Nosslaks stuff

[Serpentine]

So was it just a bad normal map from Blender, and Xnormal was good? Always good to share the solutions so if someone else has the problem it's documented.

 

It's 6am, this post most likely makes 0 sense, you have been warned!

 

The model lighting strangely like this:

Is a result of rotation/scaling not being applied before export. Noss re-released the package with the fixed models

 

The normal map problem is different however, Noss is getting badly formed normal maps from Blender, and I was just checking if anyone else had similar experiences. The problem has been fixed in the released privacy screens after remaking the normals in xNorm however having it work off the bat in Blender is preferable. To me it seems as if the direction of the lighting is changing between different areas of the normal instead of being uniform. I've seen the problem in a few of the older TDM assets that I fixed before 1.01 iirc, but haven't ever seen mention of the actual cause.

 

Please note that this is a section of a more complex normal map, cropped out. Different parts of the map have different rotations some right(i.e unrotated) and some wrong.

 

Blender: xNormal:

 

Since the structure shown in the normal map is textured horizontally, not vertically as shown here, blender seems to have rotated the bake to match with how it is used on the model. This results in incorrect lighting. The xNormal version works correctly in doom3. Might this also be something that's fixed by applying the scale etc before baking?... in my head it doesn't seem like it would be.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Serpentine

[Nosslak]

Sounds good, Serps. I couldn't have described it better myself.

 

Since the structure shown in the normal map is textured horizontally, not vertically as shown here, blender seems to have rotated the bake to match with how it is used on the model. This results in incorrect lighting. The xNormal version works correctly in doom3. Might this also be something that's fixed by applying the scale etc before baking?... in my head it doesn't seem like it would be.

I doubt this will work but I'll run some tests later.

 

I've chosen to work on a bellow instead of the carriage, so here's what I'll be making in the next few days:

Edited August 18, 2010 by Nosslak

[Baddcog]

OK, I know Blender also has issues with scaling/rotating in other renderes as well, Zero Gear is one, maybe even source.

 

I have actually had issues with scale not exporting from Max>Ogre. That took a work around but did the same thing.

 

So it makes sense, possibly that part of the model was created sideways then modelled and kept the old rot/scale props so Blender is baking according to that.

 

Anyway, good to see it fixed. And so you know, Doom3 can also bake through the console, though it's slow and you might not be able to do anything else at the time oif bake. But I've had pretty good results with that too.

[Nosslak]

Haven't done any testing yet, I'll probably get to it tomorrow.

 

Here's what I've been up to today. What do you fine gentlemen think?

I'll add the leather parts tomorrow and make an open (filled?) version as well.

[Baddcog]

Looks pretty cool

[Fidcal]

Bellows: Looks good. Be interested to see the final. Might be good to do a nice display decorative one plus a dirty working one.

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

Where are we with the street light? I lost track of that.

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

These privacy screens look fine now thanks. I'm not sure where the floorboards one would be used though. I might also add one or two skins.

 

Provisionally I'll put it up on the contribs website so they are immediately available then add it to SVN so they go in the next release. I may change paths in both versions - the former to avoid conflict later with the release version; the latter to conform to our current order if necessary.

 

[Nosslak]

Looks pretty cool

Thanks!

 

Bellows: Looks good. Be interested to see the final. Might be good to do a nice display decorative one plus a dirty working one.

Thanks, that is kind of what I was planning to. I'll make one pretty clean and decorated and then one without the decoration and dirtier.

 

Where are we with the street light? I lost track of that.

There was some kind of error with inversed normals on it so I was going to use Xnormal on it but every time I tried (three times I believe) Xnormal crashed so I sent it off to Serpentine to try his luck at it. It seems that he have managed to get a working normalmap but he is a little slower than I had hoped.

 

These privacy screens look fine now thanks. I'm not sure where the floorboards one would be used though.

Baddcog told me that he thought a wooden screen would be desired and probably be the one that would be used the most. I couldn't find any really good wood texture so I just settled with that one.

 

I might also add one or two skins.

I have used Ambient Occlusion and some other stuff on mine so if you'd want those new textures to look consistent then you should probably download the psd file (it is kind of big though, 132 mb). If you want I can resize it so it'll be the same resolution as it'll be in-game (right now it's twice the game rez) so it'll be smaller.

 

Provisionally I'll put it up on the contribs website so they are immediately available then add it to SVN so they go in the next release. I may change paths in both versions - the former to avoid conflict later with the release version; the latter to conform to our current order if necessary.

That sounds great, thanks.

 

That looks great.

Edited August 19, 2010 by Nosslak

[Sotha]

Damn this guy is fast.

I look away from this thread for a while and suddenly there is again a high quality model available.

 

All the stuff you've done so far look fantastic!

 

I'm really interested what you're going to do next. Did you notice my cry for more loot items in the 'master models needed list' thread?

 

Since this game is about acquiring loot, it would be nice to have a larger diversity of valuables to steal. Just a suggestion, if you like doing that kind of things.

[Fidcal]

OK, I'll leave the skins. Don't want more work than I already have!

[Nosslak]

Damn this guy is fast.

I look away from this thread for a while and suddenly there is again a high quality model available.

 

All the stuff you've done so far look fantastic!

Thanks!

 

I'm really interested what you're going to do next. Did you notice my cry for more loot items in the 'master models needed list' thread?

 

Since this game is about acquiring loot, it would be nice to have a larger diversity of valuables to steal. Just a suggestion, if you like doing that kind of things.

Yeah, I saw that, I just forgot to reply. I don't know if it really fits the setting but I made this cutlass like a hundred years ago that turned out pretty good, if you want I can touch it up and try to include it. Here it is:

I haven't really made much jewelry/valuables before but when I'm done with my current models I can try my hand at it.

 

OK, I'll leave the skins. Don't want more work than I already have!

Alright, but there wouldn't be a lot of work included really. All you'd need to do would be to place three pieces of the diffuse at roughly the same place in the layer hierarchy as the wood/wallpaper textures and you'd be done.

Edited August 19, 2010 by Nosslak

[Sotha]

Yeah, I saw that, I just forgot to reply. I don't know if it really fits the setting but I made this cutlass like a hundred years ago that turned out pretty good, if you want I can touch it up and try to include it. Here it is:

 

Wow. Nice! Looks like something a gentleman duelist noble would have in his trophy room.

 

With a golden handle and silver blade it would be a nice ornamental loot object. A mapper could easily use binding to embed a few prop gems on the handle to make its worth even more obvious.

 

Giving the same sword with steel blade and handle to an armed commoner AI would mean we have pirate characters!

 

This would definately increase mappers options nicely.

 

Now, who would do some vocals for pirates? "Arr.. Ho ho blow the man down. Ye scurvy dog."

[Nosslak]

Wow. Nice! Looks like something a gentleman duelist noble would have in his trophy room.

 

With a golden handle and silver blade it would be a nice ornamental loot object. A mapper could easily use binding to embed a few prop gems on the handle to make its worth even more obvious.

 

Giving the same sword with steel blade and handle to an armed commoner AI would mean we have pirate characters!

 

This would definately increase mappers options nicely.

Thanks! Then I know what to do next.

 

Now, who would do some vocals for pirates? "Arr.. Ho ho blow the man down. Ye scurvy dog."

Aye, shiver me timbers.

 

The highpoly for the bellows (pair of bellows?) is finished. It turned out pretty good:

I'm not really satisfied with the leather but I don't think I can make it much better as I've barely made anything out of fabric before.

[Springheel]

Looks great! Assuming that the ornamentation is going to be in the normalamap, you could easily make a skin for a non-ornamental one as well, useful for regular homes.

[Baddcog]

yeah, you could just use a regular wood from TDM for a plain version, and it'll have wood grain normal already. (you could probably do the same, just overlay it on your normal for the fancier version too).

 

I think the leather looks fine, just try and find a good grainy leather tex for it.

 

---------

I did mean a wood FRAME version of the screenwall BTW.

 

I was also thinking, you could probably put the AO on the alpha map, then any materials used for fabric would have AO over them.

[Nosslak]

Looks great! Assuming that the ornamentation is going to be in the normalamap, you could easily make a skin for a non-ornamental one as well, useful for regular homes.

That's what I was planning to do. Thanks anyway.

 

yeah, you could just use a regular wood from TDM for a plain version, and it'll have wood grain normal already. (you could probably do the same, just overlay it on your normal for the fancier version too).

I might use TDMs texture but I'll combine it with AO, grime and other stuff too.

 

I did mean a wood FRAME version of the screenwall BTW.

Oh, I didn't know. I'll try to whip out a new skin tomorrow or something then. Though I don't know how you would select two skins for one model in DR later, so I'd probably need some help with that.

 

I was also thinking, you could probably put the AO on the alpha map, then any materials used for fabric would have AO over them.

I don't know about Doom 3 but afaik using Alpha for AO and other stuff would be a pretty big performance hit as the computer needs to do a lot more calculations. Again, I don't know if this is true for Doom but I think it is for some other engines such as Unreal.

 

Here's the lowpoly of the bellows:

280 polys

[Serpentine]

Oh, I didn't know. I'll try to whip out a new skin tomorrow or something then. Though I don't know how you would select two skins for one model in DR later, so I'd probably need some help with that.

 

Same way you made the initial one, just copy and paste it under, change the name and materials and you're done

 

The billows are looking very nice tho, will be interesting to see how much detail the bake can bring in, but I'm sure it'll look great! As always shout if you have any trouble.

[Fidcal]

For the wood version you would need two materials in each skin, eg,

 

skin privacy_screen_woodframe_body_wallpaper1
{
   model models/darkmod/furniture/privacy_screen.ase

   privacy_screen_body privacy_screen_body_wallpaper1
   privacy_screen_frame privacy_screen_frame_wood
{

[Baddcog]

 

I don't know about Doom 3 but afaik using Alpha for AO and other stuff would be a pretty big performance hit as the computer needs to do a lot more calculations. Again, I don't know if this is true for Doom but I think it is for some other engines such as Unreal.

 

 

 

 

I don't think you're getting what I mean.

 

You have the metal trims on an alpha map already. And the AO is just shadow around that trim, so you can just put that shadow around the metal trim on the same texture, and do an alpha fade out for the shadows.

 

Then the fabric is completely plain fabric, but it has metal trim and shadows in front of it. (I am assuming the fabric is one material and the metal trim is another.

 

We have decals specifically for placing grime in corners and whatnot, basically it's the same thing, just built into the model. It won't impact performance anymore than the alpha map I assume is already there because it would still just be one alpha map.

---------

 

skin{

 

model name

 

material on model (fabric) new fabric

material on frame (metal) wood

 

}

 

Just put 2 material tags in there, one for each change.

 

You'll have to make several like

 

wood and paisleys

wood and stripes

metal and stripes

metal and pasileys

[Nosslak]

The billows are looking very nice tho, will be interesting to see how much detail the bake can bring in, but I'm sure it'll look great! As always shout if you have any trouble.

Alright, thanks!

 

For the wood version you would need two materials in each skin, eg,

 

skin privacy_screen_woodframe_body_wallpaper1
{
model models/darkmod/furniture/privacy_screen.ase

privacy_screen_body privacy_screen_body_wallpaper1
privacy_screen_frame privacy_screen_frame_wood
{

That'll come in handy, thanks!

 

I don't think you're getting what I mean.

 

You have the metal trims on an alpha map already. And the AO is just shadow around that trim, so you can just put that shadow around the metal trim on the same texture, and do an alpha fade out for the shadows.

 

Then the fabric is completely plain fabric, but it has metal trim and shadows in front of it. (I am assuming the fabric is one material and the metal trim is another.

I understood exactly what you meant, it's just that I have more or less a 1bit alpha texture where the texture is either completely see-through or completely opaque (it isn't 1bit as you wanted me to save it as ddr3, I would need ddr1 for true 1bit alpha [i think]). This is one of the first game projects I've joined (only worked on OpenFrag before) so I don't have much in the way of experience with game engines so I might be wrong, but this is what I've learnt from Polycount and other places. In other words I think you should limit the use of alpha maps as much as possible and just use in-baked grunge and AO if you can. If this is wrong then someone please correct me. If this is true it will make creating custom textures for models a little harder (as you'll have to track down the original psd or whatever) but I think it'll be a win for performance.

[Baddcog]

Well, like you said the alpha is already there, so where's the performance lost? I read polycount to and have been modeling for years. TDM, T2, TF2, Ogre... I know the performance cost.

 

There are alot of costs to consider though and believe me, I'm trying to do nothing but steer you in the right direction.

 

The alpha is already there so there's no addition cost.

 

But loading more materials IS an additional cost. If someone uses a 'wallpaper' version and already has that wallpaper elsewhere in the map then it's probably already loaded. Hence your model using default tdm textures helps keep loading times down (for the map and per area), and also can save space on the GPU as less textures are stored (thus fewer textures swapped between areas...)

 

With shading on the alpha it lets people makes skins using any base tdm texture AND have the AO. So it might help with performance due to textures used, it cuts down on overall mod bloat (having 4 large bitmaps that aren't needed), and it makes the model easier to skin AND look more consistant if someone does use a tdm stock tex.

 

That was the entire basis for doing the doors the way I did. We have 3 main door models (the others were made by Dram for his mission specifically) for 3 sizes. They have 2 meshes for material swaps (the sides for metal trim tex if needed), a hing tex and a lockplate tex. They can all be swapped with default or custom tex. So basically 3 door models with easy and infinite skinning possibilities.

 

It really goes back to what I said at first about AO. most the stuff doesn't have it due to time period/knowledge, etc... But also because we are using skins to our benefit. When we have so many base textures to use it's good to use them for as much as possible, that usually means no custom tex/ao per object. Starting to add AO to all models now also means that old models will look more out of place.

But if you have a perfect situation like this to use AO on the alpha and have to add AO why not use it and have infinite skinning possibilities at the same time?

[Nosslak]

Well, like you said the alpha is already there, so where's the performance lost? I read polycount to and have been modeling for years. TDM, T2, TF2, Ogre... I know the performance cost.

 

There are alot of costs to consider though and believe me, I'm trying to do nothing but steer you in the right direction.

 

The alpha is already there so there's no addition cost.

 

But loading more materials IS an additional cost. If someone uses a 'wallpaper' version and already has that wallpaper elsewhere in the map then it's probably already loaded. Hence your model using default tdm textures helps keep loading times down (for the map and per area), and also can save space on the GPU as less textures are stored (thus fewer textures swapped between areas...)

 

With shading on the alpha it lets people makes skins using any base tdm texture AND have the AO. So it might help with performance due to textures used, it cuts down on overall mod bloat (having 4 large bitmaps that aren't needed), and it makes the model easier to skin AND look more consistant if someone does use a tdm stock tex.

 

That was the entire basis for doing the doors the way I did. We have 3 main door models (the others were made by Dram for his mission specifically) for 3 sizes. They have 2 meshes for material swaps (the sides for metal trim tex if needed), a hing tex and a lockplate tex. They can all be swapped with default or custom tex. So basically 3 door models with easy and infinite skinning possibilities.

 

It really goes back to what I said at first about AO. most the stuff doesn't have it due to time period/knowledge, etc... But also because we are using skins to our benefit. When we have so many base textures to use it's good to use them for as much as possible, that usually means no custom tex/ao per object. Starting to add AO to all models now also means that old models will look more out of place.

But if you have a perfect situation like this to use AO on the alpha and have to add AO why not use it and have infinite skinning possibilities at the same time?

Alright, I'll do that the next time I've got an opportunity like that, but as it is now I'd have to remodel and remake the textures if I were to use this on the privacy screen. I also couldn't use one of your library textures on this model either as it consists of multiple materials.

 

Oh well, off to lighter subjects; I have finished the texturing of my pair of bellows(?):

As usual I'm using a 2048*2048 textures (diffuse, normal, specular) that I'll resize upon exporting to the game. It seems that I also optimized the model a tiny bit, now it uses up 276 polys. I'll probably resize the texture to 256*256 px or at the very least 512*512 px. Should I make a shadow mesh for it?

Edited August 20, 2010 by Nosslak

[Tels]

Alright, I'll do that the next time I've got an opportunity like that, but as it is now I'd have to remodel and remake the textures if I were to use this on the privacy screen. I also couldn't use one of your library textures on this model either as it consists of multiple materials.

 

Oh well, off to lighter subjects; I have finished the texturing of my pair of bellows(?):

As usual I'm using a 2048*2048 textures (diffuse, normal, specular) that I'll resize upon exporting to the game. It seems that I also optimized the model a tiny bit, now it uses up 276 polys. I'll probably resize the texture to 256*256 px or at the very least 512*512 px. Should I make a shadow mesh for it?

 

With such a small object a shadow mesh would be good. 276 shadow tris is a bit much

 

Btw, nice work!

[Springheel]

I also couldn't use one of your library textures on this model either as it consists of multiple materials.

 

Sure you can. You just divide each separate texture into its own submesh. Makes it much easier to make new skins in the future. The finished version looks great, btw.

 

With such a small object a shadow mesh would be good. 276 shadow tris is a bit much

 

In general, you don't need shadowmeshes for static props that are around 250 polys or less, especially if they're likely to be used only once in a scene.

[Melan]

Elegant bellows! This would look very appropriate in a prosperous household.

[Nosslak]

With such a small object a shadow mesh would be good. 276 shadow tris is a bit much

Alright, I've made a shadow mesh with 118 triangles now.

 

Btw, nice work!

Thanks!

 

Sure you can. You just divide each separate texture into its own submesh. Makes it much easier to make new skins in the future.

Yeah, can't wasn't really the right word. I know I can do it like that but it wouldn't look as good, I wouldn't be able to color the pattern on the bellows and I wouldn't be able to use the screws on the leather either if I were to use textures from the library. In other words; it wouldn't look as good.

 

The finished version looks great, btw.

Thank you!

 

In general, you don't need shadowmeshes for static props that are around 250 polys or less, especially if they're likely to be used only once in a scene.

I've already made a shadowmesh for it so I think I'll use that this time, but I'll keep this in mind till the next time.

 

Elegant bellows!

Thanks!

 

This would look very appropriate in a prosperous household.

Yup, I can vouch for this as I've got one myself.

 

I've also made a collision mesh with 64 triangles now.