@Timmaigh

The red marked parts are bad, because they do overlap. The one marked yellow is not that bad, but not good either because it does not overlay perfectly. The other parts overlay perfectly and are good for AO

As you guessed sins has no ingame Ambient Occlusion. Therefore we have only the option to bake AO into the texture using a professional 3D program (I guess blender could do this to). To make use of such a process, the parts that are symmetrical have to be overlayed on the UV pixel perfect and need to be oriented that the AO selfshadow is on the same spot when two pieces use up the same space on the UV.

Example, look at the UV above, then at your texture below

Then look at the AO map I can bake

and now at the combined texture

Using that texture for the model would result in this:

Notice all the improper Black spots? Thats where pieces of the UV overlap that shouldn't. Best example is the black part and line on the vertical wing. If all parts on the UV layout are properly separated and overlayed, the AO looks perfect and the model even more stunning.

As for textureing your models, I could (and I really would want to) but I still have so many other models and things to care about concerning this mod that It would be a great relieve for me if you could do this for us. Still, I appreciate all your models even without texture (but please make the UV)

PS.: If you want to redo the UV on the Vorchan, I will make a proper AO and Light for the texture. I think if you carefully arrange the parts on the UV the texture can be used almost as it is. Otherwise I will take care of the Vorchan UV myself sometime in the future.

Thanks again for helping us with modelling (and UV and textureing) and hope this post helps to understand what I said before.

Have a nice night

Send the texture and model to me if you want and I can try baking your non-optimized uv-map and texture onto a uv-map that will work for AO. My UV-map will be generated though, unless you want to build a standalone uv-map yourself and I can still try baking the texture.

It would seem to me that 1 texture is not enough if you're planning to fit all those bits there without any of them overlapping..

I agree totally, I won't be re-uv mapping the object though. What I'm offering is a temporary solution, plus if someone makes a clean uv-map I can still do the baking process with his original texture. If you want it, it's free. I'll send the files back to Timmaigh and you guys can decide.

Here is the end result with what he has so far.

Original:

Baked with a 2048x2048 texture and generated UV map

Baked with a 1024x1024 texture and generated UV map

Example with an AO applied from my tool (Probably not as good as what you can do but it gives an example).

I did not send a texture with AO applied as I figured Tobiwan would want to use his process if the texture map would work for him.

Ah that explains everything. I sent Tobi the files. I would say it looks great on the last pic, and suprisingly the quality of the texture does not look to suffer with your texture compared to original texture, as the parts have now less pixels

@Tobi Wahn:

Yes, i remember now, back when i sent it to you for the first time, there were some errors, unwelded vertices or something. And i sent the same model now to ZombieRus. Sorry for that.

It still should work as long as the corrected model is still similar in shape to the original textured model. Are you planning on adding new details to the model or just correcting errors?

Not a problem. If it helps in this case it doesn't really take any extra time since I'm already setup to do the baking process.

I understand what you mean about the textures though and uv-mapping process. I'm looking at some ways to improve my own process but I'm not really into uv-mapping other peoples work.

Well, UV mapping is a b*tch
Its awful lot of work if done after the model is finished. It's always easier to start UV mapping before duplicating objects for your model, because you then have to UV a part only once.

@Timmaigh

They did, but it will take time for game engines to catch up

http://ptex.us/overview.html

Obviously i have no idea, what are Zvezdochets et al working on right now, but for my part there is this little thing with fixing Vorchan AO and on previous site you could see the Centauri Starbase model WIP. As far i know, someone, possibly Zvezdochets built Primus model as well, but i suppose it is not finished yet, as i havent seen any pics since those WIP ones. But maybe i am wrong. After the starbase i might built something else and if that happens, i will probably keep my allegiance to Centauri Republic

Seriously though, i actually have some blueprints for Balvarin Carrier, Sentri Fighter, Kutai and one other centauri ship and they are generally easier to model than curvaceous Whitestars, Minbari or Vorlon models, so ill let the more experienced modelers to take care of those...