Eldar Falcon - Ministry Thread - UT40K: The Chosen mod for Unreal Tournament 3

I was pretty far along with the old version of the model, and it looks like it'll be high enough poly count to work nicely. So I've added the weapons on the turret and here's what I have so far:

I do have a few questions for you Geo: Do you want me to model the interior cockpits or should I just make the glass opaque (Keep in mind that this will also mean that we have to be able to fit the guardian inside)? Also, how many materials are typically used for a vehicle? I was thinking of using 2: 1 for the hull, and 1 for the weapons/accessories. This will make it easier to do the prism cannon and wave serpent. What do you think?

It's looking good. Are you planning on making the high poly so you can generate a normal map?

ok for the moment make the cockpits opaque, if i change my mind later it will be my fault.
materials yeh go for it, while most UT3 vehicles only have 1 i think we'll get away with 2
2048 for the hull , do a 2048 for the turret plus weapons might have to scale it down if we get display lag

btw it looks great

Edited by: Geodav

Looks good keep it coming ministry

Hey Geo, do you want me to make the cabin (where the passengers ride)? Personally, I think anybody riding inside should have a 3rd person view of the vehicle (like the driver/gunner would have). But I remember in the UT2004 version all the transport vehicles had interiors that you looked around inside of while riding.

Of course you know the trade-offs. An interior needs more polygons and texture space, but is kinda cool. So it's up to you.

I think a cabin view would be good, dont know how easy itd be to code though, and i also sorta like the 3rd person view aswell as u can see the vehicle ur controlling.

The pilot and gunner would have the 3rd person view as normal. I'm only wondering about the passengers, whether or not they should have 1st person view of the cabin or 3rd person view from outside the vehicle.

Unless Geo objects, I'm just going to leave the cabin out. It'll allow a lot more texture space for the rest of the vehicle.

yep, don't bother with the inside cabin, i doubt many people will be willing to wait for passengers

btw do you want the heavy weapons i did for the defence turrets, might save a bit of time

Edited by: Geodav

I think the Falcon should stick with only the Scatter Laser and Pulse Laser combination. The Prism Cannon is obviously only going to have a prism cannon. I think the other weapons will come into play when we do the Wave Serpent. All of these have the twin-linked shuriken catapult which will be modeled and painted along with the main hull.

Which weapons did you do for the defence turrets? And how complete are these weapons (like lopoly model with all maps completed...)?

looks like i just did the StarCannon and the BrightLance, if we can put all the heavys on to one map i think that would be better over all, but if we stick to the PulseLaser+ScatterLaser for the Falcon then just put those two into the turret map

Roger that.

All heavy weapons on the falcon have an extra layer of armor plating (you can see this on my first pic at the top of the thread). Any alternate heavy weapons would have to be remodeled with this too. So I agree that it's best to just stick with popular load-outs for these vehicles.

Edit:

I got a lot done today. I finished the UV layout and baked the normal maps. I still need to do some cleanup, and bake some heightmaps into the normal map, but it's starting to come together. I'm really happy with the way the hard edges, and the grooves on the bottom turned out. Now it's time for some painting

...

Edited by: Ministry_3D

Keep up the good work, this is coming along very nicely

that now looks awesome, really great work there, absolutely gob smacked, i just hope my project will just as good

Here's an update with the basic material setup. I've also added grooves to the normal map.

Could u post up an image with the normal map and one without the normal map applied plz? Just so noobs like me can see how much of a difference they make.

Here you go. As you can see, most of the details, and the smooth flow of the hull, are done through the normal map. I'm also going to use the diffuse and specular map to exaggerate the details. For example, on the diffuse map I'll have subtle highlights and shading in/around the grooves, and on the specular map the inside of the grooves will be black so that it receives no specular highlight down in the shadows. You can see a little of this if you look closely at the screenshot in my previous post.

Ahh nice, thanks ministry Hope to see it ingame soon

Here's a nice big fat progress update. I need to fix a few parts of the normal map on the hull's material (I missed a couple of grooves). Other than that I would say the material is about 90% done. I need to mess with the diffuse/specular parts of the bone-colored and metal areas. Then I just need to add some grunge, add some decals, and generate the other craftworlds. I'm pretty happy with the way it's coming together:

absolutely fantastic, really looking forward to getting it in game.

on a side note have you heard about the new Eldar tank which will be released soon, plus updated vehicles

NO

holy crap, I gotta find more info about this. I swear if they change the falcon I'll... umm... well I'll go and... umm...

ok, I guess I wont do anything. If it's a minor change perhaps I could work it in. If it's major than I guess we'll just have out-of-date falcons.

it sounds like more of and update like they just did with the Imperial stuff, maybe we'll get the DoomWeaver tank !!!! anyway as soon i know i'll let you know

The rumors make it sound like they are redoing the fire prism to be completely plastic. This will also allow them to create another tank based upon the same chassis. The popular assumption being the Night Spinner, which is basically Eldar Artillery.

might be of interest to you Games-workshop.com
and
Games-workshop.com

Night Spinner it is

Hmm... mixed emotions. On the one hand I really like the new models. The Fire Prism looks a little more appropriate in regards to it's abilities. Both new vehicles look a bit more "eldar". But on the other hand it's going to be a lot more work to create those variants as I can't use the turret from the falcon.

Oh well. Better to find out now rather than 1/2 way through creating them.

I also like the Support Weapon that the guardian can ride on. It'll be nice to give the Eldar some mobile heavy weapons (besides the vehicles). I mean, it could be a vehicle, or we could have it be a selectable unit.

Edited by: Ministry_3D

Is this baby in game yet?