Nosslak

I managed to make a surprisingly good looking LOD-version with just 12 triangles and the same texture: I managed to cut down a few more polys on the regular lowpoly taking it down to a whooping 154 polys.

Great! Sounds like instancing would help a great deal here as well. Is there any progress being made on implementing that? Yeah, that does sound like the most reasonable solution. Sure, that won't be a problem. At least not making a full feather or two, I'd need to find new textures to make ruined versions.

Alright, I weren't aware of any drawbacks of prefabs. How about just spawning in and attaching the feathers and mask separately? I found one more place where I could easily optimize a bit more, which saved an additional 12 polygons. So all in all I've saved 28 polys (almost 10%) I doubt it'll do much of a difference if we don't use this mesh for the shadows though. They're all single as it gives me greater control of them, makes it easier to give them more volume (they're not all completely flat, some overlap others) and it makes it possible to re-use the texture elsewhere (as the feathers are separate there). It does require more polygons though. Yeah, that would be pretty cool.

I'm still confused. Right now I am making a second set of feathers so wouldn't it be a good idea to just make it a prefab so we won't need to load in two similar versions of the mask at the same time (however small the model may be)? I also feel that it'd be a lot easier to make the skins for it as I think you could just do it like this: Feather1 and 2: - Default (visible with shadows without collision) - NoDraw (invisible without shadows or collision) Mask: - Mask 1 with shadows and collision - Mask 2 with shadows and collision Then the mapper could unflag what they don't want as you said, there wouldn't be a bunch of confusing skins/materials (confusing to me at the very least) and the mapper would be free to mix and match however the see fit. You are absolutely right, I thought I had added those so that the mask wouldn't clip with the face but I tried simplifying it and there were essentially no difference. You really shouldn't make any adjustments to the mesh after you've baked your textures (the normalmap won't match the highpoly as well anymore) but I think I managed to make it similar enough so that won't matter. I am just saving 16 triangles so there's not that much of a difference. I'm not sure people understand how little 10 polys are. A cube takes up 12 polys and a single-sided plane takes 2 polys. If I were to make up the different sides of the mask with 2 planes and then cut a foursided hole in each for the eyes that would already use 16 polys.

Yeah, I'm really not sure how well it'll cast shadows. Here's how the mesh looks: That's probably the best solution even if it does require extra work. I'm not sure what you're meaning. Wouldn't it be easier to just combine the mask and feathers as a prefab? I've never really mapped or used prefabs so I might be completely wrong.

Here's a render with improved textures for the first version: One of the feathers clip through the mask a bit but it's easily fixable.

Oh, alright thanks then! I thought about that too, but I'm not sure if it should cast shadows at all. Here's my reasons: - It should sit tightly on the face at all times so it would barely change the silhouette and therefore the shadows. - I want to have a nodraw skin as well for the feathers so that they won't be shown at all to enable more variation. - The masks themselves look very different (one bigger, one smaller) so it'd probably look weird. Also it might be wort mentioning that the mask itself is only 188 polys and the feathers take up 256 polys (128x2 for double-sided). Good! Thanks! The gold is just a part of the texture so as long as it isn't possible to do a stencil/mask for the effect it wouldn't be possible.

That's a pretty good idea. Unfortunately it is pretty tedious to change the feathers as you'll have to make sure they don't intersect with each other too much or the face or the different skins for the masks. I guess I could make one or maybe two new ones but that'll have to be enough.

Thanks! I would never have gotten this far without the support of the community. Thanks for accepting a (back then) shitty modeller! Yeah, probably but the triple questionmarks threw me off. Thanks, I were thinking of making both versions above, when the time comes. If someone wants to make a masquerade FM now I could get to work on a male version, but otherwise I'd like to just take a break from the masks and work on the zombie. I guess I can do that. I should be able to just bake everything down and be done with it. 4 polys wouldn't be possible though as the feathers are separate from the mask so they'll be colorable and even if it would've been it would have to float a bit away from the face to avoid any clipping. Is it possible to make a LOD mesh inherit the color of the detailed version? Have another purrty render:

Haha, yeah thanks! Here's a fancy lowpoly render from Marmoset for all you taffers out there: It's clocking in at 450 polys (319 with single-sided feathers). Did I mention that the feathers will be colorable? That's why they're white here anyways. The feathers are placed on a separate texture (3 feathers on the same texture) so if anyone else want to use it it'll be easy to do so. I'll probably finish up the other version tomorrow.

Yeah, that's what I thought too, but I wasn't sure so I didn't want to raise anyones hopes up for it to fit all characters. I do actually! I found these which I like a lot: I do have more important projects (the zombie) which I'll need to do first but I'll make some male masks after that.

Thanks! I've only fitted it for the noblewoman, so presumably there would be some clipping.

Thanks! I'll try to import the feathers in-game and see how they look before I make any final decision about them. Here, have a lowpoly: Looks like it'll land on about 500 polys!

Looks awesome! I'm not sure how you're going to make the bars going across the window but if you were plannng t just use a texture for them I'd recommend doing away with the 90 degree angles on them as normal- and AO-baking doesn't like those (it'd probably look a bit better with ~70 degree angles).

Thanks! I did model them after photos of venetian masks so yeah, they should resemble those. Playing around with some feathers, not sure if I should keep them or not. I'm not really sure how they'll look if I have an alpha-mapped model on top of it (if the light goes though the lowpoly with alpha or what happens in-game) so I might have to remove them anyway. Blender shades them a bit funky but the geometry is simple so it should work fine in-game.

Thanks! Here's the other version that I showed in that other thread: I'm making both models simultaneously so they'll both fit as a skin on the same lowpoly model.

That is looking awesome. I'd be glad to make one of those one day (preferably with someone else doing the animations).

Yup, masquerade mask it is. I thought it'd be harder than that to guess what it was. I'm thinking of doing a couple of these for the women with different designs on different skins. I'll probably end up making some for the men as well in the future.

I'm having some trouble importing the zombie into Blender (Blender isn't very fond of MD5, but I'm getting help by Serpentine) so I started this in the meantime: Anyone want to guess what it is (it is far from completion)?

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. So what animations do we need that can be made right now (we need more than only the balustrade)? Or should we just wait until I'm finished with the zombie which might take some time?

Alright, I haven't heard a lot about any advertisement so I weren't sure there any interest in that. I can think of several places where there might be interest: - ModDB (TDM article and job-section) - Polycount - CGSociety - BlenderArtists (a lot of n00bs but there might be some talent there) With some quick googling I found these two animation specific forums as well: - Animation World Network - Animatonforum.net I guess I could try to post at some of the first ones (not ModDB as I don't have access to that).

I've said it before but I'll say it again. Make a post on Polycount and Moddb (both in the TDM article and job section) saying that you need animators and you might have some luck, instead of just complaining about not having any animators. I realize that I sound a bit harsh, but as we've seen in the past waiting around for animators just doesn't work so we'll have to seek them out instead.

Here's a guide to starting out with Blender: http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/ I haven't watched these tutorials but most of their tutorials are very good so I trust them.