stagga

:D Yeah I know that feeling! But seriously the more time you spend getting the basics perfect the less time you spend fixing things when it's gone past that stage of moving a few verts. I also reccommend incremental saves and putting the point you're at in the save name eg: "Cockpit_Block_Out" or something. This way if worse comes to worse and you find it's easier to go back to an early point than fix you can easily find the part you need and import it back into your file. It's a mistake you'll only make once but there's nothing worse than just having one save file and someone pointing out that something is wrong when you're way past that point of an easy fix. You end up spending hours trying to adjust hundreds of verts while still trying to keep the mesh tidy :cry: And OldCrow thanks again for the advice, now I need to source a copy of Max 7 and try and remember how everything works again after 2.5 years of Maya!

Thanks for the quick reply OldCrow. To be honest I'm not trying to make a fully working new model yet but rather I'd like to upres and improve some of the models already in BS, especially the Rangir (Ranzhir?) AA Control vehicle which currently looks like a low res mock up, especially when compared with some of the other ground vehicles like the Tunguska. To see so much effort put into one vehicle and so little put into the one sitting next to it makes me wonder if they just ran out of time to fix it before release! So really I just need to find a way to extract the main hull of the vehicle and upres/add to that and apply new UVs and a higher res texture while retaining the original tracks, radar antenna and other animated parts. In other words just a basic model swap. I'll have a look for those Lock On tools you mention to see if it's possible with that. Thanks for your help.

Hi Linden, it's cool that you're willing to do some work for BS but would you mind if I offer you some advice? Judging by those early screens of your Apache model it appears you're trying to do too much too soon! What I mean is you should try and get the basic model completed with as few polygons as possible (500-1000 is a good number to start), concentrating on the proportions, the scale and the silhouette shape. When you have the whole helicopter modelled and looking accurate that is when you begin to add detail, breaking it into sections and so on. Try and keep the mesh as neat as possible with nice rings and loops and really focus on the inflation of surfaces as you work. This should eliminate those odd looking polygons and harsh edges you're seeing in some places and get the light to run smoothly across the bodywork. It can become quite tedious when you're adjusting individual vertices but for this reason it's best to get the shape and surfaces as accurate as possible while the model is still fairly low poly. That way it's easy to make changes whereas if you go straight to a high poly model and try to clean that up it's much harder to get a good result. The bevelled edges should be one of the last things you do. I hope this helps, good luck! And while I'm here I'd be interested in improving some of the models is BS myself but I no very little about modding LOMAC. Can anyone tell me where to find and how to extract the 3d models? Can I use Modman? Any pointers and advice would be very welcome. :)