Renzatic

Eh, it's not a pain in the ass, provided you plan ahead. I only barely did, and ended up having to do 10x the amount of work because of it. But hey, yayyyyy. Got one question here about shadow and collision maps. I now have a good idea on how to do it, but what about the material files? I know I can't just put them all in the same layer let it roll, so what else do I need to do to get them working? Edit: I got it ingame, and the texture on it isn't exactly what I'd call crisp. Specially not compared to its surroundings. I'll blame my UV here, since it's only 1024x and had a ton of extra space left when I was finished. I plan on leaving it in for now, but the texturing really needs to be redone. Shot

It is DONE! This model has been, by and far, the biggest whore of a thing I've ever worked on. I'll tell you why by posting a convenient list of things I learned below. 1. Never, EVER should I make and UV a low model by individual pieces then hope to paste it all back together again. It should be done all at once. 2. Only do a UV when I've got my final geometry. I had to redo the UV three times before I got my final there. Once for the recombining, which screwed it up beyond repair, and once for when I started culling down the poly count. URRRRGGGHHH! 3. When I resize my low poly, I need to make sure I do my high at the same time. Realignment ain't fun. 4. Cylinders bake best with a single model subdivided from the low poly. Even with the smoothing jacked up as high as it'll go, a good normal can never come from an 8 sided cylinder...but weirdly enough, it pastes on just fine. So there it is. 968 tris. All on one contiguous mesh. I lost some definition going from multiple UVs down to one 1024x, but it's not horrible. In fact, the lower resolution makes it look a little aged, which is a good thing in my opinion. Now all I have to do is do some fix some alignment issues for the trim in Photoshop, and do the diffuse. Then I'll have my damn table.

Eh. I'll do it anyway. It's up to them if it replaces anything, but at least you'll have something new to play with. Just wait for me to get finished with this table first, and I'll give it a whirl.

So...uh...you all want me to make a grill lamp?

The short rays thing actually worked a bit better. I think I read somewhere awhile back that you wanted long shots with the rays so it'd pick up the slants a bit better...apparently that was completely and totally false. Still can't get concave pieces on curves all that well yet, but it picked up the details on the cylinder without any problem whatsoever. I just had to adjust the LP a bit, and then no wavering, pinching, nothing. I feel like I'm starting to learn something. So here it is, the current table: Noise is just on there to break up the smoothness and make it look a little better. Unfortunately, the trim on the tabletop is all Photoshop work. Something I want to get away from except for some slight detailing and cleanup work when I start baking really complicated objects. Next up, the legs, then combining it all on one UV. Lets see how well it turns out.

Yeah, that part was simple. The baking itself? Still not so much. I've come close, but it's still got distortions all around my edges and creases that aren't easily fixable even in Photoshop. Cages, which I read a few tutorials on last night, haven't netted me any better results. So I'm doing things the old fashioned way. I took a single piece of detail from each layer, flat projected them, and started copy/pasting them into Photoshop. I just overlay them on the UV, and things look halfway decent. All I have to do is fix a few seams and misalignments, and it's good. I just wish I could get these results off a bake. It'd make life alot simpler.

Here your go, the lamp model. I included both .objs and .lwos for the high and low polys, all the usual textures, plus the second normal I overlaid for the rust. On another note, I just made my first attempt at doing the normal for the low poly table bits. The post came out great. A few bends in the normal, but that can be fixed by tightening up the low poly normal. The table top, though...horrible. I'm gonna try Baddcog earlier suggestion and cut the model apart, flatten it out, and do a planar projection to get everything right. It'll be tedious as hell, specially the bit where I'll have to line up the low poly UV to an existing texture. But if I do it right, it'll look perfect.

So basically it's one model saved different meshes on multiple layers? Hell, I'm just gonna hit up the wiki. Edit: I'll upload the lamp later tonight when I have a bit more time, since I've got to take off here in the next few. Do you want me to save them as .lwo's or .obj's (hopefully lwos, objs always seem to mess up my smoothing angles).

Well, the reason why I haven't culled down the lamp is because it distorts the normalmap too much. Like I said before, the shot above is my happy medium. The lowest I could go and still keep things looking as they should, but not as low as I'd like (I could get it down to 200 tris and still maintain the silhouette...if the normals didn't distort). I've got a few baking ideas I'm gonna try out on the table. If they work, I'll redo the lamp using the same technique. Also, those legs should support the table top provided the base is equally as heavy and they're secured together nicely. It won't look as clumsy when you see it with the chairs. As for the shadow and collision meshes, there's one thing that confuses me. They're all separate models, right? So each of my models should have, for instance, table_1.lwo for the main mesh, table_s.lwo for the shadow, and table_c.lwo for the collision? How they're combined is my big issue here. Nothing inside of the default Doom 3 .pk4s shows me exactly how this is done.

My one question here is when is more than enough too much? Even with a low res shadow mesh slapped on it, it still seems kinda high for such a small object. I'm a little wary about adding any more detail to bring out the normal because it already seems a little overkill as is, and all those tris could be used to better effect elsewhere. Anyway, I've got a couple more high res meshes en route (one table and a chair that ain't cool enough to show off yet) that need a good LP, but I've also figured out that all my meshes are about two foot bigger than they should be ingame. So now I'm thinking it's time I do some cleanup work, get everything tidied up, finalize and paired up with collision and shadow meshes. Which means I've gotta figure out how to add collision and shadow meshes, I guess.

I might try that. Breaking everything down into component parts and flat projections seems to be the best way to do all this baking stuff. But on the plus side, I do seem to be getting a little better at doing high to low poly bakes. Last night, I whipped up a little cylindrical lamp to try my hand and doing some baking on a relatively simple shape. Read a ton of tutorials on what does what, looked up some stuff on cages (still confused), all that good stuff. After that, I went ahead and did my bake...ended up with this: ...which came from this: It took about half an hour of modeling, then about 3 hours getting my UVs and low poly just right. The only way I could seem to get a good bake was if I subdivided the lowpoly once. When I did that, everything came out perfectly. Problem is, 4000 tris is a little too much, and cutting down distorted the normal the more I culled. What you're seeing there is the happy medium. 1200 tris. Still a bit high, but an improvement. I think it's coming to the point where I have to learn cages. The thing that confuses me about those is that the cage has to be vertex identical to the low poly in xNormal, so I can't trim, cut, and tweak it the way I think I should. It still seems to be that the final low poly model has to fit the contours of the high poly as closely as possible to get good results, specially with complex shapes. So the only way I can do it at the moment is to add more geometry. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass sometimes. But even at it's worst, it's always fun.

All my bakes are done in Modo nowadays. Xnormal looks like it'll be better for really high detailed objects because it uses cages, but for now, Modo is fitting me pretty well. Anyway, I think I'm figuring out how to do all this crap. Whenever you bake a geometric normal like I've been doing, it colors everything according to angle. Whatever is pointed towards the front gets the usual normalmap color spread, and everything else gets an extreme green, red, ect depending on where they're facing. To solve that, I'll rotate my model, render out a normal, rotate again, ect, then piece it all back together in PS. It's a little more work, and ultimately just a stopgap solution, but I'm finally getting some high quality results. I've now got 4 models in my map. Everything except my big archway and the accompanying trim, which I'm still trying to working on the look and shape. ..and this is it. A little monochrome, but it's finally starting to look like something. Next up is the big arch, the plants, then the big table, chairs, different windows, and bookshelves for the room.

He probably wants something like this. It'd be hard to do without volumetric stuff, though a simple cloud render in Photoshop, a motion blur, and varying degrees of transparencies on the alpha might do the trick...kinda. I'll give it a try here in a little bit.

I'll show you what I'm talking about here, and why it comes so close, but ultimately can't be used.. Okay, this is a normal I baked from a high to low poly. this is from an earlier bake. I've corrected the UV since then As you can see, it's dented, bumpy, and horrible, but spatially correct. Now what I did to try and correct that is I baked a normal from the high poly UV without involving the low poly at all. I got this: ...which lines up like this on the model: And that's...almost so great. Every single curve is in there perfectly. Only problem is the sides. Since it's going from 3D to 2D, it's trying to bake those slants in there just like it would if it were projecting to a texture. You've got too much green and too much red in there, and it messes things up a bit. The end result is it leaves those edges deeper in shadows than they should be. Now if I could get the clean fitting edges of the second, but the correct angles of the first, I'd be golden. Right now, I just can't quite seem to pull it off.

I'll do that first chance I get tomorrow. Right now, I'm experimenting with a little cheat that almost..ALMOST came out perfectly. Instead of baking the high onto the low, I baked a flat texture from the high poly UV and overlaid it on the low. The front came out perfectly. All the dips and curves went where they're supposed to, no distortions whatsoever. Everything was nice. Except for the sides of the model. Since it's off a flat bake, the sides are slanted far too wildly for me to let it go as is. Still. I came THAT close to getting it perfect. On the plus side, it came out good enough for me to give it a test run ingame. Here's the results. My only complaint is that since I UVed it seamlessly, I didn't get to use my texture space as efficiently as I could've. Thus, it isn't nearly as sharp and detailed as it should be. So...either I scrap it and start fresh, or say fuggit, no one will notice except for me, and move on to bigger and better things. Edit: I just got through looking at Dram's site. Blackheart Manor is...damn...amazing. I had no idea it was as expansive as that, and I'm surprised you all haven't slapped up some of those shots on the TDM website. Those few shots of the little overgrown shack with all the leaves, branches, and ivy growing everywhere...that's almost exactly what I'm planning on doing here. I'd love to know how he did those.

Thanks. I'd love to say they're all in game and ready to roll. And they almost are...cept for the fact I can't bake a good normalmap off a high poly to save my damn life. Judith had a little more success than I did, but his only turned out slightly less screwed up than my attempts. They've always got little dips and bobs and bruises everywhere that look awful. To show you where I'm at right now, I've got this nice window and frame completely finished...save for the normalmap. From 230,000 tris down to 892. I could probably shave off an extra 100-200 polys by flattening the trim details and merging some of my curve points down to tris. But I kinda have to leave them in there because I suck so horribly at baking my normals. Blah. I probably need to watch another 50 hours of tutorials on cages in Xnormal or something. Anyone have any advice in the meantime?

Alright. Got the high poly door finished and textured, window frame well on its way. The hallway arch is still very WIP, but I should have it finished by tomorrow. As usual, I'm having trouble crunching them all down to a low poly model. The meshwork itself is done on both of them, but I always have issues with the normalmap conversion. I've got Judith helping me out on that front, though...so maybe I'll have something decent by the end of the week.

I guess since someone had the decency to fire up a thread with my name on it, I might as well use it to post about stuff I'm working on. Kinda use it as a diary/beg for help outlet without starting an entirely new thread. So, I gave ole Photoshop and Modo a kickstart for the Christmas FM contest. My intentions are grand, and my goals...oh, they're lofty. But considering one of these aforementioned goals is to use nothing but custom made textures and meshes without relying on a single TDM object...well. It probably ain't gonna happen by Christmas. In fact, chances are good I'll be converting this from a little FM to a beauty map to showcase/contribute/brag about my stuff and finally live up to the little tag below my name. Well, so far I have about 9 textures done. Amazingly, of those 9, I've only got one maybe destined for the recycle bin. The rest are actually halfway decent. I'm intending on building everything around a theme, instead of doing what I usually do. None of the usual a brick wall here, a door there, some trim, ect. This way, I can design everything to fit together homogeneously. Another advantage is, since I have a specific idea in mind, I end up whipping things together alot faster. Anyway, here's what I've got so far. These two shots only show about 6 of the textures I've got so far. One showcasing the windows (which I need to dirty up a bit more) and another one of the two doors I've done (which isn't shown completely since I cut off the arched top for quick building purposes). Windows Door I've already posted a similar shot here before, but this is the tweaked, tuned, and finalized version. Save for a couple of easily fixed issues, I'm happy with these. They're all 2048x, save for the trim, which is 512x1024. I'll be sizing them down for final release and handing out the large originals to anyone who wants them. Though the windows and doors are ultimately intended for use on a model, I decided to make them usable as textures for the sake of flexibility. Next up, I'll be finishing the door frame, the window frame, and start on the hallway arches. After that, things will get tough since I intend on adding alot of alpha masked plants, roots, vines, and other miscellaneous plant life. I have yet to succeed at doing one that didn't end up looking like flat plastic crap, so it'll be a nice challenge.

Cool. I'll have to test it out a bit more, but that looks like it did the trick. Thanks

I'm sure I've asked this before, but here I am again. Now importing and exporting is no problem for me. It's pretty easy stuff nowadays. But I do have one last hurdle I need to pass before I can say I'm halfway competent. I need to get my models in Modo scaled properly so they line up and move with the 4/8 grid inside of Radiant. To do that, I need to align my measurements so they're uniform across both platforms. So how big is a Radiant Unit exactly? I can set Modo up to use Game Units, but I have to know how many meters (or rather fraction of a meter) are in a single unit before I can do that. I've looked around on Google, but I can't seem to find anything on this. Anyone have any advice?

Yeah, okay. I'm an idiot. Oh well, thanks for the help.

The shadows aren't so bad they'll look funky alongside your normalmap. They're subtle enough you could call them ambient occlusion and get away with it. I wouldn't worry too much about it. And speaking of normalmaps, they're still coming. I've had a busy couple of days, but I've got some time tonight to knock a couple of few out.

Here you go The final product has replaced the shot above. I didn't have as much time to play with it as I'd like, so I probably left a ton of errors on the thing. If you've got any problems with the normal not matching the diffuse, weird texture crawl, or anything else that rubs you the wrong way, tell me and I'll fix it up right fast. I also redid the diffuse a bit. Sharpened up the colors and details and added some AO on top of it and whatnot. If you don't like the changes, feel free to use the original. Won't hurt my feelings none. Edit: Durrr. This is what happens when I get in a hurry. While hauling ass to get it done, I forgot to photoshop out the seam on the horizontal tile. So...consider the above link a beta. You can critique what you don't like and I'll take it into consideration when I finish up tomorrow.

Depends on the texture. If it has overlapping pieces, like your roof there, or if it's got alot of complicated details, I'll make a model and run it through renderbumpflat. Sometimes though, playing with the black and white adjuster and going through selective colors is enough to get a good base bumpmap. Anyway, I'm assuming you think it's alright, so I'll go ahead and upload it once I fix a few errors and tidy things up a bit. After that, I'll try out one of your frames.

How's this? I'm thinking about subdividing the tiles so they look a little more rounded and maybe tweaking the bumpiness, but other than that it's finished. If you want it, I'll upload it.