First off - I FINALLY updated the homepage of Radioactive-Software, it had not been updated since late 2008 ... [grin]. I also recently (finally) snatched up radioactivesoftware.com [ no dash ] domain for less than $100 and forwarded it to my site radioactive-software.com which I've had since 2001. That had been bothering me for years, and it just came up for sale again. I had one guy try to sell it to me for ~$1,500 which I was unfortunatly honestly considering ;-).
Now, I usually don't post work-in-progress models/artworks anymore - but this one is really awesome IMO. My main contract artist is working on an aerial dropship for Armored Warfare. The model's shape is based off the V-22 Osprey [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-22_Osprey ], one of my favorite aircraft designs of all time.
It will replace the World War 2 style landing crafts on the beach assault map...and will also allow me to make the gameplay more dynamic by inserting troops quickly anywhere on the battlefields - which are pretty big - not fun to cross without a ride ;-)
I think the poly limit for this guy in-game for the highest LOD will be somewhere around 10,000 triangles. I want to keep as much geometric detail on this as possible. Obviously there will be aggressive level of detail reduction in-game ... the lower LODs should be down < 1000 triangles. Since there can be 32-64 of these dropships per world.
These are designed to carry a squad of 16 soldiers, or a single vehicle at a time.
FYI, I have an older version of below un-textured model in-game @ 26,000 triangles and 4,000 for distance LOD and it works fine. For texturing we're probably going to do a 4096x4096 set of color/normal/specular maps.
I'll keep you guys updated - props go to my fantastic artist Tom.
- Dan
