07-23-2020, 03:44 PM
So... the current BW transports were the first game assets I ever had to make from scratch* and it really shows. While I'm not too dissatisfied with the visual aspect of the thing, the technical execution and especially optimization aspects of it are absolutely woeful; and since that shipline will be receiving a few new additions Soon™ I figured this would be as good a time as any to go back and touch up the two existing transports as well.
The main performance/optimization concern with the ships is the way their textures are done. In retrospect, the slight visual flare custom textures add to the model is nowhere near enough (at least the way they were done for these particular ships) to justify each of them taking up roughly 8 times more vram than any typical ship of the same size would, so the optimal solution would be to completely redo the textures with the standard approach used in the rest of the mod.
Giving the ships a more standardized retexture, along with some minor mesh fixes (including a few minor smoothing hickups that happened during export and managed to sneak into the game unnoticed) and addition of LODs will give the two existing transports sixteen times the detail optimization while also making them more visually consistent with future additions to the line.
Apologies if you were fond of the existing textures (also whats wrong with you), and thank you for your understanding.
Revising the two existing transports is lined up for after the new (old) BW Armored Transport is concluded, but since it's not substantial enough to warrant getting its own thread in the submissions section, this notice is being posted here in advance just so the change doesn't come out of the blue for the community. In case anyone has any concerns they'd like to voice, or in case there are any suggestions/requests for additional tweaks while I'm at it, feel free to either post here or catch me on discord (do note that this is not a "remaster" of the existing transports, just a quick touch-up, so no major or drastic changes).
P.S: It's been pointed out that both ships seem to have a bit of trouble lining up with tradelanes. That's already on the list and will be looked into, though, its on part due to the proportions of the ship, which is constrained to size of interchangeable cargopods and can't be tweaked, but can probably still be remedied to some degree by adjusting how the cmp is centered. We'll see how it goes.
* Yes, there was the RM VHF before that, but that one's mostly frankensteined from butchered Wraith bits, so it wasn't strictly speaking a "new" mesh, and it's so completely FUBAR that no amount of touch-up can save it and it'd be better off just receiving a full-on replacement.
The main performance/optimization concern with the ships is the way their textures are done. In retrospect, the slight visual flare custom textures add to the model is nowhere near enough (at least the way they were done for these particular ships) to justify each of them taking up roughly 8 times more vram than any typical ship of the same size would, so the optimal solution would be to completely redo the textures with the standard approach used in the rest of the mod.
Giving the ships a more standardized retexture, along with some minor mesh fixes (including a few minor smoothing hickups that happened during export and managed to sneak into the game unnoticed) and addition of LODs will give the two existing transports sixteen times the detail optimization while also making them more visually consistent with future additions to the line.
Apologies if you were fond of the existing textures (also whats wrong with you), and thank you for your understanding.
Revising the two existing transports is lined up for after the new (old) BW Armored Transport is concluded, but since it's not substantial enough to warrant getting its own thread in the submissions section, this notice is being posted here in advance just so the change doesn't come out of the blue for the community. In case anyone has any concerns they'd like to voice, or in case there are any suggestions/requests for additional tweaks while I'm at it, feel free to either post here or catch me on discord (do note that this is not a "remaster" of the existing transports, just a quick touch-up, so no major or drastic changes).
P.S: It's been pointed out that both ships seem to have a bit of trouble lining up with tradelanes. That's already on the list and will be looked into, though, its on part due to the proportions of the ship, which is constrained to size of interchangeable cargopods and can't be tweaked, but can probably still be remedied to some degree by adjusting how the cmp is centered. We'll see how it goes.
* Yes, there was the RM VHF before that, but that one's mostly frankensteined from butchered Wraith bits, so it wasn't strictly speaking a "new" mesh, and it's so completely FUBAR that no amount of touch-up can save it and it'd be better off just receiving a full-on replacement.