Epifire

Here's an odd one. It's technically art related because I'm trying to figure out how to work around a models issue in the performance cull. The problem is a visleaf containing a model with the bounding bigger (or poking out) of the region, will render even if no portion of the model is protruding from the visleaf. Is there a way to easily flag said model entity, to manually attach it's performance cull to something like a visportal? This compact upper room I've got in my map has a triangular shaped roof and internal meshes are shaped to fit that roofing framework. Again, that problem with the bounding is that it's squared which will penetrate to the exterior. What would be magnificent is a, "seeing" entity if you will. Where it just defines it's own region and when that area is closed off (via visportals/doors) and you'd just target models you'd want to shut off with that visleaf. I can't tell you just how many more details I could pack into a map if this were a thing. It would have to be properly implemented so that no obvious popping would occur but this is a must for maps that have a lot of inside/outside sections that are tightly gated.

Nice job at masking the hard edges. Is this baked using averaged normals? That's the only way I make due without loosing corner details when baking all hard edged.

Awesome to see you've got some good help lined up for that! If I wasn't so intent on a full environment done alone (for portfolio) I'd be doing the same thing and try to collab with other modelers.

Man I'm not sure how I forgot that one but hellz yeah KotOR was amazing. I never was able to get into the MMO just because I can't get into stories with xXdinglemynuts123Xx running around on the server. But rest assured I will drop even more than reasonable amounts of cash if they ever do another single player KotOR.

Man it's gotta be a close tie with Bioshock Infinite or Half-Life 2 for me. I really love me some catered stories and narrative. Environmental story telling is a big deal to me.

I know in Sven Coop they have some pretty densely packed (polygon wise) 1st person guns. I was trying to look up what GoldSrc can actually handle but on modern hardware people tend to use more in place of little to no advanced shaders.

This might be a dumb question but is that edge merged or disconnected from the other Spooks? Cause that shouldn't happen if that is one (not two) edges.

Some very intriguing designs you've got there Jack! As a firm believer in the use of material blends, I'd suggest a vertex paint for cliffs if you hadn't considered it. With newest versions of DR able to support LWO format, it's a fantastic way to fake depth and crevice information (visually). Last year I put together a tutorial just for that purpose (of painting DR based geometry)... http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Vertex_Painting_in_Lightwave More reading on the subject if you're interested in the method... https://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtech/vertex-texture-blending-applied-to-models.php

Yes, afaik id4 wont process more than a single UV map to a model. However in the instance of a sign like this (on a separate material) it should all be able to be on the same UV map since it sounds like he's just matching to boundaries with the sign. //----------------------- // Steam Engine Mk.III - Epi //----------------------- steam_engine_003_off { model models/darkmod/super_secret/steam_engine_003.lwo steam_engine_003 steam_engine_003 steam_engine_grate textures/common/nodraw steam_engine_heatwarp textures/common/nodraw transformer_needle_a transformer_needle_a2 transformer_needle_b transformer_needle_b2 steam_engine_glassReadout steam_engine_glassReadout } steam_engine_003_on { model models/darkmod/super_secret/steam_engine_003.lwo steam_engine_003 steam_engine_003 steam_engine_grate steam_engine_grate steam_engine_heatwarp steam_engine_heatwarp steam_engine_glassReadout steam_engine_glassReadoutOn } You don't have to double list the non-interchanging materials like I did. Steam_engine_003 is listed there for my own use of keeping track of the materials. You can see various material definitions either be replaced outright or just remain unlisted if the primary material applied was an ON effect to start with. However, I've been able to slot in the nodraw material for OFF mode usage when heatwarp or grating glow isn't applied. Hope this helps but I can guarantee you it does work as long as it's all on the same UV.

Yes, a plane can remain invisible for effects such as you propose. I've done it when I had on/off effects for transformers and engines. Can you post your skin file so I can compare it with my working version? It just sounds like a typo or something but yeah it definitely works so as long as the skin file isn't doing anything strange.

Diffuse was driving the transparency (outside of the gear) and that provides a cutout for the rest of the material. Strange part is sometimes it's working great (real smooth rotation) and other times it's herky jerky. What I'd like to try is just create a set of manual rotation coords (in the map gui) on a set time that loops back to the beginning of the frames to keep spinning the gear (or give the illusion thereof). I'm looking at the menu background figure set from mainmenu_background.gui and am wondering if I could do something kinda like that. Just set it to swap maybe four rotation angles? By the time you pass cog positions, it can just reset to the start since the gear is symmetrical. If there was an, "always-rotate" option like what the MTR rotate does that'd be cool but I wasn't having that kinda luck when I tried it. Might have been needing different input data than I was feeding it though. Gonna see if this gui is gonna use the alpha channel for this gear, else we might have another problem. EDIT: Alright now for anyone who actually knows a thing or two about GUI this'll look dumb but you can get an idea of what I'm trying to do. This reference indeed will not work and what I'm finding is I might need to instance two separate MTR definitions for the two portions of the logo. The GUI doesn't want to handle the transparency and it's destroying the bounding, so I'd rather just feed it the already working MTR def and rotate that. windowDef LoadingGear { rect 10,350,640,640 visible 1 matscalex 5 matscaley 5 background "guis\assets\BRTC_loading_gear_alpha" { rotate 0 ; } { rotate -13.9 ; } { rotate -28.7 ; resetTime 0; } }

Alright so I made a working rotating logo portion but it freezes a lot with the actual loading happening with the map... It's being ran from this MTR... loading_gear_logo { { blend diffusemap map guis/assets/BRTC_loading_gear_alpha alphatest .75 rotate time * .04 alphazeroclamp } { blend add map guis/assets/BRTC_loading_gear_alpha rgb 1 rotate time * .04 zeroclamp } { blend add map guis/assets/BRTC_loading_logo rgb 1 centerScale 1.55,1.55 zeroclamp } } The GUI is pretty simple, looking like this... windowDef Desktop { rect 0,0,640,480 windowDef TitlePicture { rect 0,0,640,480 visible 1 background "guis/assets/mission_start.tga" } windowDef LoadingGear { rect 10,350,640,480 visible 1 matscalex 5 matscaley 5 background "loading_gear_logo" } } The rotate line in the GUI listings page appears to be a static (one time) operation when the script is ran. However if I could just tell the same logo to set different rotational positions on a timed set of intervals I might get more reliable rotations. I'm not sure if there's much that can be done here as it may just have to do with how 2.05 isn't optimized for multi-core performance boost. Not entirely unheard of for the loading ring in a game to lag/stutter (as there are a ton of AAA games that do) but I'd like to think there's a smoother option out there.

This is great. The combining models saves me so much time for what I was having to do manually.

On a note of combing models (before I knew about this whole option in newer DR versions) I was matching positions in Softimage, combining and exporting them. This was done for large building facades outside the map that were made of 15 or so LWO's with about three materials a piece. Before and after specification checks showed that combining meshes that were almost always in view at the same time, saved me about 500 drawcalls with all the fog, ambient or other lights I had hitting it. DCs wont kill an engine near as quickly as dynamic shadows but it's all good to keep in mind for clearing that performance overhead. All this just amounts to you being able to provide more dense details packed into a level that will not only run great for a good machine, but shouldn't kill a low end one either. But Springheel to answer your first question in the OP my experience has been... If it all stays relatively within the player view screen at a given time and is on the same visleaf; I combine them. As nbohr1more pointed out, whatever lighting graces a portion that's in view, it'll calculate and consider the entire mesh. So if you've made a long railway like me, you'd wanna separate sections realistically between visleafs and the PVS to keep that in check. Otherwise yeah, it's a TDM mappers dream come true.

Alright this may be a bit hacky to presume but it would appear by reading this you could set motions to react to a constant value right? http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Loading_Screen_Text If I'm reading that right you'd just be telling the loading circle to spin endlessly, unless I'm assuming incorrectly as to how a GUI material is directed? A lot of assumptions on my end as I've never done any kind of GUI work before. Do these correspond somewhere to an MTR (or comparably close decl) that just calls a material? Once I get down to business, I wanna start just dinking around with this till I have a basic understanding of what it should be doing. That makes me wonder how the TDM main menu elements are handled, cause those seem to loop endlessly as well.

Got another one for you fellas! So I was wondering real quicky, what resources do we have describing custom loading UI and menu header options? Specifically right now I'm tackling the custom FM loading screen (and loading icon). If MTR functions can be loaded in just like in-game this should be a cinch. I just wanted to have the title banner on a non-moving material with a circular element rotating infinitely around it. It's pretty simple in concept so I was wondering if someone might be able to steer me in the right direction?

"When science, faith and allies have failed us; whom have we sought but now a Thief?" More to show (hopefully soon!).

I'd dig option #2 and the whole TDS style Holy Water.

Such a great shot with the large gear forms being a major part of the scene and layout. Reminds me of how some very large imagery was crafted into the levels and layout of Bioshock Infinite. If you fellas need an extra hand with enviro detailing, I'd love to hop on that with you guys. I try and commit larger scenes to texture atlas and can be pretty flexible for mesh optimizations (shadow/draws included). It looks like some real fun for the portfolio, so toss me a PM if you're interested Dram!

If you make a junction brush out of that corner (connecting that inner vertex on the left to the three outer verts) you should be able to remove any shear angles for how far those triangles are stretching.

Well tbh, I think the light bulb was a much better choice. The plastic bits were squishing water out in a ring (deflecting away) when compressing at point of contact.

I've really wanted to animate stuff for a while, I just didn't wanna bite the bullet and learn Blender. However, I think I could settle for importing a finished model and animating it from there. Thanks for linking the tool Arcturus!

Hard to say as I haven't actually made the scary venture into MD5s, but does the game expect an explicit hierarchy for the bone setup? It would explain the strange deforming but that would be my first guess. Thing that gets me is every engine I've dabbled with animations for, have their own proprietary implementation. The result being quirks that need tending to else strange errors persist. Needless to say I'm very interested in seeing what could resolve in your case here.

Unless it's a tile specific resource you usually don't wanna use them whole sale from the repository (or at least just me). It's a bit more freeing to be on a procedural workflow now but it's still pretty valuable to find grunge layers and brushes to composite things with. Grunge patterns are easy enough to edit and tile in the edges if needed but man it's still pretty hit and miss to find good brush resources with all the appropriate height map data included.

Indeed great find! Really some eye candy seeing their brushes section too, as good brush presets save sooooo much time when working on a detailed project.