Meh, I like it, and other things like it in other games, taste is subjective, if you just don't like the style fair enough. I used the NF texture set, which is used for every NF building, as does the OP, If you don't use the NF texture set people complain about it looking out of place with the NF theme, although I would like a better texture set that isn't pink. It's only there as an example of the design approach I use for everything, the point is that you an apply the method to anything, if the OP tries it he will get a different result but it will probably look better than a crappy concept off the wiki. I didn't bother removing the files from dropbox so it's easy to link. I'm trying to do that weird 'helpful' thing I've heard so much about. You can do all of those, but the effect is negligible in empires, you still can't self shadow and on the average empires map the model will be lit solely by bright orange sunlight at a stupid angle, so it's still going to look flat. They do look better on maps with localised lights because they can take the brightness variations quite well (which is why I like making night maps by the way) but how many empires maps actually use those? You could make an example of how the prop would look in a specially built lighting room but again, what's the point? It's never going to look like that in empires because empires maps suck balls. Now if empires used dynamic lights you could add a bunch of lights onto the building (which it would have in real life), and spawn it with them ingame, and it'd look a lot nicer, and you'd see bumpmapping and things because of the close-to-coplanar angle of the lights, but again, on most empires maps it's just a rather lackluster sun lamp pointing from one direction with no shadows. If you want buildings to look better, well self shadowing parallax mapping is helpful I suppose, but it's never really going to look good unless you get a good texture artist and especially until you get global dynamic lighting with self shadows and whatnot. Otherwise you're hacking a lighting system designed to render very small objects to render very big ones with no increase in detail. The dynamic prop lighting model works fine for characters and small props, but it just doesn't work for something the size of a building. The static prop model works better but you can't use that, and because empires players don't place buildings so they are artistically sillhouetted by the unneccesary map floodlamps, they are going to suffer there as well.
Chris's rax has some interesting detail to it. It doesn't look half bad, could definitely work as an nf structure you see on a map. Except for the old textures I think it's mostly the slightly awkward proportions that ruin its looks and especially its silhouette. But then again, proportion and silhouette's are one of the harder things to get right.
chris's would probably look really wierd if he added the base to it that is necessary for all the buildings
Yeah silhouettes are hard, generally you want some sort of sticky out thing on the building that looks distinctive and can be seen from all angles, something like an antenna or a chimney or something that goes on top. That gives you this distinctive shape that contrasts against the background (so it also needs to be a contrasting colour) and becomes the sort of 'this is what this building is' sign. OP if you want a good note on that there's a dev commentary somewhere in TF2 that talks about the character silhouettes. I didn't put one on because people wanted the building short and the BE rax is about as short as you can physically get without being subterranean.
Think it was donmegel but I'm not sure. The buildings are kinda different from the vehicles but the textures are similar to the vehicles, he might have made the textures and not the models.
Better idea, chocolate. Beg for the source to the NF barracks model and then just stomp down the top of it. Oh, and release the result, unlike Chris. That way the only complaint that can be made is that we'll have the exact same barracks as before, just shorter. Thus, the only person who will complain will be mootant.
Yeah they don't work too well ingame. I know people actually do live in drainage tubes but they usually look kinda bad ingame.
Someone did it already. It's not going in. Bumpmapping is visible with static light direction. The same applies to parallax occlusion mapping with 1 view direction. And yes, plain vertexlitgeneric isn't exactly wondeful for building models. Doesn't mean that we can't write our custom shaders for it.
well since there seems to be three barracks ideas already, I will rework my model into something for another project I'm working on. But I am also working on a fighter jet model for Brenodi, it looks similar to a VF-101 , but i'm not yet sure which direction i'm going to take with it.
I kinda think 14's are ugly, shiet the f4 was better looking.. Although the handling was shit, I think an f22 or 35 could single handily take out 100 f4s.
Sorry was on the run, I was referring to the VF-1 Valkyrie from Macross, I have wanted to make a model of one, now I have an excuse