Andromeda Mod

... is there a way to have a ship move without the regular thruster effects?

Oh lord yes... that's easy! Adding thruster animation is the hard part!

... what do I need to make my 3D model? Do I have to design it? Or what type of file do I download? For example, pictures have a .tiff, .bmp, .gif, or .jpg ending, so what are the 3D file names?

You can make your model with any 3D object program (like Lightwave, 3DS, Milkshape, Maya, etc.) but the flux engine only understands Lightwave objects... in Lightwave version 5.6 format, so when your model is finished, you'll have to export to LW 5.6.

Your best bet for quick learning is to download the 3D program and then search the internet for tutorials on how to create basic shapes. Once you get familiar, start making your ship. Don't worry about textures yet; complete the mesh (the model's shape) before starting to texture it... otherwise later changes can mess up the textures.

Some quick facts about making models... I'm unsure of your experience, so if you're not a beginner, just ignore.

Models are made up of meshes and textures. Meshes are made up of polygons. A polygon (or poly) is made up of points and vertices. These terms may sound confusing at first, but they're really quite simple. Consider this:

Take a piece of paper and make three dots (in the rough shape of a triangle). You now have your three points. Then, connect the points with lines so you form a triangle (like the old game connect-the-dots). These lines are the vertices.

So, now you have your triangle. It's made of points and vertices. Your triangle is a polygon. Put enough of them together in the right order and shape, and you have the form of a ship (the mesh). That's what 3D modeling programs do... they allow you to create points, vertices, and polys and move them about to create shapes.

The texture of an object is simply the covering... like hull-colored wallpaper wrapped over the ship. Without textures, an object is a single bland color. Everything you see in EoC is either a texture or a light.

You will find a wealth of information and tutorials for free on the internet. Read over those and try making basic shapes. If you run into questions, just post 'em here. Everyone here is glad to help.

A warning: modeling becomes addictive! I bought Lightwave just to make ships for EoC, but now I'm completely hooked on it. And it can turn into a nice profession down the road. Animated corporate logos are big business. All the logos for advertisment and television are done with 3D modeling. Next time you watch your local news, look at the logos that are used in the opening sequence. That's modeling.

All the CGI you see in movies. The special effects and cool spaceships. Most of today's animation is cell-shaded or procedural (Pixar).

All this is 3D modeling.



<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

its kinda funny how you mention that, all the uses of 3d animation in the media, i never realized the just how extensive its use was until i started posting here and learning little bits about 3d modelling(something i gave up on[], i dont have the money or patience to learn it), but if you start looking on tv you can see 3d animation everywhere, and then i think " thats a nice texture, wish i could do that:D)

"Faith lies in the ways of sin"

Success! I think. I found an Andromeda Ascendant mesh by going to www.google.ca and typing in Andromeda Ascendant Mesh, it brought up LWG v3.0 at which I was able to download the mesh. I downloaded it and opened it in 3D Exploration (I might be biased because of my inexperience, but it sucks 'cuz I can't figure out how to change anything with it) and it came up with a pretty good model. I'm really hoping that it doesn't display colour because there was no colour when I opened it. There wasn't any when I opened the Indpendence War models, so I hope that's a good sign. I am going to guess that the reason is that the colour is part of the texture. I'm not sure what to do with it now. I will most likely need to add turrets but I'm not sure how to do that with the primtive program I'm using now. Also, the ship is in Lightwave 6, do I need to convert it to 5.1? What else do I have to add? Thrusters? Can I put it in the game as is just to see what it looks like?

Is there anyway that I can make a new type of beam cannon, and make it tracking? I wanted to add this really cool white beam (I saw it in one episode) onto the front of the Andromeda, and when you pull the trigger, I want it to move and try to hit the targeted ship. I don't know if it's possible, but I would also like it to be fairly thick and maybe slightly wavy (going up and down a few times).

Whoa! Hold on there! There's things which have to be done first.

I downloaded and looked at the model you're talking about. It's a very good model, but not suitable for game purposes. His model has 13,824 polygons. A typical EoC ship usually has 800.

There is a way around this; by cutting the ship up and displaying it in sections, you can get more polys on-screen. But I would expect you're going to hit problems (slowdowns) if you go much over 2400 polys (3 sections).

I can reduce the model for you. Bring it down to a total of 2400 polys and then break it up into three sections of roughly 800 polys each. But there will still be work to do; the textures will have to be converted to amiga (iff) format and resized to 512x512 pixels. A collision hull would have to be made. Setup scenes for both the avatar and the ship created, along with a ship ini file.

And you would have to place the model into the game. I don't want to seem rude, but a lot of work and testing goes into getting a new model into the game... so you probably won't find someone here who will just do it for you. The Terrapin model I built took well over 60 hours of work to create, texture, test, and place in the game with the correct setups... and I'd been modding EoC for over a year when I began... I had a vague idea of what I was doing. I feel it's only fair to let you know how much effort goes into modeling for EoC.

If you really want to do this... if it's worth at least 30 hours of work on your part and learning EoC-modding/modeling, then I'm happy to help where I can.

I probably do seem rude, but please understand that there is no shortage of people who want to see different kinds of ships in the game. But it takes a lot of time and work (and I tend to run out of time all too quickly).

Do you want me to reduce the model for you?



<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

The pso converter accepts jpeg (.jpg) and bitmap (.bmp) images too.

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