Skol

It's snowing in Wisconsin, too It's friggen cold.

And did you know that if you have cranberries and you stew them like applesauce, you have something that tastes a whole lot more like prunes than rhubarb does?

"soft propaganda" is how all media works, though, and, I reckon, how much of communication works. Big House movies ARE controlled by a very small group of individuals, the rich and powerful. That's the start point of cultural hegemony. And I agree on the propaganda from the Pentagon, et al, but that's nothing new, just more overt (or covert, if you can't tell the difference. Can you say Bruckheimer?).

You guys are cool Thanks fyi, atlas mapping just puts all polys on the same plane and keeps them seperated on the UV map to prevent overlap, but otherwise it has no regard for how they connect to each other (unless they're already connected on an arbitrary plane) - I'm pretty sure most modelling apps have something similar.

Not intentionally, mind. It's just ideology on a global scale. We (everyone) either take it for granted and thereby reproduce it, or call its bluff.

Great, now I'm spamming the thread Another coupla questions, because I'm concerned about taking liberties I'm not supposed to take: I'm under the assumption that there aren't hi-poly models for these models (they're mechanical and don't require loads of geometry). Since there are a few curved surfaces, is it okay for me to either subpatch and freeze or smooth a few surfaces, maybe add a few dents here and there, and use that to generate a normal map? Second of all: as much as I like making UV maps (really, it's like a puzzle), will atlas mapping work sometimes? I understand now the beauty of surface baker, and in general would prefer to surface edit a model instead of going straight to PS and using textures from sources with FUD fair-use claims. basically: Am I allowed to create normal maps by upping the detail on the source model and Can I atlas map in conjunction with surface baker (will it be more seamless, at any rate)? (to clarify: I unwrapped one model using endomorphs, but this caused seams I hadn't predicted, and I'm looking for a quicker way to UV/texture)

Crispy, would you mind if I PM a few questions to ya?

Excellent, thank you

Aright, I've UV mapped and almost completed (diffuse) texturing on a model. That's gone good. But should I make specular/diffuse/height maps, or just a diffuse maps Normal maps? I don't know that much about radiant, so I'm not sure what it is you all need.

Thanks for the help. I'm back up and running with a clean hard drive (plus tools)

Actually, interesting new development: Because my computer's motherboard is faulty, windows has trouble loading at boot. It's always been this way. however, windows has decided that I've changed the hardware configuration so much that I have to reactive windows within 3 days. Since I've reformatted so many times, that activation key no longer works. So my computer has a life span of exactly 3 days. By trying to troubleshoot THROUGH windows, I have to buy a new license FOR it. Money grubbing bastards. Wow. I'm furious.

If you guys are behind on skinners, I have D3 & LW8 & Gimp, but really no excuse to use them. I know how to UV map (as in: I've read tutorials and clicked a few buttons), and I learn quick otherwise, although I don't have much to show except for some LW renders that demonstrates my knowledge of said button clicking. I'm very new to this. My experience w/ photoshop (and the gimp, by extension) is a couple of years. I've been following darkmod for a couple months, and thief for more than a few years (including dromed), and I want to help. So I'm wondering if I'm qualified, or, at any rate, may-as-well-be-qualified-enough , before I send an e-mail.

Really basic, I hope: A model is made up of polygons, which are made up of vertices. Each vertex has an x,y,z coordinate. A UV map is generated by "unfolding" a model into a 2d space, and giving each vertex an additional u and v coordinate (you can move stuff around on the UV map without moving it in actual space). So you can create a table, and make a UV map with distinct areas (e.g., top, bottom, sides, legs). Then you can draw on it. The top, bottom, and sides of the table can be basic wood, and the legs can have some decorative design, or whatever. If you've ever seen a picture that looks like this or this, you've seen a textured UV map (really, a texture map (the face) over the UV map (the polygons); I don't know if they're interchangable). The face model has been unfolded to lay flat, which is why the face looks so distorted. Most/all engines have vertex data with UV coordinates. The texture map (and normal map, et. al.) can be seen as a UV graph, so that a vertex of a model with such-and-such texture map can interpolate a texture across a face.

Only you are, in so many ways. I don't care if you can throw away your blackjack and use a chair instead, but you don't flag the mission for ghosting because your blackjack can be dropped. (edit: and next time, I won't make a typo!)

Why not just mimic thief and just keep the sword and blackjack? @Ishtvan: There are very, very few maps on Thief I have played that didn't have a blackjack, and you could still ghost them. It makes sense, to me anyway, IANAE, to have the base gameplay code mapped out before worrying about features in the future.

Of course, you're implying that humanity is somehow broken. And if that's your argument, then, yes, you are saying homosexuality needs to be fixed because it's not "normal", something you've brought up a lot. What's normal? I know too many people that refute this asinine claim. Way too many people. Most of them women, some of them men. I know too many people jacking off to lesbian porn to refute this equally asinine claim. Far more people than above. Are these two groups also abnormal? Assuming this is a completely nurtured phenomenon. Given todays climate, there would be very few homosexuals (low, low 1%). So I assume it's also a natural phenomenon. But if it's natural, and society was completely accepting, they wouldn't reproduce, and again there would be very few homosexuals. again with the normal. wholesome? what is wholesome? And why is abnormality not to be tolerated? (you'll need your definition of normal)

.02c I'm gay. So this is based on my experience and reasoning, as opposed to just assumption and reasoning. First thing I'd like to argue is this dualist crap that there is pure homosexuality and pure heterosexuality. I reckon we can agree that no-one is perfectly black, and there is no perfect gendered male (intead of genetic male, obviously). In this same way, there is no perfect homosexual, and I can vouch for that. This idea of perfection is an abstraction best left abstracted; to reify it into some essence is ridiculous. To say that gay men and women are absolutely attracted to respective men and women denies them as emotional and reasoning people, perfectly capable of having sex with the opposite sex, and what grosses them out is not some weird and impossible imperative driving them towards this emotion, but its conflict with their perceived identity. The same can be said of straight men and women. In other words, you can identify with this abstraction (gay & straight), but you can never possess it. Of course, the above argument appears to assume that ultimately there is a choice being made on orientation (hence nurture). No. No-one voluntarily chooses to be homosexual, and I don't think anyone in here is dumb enough to argue that. I do not know, and I think very few people know, why we are homosexual. I'm not going to argue this, because I don't find it worth dissecting, like so many people do. Why is it worth dissecting? You can argue me on everything I said before this, but if you cannot supply a reasoning for this answer, all your arguments will be attacking strawmen. It's what has led to this discussion, and all discussions before it. It is central.