killhour
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Posts posted by killhour
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Sorry to hijack the thread, but I figured this would be a good place to get a quick modelling question out there. I decided to redo my chandelier model for the FM I'm making, but I'm still not happy with it. Here's the hi poly I have so far, any suggestions on things I can improve?
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Nice light house, looks the same as the one I made in my lemony map..
Coincidental, I can assure you. Is that one of the maps on the front page? I haven't been keeping up with the missions people have put out.
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No, I'm not dead. Progress has been slow partially due to real life and partially to my biggest problem - I keep adding stuff. Here's the view from the outside wall - the one that stops the player from leaving the map and gives a plausible reason why you can't. Now that it's done, I keep thinking "It would be so awesome if you could go up there." Stupid brain.
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very very pretty, its just a decal texture scaled down..?
No, it's a model made from scratch. Was a complete bitch to get working, too.
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Well, I'm almost finished with my chandelier model (finally), and I'm pretty happy with how it came out:
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Im a Max user but cant open the file right now. I dont really understand your problem, why are you using these plugins isntead of the built-in render to texture feature? thats how I make normal maps
I did that today, and it worked with the bottom of the chandelier (the dome part), but the supports are giving me crappy results. Again, I'm not experienced with this at all (a few hours, really), so I have no idea how to get a good result.
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Nothing? Damn. Oh well, I guess I'll make due without a normal map. Hopefully, it will be far up enough that you won't be able to notice.
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I needed a fancy chandelier for my level, and since there wasn't a suitable one already, I decided to make one. I'm no modeler, but I managed to make something decent looking in Max in about an hour of screwing around. I have a low poly and a high poly version, and I'm trying to make tangent space normal maps for it, but it's being a pain. Out of several programs I've tried, only the ATI MeshMapper gave good enough results, but every time I try to export the normal maps, it crops them too small.
I think I have the low poly models unwrapped properly, but I just can't get a decent result, no matter what I do. I've zipped up what I have so far, and I'm hoping a real modeler can point me in the right direction.
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The lighting on the actual texture will appear smoothly rounded, but any shadow cast by it (including onto itself) will be exact as the polys are, so when the light is going over the curve there will often still be a very solid line of where the shadow starts.
Yeah, that's the problem I'm having. It's giving me a jagged line following the polys right where the shadow starts. I assume there's no way to do anything about this other than increase subdivisions?
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Do you know you make things appear "round" by using "smoothing" so even a 4-tris "block" appears round like a round bar? That might help without compromising on the quality.
As far as I know, patches should do this automatically. Doesn't seem to be working though. Is there something I need to do to explicitly tell the engine to do this?
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How difficult would it be to program a "static" light? One that only cast shadows from worldspawn and func_static entities.
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but dosent having too many subdivisions impact on performance..?
Not if you're careful about it. That fountain has about 2500 tris, not counting the statue. Since there's only one of them in the level, it's not a big deal. Also, performance in those shots is more limited by the fact that the visportals are far from finished.
Besides, I'm not under any constraints from a publisher to reach a wide audience, so the level is going to be tuned to be playable on my card - a GTX 260.
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Not to detract from artistic license or anything, however I do think that under most circumstances the 'roundness' of patches is something that makes them look out of place, cylinders have a visible square bias, arches look flat in the middle etc, they also look smoother and shade differently than the models and other objects in TDM which have larger faces/lower poly count.
To me the lack of continuity/congruency of such elements detracts from the look of a map, but that's just my personal feeling.
But as said, it's your map and I'd prefer that you do things which make you happy at the end of the day
I usually do try to make the patches reasonable, but in this case, the lighting really makes the individual faces stand out, so it's necessary to over compensate a bit.
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Ah I see what he's saying, I don't think it looks super smooth, I was actually going to suggest adding more subdivisions lol.
What is your subdivisions at anyways?
It's pretty high - 8 horizontal and 16 vertical. The problem with less is that the light really highlights the edges.
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He means to select the patch, press Shift+S, at the bottom of the patch inspector, click the checkbox, and change the number of subdivisions until it looks better.
I just reread your post and it sounds like you are doing that already lol.
Yes, that's what I'm doing. He told me to reduce the subdivisions so it looks more in line with everything else or something.
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Just enable some fixed tessellation using the patch inspector tool (shift S). Find that nice sweet spot where it fits in more with your geometry and doesnt look uber smooth and "oh that's a patch" (usually around 5/6 for rounded stuff, in one direction). should increase FPS and make the scenes look more TDM-like.
I already use fixed tessellation. What do you mean by more TDM-like? Jagged edges aren't exactly my idea of an artistic direction. I want my maps to look better than TDM is "supposed to".
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Yeah that fountain is very nice, but you have too many shadow casting lights in there, I can't even count how many there are. Try reducing some.
There are 3 in that shot - 2 floodlights and the moon (also, the lighthouse has one, but it doesn't ever intersect with the floodlights - I think.
I'm going to make the statue not cast shadows, as well.
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the thirsd show looks awesome, how/what did you make that fountain with..?
The fountain is just patches and a cylinder. The FPS does need a ton of work though.
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I'm so happy I finally got that skybox rendered and working properly in game.
Here's a shot with the lighthouse from the waterfall:
http://sites.google.com/site/shadow516/shot00018.png?attredirects=0
And here's the same view from inside the courtyard:
http://sites.google.com/site/shadow516/shot00021.png?attredirects=0
And a final shot showing off a custom window shader:
http://sites.google.com/site/shadow516/shot00022.png?attredirects=0
With that, I can finally go to bed!
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The first image of my new skybox is done rendering! Here it is for anyone curious:
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I agree ... but it's still the best currently if someone wants an extinguishable.
Can't you just make a translucent texture that's not unlit?
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Oooh..! Is this going to be an observatory??
(this next statement no meant to be taken seriously...)
Perhaps you guys could patch in the code from Stellarium and have the player be able to do some stargazing... lol, that would be a hoot!
Yes, yes it is.
Edit: Thanks Fidcal, worked like a charm! Half of the gears turned the wrong way, but that was easily fixable.
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Would it help if I gave you a copy of the map?
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I have the lever hooked up to the ceiling, which uses atdm:mover_door. When the lever is pulled, the ceiling rotates 90 degrees. When it is pulled in the other direction, it rotates back. I want the gears to spin so it looks like they mesh with the ring gear on the outside of the ceiling.
Nosslaks stuff
in TDM Editors Guild
Posted · Edited by killhour
The metal "spokes" sticking out of the rings are for the candles. Still not sure if I'm going to put them in the model or use the ones already in the editor. Also, I'm not sure if I'm going to add the stings holding the crystals. It would require a ton more polies for very little gain (I'd have to use a different material so they weren't transparent, meaning I can't just paint them on the same cylinders as the crystals). You likely wouldn't see them, anyways.