ndragu

is there an ongoing effort to change the main menu background? or was this something gab did for fun? in any case, if there is any interest in changing that background, we could brainstorm some ideas and make a nice 3d rendering. if not, the existing one is perfectly fine

I'd love to do some modeling if there's anything that needs to be taken care of since I have time this weekend. If not, I'll keep an eye out for any tasks in the future -nick

Hi Enrique, Sorry for being slow about this. I haven't forgotten about it, it's just that I've been swamped with other work. I haven't done anything in that direction so far, but I will definitely do so at the end of this week, most likely on Saturday/Sunday. If you want to, you can start with whatever you wanted to work on and let me know so that I don't do the same thing. Again, sorry for being slow right now, but I'll do my best to show some work in the next few days. Nick

Aha, ok, I got it. Sorry for the confusion. I'll post an update in the next couple of days to show progress. -nick

I would like to help with those textures for the heroes Enrique was mentioning. However I'm not sure I understand exactly what's needed. Are the existing textures old or they don't look right? What's wrong with them and what should I concentrate on doing? -nick

I think both symbols are from one of your vector files Lion and they look awesome by the way!

I don't mind texturing paperkat's model as long as he's fine with it. I can also do unit texturing, if there's anything that needs attention. I'm working on personal projects right now, but I definitely want to help out as much as possible ... so hit me with whatever modelling/texturing task . -nick edit: also, I forgot to thank you for all the help as usual and taking the time to fix stuff that I broke

Here's the file: https://www.dropbox....mBoat-2sail.zip It has the collada file, the texture with player color and a txt file with the prop names. Unfortunately, I don't know how to make the pivot point of the boat to stay the same when exporting. It always assumes the average distance between the boat and the prop points, thus probably making the water go above the boat's deck. Also, the scale of the boat is off. Sorry about that, I'm not sure how to fix those issues. -nick edit- also, is there anything else that needs to be modeled in the meantime? I looked a bit through the forum, but it seems that every task is taken care of by somebody.

I tried making the texture a bit sharper in some places, especially the hull area, but I can't tell if it looks better than before. The texture size is 256x256 so it's hard to make everything look sharp and clean.

Ok, thanks for the feedback. I'll post an update tomorrow morning

Thanks Enrique, I made some small changes, but nothing major overall. I focused mainly on the texture, making it less noisy in some places and I reduced the triangle count slightly to ~1300. -nick

Here's the boat with the two changes: slightly narrower and lower deck

The boat is just shorter now, that's why it looks wide, but I'll make it slightly narrower and I'll lower the deck -nick

Here's a small update for the two sail boat. Texture size is 256x256

As for the smaller boat, I'm not sure what's wrong with it. It should have smoothing groups and shade correctly. I just looked at my model in 3ds max and it's fine. Perhaps there's something in the collada export options that is causing this. I'll look into it and come back later with any updates

https://www.dropbox.com/s/e96orfydl4g7v56/mauryan-LargeBoat-2.zip I tweaked the texture for the large boat by adding more padding to remove bleeding. I also added a bit more geometry to the sails to remove that awkward shading. The collada file contains the texture and the model with the proprs. @Enrique: I think I figured out why the pivot of the model changes upon exporting. It seems that whenever I export the main mesh (in this case the boat) along with those prop points (helpers), the pivot point assumes the average position of the boat and the helpers. That's why the water appears above the hull when you import it in the game engine. At this point I don't know how to prevent the pivot point to move when exporting, but I'll try to find a solution. -nick

Probably the sail needs more geometry and to be on the safe side the texture needs some padding (on top of the 2 pixel padding it already has). I'll take care of it

This is my first go at the smaller boat with two sails. Not many changes so far from the larger boat, but it's still work in progress

What should the second warship look like? I assume it is a bit smaller than the one I just modeled. Should I simply make a smaller version of this one? -nick

Thanks for all the help and feedback everybody! @Enrique: I'll look over the tutorials and let you know if there's anything I don't understand. -nick

Here's the link to the texture file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jstrkyfyb0j8sq8/mauryan-LargeBoat.png We could modify the sails if you guys think it's necessary or it would look better. -nick

@Enrique: Sorry for the bugs. I'm having a lot of problems with the exporter. Every time I export geometry I reset it to the origin and I made sure that the water plane was below the deck. However, I tried reimporting my own model to see how it would look. Sometimes the boat would import flipped on the z axis and the pivot would reset itself making the water go above the deck. The helpers were also parented to the boat, e.g. if I moved the boat, the helpers would follow. I'm not really sure how to prevent this from happening in the future, because to my knowledge, the file should have been ok. As for the sails, I think adding player color there would be an improvement. Thanks to everybody for the feedback

Here's the archive: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mrug04ykvhdcrul/mauryan-LargeBoat.zip I also added a text file containing the names of the props. Please let me know if you have any problems with the files or if anything needs to be modified.

Sure thing. Should I upload a zip file with the model and the map once I do that?

Here's what I have so far. I couldn't find any Mauryan round shields, so I used the bell shaped one and the tall round one. I also added a weapon rack. I hid the sails to better show prop placement.