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hey all, tell me what you think about my truck; i just managed to get it under 3000 vertices, so there shouldn't be any more bugs, but if anyone finds one please tell me about it. thanx

Hey, now this is more like it! Very nice job. You've actually got this down so well it won't even flood the track with Reflections turned on. Top job.

The triangular shocks are a bit tragic. Dunno if you had to go that far, but I can forgive that. The only real problem I have with it is it's still way out of scale with the other trucks in the game. But that said, I like this a lot. I didn't keep the first version in my game, but I'll definitely keep this one for the time being

Also...

Regardless of how they look, you have to run some retextured stock wheels and tires on it. They don't look that bad, but the ones you have on there now, are still way out of hand, and there is no point in running them.

I agree with D2S, the shocks are still way out of bounds too. There is no point in having that much detail on the shocks, on any truck. 4 simple tubes, at different lengths, would be much better.

The truck itself is still way too big. You should make it compared to the sizes of the stock Overkill, they are basically the same body size wise. This truck still dwarfs all the others, custom or stock.

All in all, it's WAY better than the Expo entry, but it could be so much better. You're on the right path now however.

> I agree with D2S, the shocks are still way out of bounds too. There is no point in having that much detail on the shocks, on any truck. 4 simple tubes, at different lengths, would be much better.

im not entirely sure what you mean, but i found that triangular shapes use the least amount of faces and vertices out of all 3d structures (even lower than crisscrossed faces), so i decided to go with that.

>The triangular shocks are a bit tragic. Dunno if you had to go that far, but I can forgive that.

yea i didn't have much of a choice; that was pretty much the last option i had for decreasing the amount of vertices on my truck without losing too much detail on the truck body. the original shocks i had on the first version were 170 vertices each (which used up way too many verts) compared to only 39 each for the triangular ones.

> Regardless of how they look, you have to run some retextured stock wheels and tires on it. They don't look that bad, but the ones you have on there now, are still way out of hand, and there is no point in running them.

well the reason i used those wheels was because the stock tires don't have that beefed up tire look that i wanted for my truck; and since the vertice count of the wheels didn't put the total over 3000, i figured there'd be no harm in using them.

> The truck itself is still way too big. You should make it compared to the sizes of the stock Overkill, they are basically the same body size wise. This truck still dwarfs all the others, custom or stock.

i actually set out to do that at first, but that meant i had to resize and reposition the shocks separate from the body to fit the mtm2 pistons, which in the end had an overall weird effect. besides, i liked how my truck seemed to bully all the other trucks on the track.

anyway thanks for the comments guys, and i hope to make even better trucks in the future.

Yours is fine Jqoc, but there is only so far you can go. I coulda done the same thing many times, but trust me... there are some of us that have great puters that can handle this sort of thing, and love high detail. Then there are the rest of the guys that can't run their game with trucks like yours or something I could make. We have to think of the little guy at all times here.

Trust me, I've made this truck, and people still complain of the lag with mine too, you can't make everyone happy. Not only my favorite band, but also my philosophy, the KISS theory...
"Keep It Simple Stupid" I think of it for everything I make.

No offense to you, I mean that as a gererel rule of thumb in this game. Everyone should should follow the KISS theory. Yours is much better than you Expo entry, but you can't please everyone. Keep on modeling bro, you've got excellent skills, you just need to tone it back some. This is an old game.

If the whole model reaches 3000 vertices WITH the tire models included, then it's fine...I have models of 2600-2800 vertices, not counting wheels and axles.....nice rebuild. If people have computers that are too slow for that quantity, then let them upgrade. my one gigahertz pent-3 machine runs fine with it, and I consider my PC slow....

The least number of vertical surfaces I will use on shocks is 5 faces (10 faces if they are triangular 3-vertix polys). 5-sided shocks have the least number of faces, while still providing an illusion of a round tube, rather than a square or triangular one seen with 3 and 4-sided models.

frame tubes can be square, as MTM2 tends to make them appear round in the game.

As far as their position, I always make my shocks separately from the model, to simplify their positioning.....I place them in the right place on the truck for rough positioning, then I separate them and pod them alone first using the parameters from the trk file to check their position, related to the shock struts.

then I insert them on the model and pod again....if still misaligned, then I may fudge the size or wide of the model to compensate, then repeat all of the above....A happy comprimise can usually be found.

Resizing the truck to MTM2 scale would be prefered, but that's the author's choice. I resize all the EVO bodys I converted to suitable scale.....EVO models tend to be 2-3 feet longer than MTM2 trucks.

Either way, it's an excellent model....very nice job.

>Either way, it's an excellent model....very nice job.

thanks BigDOGGe

> The least number of vertical surfaces I will use on shocks is 5 faces (10 faces if they are triangular 3-vertix polys). 5-sided shocks have the least number of faces, while still providing an illusion of a round tube, rather than a square or triangular one seen with 3 and 4-sided models.

yea, i tried using the 5 sided shocks first, but they put the vertice count over the top (3100+ verts including wheels and axles). even the 4 sided ones were too much; with the triangular shocks the truck's total vert count is a very slim 18 verts below the 3000 limit.

> the KISS theory... "Keep It Simple Stupid"

to be honest i had actually intended this truck to be an online racing version truck; unfortunately i found out that most of the wasted vertices were on the truck body (2864 verts for just the original fiberglass body). that meant that if i still wanted it to be a racing version i would either have to redo nearly the entire body (which i was not willing to do) or lose most of the frame and engine detail (which i was not willing to do either). so basically i just decided to keep it an offline single player truck only.

> As far as their position, I always make my shocks separately from the model, to simplify their positioning.....

positioning the shocks wasn't too much of a problem for me, though the result wasn't all that great; in order to match the pistons' positions i had to stretch the shocks outward away from the truck frame, which in my opinion ended up looking pretty ugly; so i decided to leave the size as it is.

Guess what version I prefer most?

Okay, maybe I'm totally off, but...

I like the Expo high-vert one better. Laggy, flooding... but still a classic.

Keep up the good work, Jqoc.