ascottk
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Posts posted by ascottk
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fbx plays well with 3ds max & maya (joints & rigging preserved).What format export can you guys do with that Maya rig? obj possibly?
Could someone try this? I would love to play with it.
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I hate using the word "skin" when rigging meshes to joints. I associate skin with changing a mesh's texture/material.I'm not sure what you mean by 'rigged joint'? If joint is part of the skeleton it's rigged then, isn't it? Or do you mean skinned, like with some vertices assigned to it? In that case it wouldn't import any dummy joints for binding stuff to character, am I right?Anyway if any joint is not weighted to any part of the mesh then the importers may ignore those. I think most joints are weighted so I think it'll be a non-issue. It's just something to keep in mind when working with these.
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What about Google code?
I've been seeing a lot of projects go from Sourceforge to Google code lately.
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There are md5 importers for 3ds max. 3ds Max is how I started working with characters. The problems with the importers are that they tend to import only the rigged joints (the new proguard rig has 71+ joints, if the rigging only used 65 joints then the importers would only use those). Most exporters use the Skin modifier in 3ds max instead of Physique.
You will have problems with mismatching joints numbers and names if the animation joints do not match the mesh joints exactly. Doom 3 is really picky that way. What I like about D3's formats are that they can be edited in a standard text editor and you can check if the joints match between the md5anim and md5mesh.
Maya has a really steep learning curve so if you use that then you need a lot of patience & tutorials. Here's my rigging tutorial for Maya:
http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Advanced_character_rigging
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I took out the skull underneath but wait . . . I have an ideaI'd have no objection though if you want to bulge his left eye out a bit more, expose part of his brains, etc. But I think this is useable as it is.
He needs something to keep his eyeball from totally falling off . . .
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Well, my quest continues for improvement and I've been trying out different software to help. ZBrush has been largely unused until I started using my graphics tablet (ZBrush + mouse absolutely sucks). So here's an improved texture for the zombie head:
New normal map generated by ZBrush (& I think it looks great on the left cheek).
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If you're concerned about texture bloat, maybe a skin add-on pack would be available after the main mod is released. I was thinking about having additional AI packs that probably wouldn't be tdm "approved".This character mesh was up for critique a year ago.Everything except the green skin just uses existing wallpaper textures, which I personally think looks fine, and has the benefit of not adding any texture bloat. If you think you can make better skins for him, by all means go ahead and do so.
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I think it'd be fair to put your characters up for review/critique. I hate to say it like this but I've been held to a higher standard, a standard that you seem to be ignoring. For example a few of those skins look more like bad drapes than clothing.
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As far as the base model (since it's tdm), it's not an issue. But as far a shaping within facegen, then yes, it will need some work. That's probably why I hated Oblivion facesI meant work artistically, not technically.
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Not necessarilyYou have to do some significant modifications to make a facegen head work (Odd once posted a video on that very topic).
Once you import a model into customizer it'll share the same uv maps & once that happens you can import the original model's skin weights in maya to the facegened model.The texture needs a lot of tweaking, I'll agree on that.
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I wanted to see if this would work . . .
Randomly generated in facegen:
My face on the guard (ugh):
Tweaked random:
Trying on the engineer's goggles:
& the new proguard helmet:
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You can only please most of the people part of the time and part of the people most of the time . . . or something like that. In other words, you can't please everyone.Much better looking, although there is still something about the eyes that bothers me.
I'm not sure how to approach that but in low light conditions & most people won't be able to get an extreme closeup. But I'll see what I can do.All those nice clean pale necks! Are we using a common neck? It shows up most on the zombie but it drew my attention to the proguard neck as well.
That's the new idle animation on the new rig. I can't do much about that.Just a quick note, his legs look a bit too bent for a standing position. I love the newer zombie face though 100% on the right track.
Partly my fault, partly the idle animation. With that combination the effect is exaggerated.They look fine, but it appear they are all floating above the floor by a cm or so? -
Well, that's all the work I'm doing on him for now. Here's a look at the revised zombie head (who is using the "forester" skin for now):
& here's a screen of the proguard 2 family:
Updates on svn now:
- All cloth is sharing UVs
- Updates textures and materials
- Got rid of colored textures (taken over by the colored material stage) and other excess textures
- Updated rigging
- Mesh updates
- Head mesh tweak (less asian eyes)
TODO:
- Zombie body skin
- Possibly add more meshes for commoner clothing (sleeve ends. collar)
- Texture touchups (beardless head is too smooth), add more character to cloth
- Better normal maps
- Update animation when available
- All cloth is sharing UVs
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Getting closer . . .
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I don't like it yet
But I'm using animations to distort the original mesh:
translated his left eye outward
rotated the lips in opposite directions
translated the cheeks inward
scaled the jaw to be smaller
He definitely needs a better normal map and some texture work
You can do this to any mesh we have. A combo of translate, rotate, and scaling joints to create head or body variations without new meshes or rigging. I don't know how AFs for the body would react. You would have to modify any animations the character has though.
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Yet another progress update
The colors still need to be tweaked, the imperial's red cloth is too dark but it's hard to nail with rgba values in materialeditor (I'm an idiot, I didn't know there was even a material editor in d3). The gold armor looks a lot better imo, and I'm pleased with the green. I did a violet version but it's still too dark.
here's the material of the gold armor:
models/md5/chars/guards/proguard_02/skins/proguard02_armor_gold { description "armor_plate" noShadows bumpmap models/md5/chars/guards/proguard_02/proguard02_armor_local { name "Stage 2" map models/md5/chars/guards/proguard_02/proguard02_armor blend diffusemap colored color 1, .7, .4, 1 } specularmap models/md5/chars/guards/proguard_02/proguard02_armor_s { name "Stage 4" if ( parm11 > 0 ) map _white blend gl_dst_color, gl_one rgb 0.40 * parm11 } { name "Stage 5" if ( parm11 > 0 ) map models/md5/chars/guards/proguard_02/proguard02_armor blend add rgb 0.15 * parm11 } { name "Stage 6" map models/md5/chars/guards/proguard_02/proguard02_armor blend add red global2 green global3 blue global4 } }539 tris for the new tunic (separated for the trim) and a new cape which was the version I was experimenting with for dynamic cloth. The new cape uses a 512x1024 texture & I'll probably use a smaller texture for the trim but that would make it harder to align normal maps and stuff.
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Only the hammer sheath & draw are mine. Also the md5mesh/md5anims with the new joints were not available. & the animation files are not that big.My god, I just saw all the textures.
That does seem like an awful lot for one character. Just out of curiosity, are those new versions of the animations that you uploaded with the character? We want to use the same animation bank for all characters now (or at least all using the same skeleton), so having separate animations in every character folder is no longer needed. All characters using the new skeleton should reference the proguard animations.
Yeah, the colored keyword is pretty effective but I'd like gold trim on green cloth. So I might do some modifications to the mesh in order to separate them. And they'll need modifications (see later in this post).The easiest way is make them separate surfaces. Barring that, you can probably do something with the various mask keywords, though I haven't played around much with them. You can also darken the cloth easily with a blend filter texture that matches the cloth shape. It depends on exactly what you want to do.
Crap, I forgot about how many polys were in the tunicWow, I just checked out that mesh...it's 7085 polys! That's an awful lot for a single, headless character. Compare that to the proguard, which is half that at 3608. You've used a LOT of polys in places that probably don't need that level of detail, like the lower tunic, which is 650 polys just by itself. Something like that does not need such a smooth, rounded edge, and probably doesn't need to be double-sided either. That part of the proguard mesh, by comparison, is around 250 polys.No one is going to quibble over a few hundred polys here and there, but you're a good 2000 polys higher than the guideline for character models. Animated polys cost performance even if they don't cast shadows, so I would recommend looking for places to trim back.
So I'm raiding the proguard for his. It's easy enough to modificate . . . hmmm modificate . . . I like that . . . & I can separate the trim on that mesh. Besides Maya refuses to reduce my tunic any further.
The levels are different from the diffuse or they'll be too bright or too dark.I also noticed some ways you can cut down on textures a bit. Several of your specular maps just seem to be duplicates of your diffuse saved at half size. If your specular map is just the same as your diffuse, then just point to the same .tga file rather than making a new copy of the file. Also, 512x512 is pretty big for a specular in any case--the remaining ones should be resized to half that (or even further for something small and unimportant like the studs on the leather straps).
The lower tunic is sharing the same uv as the arms. I do a lot of sharing being uv maps/textures between meshes so I can cut down on the # of textures. Believe me, hardly any texture space is wasted. On this guy the arms& lower tunic share space, the armor and pauldrons share space, the forearms and boots and helmet share space. I could save space for the cape & have that as a 512x1024 (front and back overlap). I'm thinking about redoing the cape anyway.The uvmaps don't seem to be organized as well as they could be to save space. I know it's tempting to make your uvmaps large for easy detail, but using an entire 1024x1024 texture just for the lower half of the tunic is probably excessive--with a little adjustment you could fit a different part of the mesh in the top half of the image. The armour, for example, could fit in the remaining space, and then you'd only need one image instead of two. -
So how would I change the color of the cloth without affecting the cloth's trim?
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I thought about that since some skins only change the color. So I'll read up on it.That's another point in favour of re-using textures whereever possible. The more textures that are used the longer a mission takes to load. You can do some very effective things with blends and maskcolors. -
Well, I think all of his files are up . . . at last
I didn't see this in our forum but I read on d3world that tga rle compression is essentially a lossless compression (digital shorthand like the flac audio codec). So if I understand this and we have a solid white color about 32x32 . . .
No compression would be like:
11111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111 11111111111111111111111111111111 . . .etc. for another 28 rows . . .
And rle compression would be like:
1x1024
So this proguard guy has a crapload of textures & I was thinking about removing some of the excess crud like using solid colors where the texture wasn't being used. That'd explain the 128 kb 1024x1024 normal map in his skins directory while another normal map filled with noise was over 4 mb (I removed the noise & that reduced the file size to 2.199 mb). Do people have problems on D3 with rle compression?
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Yup. I figured it'll be easier to commit the whole thing now so I have less to commit later. He'll be updated & revised.The zombie one is so-so to tell the truth. IMO he could do with a little more decay (green-ish etc) and definitely more pale - he looks like he has just taken a nibbling from rats but is still going. The teeth are way too white, could do with a little dirt, as well as the face.Also, I know you tried to get a "falling apart" look on his face using alpha cutting, but it really does not look right. It looks too low res beneath the falling off flesh, plus it is red, which it should not be. Remember blood goes brownish after a while. His facial expression is dopey, almost cartoony. IMO a little less vague of an expression would make him all the more scarier. Even an evil grin or an emotionless straight face could work. ATM he looks like he just woke up from a bad dream and is going "Huh? What happened?". If you bend the eyebrows down more into a frown it would work better.
Lastly, his armor looks quite clean - cover it with dirt, grime, muck etc. Just look on the net for pictures of moss, grime, muck etc and just clone brush it onto the armor in joints, holes etc, everywhere it could get after sitting in a grave for some time.
Don't take this too harshly, just being brutally honest, as it were. Otherwise the other two look splendid!
& to the coders/scripters: this guy is using the new proguard rigs (body & head) & up to date with some of the builder guard's spawnargs. It also has a new hammer sheathe/draw animation for the dynamic attachment system (I couldn't get the positions totally right). There are temporary spawnargs for the hammer & longshort too:
// temporary hammer def for the new rig entityDef ai_weapon_hammer_new { "inherit" "atdm:moveable_warhammer" "joint" "RightHand" // attachment info when worn on the back: // sidweways, along weapon axis, forward/back "angles_slung_across_back_rl" "-90 0 0" "angles_slung_across_back_lr" "-90 0 0" "angles_stacked_across_back_rl" "-110 0 0" "angles_stacked_across_back_lr" "-90 0 0" // attachment info when held in the hand: "angles_hand_r" "-90 0 90" "angles_hand_l" "-90 0 0" "remove" "0" "drop_when_ragdoll" "1" "drop_when_drawn" "1" "drop_set_frobable" "1" "drop_add_contents_solid" "1" "frobable" "0" // don't frob until the AI drops it "is_mantleable" "0" "clipmodel_contents" "1024" // CONTENTS_CORPSE // For AI interaction "AIUse" "AIUSE_WEAPON" } // temporary sword def for the new rig entityDef ai_weapon_longsword_new { "inherit" "atdm:moveable_longsword" "joint" "RightHand" // attachment info when worn on the back: // sidweways, along weapon axis, forward/back //"angles_slung_across_back_rl" "-90 0 0" //"angles_slung_across_back_lr" "-90 0 0" //"angles_stacked_across_back_rl" "-110 0 0" //"angles_stacked_across_back_lr" "-90 0 0" "angles_hip_sheath_l" "90 0 0" // attachment info when held in the hand: "angles_hand_r" "0 90 0" "angles_hand_l" "0 90 0" "remove" "0" "drop_when_ragdoll" "1" "drop_when_drawn" "1" "drop_set_frobable" "1" "drop_add_contents_solid" "1" "frobable" "0" // don't frob until the AI drops it "is_mantleable" "0" "clipmodel_contents" "1024" // CONTENTS_CORPSE // For AI interaction "AIUse" "AIUSE_WEAPON" }EDIT: I've been barely able to connect the last couple of hours so several skin textures are not on svn yet. But the base textures are there.
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Hopefully the connection I'm using is up to the task (probably won't finish with textures right off). So I apologize if not all of the files make it yet.
But I figure he's good enough for a commit with 3 major skins ("Forester", builder imperial, zombie) and some head skins.
Here's some screens of the zombie skin:
Close up of the head:
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This is the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night
I remember a discussion about having animated/ragdoll clothing attachments or something or other so I've been experimenting today since we figured out how to work with copy_joint decls
Here's a video of the animated version (xvid - just a rough & subtle animation, no normal maps):
http://www.dramthethief.com/darkmod/videos/animatedcape.avi
model dynamic_cape { mesh models/md5/props/cape/dynamic_cape.md5mesh anim idle models/md5/props/cape/idle01.md5anim { random_cycle_start } anim af_pose models/md5/props/cape/af_pose.md5anim anim death models/md5/props/cape/af_pose.md5anim } entityDef atdm:dynamic_cape { "editor_displayFolder" "Moveables/Wearables" "spawnclass" "idAnimated" "model" "dynamic_cape" "joint" "Spine2" "origin" "-2 -2 0" "angles" "0 90 90" "start_anim" "idle" "ragdoll" "cape" } entityDef atdm:env_cape { "inherit" "atdm:af_entity_base" "editor_mins" "0 -0.5 -12" "editor_maxs" "40 0.5 0" "editor_usage" "Ragdoll for cape" "editor_displayFolder" "Ragdolls" "nodrop" "1" "model" "dynamic_cape" "joint" "Spine2" "origin" "-2 -2 0" "angles" "0 90 90" "articulatedfigure" "cape" "frobable" "0" }& here's the map spawnargs:
// entity 4 { "classname" "atdm:ai_proguard_02" "name" "atdm_ai_proguard_02_5" "copy_joint Head" "controlhead" "copy_joint Neck" "controlneck" "def_attach2" "atdm:dynamic_cape" "def_head" "atdm:ai_head_proguard_no_helmet" "offsetHeadModel" "0 0 0" "origin" "-40 64 -64" "skin" "characters/proguard_02/no_cape" "team" "0" }& a crappy screenie:
I tried the ragdoll but it just stays in place & then flies off after a KO or death & it's stiff (crappy af but I can't get it to work).
The problem with the animated version is it keeps being animated after KO or death but it attaches very nicely.
I might try a version for the old rig so ppl can test.
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Now I'm having fun
I had the idea of a forest green theme going so I made this skin:
I call it the "Forester" skin. Dirty & worn.
And to go along with the worn out theme here's a balding proguard:
I have about 8 skins (3 major ones) so far.
Instead of modifying the boot to get rid of the builder guard knee cap I ended up using an alpha channel to get rid of it. & the buckle is using the gen texture setup I started a couple years back. Maybe I could incorporate more gen textures somehow.
I could easily get carried away with this guy
Adding new character
in TDM Editors Guild
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