mshihrer

Cronos, do you post at all on the DBpro forums? I'm Visigoth over there. There is a model archive that if you want to, you can add your models to for others to use. I try to put stuff up there as I finish it. I put the Fokker up. Be cool to have some more models. Keep up the good work. edit: doh, just read you are selling in the store. my bad.

yeah, but, I'd pay the 49.00 bucks for the Dark Game Studio Bonanza, if you are thinking about getting into Dark Basic Dark Basic Pro Bonanza No ads, and, you get Dark Physics, Dark AI, Dark Lights, Dark Shader, and a bunch more. Pretty much EVERYTHING you could possibly need. In fact, I might buy it just for Dark AI and Dark Physics. Forget the free version, get this! I paid 89.00 just for Dark Basic, and, another 29.00 for Dark Lights. Dark Physics by itself is like 99.00. This is the way to go, right here.

haha! I was expecting Apollo 13 or something. Fantastic!

oh, this is just too cool.

awesome! Just totally awesome!

yes, my skysphere sucks. I just cropped out a treeline and pasted it real quick on a sky. No alpha maps are being used as I am using .png at the moment, but will be converting them to .dds. Both formats have built in transparencey, so no need for alpha maps. I've got some other images and am going to make a better texture. Its basically just for sizing and scale and such right now. I'm working on the dashboard now. The guages will actually be 3d objects that work. I have written some code that simulates an engine and transmission, its pretty cool. I still need to add physics, but, for basic accelleration, decelleration and gear changes, it works great. When its all tied together, you'll be able to have different views, like driver view, or chase view, or just nose to the ground. Its just repositioning the camera. Alot of work left to do, will post more when I have something postworthy.

haven't tried it, but I will. Seems I tried .mdl before, and UU wouldn't even open it, but, I'll try again. But I don't think I need to worry. Here is a screen grab of real time with the racetrack. Without the car model my FPS fluctuates, 420-480, with car, 399 - 480. Very small hit, very small, and I just added 16 poly per patch wheels, too. Track is still very much a work in progress, mostly just getting the workflow down. edit: you know, I just thought of something. If I had 2 polys per patch, it might be perfect. Maybe the answer is MORE splines, in certain areas, and, just 1 poly per patch export. oops, actually you told me this already, kind of...I just spaced out on it "You should be able to keep the poly count really really low. If you reduce the AM visual smooth to it's minium then you would be able to get an idea how the base poly export would be without any subdivisions. Low poly work is really tough because it is 90% good smooth angles and textures to make up the difference."

The variable export option has the most polys. Strange, I know, but it adds alot more polys. Here is the 1 poly per patch export. Still a usable model, but, a little to blocky for me. The second image I applied a mesh smooth faces to the red areas, and as you can see, it doesn't round out the wheelwells. So, I think the 4 poly per patch will have to do. Oh, and, BTW, I have UU3d ver 2.0. It doesn't appear to have the dissolve function, unless I can't find it, I'll keep looking, but I think this might be a 3.0 feature?

I did some more work. Got rid of all the 5 point polys. Changed the back. Had to sacrifice the one hole in the front airdam, but I can just use a decal here. Also, had to add some lines at the wheelwells, when I low poly exported they lost their roundness. Even if I tried meshsmooth in UU, I couldn't get round. Here are some shots in UU, with a quick texture map. This is 4 polys per patch. Thanks for your tips, pixelplucker, its helping me alot!

thanks. I just changed the back end, I didn't like it, also, I don't think I like 5 point patches. Sometimes they do ok, but, I just found a big dent in the front fenders. So, gotta fix that. I suppose I could just pull the vert out in UU or Milkshape or something.

yeah, actually, I did a 4 poly per patch export, knocked it down to 900 tris, and, still looked good. I made a quick texture map for it, and, it will be MORE than acceptable as a car model in my game. I'm pretty happy with the results, and also how fast I can knock these out. With some more practice, I bet I can get it down to 2 or 3 hours. About a day right now(I know, still learning though). I'm doing all the UV's in UU. Its fast and easy when you are working with quads. I just broke it down by side, top, trunk, etc. Works great. Anyway, here is the NEW one, a complete redo. I think I got the front better, back is a little different, might change it some later, but, all in all, I like it. Going to export it now and work on a texture, more screenshots later. Thanks for your tips.

edit: Is it possible to just upload the .prj file and other users can load it up? Or, do I have to include the actual model in .mdl as well? edit: sorry, meant to edit my other post. Anyway, thanks pixelpucker. I'll try the low poly export and selectively increase polys from there, see how it works. As for DB and polys, polys don't really seem to be the issue, number of objects does. A low poly single mesh runs just as fast as a high poly single mesh, so, if I keep everything under 10k, I'm good. And DBPro does have LOD capabilites. Thanks for your comments.

here is what the model looks like in Ultimate Unwrap. At this point, with 16 polys per patch, it is 1800 polys, 3600 triangles, which is not too bad. If I can keep the whole thing under 10,000 tris, I can do it all in one mesh.

Hello All, This is my first attempt at a car model. It's more a study to see if I can model low poly vehicles quickly for use in real time simulations in Dark Basic Pro. I've got a good workflow going converting from A:M to .X, by way of exporting as an .obj, then opening and texturing in Ultimate Unwrap, and using UU's .x exporter. This model is "loosley" based on the RX-7, and, I didn't quite get all the lines, but, I just want to know if I'm heading in the right direction. Its just the body now, all in one piece. I'm not trying to get every little detail, because for realtime it would be just too many polys. Mostly, it would be nice to get the basic shapes of cars so it is obvious what kind of car it is. I'm working on another version of this from a different set of blueprints. Also, not one 3 point patch anywhere, but, had to use a few 5 point patches. I think with some better thought of the splines it might be possible to eliminate those as well.

wow, this helps a bunch. I didn't even know cameras had their own background color. thank you.