ShaZe

256x256

Close up on the last staff Otherwise, where can I get the mod files? I was asking myself the question to know what exactly the path should be when I was setting the material file and the folder structure. I searched a little bit in the different forums but didn't found it.

Final version?

Change will be soon, I agree that the staff is too much made from metal. And yeah I had the same feeling about the round part at the bottom. Thanks, gotta post the new look soon.

Well, for me, a mage always got perfect / magical items. They are like the little noblemans with magical power. Only necromancer or something like that would have un-perfect staff, such as tree branch, bones, or anything else. Those staff have been made for let's say "high-class mage", church environments if you see what I mean. But yeah, I saw a old model of a staff with a gem as a reference (here)and it looked like that type of staff so I made one that fit those criteria.

Fullscreen : http://www.shaze88.com/downloads/autres/da...-fullscreen.jpg I personnally prefer the short "battle staff" and the last one. The one in the middle is too much tall for melee, and not enough to keep the wings out of the way.

Hmmm but, remember it's a mage staff, not a walking stick, so the mage is not forced to use it while walking. He can just travel it with him, and the staff was kinda short, easier to travel, easier for close combat if necessary. Anyway, I have have tried to make it smaller and taller, if you wanna use it as a "walking stick" on idle.

What you thinks about it? Just developped a new texturing skill. I wanted to find a way to tile a texture within a textures file. Theres only one way to do it (cropping the texture to get the part you want) but D3 doesnt support it. Finaly, I just found a way to get the same things, without using a huge part of my texture. Kinda hard to explain but anyway, it's always useful. Otherwise, for the gem, I thinks I reached the maximum specular level I could... Edit : hmm, did someone found a way to color the shadow of certain type of material such as glass, it would be nice if the ruby could project a red shadow =)

There it is : It is extruded, every hidden polygon are automatically removed, and every polygon group that seem to heavy only to form a circle or anything else for example, are simplified.

Oh yeah I know what you mean. Forgive me, I uploaded the old pictures, the new got exaclty what your talking about. That's one of the reason I didn't understand ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For the shadow on the staff, I could remove them from the transparent wings and the little gems. And I could maybe remove the one casted my the gem, and take a low poly gem to cast the shadow. I thinks it could work if I add the property forceShadows to it, so the poly would not be rendered, except for shadow. =) I just don't know if I should use caulk, or nodraw, and if it will really remove the polygons from the calcules.

Ok, it look great but, hmm I am not too glad about the polycount, 458.

Thanks a lots for the suggestions/comments, most of them are really helpful Can you explain more which area that need more poly, were you talking about the spiral? Because I fail to understand the things with 3-4 sided piece. I thinks the things that should be smoothed would be the metal spiral, if that's what you were trying to tell me?. Otherwise yeah, I had tryed the high specular map on the gem, but the effect was really bad, the lighted side were gray instead of plain white. I guessed it missed reflection. And because of that, I figured out one of the problem about the texture of the whole staff, it had a too high specular, that's why it was so ugly, and the texture didnt had enough details. @Springheel I didn't understand how I could add a sort of "transparent filigree", but while writting this post, I just got a nice idea eheh. I will mess with it and show a screen later. Thanks

True Otherwise, I wanna make a little test before returning on my works. Does the staff look better than the textured version? And a second question that has nothing to do with the test, what do you thinks about the 2 others design? Because I have a kind of theory that a textured model can be compared to a colored drawing. Sometimes the colors give to the picture's look a crappy look, sometimes it become something really more impressive. Everything is about the texture/color. At least, I will be able to know if my theory was true, and if it is, I will just have to force myself as a texturer to give it a really nice look. Thanks in advance

Kinda weird because if you make the test, a sphere with smoothing group and a sphere with normal map look exaclty the same because D3 handle pretty well the smoothing groups, only on ase model of course. I should have said it before, don't know if you knew about it. And thats probably the reason they all got normal maps, most of the models are lwo.

Yeah but, I just find it usless for perfect rounded objects as the smoothing group give the same result. I only use it when I got weird curve in my models otherwise, I consider it like a waste of time. So for example, most of the mechanical model or sharp edged model won't have a normal map. Anyway, I will add more details to the staff, both for the geometry and the texture. If I succeed to do something nice with the texture, it should look nice. I will post the final result right after. The process will be more slow this weekend (I got like 4 school projects to finish soon) but I will try to finish this as soon as possible Thanks