Dragofer
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Posts posted by Dragofer
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These are great soundtracks, and what I like very much about them as well is that I haven't heard anything like these before in TDM. Many of these tunes remind me in particular of this ambience - Dark Ambient Music #4 Void (and also #6: Dreaming of Nowhere and #5: Lost Tape). It's one of the more haunting styles, in my opinion.
While listening to the ambients I made soundshaders for them so they can be tried out ingame. They'll show up in the DarkRadiant editor in the ambients list, all starting with gast_. It should go into the /darkmod/sound folder (create if necessary), and it's actually a .txt file that was renamed to .sndshd, so can be opened in the .txt editor. The sound files themselves should go into the /darkmod/sound/ambient/ambience folder.
Dropbox - gast_ambients.sndshd
It's very straightforward to make soundshaders, just copy-paste an old one and replace the ambient name and the filename. Here's a template:
AMBIENTNAME
{
editor_displayFolder ambient/ambiencedescription "Made by Gast"
looping
sound/ambient/ambience/FILENAME.ogg
}AMBIENTNAME_z
{
editor_displayFolder ambient/ambience_zoneddescription "Made by Gast"
global
omnidirectional
looping
leadin sound/ambient/ambience/silence.ogg
sound/ambient/ambience/FILENAME.ogg
}-
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Is there any other option for toggling a skin on and off with a button?
Answering that question on its own, you can use stim response on the lamp to change the skin when triggered.
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The team uses a SVN while others simply post links to filesharing sites. Most use zippyshare - personally I use Dropbox because I think it has a clean interface, has folders and holds on to files a long time.
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The actors and actresses of the play refuse to go into the basement stating that a dark shadow always stalks there
Sinister, eerie elements are things I can always appreciate in a mission
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Any luck with this? Those light models are excellent and I'd love to add them to the mod.
Yes, going back to Blender 2.70a did the trick for making smoothed .lwo models (current Version is 2.74). The interface looks identical to that of the newest version so it's simple to just use 2.70a from now on. Springheel, I've made a test torus here - could you try and see if it opens normally in Lightwave please?
The remaining problem is that my existing models made in Blender 2.74 still won't smooth when exported via 2.70a. Now I'm trying to find a way to turn a 2.74 file into a 2.70a file. If it doesn't work, recreating those lamps from scratch is no problem, but I have another carriage model that would be a lot of work to remake. In a pinch I could just make new renderbump versions of materials, but hopefully there's a cleaner solution.
Technical issues aside, I'm wondering how to move on from here. My overview of what's next is this:
- UV: The body panels are unwrapped and arranged to use the space on a 1024x1024 UV map, so they can be painted in GIMP. I don't have a source image that could just be pasted on, so to get trims and details I'd need to draw basic lines or find opensource pictures on the net and photoshop them.
- Texture normalmap: as I understand this all it takes to get this is to run the model texture through an automatic GIMP plugin.
- Hi-poly to Low-poly normalmap: I could model on trims and details to become part of the model's normalmap.
- Collision model: this looks too big to become a "moveable" with physics (in the sense of an apple or a ragdoll). So I can simply give it multiple collision meshes.
- Shadowmesh: just use _ns materials and make new meshes with shadow or shadow2 textures where appropriate.
Tris: it's at 9800 at the moment. Seats: 640 tris, lamps: 546 tris each, wheels: 480 tris each, wooden bodywork: 900 tris, leather hood: 940 tris, metal&wooden bars: ~4000 tris
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The 'convert to func_static' option isn't available to prefab when selected (it's not highlighted in menu).
And will I be able to split them again later, this way?
You can convert and uncovert any brushes and patches to func_static as you like, but not if you also have selected an entity from the "create entity" list. It also won't work if some of the brushes/patches are func_static (blue) and others are worldspawn (black) although sometimes in this case you can use "reparent primitives" instead.
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Here's another readable container possibility for your collection. Imagine taffing about in a port and looking down to the water to see a mysterious scroll getting washed about by the waves. And, a downscaled ship could take the place of that scroll to be showed off in a noble's room.
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Regarding the material files posted, in one you wrote noselfshadow and in the other noselfshadows. Maybe the latter is wrong and causing the issues with the material not smoothing.
Thanks for pointing this out, but there is an explanation for the typo - I had replaced the original noselfshadows line with noshadows, and then for this post typed the noselfshadow(s) back in again to show the original material shader. It's an oversight, sorry.
About the smoothing issues, I'd like to try to use an earlier version of Blender with the .lwo exporter, and if that doesn't work just use .ase. The earlier Blender version might come in handy there too if the .ase exporters don't get updated very often.
The way it is now, the exporter doesn't function properly if it makes .lwo files that can't be opened in Lightwave.
I used the plugins for Modo made by past id's artist, Seneca, he made them to export models from modo for Doom 3, so perhaps that is why it all worked smoothly. ;D
I can always appreciate a pun
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Currently, there's one steambot, an adorable little lantern bot. It's not very T2-esque, if that's what you were thinking of.
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/9082-newbie-darkradiant-questions/page-223?do=findComment&comment=366623is eagerly awaited.
There's no standard security camera system, but there's a custom camera in Breaking Out the Fence.
Wow... that had me stunned for a good five minutes before I got back to my senses again
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There is actually a func_securitycamera entity ingame. It seems to come from Doom3 so it ignores light levels and instead uses line-of-sight, and it has an exploitable bug, but it does have a lot of functionality already. Obsttorte even implemented a camera_gui texture that lets you make a monitor that shows what the camera is seeing.But, isn't it feasible to make an enemy with a camera shape, and it would have its vision restricted to some special angles and its voice sounding like alarm, and would just shriek and shout alerting all nearby guards? Nothing more would have been required. Is it very complicated?
Good gracious. It is said he's made out of something. Was it done using only Dark Radiant or 3ds Max?
It's not quite what I am thinking of, but if one could build such a... horrific structure... then, maybe, I could rustle up much less complicated one? If only I knew how.
A long time ago I made a testmap with a camera and monitor made-of-patches and an alarm here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/14394-apples-and-peaches-obsttortes-mapping-and-scripting-thread/?p=352597
If I remember right you can put the pk4 file in your darkmod/fms folder and then either start it like a normal mission or use console to open "map cameramodel".
In the state it's in now it's best suited for guarding a completely lit up place with obstacles to hide behind, or for letting the player see an area remotely from a monitor room.
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Are these .lwo files available somewhere so I could take a look at them?
Yes, here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dbu1i1thj1ox4hg/renderbump.pk4?dl=0
This is with the copper_dirty and the new copper_dirty_renderbump texture. Thanks for looking into it.
Also, a quote from the start of http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/idtech/export-lightwave-lwo-models.php
- LWO have no 'smoothing' (smooth groups) (instead they have an angle limit)
LWO Material path problems
Both of these core issues need a work around solution so that Blender 3D created LWO models render correctly in the Doom 3 engine. This tutorial discusses the measures that need to be implemented for both of these problems to allow Blender 3D to export fully functional LWO custom game models.
This sounds very strange... I didnt have the impression that the .lwo format could be problematic in this way. This makes me wonder again which is the better of .ase and .lwo. So far as I'm aware .lwo is better in:
- easier to avoid rendering errors when using shadow meshes
- smaller file size
- better compatibility in general with other modelling programs
- .lwo doesn't split the object into one mesh for every material used
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Thanks for your support, I've read through the information you posted, and it seems the problem could be related to the textures.
From Exporting *.lwo models for idTech with materials and mesh smoothing:
This is caused by the game engine not reading the smoothing angle that can be set on the mesh - as with most things to do with game editing it's either all or nothing. As a result the game gets around this problem by using a setting in the material file to apply smoothing.
renderbump -size 512 512 -colorMap -aa 1 -trace .125 [path]/[to]/candle_a_local.tga [path]/[to]/candle_a_hi.lwo
What isn't generally known is why that data is left in the material files, especially when associated with LWO files; the engine reads it as an instruction to apply a general smoothing over an entire model based on material assignment.
In other words, if you want your custom LWO model to have smoothing in game you need to add some 'renderbump' information to the material file.
Some experiments:
- I copied the teapot material and added this line, and used it on the left lamp. That worked (but it also darkened the texture)
- I looked through the materials for the textures of some existing .lwo models in TDM and none had this renderbump line in them, so they must have smoothing because of a different mechanism. From the forums, renderbump is normally associated with transferring normalmaps from hi-poly to low-poly models.
- The glass bulb was smooth from the beginning, so in a test I used that texture for the whole model and it was all perfectly smooth.
- Then I did the opposite test: using only the metal texture for the whole model made even the bulb flat.
- In another test, I used the generic darkmod/metal/flat/copper_dirty texture, which was flat. Adding renderbump to its material made it smooth.
- I looked around for exporters and saw that Goldwell uses the same one I do (v1.1 by iPleomax, Post) so it seems it works for TDM, at least back in Blender 2.70. As a test I used the one he uploaded but there was no difference in the smoothing.
- To test the exporter, I imported a couple existing .lwo models and re-exported them to find that they had no smoothing. The exporter could be broken, but so could the importer, which is also made by iPleomax.
- Looking at the imported .lwo models, none of them had marked sharp edges or overlapping vertices.
- Still, I marked sharp edges to separate smoothing groups but that had no effect.
- Following What are Smoothing Grounps & Mesh Smoothing and forcing it in Blender I intentionally introduced double edges which didn't have any effect. Note that there were no doubled edges or vertices before.
- I applied the textures from scratch in BlenderRender instead of CyclesRender, which is a different process, but that made no difference.
Because of the second set of experiments I've attached the materials for the glass and the metal:
Lampglass material - this smooths properly:
tdm_lampglass_sphere_unlit
{
glass
noselfshadowqer_editorimage models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_lampglass3nc_ed
{ blend diffusemap
map models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_lampglass3nc
red 0.14
green 0.14
blue 0.18
}
{
if ( parm11 > 0 )
blend gl_dst_color, gl_one
map _white
rgb 0.40 * parm11
}
{
if ( parm11 > 0 )
blend add
map models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_lampglass3
rgb 0.15 * parm11
}
// TDM Ambient Method Related
{
if (global5 == 1)
blend add
map models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_lampglass3nc
scale 1, 1
red global2
green global3
blue global4
}
{
if (global5 == 2)
blend add
program ambientEnvironment.vfp
vertexParm 0 1, 1, 1, 1 // UV Scales for Diffuse and Bump
vertexParm 1 1, 1, 1, 1 // (X,Y) UV Scale for specular
vertexParm 2 global2, global3, global4, 1
fragmentMap 0 cubeMap env/gen1
fragmentMap 1 _flat // Bump
fragmentMap 2 models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_lampglass3nc // Diffuse
fragmentMap 3 _black // Specular
}
}Teapot material: this doesn't smooth
teapot_gold_clean
{
metalnoselfshadows
diffusemap models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_teapot_gold
{
blend gl_dst_color, gl_src_color
map models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_teapot_gold // textures/darkmod/metal/flat/gen_smooth_bronze01_tiling_1d_ed
rgb .7
}bumpmap models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_teapot_local
specularmap models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_teapot_gold
{
if ( parm11 > 0 )
blend gl_dst_color, gl_one
map _white
rgb 0.40 * parm11
}
{
if ( parm11 > 0 )
blend add
map models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_teapot_gold
rgb 0.15 * parm11
}// TDM Ambient Method Related
{
if (global5 == 1)
blend add
map models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_teapot_gold
scale 1, 1
red global2
green global3
blue global4
}
{
if (global5 == 2)
blend add
program ambientEnvironment.vfp
vertexParm 0 1, 1, 1, 1 // UV Scales for Diffuse and Bump
vertexParm 1 1, 1, 1, 1 // (X,Y) UV Scale for specular
vertexParm 2 global2, global3, global4, 1
fragmentMap 0 cubeMap env/gen1
fragmentMap 1 models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_teapot_local // Bump
fragmentMap 2 models/darkmod/props/textures/bc_teapot_gold // Diffuse
fragmentMap 3 textures/darkmod/metal/flat/gold02_s // Specular
}
}So, what I'm making of these experiments is that in my setup:
- whether the model smooths or not depends on which texture is used
- my exporter and importer can't reproduce existing .lwo models with smoothed surfaces, but the same exporter was used successfully in the past by another TDM member.
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Thanks!
They look lovely, great work!
What's up with the black lamps on the right of the first pic? I don't see how no-self-shadows could cause that. They have specular lighting only by the look of it, no diffuse lighting and they're not transparent. If you have trouble debugging it could you post the material decl?
That's the unmodified unlit opaque texture for those lightbulbs, which doesn't have a diffuse map. A better look I think would be to change the unlit texture so that it has a dim white colour, which I think could be done just by tweaking the material. Maybe with a blend line to increase the light intensity, but I'm not very familiar with texture definitions yet.
By the way, I figured out what caused the pure black textures ingame - my custom materials file was in darkmod/materials/custom, when it should've been simply in darkmod/materials. Now that this issue is sorted out it's possible for me to make noshadows skins for the lamp metal when they're lit, and to turn the stagecoach into a single .ase model where all the details use noshadows textures. My guess is the stagecoach would fit best in the models/darkmod/misc folder?
If models arent smooth it is probably exporter problem. Maybe try different one.
Sloop looks fantastic. Cant wait to see some ports with those ships.
There are two possible causes to the smoothing issue; vertex smoothing or disconnected polygons. Make sure shading is set to smooth on a per object basis and try removing doubles to merge any overlapping vertices. Outside of that if the shading issues persist than it has to be a problem with exporting.
I've tried a second .lwo exporter by Paleajed / EWOC which didn't smooth anything but it showed that the first exporter did actually smooth the bulbs and all of the oil lamp. There has to be something with how I made the metal base, but the shading was still flat after I removed the double verts and manually set vertex smoothing (edit mode -> mesh -> faces -> shade smooth). Maybe there's a third .lwo exporter, or an .ase exporter that works with this Blender version.
Those look great and I appreciate that you're using existing textures. Not only does that help us avoid bloat and make for easier skins, it also helps create a unity in our artistic palette.
There isn't much choice at this moment so it's good you say that
Some excellent textures really can be used a lot more, like that teapot one, and in general there are a lot of great textures there already. In Thief 2 custom textures are very sought after because they're much sharper than the originals, but in TDM that doesn't seem to be needed. Still, learning GIMP is definitely on my todo list.I'm really glad to see the positive reception to Dragofer's lamps!
I should emphasise that these are conceptualised as gaslights, and not as electric - just in case anyone may have missed that point - so their entity class properties should reflect that fact if they are going to be added to 'Core' TDM.
I will be showing these lamps off in my upcoming WIP screenshots - so look out for them when the pictures are (eventually) uploaded!
That made me wonder how you could make them so you can tell they're gaslights. An electric light would make a buzzing sound, have very harsh light and give a constant level of light or keep zapping on and off if it's broken. While a gaslight would flicker and maybe need a vent to allow the fumes to escape. They both wouldn't react to water because of the glass spheres.
The way they're set up now is closer to the electric lights, but to make them more like gaslights you could use the yellowish _lit skins instead of the white _colorme skins and change the light texture to a moving candleflame's.
And: great! I can't wait to see
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Dunedain19 and I have been consulting in these last days to create a new lamp:
The single bulbs come with 704 tris, the double bulbs are 1180 tris. They come with straight or curved gas pipes.
Ingame:
If you look very closely, you'll see Blender up at the top
I tried Blender first to figure out if it would make more sense to use Wings3D, but it worked very well after I sat through Youtube tutorials on how to select and manipulate things. I'd even choose Blender over patches now.(An issue I'm having sometimes is that the models don't stay smoothed, which you can see clearly in the ingame shot at the bases of the bulbs. My other models so far are smoothed. Does some know what could be causing this? Also, I made some noshadow materials for some textures by swapping the "noselfshadows" with "noshadows", which works until they show up black ingame)
Here's another: one of the first things I did was to recreate my patchwork oil lamp as an .lwo. That was great because it got rid of the starry lines that were in the old patch one. This one is 586 polys.
Ingame:
Download for these lights:
[Obsolete]
And, with some bugfixes, the sloop is now game-ready. The structure itself is around 9500 tris plus some .ase models like bullseyes and mooring pins (bollards). You can climb up the mooring ropes from the pier as an extra way to get onboard, and inside you'll find a relatively spacious captain's cabin and hold.
Here's a map with the sloop:
[Obsolete]
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A question about textures: if I have one UV map texture for a model and then make three material definitions out of it for wood, metal and glass parts, does that cost more than if I only used one material definition?
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The round leather one at the end is my favourites too (and the drawer under the table too), it really makes me wonder what important deed to a property could be preserved in there. Or a letter that travelled a long way through the rain and had to be protected from the weather at all costs. That's the great thing about these containers, they can add their own little story details and they're very flexible with that.
Looking at the glass case there in the middle, maybe you'd like to do one for the wall as well? Maybe for a doctor or famous inventor who's proud of his certificate from the prestigious school where he learned his skills and doesn't want it to catch any dust, or hanging in a craftman's well-kept workshop to show that the guild hall has found that highest quality is achieved here.
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What should I set for the spawnarg of an AI's idle animation if I dont want them to do anything? I currently put "-" but its giving me errors in the console. It works ingame but maybe theres a proper way to do it?
If I remember right Grayman's cutscenes tutorial had a method to stop AIs from doing random animations when they're idle : http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Cutscenes
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This should be used together with the modular building system in my opinion. People would focus on making and contributing high-quality planned modules and then the algorithm mashes them together. If the algorithm is sound enough as Demagogue says, players could click on "new game" and "generate mission" and set their preferences for what type of mission it should be, set a check next to undead/spiders, mansion / city slums / and or docks, heist / assassination / espionage or random etc. and then click play. That would take a story generator too.
I'd definitely play that.
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We've really got to get you a modelling program.
Man impressive work to be made inside Darkradiant! But i still think you would gain more by going to a full 3D modeling program, if Blender is too strange for you, you can try Wings3D, is also free and much much easier to work with compared to blender of course, it also makes closed models automatically, recommended for the stencil shadows system, btw it was the tool i started with now i use Luxology Modo.
You're definitely right, it looked great when I watched some modelling timelapses on Youtube earlier today. People were modelling very fancy fantasy swords in no time, sometimes just by tracing the outlines from a picture and then pasting the picture on as a texture (like this one). What I was thinking until not so long ago was that I had all these little methods for using patches to make something where I needed it in my map, but in the long term Blender and Wings3D are much more capable tools. They're not really too strange HMart (thanks for suggesting this program also), just a hurdle to get familiar with the other way of doing things. It's the same thing in the "TTLG: they still need reminding" thread about getting DromEd authors from Thief to try out DarkRadiant more often.
Goldwell
I'd really like to see your bear rug become openly available by the way (Bear)
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Thanks for your comments
Agreed, a lot of these incredably impressive models will have to be added to the mod, the stagecoach while impressive is a tad too modern. But on the subject of the stagecoash, you should make one thats static and closed aswell for mappers to use (will have less tris with no interior etc)
I've followed your suggestion and stripped out the interior. That reduced the total polys by 1000 and now 2100 polys cast shadows. And it led to a fun discovery: the dark wood is actually a colorme texture! I've made another version of this coach that uses the colorme texture for the trim too, so you can select the trim or body panels and give them new colours with the _color spawnarg. A small downside is that the trim looks less sharp because the original texture gives a shadow at the edges.
Exterior - [Obsolete]
Exterior, colorme - [Obsolete]
@Dragofer, can you PM a link to all the models you have made and I will go through them and add all the apropriate ones to the SVN so they are part of the eventual 2.04 update.
Sure, a lot of these things just need to be fixed up so they work properly.
I don't think the stage coaches are especially modern.
"By the mid 17th century, a basic stagecoach infrastructure had been put in place.%5B6%5D The first stagecoach route started in 1610 and ran from Edinburgh to Leith"
It's pretty damn impressive, but what format is it? It's harder to include assets that aren't models or entities.
They're all a collection of patches made in DR. The components of the stagecoach could be converted into .ase models so they show up in the create models list, but a prefab would come with preset spawnargs and can be tweaked easily by other mappers.
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A horsedrawn stage coach, and some new lamps. They would use these coaches in the past for covering long distances overland with packages, passengers and maybe also funds for a business transaction onboard.
There are real candles in the lanterns, and you can look out through the windows (or guards can look in).
Stats for this one are: 9800 polys, of which 5400 polys are shadowcasting, with 7 different textures (2 wood, 2 metal, 2 leather, 1 glass). If you'd like to use it in your map too, here's a link:
[Obsolete]
Also 2 new lights: the tall lamp is electric with a bulb, with those dangling ropes it's 3100 polys, 1300 without. It's strange because the ropes and their ends are fixed at 1 subdivision. Luckily lamps aren't set to cast shadows.
The small one is an old oil lamp at 540 polys.
Fiddling with the textures and technical setup so they become usable is on my to-do list
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The old tehchnique for making dense forests in T2
Great, that would work really well together with Sotha's Easy Outdoors Recipe for efficient .ase foliage bushes/boundaries. (http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/16159-easy-outdoors-recipe/).
SteveL: fog
I've fired up a foggy map I had lying around, unfortunately r_showtris isnt't affected by the fog. But it's definitely a great feature.
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One thing I'm noticing is I get a lot of "WARNING: backwards triangle in input!" when I dmap. Could that be part of the issue?
In my first mapping efforts I also made a brush lattice like that too and that also gave a lot of backward triangle errors. They're normal and harmless, but suddenly getting this many implies that the architecture is too taxing. Brushes are normally for walls, floors and trims, while fine details are covered by models. My brush lattice caused dmap to crash - I don't know if it could tank performance, but it's not so healthy for the map.
You can still do a lot with brushes though. For your lattice, I'd look at this:
- Brushes going in one direction could be slightly thicker so that they can be pierced by those going in the other direction without z-fighting or needing to carve them up at every intersection.
Caulking unseen surfaces is in my opinion only really worth doing on objects you're going to clone a lot of times in your map. Even better is caulk and convert them into an .ase model because then the object is only "created" once.
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Some of the best reading experiences I can remember in a Thief mission were the collections of ghost tales, especially then when they raise the possibility that one of the apparitions could still be in the part of town where *you* are creeping in the dark right now. They can make for tense scenes even if the mission isn't a horror mission, and they can be great fun to write if you like that kind of creative writing.
For inspiration I offer American Folklore, americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/presumed_drowned.html, set to one of my favourites so far
. One thing I realised after looking at folktales from here and elsewhere is that their tellers haven't been exposed to 20th and 21st century storytelling, which sometimes results in jarring endings. In one tale, a man is tempted by a fairy to run off into the woods, but he's stopped just in time by a woman from the village. The end. Still, more than one tale really has that campfire feel.Looks Like this amazing FM is back in production -
- http://darkfate.org/forum/index.php%3Ftopic%3D3222.msg135657&usg=ALkJrhjHsWVeJlaTTrAjLUBIpYeIAWz23w
Those are nicely fitting textures there. And the vaulted ceilings...
Gast eerie lullabie(s)
in Music & SFX
Posted
Your tracks and Marteau's tracks have a chilling style that's different from many of the tracks in TDM as I see them. I'm very glad to see more in this style.