. So if I save a mistake, I have to go back and take that mystake out by hand.

Bubbalou expected us to spend no less than 3-4 weeks on a model like this and I spent no less than 3-4 weeks. I would say it came out damn good for a low poly model.

I also had to be wary of the boundaries the Fusion engine contains. You can not go above 3000 polys. The GX was 1500-2500 polys. And if I remember correctly, that took Eagle about a year to finaly release. He was also using 3DS Max, although a lower version than the current.This ship is at least twice as detailed as the GX. Especially if you look at it from all sides.

The textures I could never find myself completely happy with. They are designed exactly according to the dimensions of the original GX, as was this model. Only rounded. I was irritated by the textures, particularly on the guns.

Sure, this model in Max would have taken me, maybe a couple of hours as apposed to the long hours spent on it in Milkshape 3D. But you simply can not go any higher with the fusion engine. This is how the model will appear in-game without glows.

[[]V[]essenjah]

What pisses me off is that I have spent six years learning, researching and trying to master 3D art for in-game models. Nearly every waking hour of my free time was spent on this.

[fliptw]

blender mess.

[woodchip]

Good job Messenger. I tried once to just make a corridor with D3 edit and I was a dismal failure. It takes trying and failing to fully appreciate a job well done. Don't listen to the nay saying toke heads.

[Kyouryuu]

If it takes that long, I doubt your skills are up to whatever you are being so mysterious about. People like Kuman slap that together in like 20 minutes or less.

And people wonder why no one builds stuff for the Descent community anymore.

[Deadmeat]

I haven't a clue as to what you're doing, but I do know, from talking with Stryker and others, that kind of work can be extremely tedious and frustrating. Considering what you had to work with, I find your efforts highly commendable. I like it.

Keep up the good work.

[MD-2389]

If it takes that long, I doubt your skills are up to whatever you are being so mysterious about. People like Kuman slap that together in like 20 minutes or less.

And people wonder why no one builds stuff for the Descent community anymore.

Which is exactly why I quit posting my renders here years ago...

Kevin, if you gave it your all then you get two thumbs up from me.

[Stryker]

You can down it all you want to, Kev's put a LOT of work into this stuff. Let's face it, 99% of you either couldn't make it, or wouldn't spend the "20 minutes" of time you claim this would have taken, for this game. Making this stuff isn't easy, having you guys moan and complain about it simply means that you certainly won't be getting many enthusiastic developers. I only develop stuff for teams and for NuB, because I know that good work will receive an enthusiastic welcome. The general public, as has been pretty clearly shown here, couldn't care less if you spent a week of your life in solid time developing a sweet model; I've seen this over and over again. "Bleh, I could do better. This stinks. You stink." FACE IT, not many people are even willing to develop for D3 anymore, and it is EXACTLY because THIS IS THE TYPE OF RECEPTION YOU GIVE PEOPLE'S WORK.

I spent 3 months working almost every free moment to build a gametype. What's the result? One server hosts it for a week by my request (thanks ESA ). About 6 people try it. No one even bothers. Quite frankly, no one will ever bother modding or making levels for this game--it takes at least a year to learn to make good levels, during which time people are constantly and relentlessly brow-beating you saying "it sucks" "you're a n00b" etc. During 2-3 years of D3 modding, I've met about 8 really helpful people from probably over 100 people who weren't directly working with me that tried my levels. Yes, I counted. The rest simply said "meh, it sucks. bye. gonna play vv. STFU n00b." or some variant of that. Anyone who survives that period of time simply gets ignored, or worse, envied. It's a long, LONG climb to get any ways near the skill messenjah has achieved, and half of you are simply saying "meh, it sucks" without even TRYING to give helpful comments. Don't like it? TELL HIM WHY. It's taken me 2+ years to get very good at modding, simply because people say "it sucks" without telling me HOW TO FIX IT. It doesn't matter if you're a graphics artist or not--just tell them what you think should be done with it.

If you're not gonna be constructive or at least say WHAT is wrong with it, please, don't bother bashing someone's hard work.

[Ferno]

if it takes kuman just 20 minutes to put his work together.. how come it was usually a week between his updates?

simple answer: it takes weeks to do the stuff he does. weeks.

[Top Gun]

I know that I myself, at least, have never even attempted to use a 3D modeling program and, even if I had, have absolutely no creativity with which to craft a model. Excellent work; screw the naysayers.

[Sirius]

Actually, I don't think there are many problems with the model there.

But I suspect very strongly the texturing is doing it injustice. It comes off looking a bit cheap somehow...

Almost like it was done in Descent 2, when most people are making textures specifically for each model these days.

[DCrazy]

Everyone remembers the OG3 fiasco, correct? The one mod a majority of people were excited about turned out to be a major flop due to the lack of the 1.5 patch, Sniper's departure, Deathwinger's location in Tuvalu, my naivete, and Valin's mismanagement. After that, there has never been any enthusiasm shown for anything except maybe some of Solrazor's levels.

I released Elimination 1.5 to almost zero reception. A few true competitors like Ferno and roncli and Gooberman were kinda into it -- roncli even eventually asked me for the source so he could write Team Elimination -- but in all it was the same thing. There are 30 people who play this game and they like what they know.

Now, messenger, as far as your model is concerned, the textures really are awful, especially for the jet intakes. Better textures will make a world of a difference. I can tell there are a LOT of polys in that model, but they're being obscured by stretched textures and lack of specular anything.

[Sirius]

Add to that the fact that when an unofficial 1.5 patch was released, nobody played the game any more. I still haven't gotten to see any more of OG3 than the levels.

[Top Gun]

I've tried to run OG3 under 1.5, but I've received a main.exe error every time I tried. Anyway, if I were to get it running, and if someone had a server up, I'd jump in right away. The same thing goes for any other mod, whether it's Elimination, Duel, Instareap, Pyromania, Fragtag, or Assault. The mods for D3 have always been woefully underplayed, and I could never understand why. They represent some quality work.

[Ferno]

"where did the topic go, George.. where did it go?"

[[]V[]essenjah]

Ok, after feeling miserble all Easter over this (I was hoping it would give me a tad bit of confidence to face the holiday but I pulled it off ok), at least you guys are willing to give some constructive critisism at this point.


Now about the textures, this model was only about my 3rd attempt at texturing for Descent 3 (I actually built it about a year ago). Really for the Pyro-GL there is a very poor ammount of reference to the original model unless you have a way to open and view the original model. If you look at each of the movies, the actual in-game model and the ships shown on the websites, you will see a lot of differences in them. They also used the GX cockpit for the final movie when he was in a GL! Other annoying things were that the engine glows appeared to be different colors depending on the movies. The textures for the guns, I could not figure out for the life of me what they were supposed to look like. :
I'm trying to use a combination between Gimp and Dogwaffle being that I can't afford to buy Photoshop at the time. Hopefully by next year I will be able to acquire a student edition along with Max. Right now every penny is being saved for my move to Utah.

Now, as for textures, yes they do appear distorted. Problem is partially with the way Milkshape 3D functions as a texture editor. I may try something like UV Unwrap down the line though, since I can actually skin with it. Textures are also very limited in what you can do with them. Such as you can not use anything larger than 256X256 and you advised to NEVER use these unless totally necessary, thus you have to use 128X128 or smaller. If I had the ability to go higher, you would see better textures. I do need to get a copy of Photoshop and study some tutorials. Texturing and 2D stuff is my weak spot.

The rear engine intakes are fugly. I actually thought about using an turbine style fan instead but I figured the engine would lose the original shape. The texture was a simple chrome texture that I attempted to try and make look right. By the way, the intake is completely 3D. Now, if this game had environmental mapping or cube mapping, I could easily make that look a lot better. But you need to use bitmaps for that effect to work properly.

As for specular mapping I didn't even bother, being that I would probably have to just set that again in D3 Edit. I actually did use specular mapping on this model but after I nearly lost the model during August I had to completely re-texture it (with the old textures but it was messed up at first). Figured I wouldn't worry about doing it this time around.

Thank you to those who could at least see the good side in this model. I nearly lost all hope and faith in myself tonight.

As for the textures being a tad bit D2-ish. I was actually trying to give this project a Descent 1 and 2 style atmosphere.

I don't develop these models so that I can turn out uber crap. I build them in order to do a good job. I am always willing to take the time to make something better. There were a lot of nights that I would have rather spent playing D3 Multi or Halo or just hanging out with my real life buddies. I also skipped out on spending time with my family at times in order to work on this project. I'm not making money off from this project, I love what I do and it is my dream to become a 3D artist for a game company.

Anyway, I will try to see what I can do to improve the textures.

[Tricord]

I'll give you constructive criticism. It may not be what you wanted to hear, but it's definitely constructive.
I'm harsh on purpose, because I've not only seen this thread you started, but everything else you've posted here in the last couple of years. Through this people get a certain impression of you.

I see you are getting very excited about things. That's good, that's where the motivation comes from. But I have seen other people design for games, and all great designers had one thing in common: they shut up until they deliver.

On one hand, you want to build up some hype and expectation in the community by posting topics like these, which raises the bar even higher for you. On the other hand, we haven't seen anything impressive from you in all this time.

I've been "in" the D4 development team, as an observer. I saw how people like Valin moved a lot of air but accomplished close to nothing. I warned repeatedly for this. Valin was actually drawing plans to build an office building to house his developers in Mexico at some point... in MSpaint.. One shouldn't try to run when one can't walk yet.
Anyway, I'm having a déjà vu here.

Ferno is right, quality modeling and rendering takes time to accomplish. Indeed, even Kuman took his time to finish each image he made. But in my humble opinion, there is a huge difference in quality between what messenger delivers and what Kuman did. I just wanted to state that someone with real skills in the area delivers a picture like the one above, with very little time available. But they never will because they can do much better; and it's the difference in quality between Ku's pictures and the one above that takes the time to accomplish. Not the unfinished "draft" like what we see above.

Add to this what DCrazy mentions. Apart from this forum, there is nobody affiliated with Descent any more. That is nobody on the whole friggin planet! There are some die-hard players still hanging on, but like DCrazy said they're not waiting for something new to show up.

You sound like you have ambition in game designing. Well, for what is definitely not the first time, let me break some things to you:

- Start small and hone your skills in one particular area
- Complete games aren't made by one person in his free time
- Work for yourself, not for the "community"
- Deliver

Also, it helps establishing credibility when you avoid asking out in the open in a forum like this about what the Unreal Engine can or can't do, sounds a bit to me like you a) have no clue what you are talking about or b) are too lazy to find out the answer yourself. You've done this quite a few times before. Are you interested in the Unreal engine? Well then get it and play with it until your questions are answered. It will be so much more instructive than getting a quick answer on a message board like this one.

My bottom line is, get real. If you post a render just to show us a render you've been working on the past few weeks, we're cool! But please don't try to make us believe that this render is part of some huge kickass game you're designing, because then most of us will sigh and shake our heads.

[[]V[]essenjah]

Ok, rather than go over all the points about why what you said made me crack a grin, I'm going to revise this. Making it clear and concise.

[[]V[]essenjah]

First of all, about the Unreal Engine.

I will quote something Capm said to me once.

"that's not even in the same ball game."

I was trying to decide if I was going to buy it. I never said I was planning to build anything. I have no interest in developing anything myself for it at this time. I know my area and programming is not it. I am a 3D artist. I would like to learn a little bit of programming eventually though. But first and formost is 3D art and animation. I am also a story writer. I know and understand my place aboard a design team at this point in time, very well.


As for you bringing up the term game. A GAME and a MOD are two different things. Might try looking it up sometime.

Now, why did your last reply cause me to smile? I was planning to release this ship by Easter in a small mod. I needed to confirm everything first and I needed an extra couple of hours to finish an animation and a couple of textures and give it a test run to make sure it was a-ok. Thus, I did not release anything that was not ready to be released. I was originally planning to release the model on Easter night itself.

I had no intention of causing any sort of hype. The only reason I mentioned a mod at all is because I wished to give credit where credit is due. For all you know, the mod could even be dead at this point. Could have been dead months ago and I was simply mentioning that I developed this around that time period for something involving MSDS. Could be small could be big. Just figured I would pop a quick snapshot and say Happy Easter.

I am sorry if I came off wrong here. The only reason I mentioned a mod existing is because I wanted to give Capm and Descentrace for their contributions to this model/project. They are a pretty good group of guys and fun to work with.

[Mr. Perfect]

I'd definetly like to see it after you've played with the textures some more. When I look past the stangely bumpmapped texture I can see a very detailed model, especialy considering you did it all by hand. The texture on the other hand looks like a flat shade of grey with alien lines deviding patches of bumpyness.

If you compare it to the game's current model, your structure obviously kicks it's ass.

By the way, it might help people identify with the pilot if he had a helmet on. That way everyone wouldn't be forced to be a thin white guys with spiked hair. We could all imagine ourselves(or our enemies) as being under the helmet.

[Top Wop]

Nice job Messenger, keep it up and someday you will be great! Dont listen to the idiots who put you down, they are just that, yet you have to learn do deal with them as no matter what you do and everywhere you go, you can NEVER please everybody and you must always ready to accept criticism, it will be in everything and everywhere you go.

[[]V[]essenjah]

By the way, it might help people identify with the pilot if he had a helmet on. That way everyone wouldn't be forced to be a thin white guys with spiked hair. We could all imagine ourselves(or our enemies) as being under the helmet.

Actually that is not a thin white guy with spiked hair LOL He is really hard to see in the picture I displayed above. You need to get a nice close look. I used the helmet that you see in the D3 intro movie along with the pilot outfit. The problem here was that I couldn't afford to spare more polys on his head and I figured it would be really hard to get a view of him most of the time anyway, other than in cut-scenes. I tried to keep the model as true as possible to the original form. No, I'm not being stereo-typical because the pilot is a whayt boweey. I personally wish MD-1032 would have had a more concealed helmet (just had to show his face didn't they) I modeled his face as close as I could to MD-1032's face but left out some of the detail because you would rarely see it and and I figured some would rather feel like they could think of the pilot as themselves. If only I could set up a folder so that people could stick their own face over the pilots face. :\ Also, the reflective shading in the canopy tends to obscure the view, thus you thinking he has greens spiked hair

At this point, maybe I'll do some experimenting with this model's textures IF I decide to release it.

By the way, the original model textures had less of a bumpy surface. I think that, that is what people are dissaproving of mostly. I'll slap the old textures back on and see what I can do to improve them from there. I think, perhaps I was trying to go overkill with the detail in the texture job. I was trying to make it look tougher by giving it a sort of alien aligator skin look to it.

[Liquid Fire]

My opinion: modelling: looks great. Maybe even a few polys you could get rid of to make it run on slow machines.

texturing: Bad. Just bad. Seriously. The low-poly model in descent looks better just because the textures aren't horrible.

[[]V[]essenjah]

And thus why I will be fixing it.

Really the textures are decent. The biggest problem was that I attempted to use some filters to attempt to make it look a tad bit more detailed. I think I got carried away

Anyway, I'm going to play around with some tutorials. :
I love the support there is out there for PS. Too bad there isn't nearly enough for Gimp.