PinkDot

What's wrong with one folder for textures? I think it makes life easier - there's just one path to all models' textures, so you can't make any mistakes. And it's not like models folders - mappers don't go there looking for anything. And if they want a particular texture for some reason they can easily find it by name.

Thanks Mike. I used plain snow texture as a base and one another for brightness variations. Everything else is a result of dozens of filters, brightness and contrast corrections and manual work (mostly visible in rubble normal map). Maybe one day I'll get myself to make kind of texture making tutorial or tips&tricks. Must be a local joke or something... Wait, do you mean urine? In fact we could make such decal to make maps more realistic....

Sorry, I wasn't clear - I was looking for our hires cobbles and roof textures, so I can make snowy variations of them. But actually that link points to main texture folder, as far as I can see. Thanks! ? ? ?

For the roofs and cobbles it would make sense to use our existing textures, I think. Do I have to download them from hires repository or they're still somewhere in the main one?

I'll be showing my textures in this thread. For a start three snow textures (some of them share diffuse or specular). Here come: smooth, rough and rubbles covered with snow (may suit ruined houses such as jdude's one). These are very clean ones - next textures will be more dirty, with grass or cobbles coming out, with footsteps etc... Feedback welcome

just cosmetic suggestions: maybe ladders and stairs could be combined into one? I don't know if we need roofs... Are shop signs readable? I'd say they're more decorative... and I would change the name of chests into something like openable it would suit also containers like jewel box, tool box etc.

That sword is very interesting - its ancient shape makes it a good quest goal in old catacombs or other ancient ruins. I'm not sure about that straight arms of those bows... Other than that they look very good.

Apparently not. AFAIR even specular applies to the image already drawn on the screen. It doesn't matter with opaque textures (99.9%) but I remeber it looked weird on transparent bottle - highlight on the bottle was actually just brighter brick wall behind the glass bottle...

Yes, but as the name tells - it's ADD stage, so it's always brighter than what's behind. I'm afraid it could work only for lamp glass or maybe stained glass - where additional brightness has some explanation. I'm wondering... maybe blend FILTER stage would work better for regular windows, cause it substracts colours and make everything darker.

Definitely much better! Transaprent ones look very good, I'd vote for them.

You're right - waterpump is in misc folder as well. I still can't imagine how you can make one model using reasonably gen texture and standard one with one and the same UV layout, but I'll just wait for your results.

I don't know how changing textures to match gen UV layout will work in practice. I wouldn't mind having two identical buckets one with gen_ prefix, so people can figure out it uses diffrent set of skins. Besides that - are you sure all of them are duplicated? I couldn't find pump model anywhere else.

I like those models, especially that irregular axe handle (although I would bend it in the opposite way... ). Your progress in modelling is really inspiring, Springheel. You started from scratch recently.... But if I was to nitpick a little bit - on polycount.com they say: "You could put more love in those textures"... While they look OK, they could be more interesting with some scratches, especially at the blade, a little bit dirt or rust here and there, you know...

I'm not sure what you mean. Couldn't we just move those models to appropriate folders without modifying them?

nautical folder - already exists (boats are there so far) statues - isn't decorative oversized supposed to be the one for statues? what will be left in there if we create separate folder for statues only? gizmos - what about existing mechanical folder? to be honest - I don't understand the idea of gen folder. It's against the logic of the rest folder structure. The way model uses texture is only technical thing and has nothing to do with its usage, which is the thing mappers are more interested in.

Baddcog - sometimes model's name is enough to figure out what environment does it belong to. The best way of grouping models is doing that by their function, as most of our folders do. If you have magic light they still can be of both kinds - extinguishable or not. On that topic - I'm going to move anchor model from misc to nautical folder soon. That's the only model I have to move there, I suppose and the only place it was used (AFAIK) was jdude's map. We can establish a rule that whoever in the future moves models from one folder to another, should change all map files available at SVN. And of course, as I mentioned earlier - all changes should be discussed to avoid mess. This would be fair, I think.

There's also testmodel command - could be also useful for testing appearance of model in any map without the need of placing it actually in one of the maps. Just make sure you're facing an open space (I mean you're not standing in front of a wall) a type: testmodel path/model_name and the model should appear. It's nonsolid and can be only one in the map. (it will dissapear if you repeat this command).

At this moment we're still lacking models so it's hard for me to imagine situation where we have them too many. And lack of variety in models was also an issue after playing a dozen of FMs, so six diffrent breads repeated 10 ten times seems to be better for me than one bread repeated sixty times. As for the broken maps - at this stage it still can happen, same as it happens with the textures, cause we're still in developing stage. And since maps are text files, wrong paths can be easily fixed the same way as textures. The only problem I can see is that such a change should be discussed before. There's no one way of sorting models and what's obvious for one person might be not the best for somebody else. BTW: I always had a feeling that models folder structure is somewhat smaller than the one in Thief 2... I'd say new folder for a food could be a good thing. The question is if it has to belong to kitchen or be at the same level as kitchen.

Hinges in door models are separate polygons put very close to door base. So, all you would have to do with those hinges is TGA file with an additional channel called Alpha1, which would be a mask - white where the hinge is and black for invisible background. And save image as 32-bit TGA of course. If you want to see textures with transparencies in Doom3 change your diffuse stage in material shader to something like this: { blend diffusemap map path/image alphatest 0.5 } instead of regular diffusemap path/image

That's completely new model, Springheel! and of course much nicer! On the model tweaking topic - I was actually preparing a list of my models to be tweaked, cause somehow I feel that some of them are not finished. Here are some of them: 1) standing candelabra - it doesn't have any candle models, cause it was meant to have some attachable in the map. But I think that it would be better to make it with some candles, so it's easier to use. We can leave a version without candles as well, if there's a need for that. I was also thinking about making it moveable (but not frobbable). It wouldn't look too believable if it still stands after an fire arrow explosion. And besides that - we're lacking moveable objects... 2) graveyard models - need skins declarations and couple more thombstone textures. 3) curtains - need more textures 4) Some textures are too bright, I think. (I was working on wrong settings on my LCD). I think well, curtains, black boar, curtains and maybe some other textures need some darkening. 5) The Hammer statues need bottom polygons. Anything else you can think of?

Nice furniture! I've noticed that we had just one type of each so the more variety the better. Oh, and I really like that carpet. When I was designing my house-of-dreams I also wanted to have some grass in some rooms...

So, as I said - it only matters for models scaled dynamically. But I still can't see any major problem for static models, such as architectural models, trees and so on...

OK, I can see how it can complicate life but what about scaling static models once, before game? Dmap creates another file with collision geometry, doesn't it? So why it can't scale them during compilation? Is it something we could potentially change when engine becomes open?

What's the actual problem with scaling models in modern engines? I never understood that... If you can scale visual model why can't you scale collision mesh as well?

I didn't know about it... Sounds definitely useful...