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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!

Welcome back oDDity. Excellent Builder model by the way.

Absolutely. In my little town, $225k bought a mansion (literally - I mean a huge place) up on the bluffs overlooking the river, 14 short years ago. I know, because it was the family of a close friend. I remember thinking to myself, with an internal laugh, "those rich bastards paid almost a QUARTER OF A MILLION FOR A HOUSE!!" as if it was such a big deal. Today, the friend himself paid $275k for a place half the size (same town). There was just a home for sale on main street for $900k. This is not Beverly Hills, just a fairly quaint, semi-nice town. The average price for an average place around here (yard, 3 floors, etc) is around $400k. To think that the house I was born in some ~30 years ago (3 floors, basement, big yard, driveway) was $15k makes me dizzy. Inflation, yes - but a "middle class paycheck" has not changed anywhere near as much as real estate (and cars, etc). I feel people accept too much. If no one bought, there'd be no choice for manufacturers and sellers but to produce and offer for less or go under. If suddenly 400k players said to Sony, "we're not paying our subscription this month, as a unified player base, unless it comes down to $9.99 again", you better believe that price would drop. Now that would be an interesting precedent, wouldn't it. Must. Resist. Topic. Re: Valve - I don't honestly think they're up to shenanigans, either. But it's a model I don't want to support. At least... not until/unless I have little other choice.

The SDK has been out one day and that decision is made? I wonder what the motivation was. For me personally, if all of the garbage about steam is true and unavoidable, I won't be playing HL2 in it's current state. Sad thing is, that just enough people (Just enough? Almost the entire gaming population, more likely) will buy it and support this model, resulting in the highest yields for a game ever by far, and we will soon see most games adopting this means. Thanks, Valve, for your insight. Perhaps a merger with Microsoft soon?

The model that is uploaded can not be used. Either somebody cleans it up or models it from scratch. It has a lot of vertices which are pretty uselessand geometry that looks quite strange. All on the underside.

Coin pouch is up on the FTP in ASE and a TGA for the UV map. There may be a little stretching around the edges, so let me know if I need to re-UV it. It's a simple little model so it shouldn't be a big deal.

No. When you look at T2 then you will notice that it tilts (or is it yaw?) as well, indicating the players absolute world orientation. So if you look upwards the compass moves accordingly. Nevertheless, the engine doesn't know that and it would accept that model. You always have to have solid models with proper thickness. No single polygonthick models.

I don't get it - what's wrong with the corners ?? The problem with the model is that there are some really unnecesarry faces (for example on the back chair-legs) that are even so small that it's a pain in the ass to UV-map it. I don't where they come from and I also don't know, how to handle this. I'm still a noob at modelling.

Oh god. Please, please, please do not use that program. Please. look what it's doing to your corners! Look at the fanning you're getting! Better to use an overpolied model than THAT. If you want, I can take a look at it and point out specific areas where it can be streamlined.

I'm just skinning the lightgem. Of course I do this for myself and not for you, because you can expect how it will look when I do this. I noticed a severe problem with the model from oofnish. It is hollow. Doom 3 can not render this because it doesn't accept doublesided polygons. So for all models that are built they always need a seperate bottom even if you think it will never be seen. In the case of the lightgem this is of course not really true, because it depends on the players position what you can see. If the player turns around enough the bottom might be seen a little so it will need it anyways.

yeah we'll have to agree on one seat-height. anyway I found a nice, very profesional tool to reduce the triangle/poly count same chair with only 528 triangles - that's 75% less !!! and I think it still doesn't look different to the one with 2000 triangles. [img]http://www.dark-project.com/BlackThief/chair_wireframe2.jpg[/img] ONE problem though - I only have a trial version and so I can't safe the model The tool is called SIM Rational Reducer - prize for standalone software: about 6000 $ - 3dsMax plugin about 600 $ maybe someone can find a way to get it on another way - you know what I mean

In D3 I'm pretty sure that the boounding box, you can see in the editor, is used for that. I noticed this with the coins. I tried to change the box and it was in such a way that it was off center. Very high above the coinstakc, but the bottom end of it was almost exactly at the bottom of the stack. When I tried this ingame I noticed that I couldn't frob the stack on the bottom end but I had a large area at the upper end. So I guess that D3 is using this bounding box unless you are using a collision model.

Don't we want physics collision models for each model too?

blame me - I dunno what I calculated last night - whatever :lol: the model doesn't have 4000 polygones - it only has about 1000. I think I multiplied the triangles by 2 instead of divde them :lol: So I think that I even can add some more detail - any suggestions ?

It's the same for coding. If you have to modify an existing code it strongly depends on how it was written. Often it is faster to rewrite it from scratch and you are save of copyright claims this way. As the current situation looks it seems so. Yes. And it would be nice if you could upload your current model to the FTP.

Its an interesting debate ..about the copyright issues. I don’t know how the games industry works but I know how it relates to real models / sculptures and I would imagine it would be the same ..its a 3d form at the end of the day. The copyright law is a very very grey area. Example take any sculpture/ model at alter it by 10 % and you are in the clear ..now the problem is what is 10% ..and that is such a can of worms I won’t even get into it . Using other models could help speed things up a little but by the time you have spent making sure you have changed it beyond recognition I think you are just as well starting form scratch. I have used other models in the past and it always seams to me that it takes longer because you have to destroy the original first then do the artistic bit . So have we lost oddity then? ..it occurred to me I have all the files I used for noble man ..I save every hour or so ..so somewhere in that lot there should be a fairly decent template ..would it help anyone ?

ok first screen: ATM it has about 4100 poly and there's nothing that could be done with normalmaps - too much IMO. Is there a way to "optimize" the model ? I just think that it should be possible to have the same quality with much less polys...

Yeah, just a suggestion since I had all 99 characters here in .3ds format. I thought the same thing about copyright issues too, but at the same time there would be nothing left of the original models by the time we're finished with them. When you think about it, it's not so different from what we are doing with some of the textures that are based on Thief 2 textures. Some of those textures are essentially high res versions of the old ones. It would be a much greater difference between the models than the textures. Anyway, I won't edge us into oblivion with that suggestion, but they're here if we would like to play with them. I think copyright issues could only be laid against us if we were to import the exact model...poly for poly...skin for skin. Still, won't hurt to use them internally for testing purposes. I do believe we're aloud to do that.