That thing is god damn amazing. Screw converting it to low-poly, I'll play 1 fps-pires if it means seeing that thing.
To be honest, right now the tank looks more like it would have been when Jekotia still existed. You'd imagine it looks a lot less pristine and nice to look at. I'd also imagine they'd have to exchange a lot of damaged parts.
Yeah the model is looking incredible, but I can agree that it could probably benefit from looking more bruised and battered, less perfect. I know a lot of this can be accomplished during texturing but it might be worth thinking about it before you get to that point.
@Redskull Where did you come from? Why did you not join empires sooner ? Plz never leave us. Your work looks amazing.
Meh, Id rather you leave it like that instead of adding random junk all around. Current NF models for meds and heavies dont even resemble tanks. LT looks great and its not a scrapheap vehicle. You do not have to add some random gas pipes to give it a "this is not a serial model" look. There are ways to get that look, just look at nf apc. Besides, compared to Be's modern tanky look, your model looks positively WW2, so it fits well into the "old stuff" mentality.
Well now that everyone said something before me, I don't need to worry about being an insensitive. The tank is great, the NF theme consists of rusty recycled materials and lots of ducktape and super glue. If you ever played Metro, the weapons and vehicles in that game was some rinky dinky shit. Make it ugly, and tough is what I would suggest. It kinda looks like a cannon car right now.
thats all textures/materials. theres no modeled damage in any empires tank or building. its dirtied textures and a scratchmap.
I would definitely leave dinks and scratches for the textures. If needed, we could use a parallax map as well for big dents
Dinks and dents still come from the high poly, if you intend to bake a normal map. (You don't want to paint one by hand, trust me. Only thing you MIGHT want to do is paint a height map and convert that to a normal map, but that's equally cumbersome.) So please everyone, don't worry about a poly count right now, this is about making the model look how it's supposed to be, including details that will later only show up on the normal map. Also there are things you can do, that I wouldn't put on the normal map (just examples): -bend some of those armor plates on the turret -make some big dents in the armor, especially on prominent edges -rip one of those exhaust hoses off -break one of the headlights Oh also one technique I recently started to use: Bevel/Chamfer edges before applying a subdivision, instead of putting in supporting edge loops. That gives you some nice, rounded edges on the high poly. Blender has a modifier for this, so I am not sure if you can do that in a non-destructive way in 3DS Max. (I only know of the destructive operations in Edit Poly/Edit Mesh.)
whats the point in creating a several hundred million poly model with sculpted scratches and dents and wires and grills and whatnot (im exaggerating) for an artstyle like empires? its just not fitting, even if it looks fantastic as individual piece, you will end up with something completely out of place in the current game. its graphics from 10 years ago, you cant just throw in stuff from today. if youd ask me this looks fantastic, it hits the emprires style really well as is (if it would be low polied and textured).
I thought NF stuff looked like it was cobbled together from decent condition parts, not stuff that had already been broken to shit. Yeah, the current NF Heavy and Mediums look like giant barns of sheet metal and wrought iron, but they look more like an amalgamation of parts and less like something that's been beaten and bruised. Unless we're about to overhaul everything all at once in one giant patch for NF, in which case it'd be fine. But there's a distinct difference between an worn tank and a cobbled tank.
I'd argue that its silly to say that nf has only one style to it. Apcs and LTs look like perfectly fine gear that just rusted in a military stockpile for couple years, whereas proper tanks are welded garbage. I dont think an addition of a new model like this would "upset" the style in any way, it fits perfectly with apc and lt. Sure, the heavy would be a weird one out but if anyone really cares about fluff so much, you could just say that all the proper heavy tanks were rare and were destroyed a long time ago, so they had to desing this makeshift piece of crap.
empires tanks are perfectly symetric and theres no welding whatsoever, they are built this way - its old gear not madmax. thats the problem, you have an image in your head and then theres the actual models ingame. dunno where this image is from
That's... exactly what I'm saying. They're masses of welded whatever; they're cobbled together from metal lying around, they're a bit rusty on the outside but they're not actually damaged comming out of the factory. The stuff might be a bit aged but it's not battle-worn like everyone says they are. I mean, just look at the actual ingame stuff. They're brown and look a bit rusted, but they don't actually look battered and bruised.
Or the tank can be pretty because they were jsut istting inside weapon caches and have only recently been reactivated, so they are in pristine condition.
The tanks would actually corrode, even if not used. Well, RL tanks depends on what they are made of, but paint+metal wouldnt hold forever. Just look at the IFV's used in ukraine, most of them rusted on the edges. Unless by pristine you mean just "in one piece", but im pretty sure pristine implies something is in perfect condition.
Alright, maybe I went a bit overboard with it. Thing is, there is no real design document everyone agrees on. Almost everyone has a different view on how they should look. And just because it's Source, doesn't mean it has to look like shit. Sure, if you'd put a single remade model in, it's going to stand out for a while. But to not give it more detail and actually make it look good, just because of that is pretty stupid. You'd end up redoing them over and over again once you up the graphics. Empires wouldn't be the first game increase it's model quality one model at a time.
You guys are doing it again. We get something that's brilliant, and then you want a lot of little tweaks which will take a bunch more effort. Leave it at 95%. God knows we have things in Empires that are at 60% and have been for 6 years, so let's just accept that 95% is great, and let it go. Let us actually get to use some of the badass things that come our way for once.
