Atheran

As an update I have internet access for the following week or so and I got a 15 day trial (one of 4 I can get with my mails) for Marvelous Designer. I try to learn it so I'll eventually sell clothes etc at the Daz store. This program has some great cloth physics and I thought I could help with it. I'm not sure if there are any licencing problems (not my kind of thing to try and understand law) so if any of the mods thinks it wouldn't matter I could give it a try to create some realistic sheets on the already existing furniture. After all I'll spend this week to learn how to use the program anyways and sheets on furniture are way easier than rigged clothes for characters. But because I'm on my laptop at the moment I don't have TDM or DR in it or even a way to turn lightwave models to obj. I have Maya LT, Zbrush and PS only. So ifthe licencing is ok and you people want me to give it a try I'd need some obj files of furniture to work with. If noone can mail or dropbox the obj's then I hope I at least gave you an idea of an excelent software for that kind of job

Right now I'm in the middle of moving to a new house and I have no internet. But if noone has made any before I'm able to I could have a shot at it. But I won't be able to for a couple of months. I could make the models in Zbrush but I'm not sure how decimating will work on them. It could be bad. As a clarification... Need new furniture models for them? Or already existing ones? And hey everyone!

Right... Didn't think you'd edit the #65 so I didn't look at it again.

I only see one image. Don't know if you added more as your post suggests and I'm bugged or you put only one... On that image: I like the concept but the main problem I see is the polycount rising. I may try to make an even more lowres version when I remake it tho' to fit it. But I seem to recall (correct me if I'm wrong) that we have modular pipes already so the mappers can connect their machines according to their map layout instead of predefined built-in-the-model kind of options. In that case building pipes like that would serve no purpose. And even if it was just an idea I read that never became reality I still believe it's a much better way to do it than build the pipes on the model. In that case I could make a library of pipes for that purpose.

Not sure the feet would look cool on something like this...I prefer a sturdy bottom, but as I have to remake it anyways if people want feet I'll add feet I still can't understand what you mean with the pipes. Could you paint some on my last render? With paint or something. Don't need a piece of art just some lines to understand what you mean (see how Melan did it before) Thanks for the pics tho' Some good reference there The last one for that model I'm working on, first and third for any furniture I may do in the future...

All I can say is wooops! Got a pretty insisting malware and I ended up formating, and I lost everything I'll try to recreate at least the last machine from scratch when I get it back and running... Hopefully I'll have it ready within the weekend

heh it's okay For the pipes at the bottom I can't really thing of a way of showing that without making a hole in the model and that'd probably be out of place. And if the pipes are not visible then I don't see why I should spend polygons on them. Could you draw that or post a pic or something? I'm not sure I understand what you mean. As for the angle on top I may try to relax that. After all I'll have to remake the textures again. Changing the UVs accordingly should be hard.

Okay... What do you mean by a pedestal? This is supposed to be a gauge meter for something. The antennas are for recieving/sending signals , then there's a gauge meter and a soon to be animated needle. That's a machine thingy not a pedestal for showcasing an item or something. Imagine the machines in TG with the two meters on the topleft side and the lever on the right. Basically the same thing but with one meter instead of two and no levers. (I could try and provide you a screenshot here of the original). The metal plates are there for the same reason they are in most machines. To hide the cables/delicate equipment from the dust and corrosion of the world.Thus, plates. Plates as we're refering to a specific age when people did not have huge factories able to create a shell for a machine like that in one piece. At least that's how I understand it. Altho' some wooden parts with ornate details and copper parts would work better for a steampunk world, first I have to stay withing the game's already created and evolved art/world, and lastly it's not simply steampunk but middle ages/gothic/steampunk/victorian ugh!

Random thought that is probably not going to happen for obvious reasons... While playing Tg again (yeah I bought the trilogy ) one of the things I seem to miss the most in TDM is the smartass comments of Garret every now and then. I love those. Altho' I understand that because we're not using Garret for copyright reasons, mappers ended up inventing a bunch of thiefs in TDM and this makes my suggestion near impossible. Add to that the fact that in that case, we'd need special dialogues for every map and I know it won't happen But yeah... That's probably the only thing I really miss in TDM.

That doesn't really make any sense, construction wise...I'd still go for plates but this time closer to the original concept, some big ones/some smaller ones, some vertical ones etc to add variety. Altho' I suspect it'll be a ton of work As for the other models you proposed I don't see a reason why not. And I have a couple of others in my mind as well. But I want to finish with that one first.

Changing a finalised model is certainly doable not always worth it tho'. You have to compare the benefits of such change with the hassle of remaking UVs/textures. In this case I could add such a hidden compartment without much effort. I feel the same way... And I also feel that the rust metal part is too much colorized. Maybe I'll drop the color intensity in the next try but after I remake the texture maps. Any better idea for the body part? Top and bottom can probably be fixed just by reducing (or even removing) the normal map for them and making them a bit darker (altho' I fear the top will look like black marble then ). I may end up using the rusty plates as a base for making my own texture for the body after all. And yes. DIal and antennas are not done yet. I have made the dial's UVs but not the antenna's.

For some reason I thought you specifically asked for a concrete base. I now see I was wrong Okay... Let me find the TDM textures then and I'll update EDIT: How about that one? I tried to put some moss at the top and dirt at the bottom but sadly they're not really visible I'm also thinking to change the color of the bottom (feels too bright). And I don't like how squarish the panels are... I'd prefer some variety, but stretching them simply destroys the texture... Any ideas? About the shading thing at the top, it won't be visible when I add textures hopefully, but it's made because I put 4 lights all around the model for global illumination render.

How about this? It's one side only but wanted an opinnion before I start the rest. Basic fast viewport render. I thought of copper as better fitting than iron for the machine block. And after searchng my library for textures it was one of the very few ones I had The majority of my metal textures/panels etc are made for scifi for a personal project I had before. That means that if you don't like it I'll probably use the ones that come with DR when I find out where they are saved. The concrete in the base is warped. I'll need to fix my UVs for it, but sure it can be fixed.

I'll look my texture library as well, but when I get home. I have over 150gb of thextures I bet I can find some appropriate ones in there After all even if I used textures that are already in the engine they'll be as a part of my machine texture files so it won't change anything in the matter of loading more or less new textures. What I could do with it is extrude this place in (the vent part) and make a simple plane to cover it and then use an alpha texture for the transparency on the plane. That'll be 6 polygons total.

In order to get the side one visible like that it'll require ~8 more polys or so bringing me exactly to 1k. As for the front one I can't say I really understand what it is but it seems like some kind of grill to me. And that'll require a lot more polygons to be modeled, or I'll have to make a texture for it. I was planning to add metal plates and bolts with textures as you had it in the first concept. In that case I don't see how I could get the details you just posted. At the end I'll make an Unreal Engine render when everything's finished as I haven't managed to get the "map" or "testmap" commands to work. Unless someone wants to get the files then and take it into DR himself.

Quick viewport render of the lowpoly from maya. Just blin/lambert materials on it. I'd call it done unless you people think I should change something before I move to texturing. it's just a tad less than 1k polys right now, but I could probably manage to half that number if it's needed by removing all bevels it has. Concrete on bottom/main machine block/antennas are 1 object dial is a 2nd one and dial needle is a third one. Reason is that someone might want to use the dial seperatelly from the machine and for the needle to be animated. That means tho' that I'll have 2 texture files for them. 1 for machine the other for the dial.

Spingheel you mentioned a couple of times the general texture sizes we use. Is there a generally accepted, rule of thumb, texture density among the artists here? ie 512x512/sq meter for example? Or it's up to the artists and the information he wants to transfer to his maps? For example for the above generator (waist high) I could do two things for example (considering 512x512/sq meter). 1 texture file at 512x512 for the main block but I'd loose some details as it's supposed to be 1.5m/1m dimensions and 1 texture file at either 256x256 or 512x512 for the meter and the small antennas, or one texture file at 1024x1024 with everything and probably with some better details textured in it. In the first case I get some lowres for the base model (which isn't really a big problem as the detail center will be at the meter) and a highres meter (which is good). I also allow the mappers to use the meter alone in something their working on as it'll be a seperate model with seperate textures. In the second case I get to highres everything but in 3 models/1 texture file. (3 models becase one is the main block the other is the meter itself and the third is the meter needle so it can be animated if someone animates it). Which way should I go according to previous guidelines in TDM? Sorry for asking again and again but I think that this time I'll fully understand how we go about things like that. And it's something I DO need to know if I'm to make any models.

I started on the dial stand and the low-poly is almost ready (I only need the small antennas at the back and the UVs). At 800ish polys at the moment but If I change my bevels to less detailed ones I can drop it to 600ish. But I'm really sleepy so I'll probably save it here and continue tonight to at least finish the low poly before I go back to sculpting the owl statue. As for what I like... I'm a sci-fi nerd of some kind so anything machine-like extended to hard surface in general for practical reasons will keep me happy...Like now... Awake for 40ish hours and I jumped on this thing the moment I saw the scetch, instead of going to the bed as I was planning to. And while I do have WS installed the .proc file is in my darkmod/maps folder as it should not in WS one. after I run "dmap try" (try is the totally original name I found and I'm proud of it) the console ends up with that output When I type "map try" after that and hit enter it outputs in scary red letters. As for the .aas files I don't have any in any folder if that matters... And as for the antenna I didn't mean to make an exact copy, but to make something like that if it doesn't already exist. It'd be pretty fast I think

I like those Melan Altho' I do not really understand how the demijohn fits with the machines but anyways... Correct me if I'm wrong but don't we already have a couple different boilers? As for the fourth one that's exactly what I had in mind. Along with the generators/distributing antennas from T1. I loved those antennas but I'm not sure if remaking them would be considered a copyright breach. The antenna I was talking about. And yes I got all three thief games from steam so I can check things out myself now. I'd like some hints tho' on what missions should I keep my eyes open for machines Something that may seem random for this thread... I started the tutorial on the wiki about mapping, so I know at least the basics of the engine to be able to do stuff easier(ish), but I have a problem. While dmap *** works fine, when I try to run map *** or testmap *** I get a message that there's no such command. How do I test my map? Sorry for asking here and not in the appropriate subforum but I didn't want to start yet another thread for my noob questions. But yes...I really like those scetches and especially the info on the side. The last one was exactly the kind of machines that I had in mind

I am working on the statue Even right now... As for the table it's on hold until I find out how to fix the normals bug. Or I release a blocky looking 1k poly version of it but I don't see any reason of doing so as we already have a lot of tables. What I wanted to do with this one was to use normals to add some roundness to a beveled low poly version. But bevels and normals are not working well on maya

Minecraft is voxel-based as well. In a much more primitive way than this but still... Anyways I got some printed chapters from an awsome book about Victorian age architecture. It has pics/schetches from building facades to interiors to even different ornate details... Public libraries ftw!. Check out if you local library has "Victorian Houses and their Details". Or well pirate it if you find it. It really worths it.

Without wanting to sound belligerent or something, but it's 6 am, I haven't slept and I'm full of caffeine , I don't care... What I mean is... I do it for all the reasons you mentioned above. To help how I can, to improve my skills and my knowledge, even to make specific things instead of stuff simply as I imagine them and then scrapping them and starting over and over again. If people here believe they should be in the mod so even better, I won't have to pay attention if someone asks me to mail a model to him I hope I managed to clarify that bit for now. As for following the tutorial, I plan to, but I always find myself finding reason to postpone it. Thing is I'm used to work in Unreal and DR is completelly different. Not simply in the interface but in the basic principles that each engine runs. And I'm afraid of changes like that. That said, I know I have to eventually do it. I can't be of much help if I don't know how the engine works. I need to know how it works in order to create stuff for it. And lastly, the reason I asked for such a list (as I have done before) is not so I create the stuff so they get in the engine. I mostly intended to use them as a guideline. I have a big problem of being unable to focus on a project, and such a list would really help me in that department. Mostly like, having other people keeping me on track, something I can't do it for myself. Well... Not that bad but I think you understand what I'm trying to say. It's totally different to get a list of ideas to help with than googling "Dark victorian art" images for ideas ending up with a crapton of chicks in black and white paint with leather boots and black jackets looking at you like they want to eat your brains. Usually I simply end up scratching my head thinking that the world is way more insane than I hoped it was. And then I loose any motivation I may had for art.

I mean to get the .ase files turn them to .obj and work on them. Then export the .ase and get them back into DR with the same name etc. Just updated. And yes I was on that desk but I have some technical problems with it Until I fix them tho' I can help with some work that people want to be done.