So, what are you working on right now?

[Baddcog]

I can't find exactly what I mean but these give some idea. I don't mean foliage that extends for miles like Oblivion but perhaps 3 or 4 layers of foliage that can be placed to cover alongside walls and paths and buildings etc. Maybe decal textures would be better rather than a model so the mapper can place varied patches overlaying one another a few inches higher to get more randomness and cover a larger area than just single plant models.

 

http://en.wikipedia....iki/Groundcover

http://www.best4plan...e.aspx?CatID=21

http://wp.macfusion....g-overgrown.jpg

http://www.sacred-de...ried-schmid.jpg

http://www.michaeljo...oka/1bbqint.jpg

 

 

Ok Ok jeez, lol...

 

This was fun UNTIL I had to deal with the path to DR issue I gave myself in the middle of the day. Killed ALOT of time with that one.

 

Anyway, this is what I came up with last night.

 

Made a circle and a row, these aren't final, just kindof a test bake to see what I could get.

 

And for some reason last night my decals weren't showing the normals, they were flat as pancakes. Gave up, start up this morning and normals are working so I don't know...

 

 

The texture is a normal map and an AO map with an overlay of green (alpha-ed). Spec would probably help bring the lighting up just a bit.

[Fidcal]

Looks useful. I'm thinking of one layer above the first so the lower level shows in the gap lower down and gives an impression of depth. In a real FM that patch would be shaped so look even better. Different leaf types would be good too such as ferns and more wild, dull green, varied sizes, less perfect leaves. If that is on SVN I might grab that and see how it looks in my FM. Hang on - made from a normal map and a plain green map? So maybe the colour could be varied easily with red green blue?

[nbohr1more]

Not sure this approach is relevant (or already in consideration) but I saw this the other day while lurking around D3W:

 

Mikebart Grass

 

[Baddcog]

That's basically the approach I used, just using alpha instead of dirt behind it.

 

I started a new version. varied leaf sizes more, payed more attention to make sure they don't cut into each other.

 

11,000 polys baked down to a 512, lol.

 

Still have to tweak the alpha and whatnot to get a nice edge. Rebaking right now to test that.

 

Also added a bit more color to the diffuse (just random splots of green/browns) and it helps vary it. Added spec and it helps but still too bright I think.

 

The main issue right now is it's alot of work to make a small decal.

 

 

currently: 3 patches, 2 flat on ground one bent up wall. too bright spec, crappy alpha. 512x512.

 

I'm thinking just shapes (this square), a long row, a circle for trees, maybe a corner fill.

 

Tiling would be tough but it might happen. The main issue with tiling is the edge will always look like crap, so I may just tile in one direction so a small texture could go along an entire wall.

 

-------

I'll get these up on SVN in a few minutes so you can test them Fidcal. But they are currently WIP so don't use them as is for a project.

[nbohr1more]

I thought that was what you were doing (best ground-cover method AFAIK) just wanted to verify for my own feeble understanding... Thanks.

[Baddcog]

OK, up on SVN now fidcal, all in decals folder. um actually, give it a few minutes...

[Fidcal]

I jumped the gun unfortunately. Updated and copied over the files to my project folder but I think I'm looking at the model textures - it's like a giant beanstalk on its side.

 

I'll check SVN again.

[Baddcog]

Oh yeah, the models of that hi/lo poly plant are up too, yesterday. That's all in models directory.

 

-----

Good news, I never understood the grid snap in Max before now. I have tried to use it but it's a bit weird.

 

Anyway, looks like baking a tiling mesh is working just fine

 

Will add that to SVN sometime soon too.

[Melan]

In celebration of the weekend's work (+400 brushes, +400 patches, +300 entities), here are two images from Return to the City Updated (there's got to be a better name than that). The architecture is part mine, part Bikerdude's.

 

[Diego]

Awesome work, Melan and Biker!

[Fidcal]

Just a very quick first test of the ground cover shows promise.

 

[Baddcog]

Re-Return? lol.

 

Looks nice

[Tudor]

I have an issue with how the leaves look in the ground cover texture. I have a newly acquired interest in flora, and I was as soon as yesterday outside picking leaves, and I'd say they shouldn'tbe so clean, and It wouldn't be a problematic change to the texture as it seems quite high resolution you could make all kinds of changes to it quite easily. A more olive colour and a more obvious pattern on them would be one of the simplest and most effective changes in case you don't want them to be too distinct (these leaves are the ones of a Lilac?)

 

If you make the pattern of the stripes on the leaves fairly white-yellow and change the shape of the leaves a bit you could have a pretty nice Ivy, which would make the most sense.

 

 

I must add though I love the idea and how it is applied in Fidcal's screenshot, good work this far!

Edited September 12, 2010 by Tudor

[Serpentine]

Been playing with a lesser known tree gen, getting some quite promising results for a change! The new LOD system has a quite interesting option that I can use a material with

deform sprite

On it to get billboard leaves at medium ranges and then snap to fixed positioning if the player gets closer, so that it doesn't look too interactive. At the moment the only problem is that the leaves render as completely black, I suspect it's just because of the render order and hopefully I can fix that up.

Trees themselves are around 600-800 tris (3-4 roots, 5-7 branches, main trunk) with leaves adding 160 verts.

 

Will write up a tut should I manage to get everything working, which so far seems quite likely

[Baddcog]

Thanks, here's an update. On SVN.

 

These are a bit more olive, and I did a bit of work on a specular. Right now none are final, the color is easy to change and spec is hard to do right.

 

I should probably and some more base grit layers before I'm done too, thanks Tudor.

 

This is basically the same tex, but tiles in one direction. I made a loop here but Fidcal can now redo that wall with 1 patch (or maybe a few layers).

 

Also through a couple particle leaves in my cherry blossom tree and it fills it out pretty good. The particles really aren't bad most of the time and they look fullest, they only spin weird if you really look right at the tree and rotate, which is an odd move to make in game.

But I might try to just thicken the trees up alot on their own.

 

--------

edit- LOL, ninja'ed, we're both thinking about trees

 

What Tree Gen are you using, sounds cool. I suppose we can just model it and the material asigned does the rest?

[AluminumHaste]

Also through a couple particle leaves in my cherry blossom tree and it fills it out pretty good. The particles really aren't bad most of the time and they look fullest, they only spin weird if you really look right at the tree and rotate, which is an odd move to make in game.

 

 

Don't worry, any particle generated look at particle will do this, Oblivion trees have this issue also and they look amazing in game, so no need to worry, they look great :)

[Serpentine]

What Tree Gen are you using, sounds cool. I suppose we can just model it and the material asigned does the rest?

 

The creator of 3D-Coat released a little something he had made a while back, it's free and if I might say... pretty damn good. Free stand-alone version

Usability wise it's a bit of a pain, once you figure out what everything does and the way to get poly count down to game-suitable levels you can really make some nice stuff with minimal effort. Saving out as XML works quite nicely too and should prove useful. Once you come up with something that looks good you can get random variations on that to make a set in a few seconds. It only exports to obj, but that isn't much of an issue, the models are really well formed and only really require saving to ASE and correcting the material assignments.

 

Lemme show you what I managed in about 15 min of messing around... more likely tomorrow, I want to try something with leaves

 

The ground cover looks quite nice when scaled down, I'm once once you roughen up the edges a bit and throw on some detail it'll come out looking really nice. Just remember that you can also colour the specular, might come out with an interesting result. Might also be worth changing the diffuse to have a 'hard' background light dirt/generic bush leaves. That way when the alpha is applied it'll look like it currently does and if you add a 2nd material without the alpha you'll have another look for solid stuff, tho I'm not too sure where you'd use it.

Edited September 12, 2010 by Serpentine

[Bikerdude]

@Return to the city, the return -

You guys are gonna love exploring the new area's and places Melan and myself have built.

 

@Bc/Fids

Those new leaves are great, but would i be jumping the gun if i were to say the texture is too clean..?

[Baddcog]

I'm looking foward to seeing that map, should be a great one.

 

The leaves aren't done for sure, I really haven't done much modeling into textures yet so I'm still working through it. I'll have to mess with some overlays and stuff to dirty them up in photoshop. Possibly different patterns too.

 

Thanks for the link Serp, gonna have to check it out.

[BrokenArts]

Looking good guys!

[aidakeeley]

Shouldn't "things" be as clean as possible out-of-the-box, and then each mapper can apply decals to dirty them uniquely for the situation? You can't re-hippify once the Marine barber has got hold of you. What if those beauties (the new plants) are in some lab or otherwise well maintained situation?

[Fidcal]

Yes but as BC said these leaves are wip and squeaky clean plastic at the moment. We were just looking at application to see what works.

 

Talking of trees, we need low bush ground cover too. In my screenshot did you see that bush in the distance against the wall? I have lots of those (placeholders at the moment.) They are just trees size-hacked and buried in the ground. I did that also in Alchemist. But that is a bad way to do it. We need even lower (half a metre?) bush models which would be long and low as well as the ground cover texture. They are effectively very low wide spread trees after all.

[Bikerdude]

Who would like to see my newly decorated Cathedral....

 

I ave been using a combination of old Doom textures and some Melans yet-to-be-released textures and I can indeed say this map is now very dark'esk, which is keeping with the theme of the mod - geddit...

 

[AluminumHaste]

Who would like to see my newly decorated Cathedral....

 

I ave been using a combination of old Doom textures and some Melans yet-to-be-released textures and I can indeed say this map is now very dark'esk, which is keeping with the theme of the mod - geddit...

 

 

Sooooooo where is it? Like you have to ask? lol <3

[Bikerdude]

Just creating some anticipation while I sort out the screenies...

Edited September 14, 2010 by Bikerdude