mikebart

you can do it if you try

hey, you might have seen this at doom3world.org, it should look really good in a night time map, if put it in a testmap with low lights and run around with a flashlight and you should see what I mean. download grass

Yeah it dosent help that im no expert either , are you sure that the fly is actually a sprite and not a decal? I mean does it always face the camera no matter what angle you veiw it from?

thanks, yeah you can really see it in that shot, it looks nice too , so it definitly can be done on a particle sprite but what about in a material alone?

This is kind of like that wife swap programme I've been seeing on TV, hmmm.

Exactly, there's a good chance that will happen (not sure when) but im only talking about generic stuff like trees, plants, rocks maybe a few textures, but nothing unique to the game, the amount of darkmod assets that get released will depend on how many GZ uses. But just have a think about it, maybe it would be a good idea to start a discussion about this in another thread, I dont know, maybe you could have a vote or something?.

Just an idea, this was the only totaly wooden water wheel I could find, its not as ornate or chunky as yours but you can see how its divided into 8 segments, if you made 1 1/8th segment of this type of wheel, you could repeat it 8 times and then model the axel seperatly, I think your model looks nice but probably a bit costly in the poly department

Yeah for sure, theres probably quite a few other things to share, particually the natural environment type assets, but just keep in mind what I said about them being released to the public, when the GZ beta's get released.

Thanks sneaksie but I cant get the image to load, are you sure the links ok?, is it just me or has imageshack totally gone to shit lately? Is the sprite material targeting a .tga file or a material file? if its a material file could you show it to me?

have you tryed the same thing pointing at a material with diffuse, spec and local maps? Btw, thanks for all the help guys

yep, the material works fine when you take away 'deform sprite' Ive done some tests with particles myself, but it was a long time ago, early days of doom3 and I have a distinct memory of having a particle emit static sprites with diffuse, normal and specular reacting properly to light, but it was a long time ago, for all I know I might have dreamt it and confused it with reality. I tried it again with a particle emitter recently in quake4 and got pretty much the same effect as the 'deform sprite' shader. I love your shaders! I actually just found your test videos last night in the public forum, really impressive stuff, I wasnt aware those things were possible in doom3, it shows you have a very creative mind. More like the sprites in Doom 1 and 2, Duke3D like the objects, candleabras, trees, pickup items although I dont think they are the same thing because in doom3 a sprite, wether its a particle or defined by the shader, is applied to a 2 triangle plane and thats why I find it hard to believe that we cant have lit sprites with bump as a stand alone shader. you might be onto something there, is it possible to change the order of events in a shader like that?

Yep, its basicaly the same technique as the ivy, which can be made into a bush pretty easily, except with this one i've made a few improvements which save on texture memory at the cost of a few extra polys. If you compare the diffusemap for the ivy and this tree you should see what I mean, the tree has less wasted uv space. Im gradually going to be making alot more nature type assets for the Ground Zero mod and The Dark Mod, it would be great if you guys could contribute some of your nature assets to the Ground Zero mod aswell because they're badly in need of them too. But I also want to make it perfectly clear that we will be releasing all assets to the community regually, Im not really too sure where you guys stand on asset sharing between mods but I think it would benefit both mods. yeah, I totally agree about trees being difficult to make, i've made about 6 so far, gradually improving the workflow after each one through trial and error, you need good references, images found on google.com quite often are'nt enough to really grasp the shape and structure of a tree, it helps to have multiple photos of the same tree around that same time period, otherwise you might start mixing seasonal differences onto the same model wich can look quite wrong. I'd advise getting out and actually photographing some trees yourself, good references online are hard to find. Also crack open call of duty or any other games you have wich have good trees in them and study the texture maps and how they are layed out onto a UV space, I learnt alot from doing this. this was my first tree model, I made it shortly after doom3 came out and I was quite proud of it at the time, so as you can see you're not doing too bad Badcogg but I think you'r pine could do with some more variation and some spiney bits going up the trunk, but I think you've got a pretty good looking tree there . http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=5854

Hey thanks for the link, it was a very interesting discussion that answered alot of questions. Thankyou I've basicly just added the 'defom sprite' def to an alpha tested material as you can see below and thats about as far as I got. Im really not too clued up on shaders but this just seems like such a simple thing, from what I understand a material wich has the 'deform sprite' def is just like a lookat_target which tells the polys its been assigned to, to target and track the player, so why wouldnt it receive lighting and shadows? models/nature/tree_foliage01 { deform sprite noShadows nonsolid noimpact twoSided qer_editorimage models/nature/tree_foliage01_d.tga { blend diffusemap map models/nature/tree_foliage01_d.tga alphaTest 0.5 } specularmap models/nature/tree_foliage01_s.tga bumpmap models/nature/tree_foliage01_local.tga } and heres a pic of what happens: This is one ive used in the past, wich I think is doing what you were describing: models/nature/tree_foliage02 { qer_editorimage models/nature/tree_foliage01_d.tga DECAL_MACRO noShadows nonsolid noimpact twoSided translucent deform sprite { blend GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA map models/nature/tree_foliage01_d.tga } } But like you said, the brightness of the texture is determined by the diffuse and it receives no lighting or shadows and is unsorted. I ended up just creating a 6-tri cluster model (3 planes facing at each axis) for the foliage using the same material but removed the 'deform sprite' def and I personally think it looks ok possibly even better than it would have if i'd used sprites. Something I've found with sprites is that they have to be quite small otherwise you really notice them when you orbit around the model, so with the cluster models I was able to double them in size and by doing so cut out a few tris from the model. But im still very interested in alpha-sprites which have normalmaps and specular, there would be so many uses for them. thanks again

you mean the AA stuff?, im getting this sort of crosshatched effect from a distance, i've just got a new video card and im not sore if its a normal occurance.

Hi, heres a tree model Ive made that I thought you guys could use. In the .rar theres 3 .ase's; 1. poplar_base: tree with trunk and branches (no foliage) 2. poplar_foliage 3. poplar_full: tree model with full foliage the poplar_full model is about 240tris. You can add the 'poplar_foliage' model to the 'poplar_base' multiple times to create many tree variants. Im not too sure about the best way to aprouch animating the tree, I guess I could leave that up to you guys, the Ground Zero mod is using it aswell so im sure they'll make some improvements on it too. Also ill experiment with vertex blending to try and get some more colour variation out of the leaves. Download

Ive been told its not possible with doom3 but im sceptical, all my attempts have resulted in a black image but the alpha still works, im basicly trying to create the same effect as the trees in Oblivion. Hope someone can help. Thanks.

No its probably not a big deal, I think the extra polys are a good idea for when you're veiwing it close up and side on now that I think about it, but if you have alot of it in the scene then I think those polys could be better used elsewhere.

It looks great in those shots, you've done a nice job of making it look natural. Im not too sure whether the extra polys are really nessesary but im glad you're experimenting with it and we all know doom3 can handle alot of polys I cant wait to see more

Ive been showing mine at www.polycount.com and recently cgtalk.com. I'd definitly recommend polycount though. Contract work is probably the easiest way to get into the gaming indiustry, you can work from home and you're not expected to be as productive as someone working in-house, and it gives you paid experience, which is pretty valueable, even some veteran games artist choose to work this way.

nice stuff, I want to see a man with a womens legs. but seriously awesome work

Thanks Dave, I want to update the castle textures diffuse maps with ambient occlusion as soon as I get a chance, its a quick easy technique Ive implemented it into my work flow and it makes up for all the little details you cant acheive through normal maps alone. here are some good examples, they arnt ingame but they are low poly I still want to continue working on the stonewalls. Actualy what Id like to do is develop a system for creating anything out of stones and mortar like halfwalls, bridges, wells, ruins... By combining the high poly models with the low poly ones and then re-baking/projecting them together (for example those low poly bricks in the renders above can be combined with HP bricks and then re-baked for normalmaps aswell as diffuse and specular) Lets say you want to build a stone bridge; you could block it out with a low poly mesh apply the castlewall01 texture, and then cover all the edges and corners with high poly stones and mortar. Then, build another low poly model around the whole lot, project it, and all the normal info would get baked onto the final low poly mesh. no promises as to when ill get started on that but when I do ill definitly provide documentation which will make it a bit easier to understand. Thats awesome about the Ivy pinkdot, they should be easy to use for mappers which is exactly what I wanted. Ive got an idea for another texture; basicly just solid tilable leaves, then the tiling patern could be broken up by the ivy01 texture, aswell as edges. It would be interesting to see an environment made entirely of the Ivy textures, well maybe not entirely , but now that you guys have got the high poly models maybe someone could take on the job of creating some kind of an ivy creature.

yeah, I divide the large peice up and fold it so that it grows along the ground out from the rooty bit in the middle so that its like an 'L' but with a chamfer on the corner, I divide and fold some of the other peices too like the two out stretching vine bits in the middle of the texture sheet, so that they appear curved and reaching towards sunlight or hanging. Thats a good idea about making 2 seperate peices from the big one too, you can always cover the cuts with leaves. heres some wires that might give you a few ideas, the only thing I can think of that will make them look wrong is if you place them upside down. Btw: How are you finding them?

hey pinkdot, are you posting you're models anywhere else?, you know, if you show some of you're models around on game modeling forums I think you'd pick up some contract work

thats strange, I tested them before I uploaded them, but ill bet if its anything it'll be the paths.

hey, just caught up on this thread, nice stuff pinkdot the textures look excellent