from what i saw - fighters have a polycount of around 1000 - 2000 in freelancer ( might be a bit more for non vanilla ships ) .... and capital ships go up to like 9000 ( most custom ships have less, cause the vanilla capitalships are fairly detailed compared to custom ships )
these values were necessary when the game got out back then - and of course even low end computers today can deal with more complex models... but nevertheless... aim for a maximum of around 10k polygons [AFTER converting them via milkshape to a .cmp]
for example.... when i build a ship in metaseque ( which uses squares instead of triangles ) - and convert it in milkshape to a .cmp - it easily tripples the polygons. ( example: the juggernaut has around 2000 polygons in metaseque - and results at around 8700 polygons after converting )
When creating fighters I usually work between the 1500-2000 polygon range. For gun boats I work just a little larger about 2000-3000 polygons. 50k polygons is a bit overkill not to mention UV mapping it would be a major pain. Unless you really want to spend a long time and not get squashed or stretched textures that look horrible.
The upper part is one single object, with 10,179 polys.
The lower parts make up another 11,256 polys.
All I did was take the large piece and move it upwards, to see what is where. There is a huge amount of waste in these models I've found and symmetry definately is not a given, even for basic things.
After some mangling of the ship and some cleaning up, I arrived at this:
The pipes that you can see actually account for over 5500 polygons.
Could easily cut down the poly count but it does leave things looking pretty bare. Some details here and there could solve that though.
I'm pretty unsure about the central cylinder object but it can be removed and changed easily anyway.
Thoughts/Ideas/Suggestions/Criticisms?
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Those last two look a little Starlancer to me, with the last being closest to the Yamato and the one before looking like a Prowler. Still they all look great!