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True, but while actually playing it wouldn't be in that position for very long. Also, this is an unskinned model. If the gem were skinned it would definately show up better than it is here.

I see where you're coming from on the matter of a perfect sphere, but our gem isn't a perfect sphere. It's more flattened. A perfect sphere would probably be easier to work with, but wouldn't look right in the current compass casing. In its current form we would get issues like this if it wasn't 3D. When we should have this. The 3D model should look as if it is held in place by the compass casing. Come to think of it. It might be really nice to have it spin with case too. We can still achieve a nice glassy gem effect like this and it would give a nice effect if it all spun together. We should really set aside time to talk about this in IRC. If the number of polys can be minimized in the models even better, but I honestly think this is the best way to go. *pushes away from the table* I'm exhausted. :lol: I was up until 3am playing around with this. Anyway, that's the last I'll say on the issue, my two cents have been thoroughly laundered.

Surely a 3D model would be best?

I think the max payne player model has a cloak.

And does it matter how high res the compass model is? Does it affect performace for the player?we could dicus these sorts of things in real time, rather than like this - it's taken all these posts and the best part of a day to sort this out, which could have been sorted in 10 minutes real time, I suspect. Message board really aren't a very convienient way to tak, it's really just a succession of one sided arguments.

It's on the FTP. I think Jay uploaded it andhe also wrote a post about it. Don't know where it is right now. But it's definitely there. I think that importing LWO into Blender may not be so good though. When I looked into Oddities LWO File it also looked quite strange. Similar to oofnish model. So it may well be that the importer is screwed up but it doesn't recognize an error.

THat's another great piece. Reminds me a little of my NB pirate with the one piece mask and hood. Do you paint these digitally or the old fashioned way? Cloaks are not hard to model, it's just animating them or a game engine that's the pain in the ass, especially for a game like this with all sorts of sneaking. crouching. mantling, and climbing.

In the November issue of PC Gamer, there is half-page article about Blackcat and Nightblade, and there's a large full colour picture of oDDity's female thief model! Woot! Hats off to oDDity! I hope you'll still talk to the rest of us when you hit true celebrity status.

Nope. Not only would cloaks not be practical thief-wear (they get snagged on things and knock things over), but they are a major pain in the ass to model. (Though I do love the look of cloaks in general.)

I just tested it. The model is so tiny that I can barely see it. Only a few pixels big. I created the files in the FTP directory of your lightgem, so you can load them ingame. Take a look at them and resize it. You can copy the directories directly in your darkmod folder and then load the mod and a map and you should see our hud. Another problem is the textures of the gem. You must render them as they are to be seen from the player because they will be displayed exactly as you render them. There will be no transformations applied to them. So what you should do is to position the camera in such a way as if you are the player looking at the game screen, and then render the 16 images. I think the colour ramp should be probably a little bit brighter. The dark end is good as it is, but the the brightest one should be brighter. You can find my version of the lightgem colours in the guis/asset/... folder. You can take a look at it there. Of course the colours you should take from your own, but just look at the brightness level. And please rename the textures to the names that I already use.

Or like this. Should also work. But don't forget that the gem and the compass are two different models. The gem is not even a model it is a bitmap.

There isn't going to BE any tilting, remember? If it tilts, then you will have angles from which you can't see the gem, or angles where you can't see the spokes. The gem should stay at the same level at all times. But I think a model would be easier than 2d images for that part.

As I said. The gem needs to be normal textures. Not normal textures as in normal substituting for geometry details, but normal as in just like any other image. That's why I said it should actually be two different models. One that will yield the gem textures when rendered in 16 steps and the other is the compass model that will turn and tilt around with the player.

the chair, the texture (which is also used for the table), the normalmap and the material-file furniture.mtr are on the ftp now. (/TheDarkMod/models/props/furniture/chair/vic_diningchair1.ase /TheDarkMod/models/props/furniture/table/coffeetab1.ase /TheDarkMod/models/props/furniture/table/tab1_chair1_d.tga /TheDarkMod/models/props/furniture/table/tab1_chair1_local.tga /TheDarkMod/models/Material-Files/furniture.mtr) the normalmap isn't perfect yet, but it's ok for now. I'd really like to do something different now. I'll post that into the model-request-thread.

Animated characters need to use the md5 model format, and have a skin, anim and mesh file...there are several exporters available.

I did my textures manually in about one hour. It only took s o long because I didn't know how to do it better. Now I learned to animate and it should take less then 10 minutes to do this. Should be pretty simple. Just model the gem and then make a render in 16 steps with animating the material brightness for the gem. I guess that LW can do this and copy each render to a seperate image. Blender can do this as well, and I think this is pretty basic functionality for most 3D animation packages. The gem should be rendered against a black background with Alpha included so that the background will be removed when imported in-game.

Ok, so basically copy the one Oonfish modeled? It'll take 20 minutes to model, but getting all the 16 textures sorted out will probably take quite a while

Yeah. But still somebody must do this. Maybe it is just the importer for Blender or it happened because of the triangulation and/or poly reduction. The model that I looked at is complete crap for in-game purposes. So it would have to be redone. I only looked at the lowest poly version and this has vertices all over the place. And it has some flaws which oofnish probably didn't knew about when he did it, but which can't be used. Like this single-poly circle aorund the gem. And of course we didn't really knew the constraints for the gem itself. Now we know. So I don't know if we can use this gem as it is. I really like the look of the gem, so it should probably be used as a template.

It's coming together very nicely, BT. Pretty good work for a newbie! We should probably put a specular map on this to get a glossy look for the wood. Right now it seems to absorb the light a little too much. Once we get the size just right for this chair, we should use it as a base to model all our other objects that might require sitting animations.

The def file is also needed because it is like the entity representation for your object. It will define all properties of the object, like what model it should use, what class it belongs to when the code will spawn it, and others. In the case of doors it contains the opening rotation, the locked state and so on. In case of AI it contains a lot more. Like what animations to use and this stuff. But the def file is only a generic description like a template. Only when the object is instantiated in the editor it will become "real".

I suppose this is off topic more than anything else - figure I may as well brag about the system that I'm building. Been meaning to put together a sweet workstation for a while now, so I'm using income from my first real job (whoo!) to cover it. So far, is about 1000 dollars, plus an anticipated 500 more over the next 6 months or so. 2.8 Ghz Xeon with 800 MHz frontside bus 200 GB ATA 7200RPM HD (Maxtor) Sony DRU-540 DVD +/- Burner GeForce FX Ultra 5950 256 MB 1 gig PC2700 DDR RAM ASUS NCCH-DL motherboard (sweetest motherboard I've ever seen for under 300 dollars - supports dual xeons up to 3.2 GHz, plus 4 DIMMS of DDR and an 800 MHz FSB with built-in Promise RAID controller, 6 SATA ports, 4x USB 2, built-in optical audio out... hot damn) Unfortunately, it took me about 3 weeks to convince ASUS that their mobo is dead, so I'm now waiting on a replacement. Whee. I'll be sad if this never comes together... Long-term goals: a second 2.8 xeon, another gig or two of RAM, SATA hard drives... The works. Gotta love it. For the curious, I'm basically waiting to get this system built before I continue the Thief model - my current one cries.

He wants to have the unfinished model so that, if you are temporarily or permanantly incapacitated in the future, we can pick up where you left off. Essentially.

Good point. I think the D3 screen is a map too (you can see the polys with r_showtris 1) but it's obviously tiny and quick to load. Hey... maybe D3 has a certain amount of memory set aside specifically for the menu, and that's how their Mars model is instantaneous. I wonder how small a nice street scene (building facades only) could be made.

It is far too pleasing to see you back, Oddity. Great model.

Fantastic model. Just amazing. I love the boots. As far as textures and colours go, I do think Springheels concept is spot on though. But since you said you were going to redo them anyway, I'm not that worried.. Oh, and nice to have you back!