U.S.S. Enterprise as seen in "Star Trek: TMP"

[seanr]

Can someone - anyone - please repackage that LightWave version with JPG textures instead of IFFs?

[Dan]

Oh, just convert them like the rest of us non-LWers, Sean

Seriously, though: A 5-view of each section (saucer, secondary, nacelles) out of LW 5.6 (I'm losing a lot of the details in 6.0) would help a lot: I can use those as templates for Max textures, and Sean could probably do something similar with Truespace.

C'mon, peeps; we're seein' all these great renderings on the boards, *somebody* must have the time to shoot off a couple of "full-lights" shots we can use as textures...right...anybody?!?



Thanks,

Dan

[Voyager1]

I too would be most grateful for a MAX 3.1 conversion. This model is so detailed, I'd almost swear that I was watching the movie. EXCELLENT WORK!

Dittos to all the above...this has to be the best public Enterprise out there......THANKS!

Blah .. What is with you Lightwavers and saving your ships on Odd angles ?? Pollytrans resets any aingles.. So if I am trying to make the Ent look forward I need to guestimate as to the XYZ rotations..
*throws a spitwod at Dennis*
A trueSpace conversion [ Basic conversion .. I haven't the time to go through and reaply Light maps and so forth ] should be done by tonight .. All textures will be in a TGA format, because that is what Pollytrans changes the extentions in the mesh to..
I could also do a 3DS version if anyone wants it..


Ryoken

PS : Dennis, could you post the Rotations the ship was at ? So I can use them to make the ship Look straight ahead ?

Sean,

If it's ok with Dennis, I'll repackage it as LW6+ with pngs or jpgs.

Dennis? You ok with that? And which preference jpg or png?

Cobra

I'm fine with that and have no preference about format. I'm curious, though -- what additional features/flexibility will LW 6.0 add to the model itself?

If people who do conversions are okay with it, I'll make those conversions available from my page as well, with credit.

Keep the maps as IFF files. They're lossless, unlike JPEG, and usually way smaller than PNGs. I honestly don't know why they never caught on as a popular file type, they're so handy.

Also, converting to LW6 shouldn't add any extra functionality to it, AFAIK. You could make the entire thing into one object instead of three however, because they took out the point limit.

[seanr]

Kakaze, as far as I know, LW is the _ONLY_ program that supports IFF files. Better to use something everyone can work with, for the ease of making conversions, IMHO.
Of course, it'd be nice if other software would support IFFs, but that's another story.

Uhm ... actually it is no problem to convert a *.iff into a *.jpg using ACDSee ... shall ... I ...?

(I don't know if this solves your problem, though, as you would have to change the texture options in LightWave, too ... maybe should just wait for Cobra repackaging it)

If you have to convert, at least convert to something that doesn't use lossy compression. TIFFs or TGAs would be good.

[rant]
okay, I started to do a convertion last week when Dennis (kick ass mesh, a job damn well done btw,) released the mesh but after I converted and imported the geometry I found there was lots of mesh errors and they will take me quite awhile to correct, and with the fact that I'm starting a BA at University, I aint gonna get it finished no time soon,
Anyways one of the frist things I did do was convert the textures.. to PNG format, this really is the best texture format at the moment, MAX and Lightwave can read them, not to sure about truespace thou, they support alpha channels and give the best file sizes, now all the textures in IFF format amount to about 36.1mb, converted to PNG's they come in about 1.35mb and just so you know I'm not talkin' gobshazbote here's an example ...


just abit of differnce eh? and trust me the textures look identical!, so in short IFF, TGA and TIF bad, PNG good
[/rant]

P.S.
Dennis please not see this as me having a go at you, I'm not,
it's just I've been watching people taking about what texture format to use and the answer seems just too obivous not to say something,
that and I've just had a really shazbotty day,

If only more web browser could use .png..... It would make web designs alot more fun

The Internet Explorer, MoZilla (Netscape 6), Opera ... all the browsers I care about a capable of displaying PNG. I think even a newer Netscape 4.x should do it.

[Dan]

http://www.darkervisions.com/3d-objects/denentmax.zip

Should be downloadable at about 0300 GMT

Thanks to Hito for the hosting; needs decals.

Dan

Sho- there are different levels of support for .png. Some browsers will show the file. Sometimes it will not use the alpha channel for transparency. Some times it will allow transparency, but will not show a background image behind it. It varies alot.

3D Exploration also reads the IFF format.

Originally posted by Dan
http://www.darkervisions.com/3d-objects/denentmax.zip

Should be downloadable at about 0300 GMT

Thanks to Hito for the hosting; needs decals.

Dan

Thanks, Dan, for all your hard work on the conversion. I know this required taking a lot of time away from your own projects which, judging from what you've posted in the last two weeks or so, are really cooking right now.

Would it be okay for me to offer the conversion download from my download page as well?

tS will read PNG images.. But I prefer TGA's .. IFF's are evil .. They make it a pain to quickly convert meshes.. and they are huge .. [ so are TGA's .. But meh ]

btw .. Dennis.. Can you post the XYZ angles that your Ent. is at in the LW file ? Cause When I try to convert it, It's angles get reset, so I can't make it look forward or anything [ You Lightwavers .. and saving stuff on Odd angles.. Everything I save is always facing forward, and has no rotations .. just makes live simpler when I am loading severial meshes into one scene.. ]


Thanks..

Ryoken

PS : Once I get the rotations.. I'll aply them to the tS mesh, and put it up.. as for a 3DS version .. I should just be able to u/l it with TGA textures tonight.. if I can get wsftp to cooperate with me this time..

[Dan]

Sure thing, Den; it's your ship Do with it as you will.

Thanks.

[Commodore-SirJohn]

Hey, Dennis, could you produce a couple of alternate sets for the decals? I've got an idea for a picture showing the new USS Excalibur (NCC-1664-A) coming out of dock while Capt. Tom Harris' (or Ken, if you prefer) widow looks on...

Unfortunately, I'm so bad at texturing that I doubt I'd be able to do it...

Oh, and I must've hit the memory wall on this one (as if that's hard with only 64MB in the machine), as Lightwave crashes when I try to load the saucer.

If you'll allow me to butt in briefly here, here is a another link for the ent max conversion. Just so we don't kill Hito's server.

www.uscgermanclub.com/denentmax.zip

Hiya Vertigo1,

I've been playing around with 3D Exploration on this one too - have you had problems with textures not being found? I've mucked around the directories and everything, but no real success loading this model with textures intact.

Cheers,

Bonzai Gopher

OK ..

I've started the Conversion process.. Dennis was kind enough to send me a version of the lws that has the Ent Looking forward, and not at any odd angles
Also I found a way to Preserve the Lights in the conversion to tS .. One less thing I need to worry about ..
However, fixing the textures will take some.. err.. a lot of time .. [ tS4 doesn't have the abilitly to Mirror textures.. so I will need to edit some in PSP .. ] ..
But I will finish it.. Or my name isn't Homer Simpson
Just gonna take a bit longer than I had hoped..

When it's done it will be in tS4.3 cob format.. and will have TGA Textures..


Ryoken

[Voyager1]

Ryoken,

Do you still plan to create a 3DS version as well once you finish?

I just noticed something last night when I was playing with the ship...how come some of the lights aren't where they should be physically? Like the spots for the engineering section registry, the main registry lights, etc...

Was there a particular reason?

I'm not sure what you mean. If you're asking why the light sources aren't located where the visible supposed light-emitters are located on the hull, the answer is that lights placed in those positions often don't actually cast light on the hull in ways that closely resemble the appearence of the practical lighting in the Trek movies.

This is because the sources of light for the model used in the films were not actually on the model. Light was cast onto the model from small spots and arrays of mirrors -- the lighting built into the model was just for show.

So a spotlight placed near the bridge won't actually light the main registry? It's ridiculous, they should light it how it would actually look if it were real.