Vorlon Light Cruiser

@Timmaigh

The red marked parts are bad, because they do overlap. The one marked yellow is not that bad, but not good either because it does not overlay perfectly. The other parts overlay perfectly and are good for AO

As you guessed sins has no ingame Ambient Occlusion. Therefore we have only the option to bake AO into the texture using a professional 3D program (I guess blender could do this to). To make use of such a process, the parts that are symmetrical have to be overlayed on the UV pixel perfect and need to be oriented that the AO selfshadow is on the same spot when two pieces use up the same space on the UV.

Example, look at the UV above, then at your texture below

Then look at the AO map I can bake

and now at the combined texture

Using that texture for the model would result in this:

Notice all the improper Black spots? Thats where pieces of the UV overlap that shouldn't. Best example is the black part and line on the vertical wing. If all parts on the UV layout are properly separated and overlayed, the AO looks perfect and the model even more stunning.

As for textureing your models, I could (and I really would want to) but I still have so many other models and things to care about concerning this mod that It would be a great relieve for me if you could do this for us. Still, I appreciate all your models even without texture (but please make the UV)

PS.: If you want to redo the UV on the Vorchan, I will make a proper AO and Light for the texture. I think if you carefully arrange the parts on the UV the texture can be used almost as it is. Otherwise I will take care of the Vorchan UV myself sometime in the future.

Thanks again for helping us with modelling (and UV and textureing) and hope this post helps to understand what I said before.

Have a nice night

Oh, christ on bike... this is pretty bad  

Thanks for the explanation, i get it now. Obviously i did not consider your AO map, when i UV mapped the vorchan. The thing is, i created the map first and then "fit" it onto the model, did not use your way of exporting the UV coordinates map from modelling soft and make texture based on this. Apparently it was a mistake.

 I can re-UV it now, but its going to be helluva lot of work.   I am not even sure, if it is possible with that texture... i will have to look at this, perhaps tomorrow.

BTW that vorlon ship looks brilliant. I  Vorlons. 

Send the texture and model to me if you want and I can try baking your non-optimized uv-map and texture onto a uv-map that will work for AO. My UV-map will be generated though, unless you want to build a standalone uv-map yourself and I can still try baking the texture.

So it is possible to do it, even if the UV parts overlay? How?

PM me your email address please

EDIT: Oh, i got it, i think. You plan to redo the UV using automatic mapping from the ground and then fit it onto my texture, right?

It would seem to me that 1 texture is not enough if you're planning to fit all those bits there without any of them overlapping..

It certainly seems to be the case to me as well, but maybe it is not that bad. Anyway i suspect the most sensible choice will be re-UV it from ground up, rather than meddle with the existing UV coordinates

@Timmaigh and ZombiesRus5

While a generated UV will solve the problem of overlapping polygons, it will not give as much detail to the texture as a handmade uv layout (or can you do generated textures where identical parts overlay on the UV?)

As for fitting all pieces of the UV map onto a single texture, this is no problem as you have many identical pieces which can take the same place on the UV map, as they will receive the same AO information. Just remember to mirror the parts.

I will try to give you an example using your Vorchan in the next days (but might take a bit longer due to illness)

PS.: Vorlon ship by Thoumsin, AO and Lightning map by me

PPS.: UV of parts of the model that are not visible can be indefinitely small on the UV layout, so saving us lots of space

I agree totally, I won't be re-uv mapping the object though. What I'm offering is a temporary solution, plus if someone makes a clean uv-map I can still do the baking process with his original texture. If you want it, it's free. I'll send the files back to Timmaigh and you guys can decide.

Here is the end result with what he has so far.

Original:

Baked with a 2048x2048 texture and generated UV map

Baked with a 1024x1024 texture and generated UV map

Example with an AO applied from my tool (Probably not as good as what you can do but it gives an example).

@ZombieRus5:

I got your files, thank you. Finally i get what you had in mind. It looks good, but somehow on max it does not look so good as on your last screenshot. Need to play around with it bit more.

Anyway it is now up on Tobi to decide, whether this is good enough for him or not. It probably needs to be tried ingame.

@TobiWahn:

I will forward the files to your mail to look at them. I am sorry to hear youre sick, get well soon.

EDIT:

@ZombieRus: Oh, the last pic is NOT, how it should look with the pre-baked AO map, thats how it looks in your software only, right? The second and third pics are with baked AO map... or? Now i am bit confused.

I did not send a texture with AO applied as I figured Tobiwan would want to use his process if the texture map would work for him.

@Timmaigh

Yes, please send me the files. Btw, while chekcing your model I found some inconsistencies (but seems like sins has no problems with them) and started to correct them. If ZombiesRus5 work is good enough, I will postpone redoing the Vorchan texture for a bit because it will take some time to make a custom UV with the corrected Vorchan.

@ZombiasRus5

If you can do the baking of the texture with a clean new UV that would be perfect, but I suspect it won't be possible because in the process I'm correcting a few errors in the mesh which will prevent this I suppose. Thanks for the temporary solution! I will apply AO to it ASAP

Ah that explains everything. I sent Tobi the files. I would say it looks great on the last pic, and suprisingly the quality of the texture does not look to suffer with your texture compared to original texture, as the parts have now less pixels

@Tobi Wahn:

Yes, i remember now, back when i sent it to you for the first time, there were some errors, unwelded vertices or something. And i sent the same model now to ZombieRus. Sorry for that.

this is still in beta stage right?

It still should work as long as the corrected model is still similar in shape to the original textured model. Are you planning on adding new details to the model or just correcting errors?

@ZombiesRus5

Just correcting the model and removing unnecessary polygons.

Your baked texture is perfect for AO (because every polygon has it's own space) but sacrifices lots of detail in the process (because of the same thing). I will try to get a new UV to you this week so you can try to bake the old Texture into the new corrected UV and model. Thanks alot for helping.

@Masterjon911

It's in prealpha right now. Alpha is considered to be feature complete and beta is considered to be almost production ready. So prealpha right now.

Not a problem. If it helps in this case it doesn't really take any extra time since I'm already setup to do the baking process.

I understand what you mean about the textures though and uv-mapping process. I'm looking at some ways to improve my own process but I'm not really into uv-mapping other peoples work.

Too bad

Well, UV mapping is a b*tch
Its awful lot of work if done after the model is finished. It's always easier to start UV mapping before duplicating objects for your model, because you then have to UV a part only once.

After all those years they could already come with something more intuitive and less annyoing...

@Timmaigh

They did, but it will take time for game engines to catch up

http://ptex.us/overview.html

Sorry to ask, but is there any info on what Centauri models are being worked on at the moment?

Or the ships they're planned to have?

I thought i saw some list on what ships the different races were going to have in the final version, but i don't find it anywhere.

Obviously i have no idea, what are Zvezdochets et al working on right now, but for my part there is this little thing with fixing Vorchan AO and on previous site you could see the Centauri Starbase model WIP. As far i know, someone, possibly Zvezdochets built Primus model as well, but i suppose it is not finished yet, as i havent seen any pics since those WIP ones. But maybe i am wrong. After the starbase i might built something else and if that happens, i will probably keep my allegiance to Centauri Republic

Seriously though, i actually have some blueprints for Balvarin Carrier, Sentri Fighter, Kutai and one other centauri ship and they are generally easier to model than curvaceous Whitestars, Minbari or Vorlon models, so ill let the more experienced modelers to take care of those...

@ Hawkwall

Centauri

Cap Ships:
Altarian Destroyer        2150
Vorchan Warship            2160*
Primus Battlecruiser        2195
Octurion Battleship        2202
Dargan Strike Cruiser        2258
Adira Royal Battleship        2269


Frigates:
Kutai Gunship            2134
Morgrath Frigate        2145
Haven Patrol Boat        2150
Corvan Scout            2191
Maximus Frigate            2191
Centurion Attack Cruiser    2202
Sulust Escort Destroyer        2218
Balvarin Carrier        2237
Darkner Fast Attack Frigate    2249
Liati Advanced Cruiser        2265


Fighters:
Razik Light Fighter        2105
Sentri Medium Fighter        2202
Rutarian Strike Fighter        2258

This is the list of planned ships. AFAIK only Timmaigh is working on Centauri models at the moment.