islipaway 3d modeler application

[Springheel]

we haven't really defined a style for the inventors visually yet.

 

The inventors are just members of a guild--they don't make their own furnishings, so there's no particular reason for them to have a special "style" of decor (other than things that might have practical value to someone who is working with mechanics and chemicals).

 

Progress: Probably doesn't look like much but: proper UVs, better jewels inset and settled on a fairly simple but hopefully effective spike layout.

 

I think it's looking fine thus far. I have an urge to make the center spine larger than the rest, but that's just a style thing. I think with a good texture it could look quite nice.

[islipaway]

Quick texture throwdown (eww seams) on hopefully final normals!

 

[Springheel]

Very nice!

 

Keep in mind that D3 saturates colours a bit, so you may want to make your original texture a bit less saturated to compensate.

[islipaway]

Ah yeah I think I recall reading that! Is it by a specific percentage? I will make it as I'd like it to appear then work out how much to desaturate by if so.

 

Think I am nearly done with the diffuse, any comments/crits?

 

[Fidcal]

This looks really good to me - regal and very old. I'll leave it to others to comment technically.

[HappyCheeze]

Very pretty.

[Springheel]

Looks great to me. How many polys is it? If it's less than 250 or so, there probably is no point in making a a shadowmesh.

[islipaway]

Cheers It is considerably more than 250 - 630~ tris I looked at the poly count for the loot props listed on that database and fit it in there. I will make a shadow mesh and collision mesh tomorrow, also a spec map. What resolution are you using for textures on props like this? At the moment it's 512*512.

[Springheel]

That's fine for the texture size. I'm surprised at the poly count though. 630 is not unusable, but I can't see where the extra polys are coming from if all those bumps and detailing are part of the normalmap.

[islipaway]

The largest gems and the rows of bumps at the top and bottom have some polys assigned as when I tried it without the silhouette didn't hold up very well, I tried to strike a balance so that if it was examined closely it didn't just look like a loop but not go completely overboard. I guess it's because it's circular things like that add up really fast.

 

[Springheel]

Ok, well, for something that size we would normally try and create a shadowmesh of less than 250 polys. The shadowmesh can't poke outside the visible mesh. The mesh should be textured with "textures/common/shadow".

[Fidcal]

Also, because this will primarily be loot and will be a moveable it will need a collision model.

 

A second skin with say, the metalwork in silver and the dominant colour say, blue, would also give it a totally different look and effectively give two models for the price of one.

[islipaway]

Been trying to import this into D3 today, having a fair bit of trouble exporting a .lwo give no texture and .ase gives nothing at all. Got polycount down to 564 though.

[Flanders]

you know how d3 material files work?

[islipaway]

Trying to work it out through various wikis. Exporting from XSI seems to be undocumented and when I tried from blender it didn't work at all.

 

Edit: I worked out how to point it to the material file when it's exported from XSI, just need to work out the material file now!

[Flanders]

If you use an ase file, you should change the line with bitmap to the material you want to use.

*BITMAP "//base/textures/darkmod/stone/brick/rough_blocks01"

I don't know how this works for lwo models.

[Springheel]

All you have to do for .lwos is make sure the surface name of the mesh is the same as the name of your shader. If your material shader is:

 

tools

{

diffusemap models/darkmod/props/textures/tools

bumpmap models/darkmod/props/textures/tools_local

specularmap models/darkmod/props/textures/tools_s

}

 

then you'd make sure the surface was named "tdm_tools".

 

I'd prefer the models to be saved as .lwos, as I'm unable to examine or modify .ase files.

 

Not sure how much you've already read about material shaders, islip. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.

[islipaway]

Cheers, I have got it showing up in the editor but having trouble (once more!) working out how to build a simple level to test it in, can't seem to find a really basic tutorial for this on the wiki? Any directions?

[Flanders]

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php/...uide_Start_Here!

[islipaway]

Cheers, here it is - no shadow mesh implemented yet and for some bizarre reason even when I scale the model down in XSI and re-export it it doesn't get any smaller in game but if I change the geometry the change shows up. Also experiencing some smoothing issues but I understand that's inherent in the *.lwo format?

 

 

Also down to 504 tris.

[Fidcal]

Great! - Can't wait to steal that!

[Springheel]

I'm not aware of any smoothing problems inherent in .lwos...what are you referring to specifically?

 

The crown looks fantastic, btw. Let me know if you need any further assistance with it.

[Flanders]

Quality stuff islipaway. Nice shiny jewels.

[Baddcog]

Looks great.

 

Not sure how to do it, maybe Spring knows. In Max you can 'reset XNormals'. Basically it resets your pivot location and model scale. Some programs have a hard time with Max stuff if you don't. Not sure about Lightwave/D3/lwo.

I don't have scale problems with Max/D3 but do with Max/Ogre.

 

The smoothing problems are probably that you want a sharp edge but it's smooth in game? It looks like that's what you need at the top of the triangles.

Doom3 either smooths a mesh or doesn't, smoothing groups don't work.

 

So you have to detach polys where you want a sharp edge to be. Then reattach to the mesh, but don't weld the verts again.

There's another way to unweld verts but i'm not sure what it is.

I'd probably detach the polys on the backs of the triangles, then you'll still get a smooth edge from front to top, but the weird shadows wont be on the back.

[islipaway]

Cheers guys glad you like it! Does that mean I get to make more stuff ? I think I am going to need further assistance getting the collision and shadow meshes working, am I supposed to export them all as one file? I am not sure how to direct different meshes to different textures in the material file, I think I understand how it would work with ASE but I can't even get the normal material that I can get to show up with the LWO when I export to ASE

 

The main smoothing problem was more where the uv repeats, even though the texture tiles properly it makes a seam at the edge of the uv map, will post an image to show what I mean. This website kinda states that it is because of LWO: http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tutorials/prep..._lwo_models.htm

 

You should then find (after restarting or reloading the game/editor) that the model in questions has smoothing applied to it universally (with edges based on the UVWmap layout) when ever the 'renderbump' parameter appears in a material.

And you can see it in the seam down the middle of the donkey's head on that site too.

 

This could be something doom does or that's totally unavoidable I don't know. As you can see in the image below it doesn't happen in xnormal. This might be just inherent in game engine like I said, I can't seem to get textures working with ASE exported files yet to see if it's a format thing.