any way to make shields look thicker?

**lesterthenerd** · March 31, 2008, 08:31 AM

cause they r awfully thin looking dont u think?

**Publius** · March 31, 2008, 08:46 AM

Sometimes curving the shield model slightly can add the illusion of thickness.

Outside of that, the only way I can think of is to make a new shield model using a box instead of a plane as the base (so you have six sides instead of two, and can manipulate depth that way).

**lesterthenerd** · March 31, 2008, 09:32 AM

why is it that modders for like RS or RTR dont do this? the shield (especially round shields) in their mods look way too thin.

**florin80** · March 31, 2008, 10:22 AM

I assume because you have to stay within some boundaries with the model`s size for this engine(so that it will still be playable without serious lag) and those polies would be better used somewhere else. Just a guess.

**Publius** · March 31, 2008, 10:59 AM

Originally Posted by lesterthenerd

why is it that modders for like RS or RTR dont do this? the shield (especially round shields) in their mods look way too thin.

I'm not a big fan of doing it to be honest, though for RTR we did make a few models like this. Especially for a round shield or one with curves vs. straight edges, you'd have to use so many poly's just to get something that looked decently round (vs. something that looked like a pentagon or a hexagon, etc.) that the engine load is very high. Like anything else it's a trade off, and never a particularly logical one in my opinion.

**lesterthenerd** · March 31, 2008, 05:46 PM

i see. well i guess we just have to stick to thin looking shields then.

**tone** · April 03, 2008, 03:59 AM

And also quite often you want to allow different skins of the same model to have slightly different shapes to have more unit variety - e.g. with Celts having oval or hexagonal shields. I've started doing the 3D thing however with one or two units...e.g. the Brythonic slinger in the new Belgae preview: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=155960