- Joined
- 30 Mar 2008
- Messages
- 2,477
- Age
- 39
No need to feel awkward, we all started somewhere.
As for the ID D4... nope, never even crossed my mind, mostly because I don't like the design (the alternative version was far better).
Looking at it now I can say that the segmented design does not lend itself to the low poly meshes you see in A2. Even though PCs are a lot better now than when A2 was released, if you want to spam a lot of them then you really do need to keep the poly count down. As an idea, I try to keep A2 meshes below 3k polygons where possible. For spammable fighters, 100s of polys is preferable. Now it might be possible to do the D4 for a couple of thousand with the careful use of textures, but it's not one I'll be attempting.
If you're a total "noob" and have no idea what a poly is, it's short for polygon. If you imagine breaking down the design into a shape made of triangles, each triangle would be one polygon. If you look at the runabout images posted above, you'll notice some flat parts on the nacelles. That area is made of very few triangles. The more detailed and/or curved you want the mesh to be, the more you need to break the mesh down into smaller and smaller triangles and hence the higher the polygon count.
Which reminds me - HK, my apologies. Between breaking in a new PC, getting the Seeker printed and doing a practice run for commissions I have completely forgotten about that runabout. I'll try to spend some time on it soon.
As for the ID D4... nope, never even crossed my mind, mostly because I don't like the design (the alternative version was far better).
Looking at it now I can say that the segmented design does not lend itself to the low poly meshes you see in A2. Even though PCs are a lot better now than when A2 was released, if you want to spam a lot of them then you really do need to keep the poly count down. As an idea, I try to keep A2 meshes below 3k polygons where possible. For spammable fighters, 100s of polys is preferable. Now it might be possible to do the D4 for a couple of thousand with the careful use of textures, but it's not one I'll be attempting.
If you're a total "noob" and have no idea what a poly is, it's short for polygon. If you imagine breaking down the design into a shape made of triangles, each triangle would be one polygon. If you look at the runabout images posted above, you'll notice some flat parts on the nacelles. That area is made of very few triangles. The more detailed and/or curved you want the mesh to be, the more you need to break the mesh down into smaller and smaller triangles and hence the higher the polygon count.
Which reminds me - HK, my apologies. Between breaking in a new PC, getting the Seeker printed and doing a practice run for commissions I have completely forgotten about that runabout. I'll try to spend some time on it soon.