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Maya is the best overall 3d app available yes, but I spend a lot of time hanging around the CG commuity, forums etc, and Lightwave is regarded as the best poly modeler available. It has it's shortcomings obviously, no history, edges or NURBS are the main ones, but it's just so fast and intuituve once you learn it, and you can also virtually 'sculpt' in it , in a way not possible in other apps, apart from ZBrush. I used Lightwave 8, but it's virtually identical to lightwave 7 and 7.5, most of the changes in the newer versions were made to Layout, character setup and animation.

Ok, we have had plenty of discussion of what the lightgem should look like, and I think we have reached a consensus of sorts. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=48&st=25 Now what we need is someone to actually create the thing. I would be willing to do it, but honestly, I'm not quite sure how. Is this going to be a 3d model? If not, how is it going to be animated? I know it's not as simple as just making a single image in Photoshop, but someone is going to have to explain how to approach this so that we can get going on this.

Ah, thanks. Applegeeks' forums aren't bad for tutorials either.

If you're interested in some good tutorials and critical feedback, there are a couple good forums to look at. Epilogue is one that has a lot of stuff available that might help. http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/phpBB2/

Well I read in another post o the forums here that 7500-8k polys is the target for characters. I'll have no problem whatsoever getting to that level from the current 30k It's never a good idea to have large details like the belt buckle just a flat plain with a normal map, it's always best to have some basic geometry there as well that more or less follows the high res shape. That's not a problem though, there's a plugin for Lightwave call qemLOSS which does just that job. I'll have to get this textured and normal/spec mapped and into Doom to see what the final effect will be. I currently have no idea how god/bad/average it will look inside the game.

Fro all those where the mod crashes, you can remove the gamex86.dll from the pk4 file for now. As of current there is no functionality in there, so it is not strictly a must. That the mod is crashing with the DLL is a good sign, though. It means that the DLL is loaded by the game and recognized, so don't take it as a bad sign just because it crashes. That's to be expected for such an early test.

If you find something out then you should probably download this http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=255 and incorporate it there to test it out. My next plans are to figure out how to change the buttons, and how to let the SDK do something for me.

Not really related in line with what we were talking about here....but I just mocked this up for fun. Someone at the ionstorm forums asked if we were going to change the name or just leave it as "The Dark Mod". Thinking of how Eidos and Ionstorm may take to us creating a mod inspired by one of their intellectual properties, I felt it would only be fitting to call the game THIS. On a half serious note...*L* I think I might even like that name. HA. @ pakmannen: Wow, I love that mock up. @ Springheel: I see where your coming from. The inspiration for that idea came from the idea that the fans will be creating prophecies in a sense. Fan Missions are essentially adding to the story. Kind of mystical and fantasy oriented I suppose, but it's also in line with the Thief universe, just approaching if from a different and I think more cerebral direction. Kind of quiet and reflective, like the game itself. As more fan missions are written, it would be like the prophecies unfolding. Just some thoughts to ponder. Anyway, enjoy my silly mockup.

Hey, some of you might recogise me from the ISA forums, or maybe not. I'm normally called "The Nay-Sayer". Anyway, just thought I'd drop in and wish you guys luck since the D3 SDK just got released. I've gotta say those engine tests in your gallery are great, particularly the original old window one, the colours are just so awesome, the ambience is just right and it's only a test. And the one of the really dark stone hallway is great too. But really I love the old window shots, looks better then TDS even. Best of luck with the gameplay and stuff though, obviously that's whats most important. Cheers and "god"speed.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?act=Post&CODE=00&f=1 WOOT!

Yes. You should talk to Fingernail about that. He can give you access to the teams forums where we have the concepts and everything.

In some ways, yeah. I'll play around with em and see what I can come up with. Edit: I think this thread seals the deal.. http://www.threedy.com/site/forum/showthre...&threadid=19716 Unless we can find a way to keep other people from extracting them from the .pk4 files, we won't be able to use em. Oh well, I'll still use em for educational purposes. We might be able to use the dirtmap overlays cuz by the time we're done with them they won't be useable as they were in the disc..they'll be entirely new textures. I'll ask on the 3Dtotal forum and see what they say, if it's a yeah I'll plunk down the $49 and grab it.

I think I remember seeing you around on the ISA forums back before Thief 3 was released, that render of the Thief jumping the wall looks really familiar (and absolutely completely amazingly awesome). I'm impressed, everyone else is impressed, and you're already a member of the team as I write this. Welcome to the team, man..hope you have fun.

I did this for Phantom a few weeks back, it'll tell you everything you need to know getting textures into the game...along with links to an indepth normalmapping tut. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=101 It sounds like you've already found the proper way to add a light, you just didn't switch to the renderer so you could check it out in realtime. To do that just hit F3 to switch from the cam to the renderer, and then F4 to enable realtime updating so it'll apply all your lighting information. When you say premade room do you mean one of Id's maps? For that you'd have to find the name of the texture you wanna replace, open pak001.pk4, track it down in there, and replace the 3 dds textures with your custom one. But that could lead to some really funkified results cuz their texture could've been applied to the wall in some weird way which might stretch and distort yours out of proportions if it isn't the right size, it'd be better just to make your own simple room in the editor for testing purposes. To do that all you'd need to do is make a texture set and use a generic name like Wall_Test01 or something like that. Plop it in a certain folder for easy access like base/textures/darkmod/test, make the appropriate .mtr file, then build your room using it. If you like it you can just rename the 3 textures and move it somewhere else, if not you can just make another set with the same name and overwrite the ones you have in the test folder. The next time you reopen the editor it'll have the new textures already in place to check out. I do something somewhat similar to that. If I find something about the texture I don't like while I'm working in the editor, I'll close it and zip up the current files, change it to fix what needs fixing, then just overwrite the files with the new texture and fire up the editor again to check it out.

If possible, would you be able to load smaller images of the drawings and link to them with the tags in this thread rather than a listing of links? That'll make it easier to see the drawings. Springheel made this comment for some of my drawings a while back and I think it makes sense It helps to view them and compare them. For drawings that contain extreme detail, keep the smaller images, but link to the larger versions with http:// links. Just a thought. I'm on 56K dial-up and it takes a while for those images to load And yes, I like the drawings also, but I agree a joint might be missing in the hind legs. I haven't studied animals a lot so I usually mess up the structure of the hind legs myself because I haven't commited their joint and muscle structure to memory yet. But I have a book on drawing animals, and if we're to take the common structure of animal legs, then another joint should be drawn. There seem to be 4 main joints in each hind leg (starting at the hip, working down) for animals. (This might be easier to see in rams, deer, bulls, horses, etc.) It looks like your creature has 3 joints and would thus have some mobility stiffness to it. Not a bad thing, just a visual 'non sequitur' (does not follow) thing that I think people are picking up on.

Greetings Everyone! I wanted to start this thread on behalf of the DarkMod team to help keep our guests informed on our progress; to let them know there's DarkMod life in the project even when it may seem there is none -- and to keep them updated as such. There won't be a set schedule as to when this thread will be updated, but maybe check back from time to time. Anyone can post here and I'm sure you'll hear from other team members here in the future. Although many visitors might already have http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/index.htm bookmarked to see updates on screenshots and concept artwork, etc., some don't have it bookmarked and may not know about it. Other forums actually point to our site here and I figured there might be some benefit to providing occasional updates here via this forum, too. As an update for our guests out there, I can say that I've seen a LOT of activity from our team members behind-the-scenes on this DarkMod project. There are many discussions going on and a lot of concepts being worked on. As a team member with a primary focus on artwork, I've personally created a few concept drawings and have seen fellow artists showcase some very nice concepts. Our programmers, 3-D modellers, audio experts, etc. are also very active in these early stages of the project. I want to assure our guests that there's a lot of DarkMod life behind-the-scenes that you might not otherwise see from the outside. We have a long road ahead of us, but we have an enthusiastic group working on this and I'm confident you'll be happy with our DarkMod work once complete. Stay tuned, as I'm sure there will be many more updates in the future! Until then, may shadows continue to guide your journeys. Darkness_Falls

Or register here at the forums, so you can see the rest of the boards.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=159 The second post in this thread is the important one. The aim of this thread is to collect all information about what we want to do on a more detailed level but not TO detailed. So discussion about conecpt art should be here, but the information that this beast should be done shouild be posted there as well. You should also look through the document and add items in the lists, if you think that they should be included and I forgot them. For example: I listed a number texture themes and what each theme must provide for. If you notice that a theme, or a texture for a theme is missing, the list it, there so we can keep track of it. You don't need to be specific, but specific enough that we know what you are talking about. Of course even if you are an artist, that doesn't mean that you may not look through the other sections to check if we forgot something. If you decide here that you want to do a belcher but the coders don't know about this, you can not animate your model afterwards.

If you agree or decide something like that, then you should post it in my project definition thread, so we can include/remove it there. Not everybody is following all the threads, but we should all know about these things. That's why I started this thread. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=159 Usually I don't look much into the Art threads, because I'm not an artist and can not contribute much there. So most of the time, when I look at these threads, I just look at the pictures and hope that the first mod is appearing fast because of the great graphics. But I don't read all the postings here. I guess there are others as well and we shouldn't rely on this when deciding what we want and what not. Especially since a thread has only a limited time and after that only few remeber it and what has been decided. Don't forget. If you decide something here, then the coders will also have to know about it, to give it life.

Mechanics of lockpicking is discussed here http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showforum=14 and here http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=170. This thread is actualy only about the position of the locks. Or did you mean that? Not sure about this.

I'll work on these. PS: I just posted a sample environmental scene in the Art section: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...findpost&p=1795

LOL, ummmmmmm.......someone has my login I think -- or the forum's trippin'. I didn't write this. Considering this other thread that's going on (http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...st=0entry1247), I'd say something's amiss with the forum.. or someone's playin' gamez.

We've had this discussion already. Check out: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...%20dagger&st=50

This question was asked in the Ion Storm forums a while back. I thought it might help us to conjure up more resources and spur more creativity... Source: http://forums.ionstorm.com/index.php?showt...ndpost&p=290033 The City is an amalgamation of times and places, both actual and fictional. Medieval & Victorian London and France, modern-day Prague, and even parts of Boston (home of the ghosts of Looking Glass) have been mentioned as real places that influenced the look & feel of the City. Some oft-cited art references are The City of Lost Children, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Name of the Rose. The works of Mike Mignola (Fafhrd / Mouser stuff), Tim Burton (Mr. Wrought Iron Himself), Jules Verne, Charles D-i-c-k-e-n-s, and Alan Moore / Eddie Campbell have also been mentioned a fair few times as influences. That's just a sampling, there are dozens of others .

Whoa, can we shrink that image down a bit? Images should be kept at a reasonable size on the forums...if they absolutely need to be bigger than 800x600, then we should use a link. The cathedral doesn't look bad, but that tower really looks familiar. Is it based on something? I originally thought of Orthanc, but I know it isn't the movie version.