Turret design and learning - slowly

[Olrox]

Hmm, I really think that those shouldn't be that rounded. :rolleyes:

[Avestron]

gun plus missle - is awesome. xD best of both worlds.

A number of these stem from the multi-turret solutions thread a while back. ^_~

I can also see this being adapted for heavier lasers/ Plasma - with a little more modification even light mortar.

[lav_coyote25]

i was thinking more along the lines of maybe the sniper gun and maybe the first cyborg scourge missle. xD

long range LOS on both.

[Avestron]

Hmm, I really think that those shouldn't be that rounded. :rolleyes:

I see - poly rate too high

[Avestron]

Well based on feedback I figured that it would be fine to try for a minimalist approach.

Warning - you will need to use a little imagination - textures and all.



Top - Single turret (light-to-heavy)
2nd - Twin turret (light-to-heavy)
3rd - Chemical turrets (light and medium) and Dual turret (light and medium)

[winsrp]

you were not kidding on the imagination part... man

[Avestron]

Heh heh - my primary aim was to minimize faces and vertices. ^_~

I had taken a closer look at the turrets in-game and listened to the conversations about how performance could be affected by having too many vertices - and so I took a break from look-good geometry with the aim of placing details in the texture (not included since my texturing makes wall-paint look like a masterpiece).

I may actually have gotten carried away with the chemical turrets.

[Olrox]

Well, I feel like I must say exaclty what I think about it - don't take it as a good/bad judgement, the purpose is to achieve the highest quality, in the end.

I really think that the geometry could be a bit more complex. That is, not as curvy than the previous ones, but not as rough as those, but a blend, which can be achieved by making a few modifications, I think.

Some planning stage would help keeping the focus and allow you to make more coherent designs. Even though the textures help a lot with detailment, it can't help if the geometry isn't coherent with the details you're going to put on the the textures.

I will now dare to let out my opinion, regardless to the fact I didn't spend as much time as I'd like thinking about it.

I'd first think about the capabilities of the weapon that's going to be mounted on the turret. That is, what the weapon is capable of doing in combat. Those capabilities, of course, must affect the design if we want a good one. For instance, I'll separate categories by the possible firing situations: Ground-Ground, Ground-Air, Air-Ground basically.

Then, we could separate each of the situations further. Using abbreviations,
we have:

GG -> High angles (artillery), Low angles (cannons and ground-targetting MGs and mini-rockets).
GA -> Direct fire (air-targetting MGs and flaks), Homing (SAMs)
AG -> Dropping (bombs), Direct fire (other things)

Where I want to get is, we must think to what direction the weapon must point the barrel at. AA-capable guns must have great capabilities to point the barrel(s) upwards. Such are MGs, mini-rockets, flaks etc.
Anti-ground capable weapons don't have to point the barrel upwards too much, as they're limited to fire at ground targets
Air-to ground are pretty obvious.
Artillery weapons are locked forwards but must be able to fire at extreme angles, about 80°sometimes.

Therefore, it is immediate that turrets able to mount MGs must have a proper layout to allow the quick vertical rotation. Also, missile and rocket weapons must have a clear mechanism that allows them to rotate vertically, but the horizontal rotation of all the guns is provided by the turret design itself.

I think that the Dual turrets design look like the missile/rocket weapon is going to be locked forward, and they must fire at some angle, especially rockets.

If you want/need, I can make a scheme about what I've got in mind, but I don't want to even try to dictate the way you make your turrets - I'm just another member of the community, after all
And even the devs can't say what you MUST or MUST NOT do, but it is indeed good when they say what you should or shouldn't do: Usually they have wise things to say, as they are the most involved people with this project.

Regards,
Olrox

[Avestron]

Sorry that it took me so long to reply. :c) I have to admit that the last line of turrets were mostly butt ugly - and I've listened to most of the advice put forward.

The following are examples of the results so far.

Mortar Turret (including struts upon which the actual mortar weapon would swivel vertically)

Rocket Turret (simplest design, allowing more versatility in designing the actual rocket weapon systems - from pods to twin missiles to bunker busters

Flamer Turret (semi-shielded design, with added front-flank armour and less sloped front armour (to reflect the horizontal plane of fire))

Inferno Turret (slightly more stated flamer tank design - larger tanks - broader setting)

Gun Turret (Simple but versatile turret suited both for ground and air weapon orientation)

Twin Gun Turret (Similarly simple but broadened for situating two weapon slots)



Thanks for the tips ^_^ This falls between detail and economical.

[Corporal Punishment]

Remember that mortars are designed to fire in a parable. There really is no need to have this lacuna in the front armor. The barrel will never point anywhere near horizontal and the more protection, the better.

[Olrox]

Remember that mortars are designed to fire in a parable. There really is no need to have this lacuna in the front armor. The barrel will never point anywhere near horizontal and the more protection, the better.

When the mortars aren't assigned to fire at anything, they point directly forwards. Even though it doesn't make sense and they should point always at an angle, they currently do point forwards, horizontally.

[Avestron]

Well I will look into narrowing the lacuna by drawing the vertices closer together. ^_^

I figured that since I have a partial set of workable turret designs, I'd jump straight into weapon designs - starting out with the machine gun line.

I have met a couple of issues and I hope that somebody would help (did take a look through blenderartists.org for assistance). ¬_¬

a.) Well I had little trouble creating a new object within the single turret file to represent the machine gun barrel. I have however been unable to figure out how blender permits 'copy' 'paste' between different blender files (I was hoping to copy-paste to the twin turret file to properly allign and space the weapons).

b.) I was wondering how to create a library of existing objects so as to save time.

c.) I am considering exporting my blender files to pie slicer due to past and present issues with rendering. not a question but I'm not sure about it.

[Olrox]

a.) Well I had little trouble creating a new object within the single turret file to represent the machine gun barrel. I have however been unable to figure out how blender permits 'copy' 'paste' between different blender files (I was hoping to copy-paste to the twin turret file to properly allign and space the weapons).

I imagine it could be like in 3dsmax, regarding to this - if so, you must open the twin gun turret and import the file with the barrel. In 3dsmax, a dialog appears so taht you can select which elements are going to be imported.

[Avestron]

Thank you very kindly for the advice. Yes I'm using blender - it seems like a very apt platform even if the learning curve is a little steeper than I'd have liked :cP

I am currently looking through a number of tutorials - Getting a few 'oooh - aaah' moments and with any luck I'll be able to get a few turret-weapon combo shots through :cP

I've little idea how you managed to get your sniper vehicle together. ¬_¬;;

[Olrox]

Thank you very kindly for the advice. Yes I'm using blender - it seems like a very apt platform even if the learning curve is a little steeper than I'd have liked :cP

I am currently looking through a number of tutorials - Getting a few 'oooh - aaah' moments and with any luck I'll be able to get a few turret-weapon combo shots through :cP

I've little idea how you managed to get your sniper vehicle together. ¬_¬;;

I've just merged the scenes (basically, 3dsmax files are scenes, including environment, animation, model... everything that affects the "cenario").
It is very "fake", thinking by modding terms - it is somewhat far from being ingame, I'd had to separate the barrel into an individual file, the turret also, the propulsion (I have to take a look at how the original models are positioned into the .PIEs) and the body - 4 different .pie files, with proper repositioning and rescaling. Then I'd have to assign proper texture names. Then I'd have to assemble a .wz (which is, I've found recently, a VERY QUICK, STUPID AND EASY thing to do, and it kept me from starting a graphical mod of my own some time ago).

I myself also hadn't too much knowledge about modelling an UV mapping and texture-making some time ago, actually I could only stick out with AutoCAD .dwg model screenshots around here, with barely any clue of how to make textures and no clue about how to make my models get into the game. Mostly, this state of ignorance was due to laziness and lack of motivation, inspiration etc.. I've started to make models little more than 3 years ago - when I've joined the forums, and was 14 years old. Now I can make good stuff and people appreciate it, and I keep going because I know I can make better than that!

If I had any knowledge about blender already, I would be glad to help you further. Until I start to mess out with it, I'm limited to "guess".

Search for "importing" or "merging" files, scenes or whatever, in the tutorials, I think you can manage to find something this way.

Good luck!