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I think it was one of Heinlein's books that had newtonian physics ships where the pilots rode in suspended animation to handle the immense G forces pulled by accelerating/decelerating.  I remember one encounter where the 'Space Police' were watching some billionaire's ship as it pulled away from them, and when the ship rotated into a new heading they calculated the intercept course and jumped into their suspended animation pods...

The didn't know the rich guy had engines at BOTH ENDS of his ship, so he could look like he was rotating to a heading and then go exactly the opposite direction...  Boy were they suprised when they woke up 'by the numbers' expecting to be closing in on his ship...   

I thought that a good, old-fashioned newtonian trick...

-Av-

Who is, himself, a good old-fashioned newtonian trick... 

Wow... I mean... thanks for the gift but I think it really shows the lack of work put into ROTBD...  it doesn't even look like a tank...

Hmmm...  thinking....

-Av-

Very!  How many polys?

-Av-

@ forming:
I can see that for 'professional' projects, but all I've done have been my own simple things so it's all I've known.  I still regard this as a very simple model, but as things progress I think it's growing more complex...  for instance, if you go with a concave 'mould' you could actually etch the various markings very lightly on the surface to serve as a guide to painting.  I think even the fumbliest of us could do a paint by numbers Grizzly texture some amount of justice.

@ texture:
I've always wondered if an artist makes the texture first and a modeller models using it, or they make a model and then an artist paints the texture...

I think what you'd really rather see is something like Lithunwrap output, where it looks like the various faces have been flattened out.

There's also an issue with the star on the 'hood' of the Grizz being cut off...  I have a recreation for both ways...

-Av-

It's just that BZ2's model export is like a mexican house wife, "yessir, no sir, can't do sir"

while BZ1 exporting, is like a german house wife "Do this now exactly this way or get out!"

-Av-

Av- I was thinking about going back FROM CAD to a NEW POLY model for use in the game! CAD to 3DS to

Oh, easy...  first get it textured, then export it to XSI for BZ2, or give it to Ken or Dx for conversion back to BZ1...

For BZ2 there are converters for several versions of Max, and a few other packages...

For BZ1 I assume there's a utility somewhere, since Dx got them into BZE, and I assume Ken can do it also...

-Av-

Since the "1.0" Grizzly is NOW tweaked to CAD standards, should "we" (not me, I don't know $#%^ about how to get there) use the new CAD PERFECT Grizzly?

Well, it's to be expected that some 'processing' will have to take place to make the model...  and that the game version may have issues when converted to the real world equivalent.  I think what you've got there is perfect... 

The few CNC created models I've seen have had ridges that needed to be sanded out, and possibly a 'tail' that had to be cut off.  I'm not sure just what you'd end up with if you tried to create a Grizz from the final file, but assume it would at least have to be sanded a touch and then painted up...

Awesome...   

-Av-

What's the 'in game model'?  Do you mean mine?  If so, don't worry about hurting my feelings and call it something like "Av's Grizzly".    We don't want any more confusion than we already have if at some point you're going to switch to the actual in-game Grizzly extracted with Dummy's tools.

Or are you talking about the actual Grizzly from the game?  If so, wow, and I wonder if it's exporting in Dummy's exporter exactly as it was in the game?  For that matter, as it was under what patch?  The Grizz suffered a lot of messing around, apparently, in the various patches.  I know I absolutely HATE that the top barrel move one of the patches did...

So, if you're working with the extracted models maybe we should know what version?  I'd love to see them be straight 1.0 with no patches, but other people may have another opinion.

About my version:

The Grizz is one of the first models I did.  Since FON had one of his techs do the Czar on a Sun Workstation at work I felt the Grizzly should also be done, so I basically learned 3D Studio doing the Grizz, then the Razor and Badger.  BTW, that means the first BZ1 ship converted was done so on a hundred-some-thousand dollar graphics workstation, as FON is part of a special effects house.  He's at a different one now, or at least was last time I heard from him, as he's with the company that did the Balrog in LOTR...  He sent me some early computer generated fur on a rabbit from Hell once...  it was supposed to be a regular old rabbit but the technology was being developed...  so brrrrrr...   

3DS is only partly parametric, mostly GUI, and I rarely ever 'went by the numbers' when building faces and such.  You drag it, you drop it, and if it looks decent when zoomed out then you go with it.  There are a few tricks you can do to align verts but for most game models it's not a huge issue.  This'll make them annoying to anyone with a CAD background...   :p

I told my Boss, who's a big Autocad nut, that I was more a Max person than Cad.  He asked what the difference was, and I said "In CAD that box might be 4.3125 on a side, where in Max you drag it out and go 'That looks pretty good...'."   

There'll also be some overlap in all of my models as I hate seeing that gap between parts ingame.  Maybe if they were supposed to be alien tech and held together by energy or something it'd be different, but for human craft I imagine bearings and shafts, not just thin air.  Later on I started zooming way in and aligning them JUST short of touching, but the quick and easy way was to make them overlap.  I later was told that BZ2's renderer hates touching parts, though...

Um... don't get hit...   

-Av-

This is exactly right:

That's understandable.  AV recreated the models by hand using the textures to recreate the models to the best of his abilities.

I explained all that to Ken, but not to Wall.    I apologize for being extra flaky right now... RL is killing me right now, as Christmas always does.    In another week I'll have actual FREE TIME for the first time in many many months, and intend to get back into BZC.

In the meantime if Wall is going to make us keepsakes of BZ1 I think they should be the real deal.  If someone (GBD?) wants to extract the originals with Dummy's utilities and convert them to 3DS it'd be great.

I, for one, want exactly what's in the game to the fullest extent possible used for any 3D models made.

Not that it's not cool moving into "Battlezone, the Next Generation", and I absolutely love the jazzed up models shown, but they're not my babies...    

This is somewhat wrong:

General BlackDragon is able to extract the models.  He did it for the Chinese models for Avatar's BZC mod for bz2.

He IS able to extract them, and did so for his own version of the Chinese units, but they're not the ones in BZC.  I did the same thing for the TRO units that I did for the others, made them all one face at a time from scratch.  They were considerably easier for the most part, but some of them are very strangely made...

-Av-

Darn Wall, I can't believe I forgot the texture...    color me brain dead during this busy holiday season.       I'll bundle those off to you asap along with the Razor.

Now, about vacumn forming...  um...  I've always worked with CONVEX models. 

The styrene goes in the oven, on a frame, to be heated.  It's then pulled down around the master model which is sitting on a mesh.  This stretches it down over the model, and the only place you need to worry about extra 'vents' are where the master goes concave... 

The styrene is fairly hot but cools very quickly, so the master model doesn't really have to be indestructable...  but foam is probably out of the question.   And of course there's no undercutting, or the master becomes entombed in the styrene.  For the Grizz I've always thought it would be just an easy horizontal plane through the widest point of the body, giving you a top and bottom.

The idea of a plate as shown looks to me more like something for a stamping press...  or a chocolate mold.     Grizzly ice cubes, anyone??  Or Ice Pops?   Coooool....   

-Av-

That last one sounds like the perfect start to a planet-sized ship...  nothing like a kilometer thick layer of diamond under a layer of granite for a hull...   

No super-race should be without one... 

-Av-

Concept art, always a tease... 

I see it more as a 'ribbed' barrel, not spiraled.  The white lines on the game model are definately just 'painted stripes', but those on the concept tank look more like vertical ribs...  in fact the whole thing looks like it might be set up to contract during recoil...

Anyway...

Lightning towers on the moon...  I always thought that crater was the original NSDF base on the moon, Eagle's Nest one.  This would have been the first place Arkin could get his hands on enough biometal to really experiment with, once the Scavs were turned loose on the scrap fields of the moon...

This makes that Comm Tower and those Lightning Towers prototypes, and indicates plans in place to journey to Venus...  surely Arkin would have figured out that Venus wouldn't be too friendly to Solar Power...

***

You know...  I've been looking at Ken's project as a way to preserve BZ1 for modern hardware.  Maybe, if he can unlock the game the way GSH has unlocked BZ2, it could be a way to expand it also.  If he opens the engine up to new models we COULD contribute updated versions of the units and buildings.

Just a thought, purists please don't hunt me down and kill me... or burn anything...   

-Av-

Just what is the pop gun designed for, besides knocking out snipers at the end of a strat?

Someone once said it was the weapon of choice for flying targets...  (pssst...  FURIES...   )

-Av-

You'll also notice that rotating and moving buildings leaves their shadow behind as the light file isn't updated when editing...

Seems like there's also a way to get into a 'psuedo' view, where you have textured terrain instead of the wireframe view for terrain scultping.  I can't remember the keystrokes, though, cause I'm old...

I thought the BZ1 editor to be the most amazing thing I'd ever seen.  It's still head over heels better than most editors out there if only for the instant in/out of FPS/Edit mode.  Nothing beats sitting right there in front of whatever you're trying to edit...

-Av-