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Initial Project Concept
Ironwatsas
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls. Welcome to the first annual brainstorming session of the new version of Point Defense Systems 2 (working title, hawking).

While this is going to be a large-scale and comprehensive project, and very little is set in stone, but there are two main goals we intend to achieve.

-1: Preserve and maintain the "Classic" versions of PDS, including the NGCS and PDS:AS projects for posterity, and ensure they work on the steam version of Homeworld 2 classic.

-2: Create a full "Sequel" to Point Defense Systems, on the Homeworld Remastered engine, bringing our brand of high-intensity, pseudo-realistic space warfare to a new generation.

To achieve this, we plan to gather a crack team of modders, both old and new, and co-operate with other Homeworld 2 mod teams to gain synergy effects and share information. We're all in the same boat trying to figure out this new engine.

Ultimately we plan PDS 2 to take the best elements of past mod versions and make a game which both maintains the evolving world and intense battle-space of PDS classic, and improves upon both our own past work and pushes the envelope of what the Homeworld can be!

At the time of this writing, we're still in the pre-planning and team assembly stages (considering HWR isn't out yet and it will take time to figure all the tools and gubbins and bits out) and gauging community interest.

If you're an old timer returning for old time's sake or a newcomer with something new to offer, we welcome you. Every little bit helps.
 
Warman1
Greetings, I had read somewhere that one of the possible intentions with the new PDS was to have it fluff-wise go through the transitional period between HW and HW2. If this is the case, it would seem as though we might need some new ship models eventually to represent the craft in between the two dynamics. I've modeled some art assets for a friend a little while ago utilizing my engineering CAD software and it seems to work fine for this sort of work, so I am willing to be on tap as a modeler if desired.
 
Ironwatsas
Yes! Well, Siber was letting us use HW@ stuff this time around, and a few of the UNH models might work for the intermediary period, although I kind of had my heart set on using them for another faction I've been cooking up.

That being said, any modeler is heavily desired! We've got a few other fleets I wish to flesh out. I'm going to try to familiarize myself with HodEd and the other tools once I get some free time to really concentrate on it. Right now I'm still looking for people.
 
Warman1
If you happen to have any particular concept art in mind, I could try to my hand at the model. Alternatively, I might attempt, just for the sake of fun, to come up with a few. Though one thing we'll have to figure out is what sort of polygon counts the new engine can handle. Given the modern age though...I think it's safe to assume quite a few. Grin
 
Ironwatsas
Well, after porting the models we already have to the new engine and getting everything up to speed, my first thought would be to add a HW2 era Taiidan Race that isn't basically a bunch of Vaygr Ships haphazardly glued together. Siber and Battlecry have allowed us to use their resources, and I'm planning to contact Enterprise-E and Mololololu to see if they will allow me to use theirs. Plus, the Shamshir, Needleboat, and Al'mou'Akir are canonically Taiidan/Vaygr designs, plus we can fill in some of the blanks with Homeworld 1 ships.

There are two concepts I fantastically love, although they're from Dust Wars and the old Taiidan Republic Mod respectively. I'm not entirely sure about how IP comes into play when basing models off of them though. That's something we really need to figure out. There's also some of Norsehound's creations.

This is a Taiidan Supercarrier from the old Dust Wars mod, and This is what appears to be a small Taiidani destroyer.
 
carl
Thats a cool destroyer concept. Think i might use that as a loose basis for some of the Taidanni cap ships i'm planning on working on myself. Not sure how useful what i'm working on will be to you, but here some screenshots of a little assault frigate a whipped up in a long afternoon, no mapping, texturing or detail mesh though, (and i suck at all but the first).

s21.postimg.org/4g4b118pv/001.jpg

s21.postimg.org/s8dmckaqr/002.jpg

s21.postimg.org/jaswf7iar/003.jpg
 
Warman1
Those images did not seem to come through.
 
carl
Strange. Direct links:

http://postimg.org/image/jaswf7iar/

http://postimg.org/image/s8dmckaqr/

http://postimg.org/image/4g4b118pv/

Note that the turret has been redesigned to a tri-barrel setup. The rotary kinetic setup sounds good but is hard to make look good at this scale. Closest i ever cam is a now dropped frigate design with a spinally mounted rotary plasma bomb launcher.
 
Homdax
I can see the images in the post number 6.
king-o'da'bigfile
 
carl
Here's my WIP attempt at the DD concept. Only put a few hours in so far and the keel is giving me fits, but getting there slowly.

s13.postimg.org/9n11sq66b/Taidanni_DD_WIP.jpg

Also thanks Homdax Smile.
 
Sun Tzu
Based on the released screenshots and videos, HWR will use more detailed meshes than HW2. I do not know what exact worflow will be required, but the normal way would be (i) build a quite detailed mesh with panel lines, all "goblins" and such, (ii) bake ambient occlusion maps and normal maps, then (iii) simplify the mesh to the extent required by the recommended polygon budget.
In the building process that means that you should go for maximum details at first, even if the 3d model that eventually goes in game is simpler.
Perhaps it will be unnecessary to model the simplest details such as panel lines and add them manually in the normal map. It looks feasible to do it that way for the kind of normal map that shows in this screenie.
img11.hostingpics.net/thumbs/mini_939056HWR.jpg
Edited by Sun Tzu on 18-02-2015 10:22
 
Warman1
Apparently my work internet blocks assorted image viewers. I was able to look at the images at home successfully. They look pretty great!

It sounds like I should just model the ships out with all the little antennae, hatches, etc, I want and if it turns out we need less remove them. That's fine, I can name specific feature groups in my CAD software so it's easy to see what is what and to remove/add them. If I get lucky, I might have some time in the next day or so to try a first hand pass at the small Taiidani Destroyer.

Also, for the purposes of these ships, it is my understanding (at least for HW2 original) that while having some placeholder shapes for the turrets is useful for 'fit checking', the actual ship model itself doesn't include the models for the turrets. They are separate models that get added in from other later code.

If that is true, I should be able to bang out the basic destroyer in not too much time and then start adding the cool fiddly bits. The supercarrier I'd want to take more time on.
 
Homdax
Issues about some werd imag attachments moved here:
http://www.pds.homeworldaccess.net/fo...read_id=24
king-o'da'bigfile
 
carl

Quote

Apparently my work internet blocks assorted image viewers. I was able to look at the images at home successfully. They look pretty great!

It sounds like I should just model the ships out with all the little antennae, hatches, etc, I want and if it turns out we need less remove them. That's fine, I can name specific feature groups in my CAD software so it's easy to see what is what and to remove/add them. If I get lucky, I might have some time in the next day or so to try a first hand pass at the small Taiidani Destroyer.

Also, for the purposes of these ships, it is my understanding (at least for HW2 original) that while having some placeholder shapes for the turrets is useful for 'fit checking', the actual ship model itself doesn't include the models for the turrets. They are separate models that get added in from other later code.

If that is true, I should be able to bang out the basic destroyer in not too much time and then start adding the cool fiddly bits. The supercarrier I'd want to take more time on.


1. Yes turrets, (and barrels), are separate but that's true of the turrets and barrels in my screenshot, i just used the put on command to position them for display purposes Smile.

2. Partly because of how inflexible wings 3d is i follow that vanilla HW2 model. Make a basic low polygon starting mesh, then add a second separate detail mesh for the details. That's partly down to the fact that some details are very hard to build into a single mesh and if you don;t finalize the shape first, and the add details and then decide you want to change it your going to have a hell of a time doing it.

Also doesn't help for my own stuff that i'm poor at imagining that kind of detail.
 
EatThePath
Two things: According to comments on the gearbox forums by devs, the remodeled ships have no goblins in the HW2 sense. Every geometry detail is either on the normal map or in the LOD0 mesh. Goblin meshes turn out to have been a bit of a dead end in terms of graphics technology.

Second, if you're doing high ploy->low poly bakes, and you probably should, I'd include the turrets so you can get there effect on an AO map. But it's possible the tools GBX is making will handle that step, we shall have to see.
AKA Siber
 
carl

Quote

Two things: According to comments on the gearbox forums by devs, the remodeled ships have no goblins in the HW2 sense. Every geometry detail is either on the normal map or in the LOD0 mesh. Goblin meshes turn out to have been a bit of a dead end in terms of graphics technology.


Well a few things there:

1. Unless they've done something really funky Turrets are still going to have to function separately so from the PoV of putting them in you can still do it the old way.

2. As i allready said Wings 3d just does not let you do it any other way, many of the details on HW2 ships if created in wings as part of a single mesh would radically increase the poly count above and beyond that otherwise required, and are virtually impossible to add until the base mesh is done.

3. Fortunately wings 3D lets you combine meshes together without the components thereof being connected so from a practical PoV i can combine them in that if i have to.

4. Unless i missed a function, (entirely possible), wings 3d makes taking polygons off hard. You make models at the poly count you want to use. Not at a higher one then delete details because that will just give you a lot of badly formed faces.

Attached a couple of demo pics, note he poly count in the top left corners. This is post tessellation btw.
carl attached the following images:
wings_3d_polygon_demo_2.jpg wings_3d_polygon_demo_1.jpg

Edited by carl on 19-02-2015 00:16
 
EatThePath
Re 1: For putting them into the game, it may actually work a lot differently from before, with you importing into the gbx tool with the geometry already in the final location, then you define joints. But maybe not. It could go either way.

Re 2: I was referring to goblins in the HW2 engine sense, where they're a separate geometry group that gets faded in. In the sense of detail geometry, I wouldn't be surprised if you were actually better off eating the higher polycount anyway and integrating them into a seemless mesh. Polygons are pretty cheap, and it avoids any z-fighting issues. And I don't think this is a wings-specific issue, just how geometry works in general.

re 4: I made a quick demo model similar to the one in your screenshots to show how quickly that kind of geometry could be sliced off and cleaned back up. Watch this, if it's unclear what's happening at any point, I can probably explain.
AKA Siber
 
carl
re2: Ahh got you. What do you mean by z-fighting, (bear in mind i'm a modeler who's largely self taught apart from how to use wings and even a lot of that is self worked out)?

re 4. I really can't tell what your doing in that video, any chance you could add in 720p, at 480p the commands are completely undecipherable on my current screen, (new computer stuff isn't here yet Sad).

That said i could remove the detail there too, it's not hard with those shapes. But there#'s some forms, (usually involving multi-part triangular and hollowed out objects), that you'll always end up with an unformed face left which can only be fixed by using the connect function to connect the dots on one part to another part, but in the problem cases, (as apposed to the fixable ones), the places you need to connect between have one remaining face of the set you need gone that's still around blocking you from doing so, but being itself un-removable till you fix the unformed face next to it. I'd give you an example but their rare and only loosely impossible to predict. But due to those very points i prefer to not have to delete anything unless it's really, really, really necessary. Because if i do have to do so and the undo function won't go back far enough, (or is otherwise impractical), and i get that kind of error i can end up having to rebuild half the model to get the result i want. Not ideal.
 
EatThePath
Z-Fighting is when you have two surfaces near each other, facing the same direction. In the right circumstances the engine can have a hard time deciding which is in front and draw parts of each, in an exceptionally ugly way.

Re 4: Sadly, that's the best I can do right now. Hardware limitations make great capture a pain to sort out. If you run into such a malformed face, throw it my way and I'll see if I can find it. Weld and dissolve tools will eventually get it done most of the time. I may try to make a worst case scenario and sort it out on video, but it definitely won't be tonight.
AKA Siber
 
Warman1
Is Wings 3D able to import .stl files?

If so, could one of you pass me a couple of .stl versions of some of the current HW2 ship models? (Fighter, Frigate, Destroyer, Battlecruiser, just to give a range of sizes).

My understanding is that whatever models I make can just have scaling multipliers added to them, so it doesn't exactly matter if I scale them right myself. At least this is how it worked with the last thing I had done for someone. But it would be nice to work in the right scale so others don't HAVE to do that. So snagging some of those models would help me pre-scale it.
 
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