Springheel's Stuff

[sparhawk 17]

Wow! Nice! Where did you get the wooden texture from? Did you make it for this, or are these ones from our existing repository?

[Springheel 4340]

I got the wood texture from our textures. I think it was old_wood something. The cylindar was one of our beam textures. I just desaturated them and made a few tweaks.

[Nyarlathotep 0]

Very, very nice.

[Baddcog 114]

Nice. Is the handle a seperate piece to rotate?

 

Nameless Voice had got a well working for me on an unfinished T2 project. It was (is) great but that stuff never got released. I'm pretty bummed but it was just too much and everyone was too busy. Disolving AI down to the bone, all kinds of cool stuff.

Anyway, he had the well working so you could frob the handle, the rope would wind up and expand so it looked like it was actually winding up top, the roipe would shorten and a bucket would rise up. Very cool. This is all stuff done by S&R and scripts. We can accomplish it for sure, if not for release someone can/might do it after anyway.

[Crispy 8]

Very nice!

 

Movement would be cool. I don't know how you'd handle the chain wrapping around the bar as it came upwards though. Some kind of texture animation? Sounds complicated.

[Baddcog 114]

well, NV used Tweq/scale in Dromed to scale the 'rope wad' up in size as it wound up. Chain might not look as good as it is more defineable than a rope. But still a cool effect was achieved.

We don't have Tweq's, but I'm sure we could enlarge the scale of something thru scripts. Not saying we should even worry about it right now though, it just made me think of that.

[Ishtvan 17]

I'm sure we could enlarge the scale of something thru scripts.

It's not as easy as you might think. I spent about 20 hours on it before giving up. The rendermodel is easy to scale, but the physical collision model kept getting reset by something.

[Springheel 4340]

It sounds like a lot of work for a single "oh neat" effect. Someone else is welcome to take that on.

 

I think I'm going to make a skin where the crossbar is nonsolid, however, so players can climb in and out of the well.

[Springheel 4340]

Another prop for your guard post, Bob: a pair of guard boots (well, just one boot, really).

 

[Springheel 4340]

I've found a handy plugin for decreasing polys while not losing the uvmap, so I've been experimenting with some of our AI to make some statues. Here's a few. The uvmaps could use a bit of tweaking, but not bad for about fifteen minutes each. The statues all come in around 1200 polys and could probably be reduced more.

 

[Nyarlathotep 0]

Not bad!

[Baddcog 114]

Springheel. If you can decrease polys without losing UV you should do a slight greyscale overlay of the original ai skin over then stone. I know it would take an extra map per skin but would bring out alot of details.

 

I'm not sure if it's really needed though. Most likely not alot of them would be used in one spot, so detail would be better. You'd probably end up losing small details like the face shapes. Worth a try I guess.

 

Come to think of it, maybe just make a material with the stone as diffuse and thye normal map, that should look pretty sweet. I think that would help cover the stretching on the bottom of alcolyte robe too.

 

The head statues just look kindof plain with only stone on em.

 

Also, those statues look like they have the stone bumps, but they would've been carved smooth. Using the rock normals gives it a 'natural formation' look, using the ai normals would give em a finely carved, smoothed surface look.

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As far as the models go. Are you using the bones to set their pose? or are you just tweaking them manually?

I'd still like to find a way to export one frame, using bones to set the pose then exporting the model in that pose.

I have yet to find any way to do this.

[Springheel 4340]

do a slight greyscale overlay of the original ai skin over then stone. I know it would take an extra map per skin but would bring out alot of details.

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Are you saying to blend two diffuse-maps together? I think that's possible but I'm not quite sure how (other than baking it). Right now I'm just using default stone and metal textures, so there are no special textures needed for these models.

 

You could easily bring out more details by running renderbump on the original models and then using addnormals to blend that normalmap with the stone one. But frankly I didn't want them to be very detailed--they look more believable as statues this way, at least to me.

 

Also, those statues look like they have the stone bumps, but they would've been carved smooth. Using the rock normals gives it a 'natural formation' look

 

Yes, I chose mostly rough stone for the skins, although the metal textures are fairly smooth. The benefit is that they are all using our existing textures, and can easily be swapped with dozens of skins (I've made 6 already). There is some stretching because I didn't go over the uvmap at all--I just left it the way the plugin made it. A little bit of effort will fix that stretching--I just wanted to show how good they looked just running the plugin.

 

As far as the models go. Are you using the bones to set their pose? or are you just tweaking them manually?

 

I'm taking poses that Oddity already did and tweaking them a bit. I'm not sure how he made them originally.

[Baddcog 114]

Well, no doubt they do look good.

 

The best way I have learned to texture (was alot better when you actually want to paint shadows, normal maps take away some of the benefits) is to paint in greyscale all the details.

So in this instance just make the original ai skin greyscale and get rid of the colors.

Then put the colored rock tex in a layer above it in Photoshop and set the rock layer to overlay.

I DON'T think you should do it for these models though, but you might want to give it a try just for another idea on texturing. You're already quite adequate in texturing so it might not matter anyway, but I like to try new ideas when I hear of em just to see how they work.

 

I think if you do do anything to these textures though it should just be the new material. rock diffuse/AI bump. I'd like to see how one of em looks like that, I think it would look very sharp.

 

If that plugin is causing the stretching then it does what all optimizing does when lowering poly counts though. It is messing up the uv map. I really don't see how any program could avoid this side effect. You get rid of a vertice and there is no information for where the map would be. It would have to interpolate verts before/after somehow, then stretch the material to fit. But then you'd be moving verts to where others used to be, then the material would get stretched across polys... You'd have gaps in the uv mesh where polys where missing from, ect...

[sparhawk 17]

That idea gives me an idea for a map. How about a sourcerer who can turn people into stone. Or a medusa. I wonder if this can be done in realtime. Should be possible, by swapping the skins.

[Springheel 4340]

That idea gives me an idea for a map. How about a sourcerer who can turn people into stone. Or a medusa.

 

I had the same idea when I was making them.

[SneaksieDave 39]

Very glad to see this being done. I'd started with Blender but couldn't get very good poses (I don't know how to do bones stuff with that, so I have research to do yet). I also think it would be a great idea to have high detail versions in addition to the rough rock ones, where the original diffuses are greyscaled, and/or normalmaps are used. If no one takes that on, I probably will at some point.

 

I wonder if Oddity took on those highpoly statues (he mentioned he'd give them a go). I'll try to find that thread.

[Ishtvan 17]

Turning AI to stone in realtime could probably done with a mod to stop them in place (basically just stop the animator from updating) and a skin swap.

 

I think you could get a good psychological effect though just from passing by various "statues" frozen in the act of running/crawling away from something, and then just have the player die if they see whatever turns people to stone.

[Springheel 4340]

I added a wide bookshelf. It's a match for the existing one and uses the same texture. While I was at it, I separated some of the surfaces of both bookshelves, so that by mixing and matching it was easy to make some different skins with alternate book colours. Just keeps them from looking painfully identical when lined up next to each other.

 

[Springheel 4340]

A simple square pedestal for displaying decorative stuff. They use the gen texture set for a lot of variety:

 

[Baddcog 114]

I'm really not to fond of some of the general textures.

 

I think we have a different idea of what they should be, how they should be used.

 

hmmm, I guess what I'm getting at (after deleting some comments) is that just making 10 varieties of skin isn't nessecarily (I can never spell this word right, must've looked it up at dictionary.com 100 times, I give up, I will spell it wrong on purpose, yeah that's it) a good thing.

Yeah, one model can be made to look 10 ways, but does it give good results? Do we need 10 skins if they don't look good?

 

This is only meant as constructive criticism btw.

 

Each one has the same prob but is very noticable with far left one. The wood grain runs straight thru the object, even thru the trim piece that sticks out. Would be fine if carved from one block of wood, but that doesn't seem likely. Plus if it was the grain would change across the faces, would be wider at edges and more grain marks in middle. That texture looks like a board of plywood or something, not a carved log.

The normal map gives details but they don't look right.

 

Possibly the trim in the middle should be a metal band or darker wood. So it would have to be a seperate layer of polys. If mapped the same as the wood part (same scale) the normal could be used on a metal tex and the wood tex and would align correctly.

 

I guess I just think they look too plain, they look like they have one tex slapped on em. Even if you put a few polys here and there as 'decals' like the door hinges so some designs could be applied. Carvings of builder symbols, flowers, whatever.

[Springheel 4340]

Each one has the same prob but is very noticable with far left one. The wood grain runs straight thru the object,

 

I'm not sure what you're seeing as woodgrain...none of those textures are wood and they don't have any grain.

 

I guess I just think they look too plain, they look like they have one tex slapped on em.

 

The current gen textures could probably use some work. The concept is sound, but the textures themselves are not always up to par--most of them are hand-made and not very detailed.

 

Once a model can use one gen texture, however, it can use just about all of them, so all that's needed is for people to make more textures like that. At some point I'll probably go through and improve the existing ones.

 

As far as being simple, pedestals are generally pretty simple anyway, so I don't see any particular problem with the ones above.

[Springheel 4340]

Some more foliage. There are 1, 2 and 4 stalk versions, with an autumn and summer skin.

 

[Baddcog 114]

Well, if the 2 brown pedestals aren't wood what are they? I thought it was wood grain, maybe just odd bumps.

 

Something I forgot to mention from above, a point I was trying to get at.

I think gen textures are good for parts of models. But if used over the entire model like that look generic and kindof cheap. I would expect that from a novice modeler, but I think your skills are above that already. What I mean is if I played a mission and saw a pedestal textured like that I would assume it was someones first attempt at texturing, and it seems like we would want to avoid that impression at all costs, no matter how many skins it has.

Better would be the model divided up into 2 or 3 general textures that could all be swapped around, yet giving it more flavor and a look of craftsmanship (The game AI who 'created' it would have been the craftsman who carved things in it, ect...)

 

Slightly off topic of your personal stuff but general textures should all match specs, ie: all wood planks should be vertical or horizontal, but not both. That way they can all be interchanged on objects that use them. (just something i had thought about that I thought to mention, I haven't actually looked to see if all our planks are the same direction or not)

 

As far as the cattails go, I am bummed. I've been meaning to make some, I see them daily and keep thinking about it. But I'm glad you made some and they look very good.

[Crispy 8]

Well, if the 2 brown pedestals aren't wood what are they? I thought it was wood grain, maybe just odd bumps.

Copper and bronze, I believe.

 

I understand the pedestals are supposed to be plain, but I have to agree that they don't look that good, on the whole, compared to everything surrounding them in that screenshot. Maybe improving the gen textures would solve this, I don't know.

 

Bleh. I just realised I'm nitpicking again. Shutting up now!