Nosslak
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Posts posted by Nosslak
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That is not a problem, if they are two sep. models, you can attach one model to the other with no problems.
Great!
Although engine wise, two sep. models use a little bit more resources than one model, as they need to be two entitites, too. This isn't really a problem, because A: the feathers use a different texture, anyway, so they cannot be combined into a drawcall with the mask and thus get rendered in a sep. pass, anyway. And B : there won't be that many masks in a mission (maybe a dozend tops?) that havign another dozend entities is a problem.
And if all fails, we can still hack the engine and create multi-model entitites (in fact, we want to do this anyway. Entities carry a HUGE overhead, and if the entity consists of just a model, you have that huge overhead just to render a little model. That is why SEED can combine entities together by creating a mega-model. And we really want to use that with instancing, anyway.
Sounds like instancing would help a great deal here as well. Is there any progress being made on implementing that?
Before we had the source, models needed to be constructed to work with the engine in the best way. Now I think we should fix the engine problems, instead of placing the same (stupid) restrictions on every model.Yeah, that does sound like the most reasonable solution.
Yeah, if you can please make one or two "single-feather" models, and maybe even a "half-feather" or "teared one". We can really use more "flinder" objects that get spawned when the player destroys things - makes the world feel more real than the indestructable stuff we usually have
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.
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Prefabs for models are not a good idea. Apart from the fact that it is impossible to modify prefabs once they are in a released FM (if you change the model, it will change it all FMs. If you change the prefab, only new FMs will be afected), it also makes it much much harder to attach things. This is esp. important for wearable stuff.
We really want to be able to control everything with spawnargs, so you can make pre-fabricated AI by simple writing an entity def - and the mapper then simply places the entity in his map an everything is allright.
Having only one model with 20 skins is definitely easier there.
Alright, I weren't aware of any drawbacks of prefabs. How about just spawning in and attaching the feathers and mask separately?
Yeah, but I thought that you could maybe do this in more places. The "don't clip the face" is important, tho and hard to see from the screenshots how the mask is formed in 3D.
But if you saved 16polies, cool, and saving more is not that important esp if you need to redo large parts.
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.
I wonder tho why the feathers are all single polies, and not a simple mesh covering all of them? Was that easier to create, or does it look better or is there any other reason?
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.
(Edit: Me thinks it would be cool create a script that "detach/make invisible" the feathers by a skin-change, and then creates 16 single feathers and spawns them - so if the AI dies, the mask drops and the feathers fall out
Yeah, that would be pretty cool.
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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.
Noss, here is another thing that you might consider. Now, I am no modeller, so this might be something silly, but I think the mask has way to many poligons in some places.
Here is a screenshow that shows how you could combine some:
I mean if the border is alpha-mapped, anyway, why waste so many poligons to accurately track the outline? Instead make the mesh more coarse, and adjust the texture
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.
@baddcogg: I don't think adding 300 shadow casting polies to an AI is a good idea, esp. because the shadow casted is VERY simple - it could be as much as 10 polies or so and nobody could tell it isn't accurately.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.
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I think you should leave the material as shadowcasting. It doesn't have that many polys anyway, and if used as a moveable it would be consistant mod wise.
If it casts weird shadows (alpha eye holes maybe?) on the face or whatever authors can always tag it with NoShadows as they see fit. (but if that tag is in the material then they have to make a new material if they want shadows...
If it's best we can just make the entitiy noshadows but that allows authors to unflag it if they really want to.
If they eye holes are just alpha you might want to spend a few more polys anyway to have actual holes (still alphaed the same) to let light through in roughly the same shape as the eyes.
Yeah, I'm really not sure how well it'll cast shadows. Here's how the mesh looks:
As far as that goes, you can always have two shadow meshes, just export two materials (easy to do with ase), then each skin can have Shadow or NoDraw for the shadow mesh that needs to show for that skin version.
Same with collision
That's probably the best solution even if it does require extra work.
To keep it seperate from the feathers though you need to just export with some random material so nodraw can be put in multiple spots in a skin.
ie:
feathers>nodraw
collision 1>nodraw
shadow 1>nodraw
nodraw>shadow 2
nodraw(exported with wood tex)>collision 2
nodraw exported with metal>feather 2
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.
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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.
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Haha, Noss. No, man I wasn't being sarcastic, you do fantastic stuff!!
I think it's just ridiculously awesome, the colorable feathers was a detail I didn't expect!
Oh, alright thanks then!
Don't worry about 4 faces, 20 or so is good enough. (Side-note: with 300 polies it really should have its own shadow mesh which would be much simpler)
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).
If the feathers are colored via the material, then the material gets the color from the entity, and since the entity is the same (it just switches the model around), the LOD stages would keep the colors. Haven't tried it, but would be surprised if it does not work (and even then we can fix it - we have he source now
Good!
(And good idea to make the feathers colorable! Maybe one can even do this with the white part of the mask? Is the white sep. from the gold?)
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.
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Very cool... I would also suggest alternative orientations to the feathers like in these examples, maybe a more profuse amount around the face/mask (or the opposite, centered on the forehead, like in the last pic), varied sizes to the feathers (like in the first pic, the botton "rows" of feathers that have different sizes, ignore the huge top ones), or an asymmetrical composition (to one of the sides):
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.
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Perfect work noss.. I can really tell that your models are better and better.
Thanks! I would never have gotten this far without the support of the community. Thanks for accepting a (back then) shitty modeller!
I think it is genuine excitement - it's almost offering up a whole sub genre of "masquerade" FM by itself. =-)
Yeah, probably but the triple questionmarks threw me off.
That mask is just awesome! I hope you do a male one. If you do I really like the ones with the long nose. I think they look really creepy.
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.
That's very cool, Nosslak!
I know I am always wishing, but could you do a very-low-poly version, too? (Something like 20 polies, hell, even 4 with alphamask) Soemthing that can be on a Noble 50m away and doesn't waste 300 polies for being 4x4 pixels
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:
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Nosslak's little magic forge always producing high quality models.. Very nice stuff!
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.
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I wasn't serious on that. I mean what kind of citywatch wears these stuff.
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.
come to think of it, do you have a plan on making male version of these for enabling masquerade?
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.
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Oh wow! Love it - love the feathers... Putting me in a "Life of the Party" mood! =-)
Thanks!
I wonder how it'll look in the face of citywatch.
I've only fitted it for the noblewoman, so presumably there would be some clipping.
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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!
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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).
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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.
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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.
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I was just thinking the other day of a model I tried to make once but didn't have the skill to do it. Thought I'd post it before I forget. If you're looking for a challenge at some point, I'd love to have a repeating crossbow for our AI, something like this:
That is looking awesome. I'd be glad to make one of those one day (preferably with someone else doing the animations).
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It looks like a mask, or it could be a vagina, I can't tell. Whatever it is it's Sweet looking! I can't wait to see it when it's done.
Ooh! I think it's a party masquerade mask! =-)
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.
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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)?
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Noss, that sounds like a plan. It might also be better to have a specific task like "create an animation that does X", instead of asking for someone to show up, talk to us, discuss for 2 weeks what she/he should do etc.
That way the animator can show us a mockup (with his tools etc) right away, and then we provide him with our data and he can convert/fine-tune it.
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?
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Noss, this isn't exactly a new problem. We've advertised for animators for years. Sometimes, we'd get one or two to show up. Rarely, one of them would stick around long enough to actually do some animations. Sometimes those animations were even good enough to use.
Alright, I haven't heard a lot about any advertisement so I weren't sure there any interest in that.
If you know of somewhere special to canvas for animators, feel free.I can think of several places where there might be interest:
- ModDB (TDM article and job-section)
- 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:
I guess I could try to post at some of the first ones (not ModDB as I don't have access to that).
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And yes, it is a shame that we have not more animators.
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.
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Learning Blender is a chore man, Im sorry to say, so its probably going to be a while before I can give this any use. I can think of ways that building a detailed house interior with a polygon modeler and than exporting it as brushes would be a lot faster and more confortable than doing it with the rigid pieces inside DR; but I also agree with Arcturus that there is great potential in just modeling free-style, organic shapes to be used as architecture models, and using the original shape as base for a quick and accurate double to be used as de facto underlying map geometry.
Now if only I had the brains to learn the program... (Im actually learning two other 3d modelers right now (Rhino and Revit Architecture, that's the main problem, your memory is psread to thin... 3 with DR, if you think about it...)
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.
Nosslaks stuff
in TDM Editors Guild
Posted
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.