Tangara Progress

Progress on the Tangara has been slow, so I've been holding off on writing an update here. Now I have some other things to say, so Im posting this to get it out of the way :)

First, let me say that I have been working on some fiddly bits, re-arranging vertices by hand, in order to assist with the texture mapping, so there has been a lot of work, but very little to show for it.

I've found that its much better to create a "hard" line (for example around the driver's window, or the cab door) at the edge of a polygon, rather than trying to draw the line on a texture. The Tangara is 20 metres long and almost 5 metres high, and all that has to fit onto a couple of texture bitmaps. I have been using 512 x 512 pixel texture images, but even at double that size, one pixel is still equal to several centimetres on the side of the Tangara. The end result is, that if I draw a solid line on the texture, at any sort of angle, it has a jagged, pixelated edge. Not so on a polygon boundry - the edge is smooth and sharp!

So, I have added a few polygons by cutting an area around the driver's window, which gives the sharp lines that I'm looking for. I also added exterior sills to all of the windows, to allow me to texture the sill area in black. Previously the sills were part of the interior, which will be white, and getting the sharp dividing line between the outside and the inside (between black and white), and getting it in exactly the right place, (since the windows are only about 1cm thick) would be difficult on a texture. Cutting the mesh gets the location right, and gives a nice sharp line.

I tried simply painting the texture around the guard's door, since it is at a 90 degree angle, but I have found that with the resolution of the texture images, the line along the top and bottom falls mid-pixel, so I would have to slide the texture map up or down a bit. Its just easier to cut around the door, and have it be consistent with everything else, so that is the way I am going to go.

File Version: 400
Poly Count: 13,325

Bogies and pantograph have been exported to seperate files for texturing

Note: The poly count shown here is for the Gmax model in progress. The count will generally be higher than that of the finished in-game model since it includes duplication, tools, jigs, and other pieces which may not be part of the final model. It may also include parts which are generally counted separately, such as pantographs, interiors, or bogies. LOD modelling will be used to further reduce in-game polygons.