Sotha's mapping thread

[Arcturus]

That just about doubles my Blender knowledge. Looks rather technical and difficult at times, but I'll definately try it out later.

You're welcome. And it's not so difficult as it looks. Just some more buttons to learn.

[SneaksieDave]

@Arcturus: That was awesome.

[Sotha]

28) We need to invert the x axis of the final normalmap. I use GIMP's normalmap plugin. Choose scale: 1, conversion: normalize only, Invert x:

 

Okay, now I'm stuck. I'm basically at this situation:

 

I got the normalmap baked (?) on the model and I would now like to put the model in DR to see what I got.

I've got the normal map as a .tga file. I got two normalmap files in .tga format, one made as in #13, the other made as in #28.

 

Normally I've exported .ase at this point and edited the file with a text editor and put paths to TDM texture assets I use. But now since this all involves a new file, my normalmap, I'm uncertain how to proceed. What should I do? Simply put the normalmap.tga in TDM assets, set the .ase normalmap path to it and everything should work? Or should I create a material file? How?

 

Also:

• I never did the highpoly version, why should I do that?
• I made the normalmap as in #13. Why the normalmap is done again in #28? Is the idea that first I make normalmap as per #13, save it, load it on blender, set the normalmap, then open GIMP and do the normal as per #28 and overwrite the normalmap.tga and *this* normal map is the one that goes to the tdm assets?

Sorry, I'm a bit confused now. Thanks in advance!

[Baddcog]

The high poly is ONLY needed for more details to bake onto the normal. Then the normal makes the low poly looker higher in game.

 

But you can also just add a normal map like you did from photo source or whatever. So you don't need to make a high poly version.

 

 

(you actually didn't 'bake' anything, just applied.

 

Baking is taking details from one model and forcing them onto another to create a normal map. Looks like you just converted a bitmap to a normal.

------------

The normal map goes into the material file. Open almost any mtr file and you'll see where to put it. Most of the loot models use diffuse, spec and bump (normal aka _local) maps. So open loot.mtr, copy a material, put your maps in there, give it a new name. The new name you put in the ase file.

 

The normal map should be named whatever_local.tga. Put it into darkmod/models/props/textures...

 

(The dds diffuse and specular go into darkmod/dds/darkmod/models/props/textures)

[Arcturus]

Baking normalmaps is a process in which highpoly model and a low poly model are compared by a program and the difference between them is saved as an image called normalmap. Not all details are easy to be made as polygons. That's why I made heightmap with the letters. I converted the heightmap to normalmap because it seems to me that the latter works better in Blender. So I made highpoly model and applied normalmap made out of a greyscale heightmap to it. Then I made a low poly version of the model and baked the final normalmap.

 

Now you may ask why to make highpoly model when all you have to do is to make greyscale heightmap, convert it to normalmap in GIMP and put it in game. The answer is, because often heightmap can't replace polygons completely. It helps with tiny details but for example those soft edges couldn't be created with heightmaps:

 

I combined the normalmap with heightmap into one image because I think in most cases you don't need them separated. You can however have in TDM normalmap and heightmap separated. It's usefull when you need different heightmaps and only one normalmap. For example the thief model uses thief_local.tga - normalmap created from a highpoly model with cloth's folds and thief_h.tga - a heightmap with detailed texture of a fabric. In material that's:

 

bumpmap addnormals( models/md5/chars/thief/thief_local, heightmap( models/md5/chars/thief/thief_h, 5 ) )

Usually TDM models have only normalmap. You can copy existing object's material and only change it's name and file names where needed.

 

Edit: You don't need highpoly model if you think that heightmap converted to normalmap alone will suffice. In that case you don't need to invert x axis in normalmap. GIMP produces normalmaps compatible with Doom. It's Blender that uses this channel reversed.

 

I hope that makes sense what I wrote

[Sotha]

Thanks for help! After several attempts I gave up. The main reason for this was that I basically didn't know what I was doing, which was rather overwhelming. Simply too advanced for my level.

 

After this bitter defeat, I took Spring's recommendation and started to hunt for suitable pictures of medieval coins and medals. I found a few images and mashed them up into one texture. I also created background metal in the texture by using the clone brush and cloning smooth metal from the medal picture into a larger area.

 

The metal parts have it all: normalmap and specular, although they are just auto-generated fractal clouds, as suggested in rich_is_bored's tutorial.

 

After the metal part I remembered that there is the citywatch banner. And this texture has the fabric coarseness thus relieving me of the task of creating one myself. I used that for the ribbon cloth.

 

Result looks now like this. I'd love to hear your opinions.

 

 

I think it's drastic improvement to the previous one.

 

Lesson learned: don't try too learn to much in one big chunk. Rather, stay in comfort area and add few new things to be learned in moderation.

 

So now I know how to model AND how to create basic textures for the models by hunting images from the net and basic image manipulation. Progress! Yay!

[nbohr1more]

Looks great Sotha!

[Arcturus]

It looks better. Maybe there could be more polys in the middle part.

I was affraid my tutorial was too casual (is that a correct word?). Anyway learning takes time and I think you're learning quite fast.

 

 

[Sotha]

Thanks! Reasonable suggestion, adding more edges to the cylinder. I went 8->12. Now it is 118 polys.

 

I also fooled around with the normalmap tool and managed to improve the carvings:

 

Unless someone throws in some nice improvement ideas for this, I think I'm done.

 

I suppose I have to go back to the rod and try to mash up a texture for it from some photo sources.

[Melan]

That's good as it is, I think.

[Baddcog]

Yeah, looks good, now skins right?

[aidakeeley]

Looks great!

 

A wonderful bit of detail to go along with the best aspect of your FMs: the missions themselves. Nice to have a dash or two of eye candy along the wiles and ways of gameplay...

[Sotha]

Yeah, looks good, now skins right?

 

Is there a tutorial on how to make one? It would be simple to use the builder banner texture for a builder medal. Also changing the texture to grayscale would yield a silver medal..

 

@aida: Thanks!

[Baddcog]

There is now specifically for that model (of course I don't know your model/shader names)

 

 

place this in a text file with skin extension, in skins folder

 

first one swaps both materials and is named red_silver_medal, second would only swap gold to silver.

 

 

skin red_silver_medal

{

model path and name (ie:darkmod/loot/sotha's shiny golden medal.ase)

 

bluebannershadername redbannershadername (changes blue to red banner)

goldmedalshadername silvermedalshadername (changes gold shader to silver)

 

}

 

 

 

skin blue_silver_medal

{

model path and name (ie:darkmod/loot/sotha's shiny golden medal.ase)

 

 

goldmedalshadername silvermedalshadername (changes gold shader to silver)

 

}

[Springheel]

Unless someone throws in some nice improvement ideas for this, I think I'm done.

 

Looks good Sotha, and is a great improvement over your first effort. I definitely recommend small steps when it comes to learning to model.

[Sotha]

There. Skins for six variations:

Red, blue and citywatch ribbons.

Also, there are two variations for metal parts.

 

 

At present all the textures are 1024x1024, do you think it is okay to go 512x512? Also I use .tga files. I saw most of the textures in TDM is .dds files. I've got the gimp plugin, so I can make the textures into .dds as well. Is there any benefit? I also was confused which compression to use with dds-plugin.

[Melan]

DDS is much smaller than TGAs. With a lot of textures in a mission, there is a tremendous performance gain, so definitely do it. The TDM compression standard is DXT1. For small items, 512x512 is okay, but if you submit the object, also submit the 1024x1024 texture. Five or six years down the line, computing may advance so much people will want all high res all the time.

Edited September 12, 2010 by Melan

[Sotha]

Okay.

 

I also got now a bit worried about copyright issues. (I hate this kind of stuff, really takes the fun out of creating stuff.)

 

We had a lawyer here, right?

 

I took the medieval coin images I used in the texture creation quite liberally from the net without checking much about whether the images are free or not. And the texture on the medals are clear enough so that the original images are relatively easily identified.

 

Many sites do not even have any info whether the images on the are free or not. Can I basically take any image and alter it for my own purposes as long I'm not making profit? Are the textures now copyright burdened, causing trouble later?

 

If they are, the remedy for the situation would be to remove the coin textures and use only the normal maps. I drew them by my own hand using the coin images as reference, so they certainly are my own creation. But I'm checking so I don't see the trouble unnecessarily.

 

Just to be on the safe side, I'd love to contribute these to TDM but I want to be sure I'm not causing any damage with my good intentions.

[Sotha]

Finally did my homework on this. Basically:

• When a creative work is generated, it gets auto-protected by copyright.
• Nothing can be used unless otherwise stated that it is free.

Contacted the copyright holders on the coin-images I used and asked for permission to use them. First already replied that it is okay. Let's see what the other says.

 

Lesson to be learned:

When drooling over net images for textures, check permission before making texture/model work on it.

Most likely permission will be granted and people are happy for the courtesy of asking.

[Mortem Desino]

I'm positive that those basic symbols, the Fleur De Lis and the Charlemagne eagle, are free to use. But people usually at least appreciate the courteous.

[Sotha]

I'm positive that those basic symbols, the Fleur De Lis and the Charlemagne eagle, are free to use. But people usually at least appreciate the courteous.

 

Certainly. That's what I thought at first. The symbols are free. But the person who took the photo of the coin still owns the copyright to the photo. And I made the texture from the photo belonging to the other guy.

 

It is so confusing, I'd love to hear a law-professionals opinion on this.

 

At least this way I'm playing this by the book.

[demagogue]

People can't copyright anything over 100 years old, even if they re-created it from scratch, because the underlying thing itself is already in the public domain, so they have nothing of their own authorship to copyright. And taking a heads-on photograph is not good enough to add anything "creative" to the underlying thing. There's plenty of caselaw on that point. (e.g., a case on a museum taking a photo of an old painting; they can't CR it; that's why museums always want to say "No Photography"). Now maybe if it had been part of some assemblage at some special angle and lighting, they could copyright just that exact assemblage, angle & lighting (heads-on, neutral lighting doesn't count), but even then they still couldn't copyright the image of the coin itself and you could still just crop it from the rest of the image (I doubt that's your situation, I'm just saying even in the worst-case you're still safe), and even your goal is to specifically avoid or get rid of any "creative additions". There are lots of cases where people use public domain stuff in their own works; they can get a CR in the creative angle they took with it, but never in the underlying image, even if it's taken from that work. This is all established stuff, so no worries. These medals look great, too.

[Sotha]

My current set of problems arise from the envshot command.

 

Background:

I first made a nice landscape I've been using as a starting point for skybox creation. I've added small building models to my skybox room to fill the landscape with buildings.

 

Now I want to smoothen performance by capturing an envshot of my environment with all the buildings. This way the new skybox would provide better performance since the buildings are in the *image* not polygons.

 

I have a skybox room with the plain terrain cubemap and the building models. The room contains the skybox camera. I made an empty room with skyportal textures, flew there in 640x480 resolution and typed "envshot knighton 512"

I get a bunch of images in the env/ folder. The problem is that all the images are identical, like the direction I was watching when I typed the envshot command?

 

I've read this http://modetwo.net/d...title=Cube_maps

and followed the instructions, but I've no idea what I'm doing wrong.

 

I've tried 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions, 512 and 1024 envshot parameters, but no help. I've tested with noclip and without it. Any clues?

[Sotha]

In addition to the previous problem, I'd also like to know can I change AI carried items properties.

 

I have a guard carrying a lantern, but the shadow cast by the guard didn't look realistic, so I put the guard to noshadows 1. The guard looks now fine, but the guard's SWORD is still casting shadows. Can I somehow set that to no shadows as well?

[nbohr1more]

I see the problem. Since the cubemap is designed to always face the (edit: viewer position) camera, each envshot camera is seeing the same portion of the skybox.

 

Unless I'm somehow mistaken, you will need to capture your geometry without the skybox and then blend the images in an image editor???

 

Edit:

 

Another method might be to noclip and precisely take screen-shots from each direction...

Edited September 17, 2010 by nbohr1more