Nosslaks stuff

[Sotha]

Nosslak's little magic forge always producing high quality models.. Very nice stuff!

[Nosslak]

Nosslak's little magic forge always producing high quality models.. Very nice stuff!

Haha, yeah thanks!

 

Here's a fancy lowpoly render from Marmoset for all you taffers out there:

It's clocking in at 450 polys (319 with single-sided feathers).

 

Did I mention that the feathers will be colorable? That's why they're white here anyways. The feathers are placed on a separate texture (3 feathers on the same texture) so if anyone else want to use it it'll be easy to do so.

 

I'll probably finish up the other version tomorrow.

[GameDevGoro]

Holy crap, man. That is just freaky cool right there.

And oh my god- colorable feathers! Is there no end to the awesomeness???

[Nosslak]

[PPoe]

Perfect work noss.. I can really tell that your models are better and better.

[Glyph Seeker]

I think it is genuine excitement - it's almost offering up a whole sub genre of "masquerade" FM by itself. =-)

[Sir Taffsalot]

That mask is just awesome! I hope you do a male one. If you do I really like the ones with the long nose. I think they look really creepy.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Sir Taffsalot

[Tels]

That's very cool, Nosslak!

 

I know I am always wishing, but could you do a very-low-poly version, too? (Something like 20 polies, hell, even 4 with alphamask) Soemthing that can be on a Noble 50m away and doesn't waste 300 polies for being 4x4 pixels

[Nosslak]

Perfect work noss.. I can really tell that your models are better and better.

Thanks! I would never have gotten this far without the support of the community. Thanks for accepting a (back then) shitty modeller!

 

I think it is genuine excitement - it's almost offering up a whole sub genre of "masquerade" FM by itself. =-)

Yeah, probably but the triple questionmarks threw me off.

 

That mask is just awesome! I hope you do a male one. If you do I really like the ones with the long nose. I think they look really creepy.

Thanks, I were thinking of making both versions above, when the time comes. If someone wants to make a masquerade FM now I could get to work on a male version, but otherwise I'd like to just take a break from the masks and work on the zombie.

 

That's very cool, Nosslak!

 

I know I am always wishing, but could you do a very-low-poly version, too? (Something like 20 polies, hell, even 4 with alphamask) Soemthing that can be on a Noble 50m away and doesn't waste 300 polies for being 4x4 pixels

I guess I can do that. I should be able to just bake everything down and be done with it. 4 polys wouldn't be possible though as the feathers are separate from the mask so they'll be colorable and even if it would've been it would have to float a bit away from the face to avoid any clipping. Is it possible to make a LOD mesh inherit the color of the detailed version?

 

Have another purrty render:

[RPGista]

Very cool... I would also suggest alternative orientations to the feathers like in these examples, maybe a more profuse amount around the face/mask (or the opposite, centered on the forehead, like in the last pic), varied sizes to the feathers (like in the first pic, the botton "rows" of feathers that have different sizes, ignore the huge top ones), or an asymmetrical composition (to one of the sides):

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2012 by RPGista

[Nosslak]

Very cool... I would also suggest alternative orientations to the feathers like in these examples, maybe a more profuse amount around the face/mask (or the opposite, centered on the forehead, like in the last pic), varied sizes to the feathers (like in the first pic, the botton "rows" of feathers that have different sizes, ignore the huge top ones), or an asymmetrical composition (to one of the sides):

That's a pretty good idea. Unfortunately it is pretty tedious to change the feathers as you'll have to make sure they don't intersect with each other too much or the face or the different skins for the masks. I guess I could make one or maybe two new ones but that'll have to be enough.

[Sir Taffsalot]

I haven't thought about what I'd like to do after the current FM I'm working on. But now that you mention it, I'd love to do a masquerade FM. it would be great if you could put a mask on and the AI wouldn't attack you. Like in Hitman when you wear a disguise. Although that would be limited to the ball room. Caught any where else in the building and they get suspicious.

[GameDevGoro]

Haha, Noss. No, man I wasn't being sarcastic, you do fantastic stuff!!

I think it's just ridiculously awesome, the colorable feathers was a detail I didn't expect!

[Tels]

(about LOD)

 

I guess I can do that. I should be able to just bake everything down and be done with it. 4 polys wouldn't be possible though as the feathers are separate from the mask so they'll be colorable and even if it would've been it would have to float a bit away from the face to avoid any clipping. Is it possible to make a LOD mesh inherit the color of the detailed version?

 

Don't worry about 4 faces, 20 or so is good enough. (Side-note: with 300 polies it really should have its own shadow mesh which would be much simpler)

 

If the feathers are colored via the material, then the material gets the color from the entity, and since the entity is the same (it just switches the model around), the LOD stages would keep the colors. Haven't tried it, but would be surprised if it does not work (and even then we can fix it - we have he source now

 

(And good idea to make the feathers colorable! Maybe one can even do this with the white part of the mask? Is the white sep. from the gold?)

[Nosslak]

Haha, Noss. No, man I wasn't being sarcastic, you do fantastic stuff!!

I think it's just ridiculously awesome, the colorable feathers was a detail I didn't expect!

Oh, alright thanks then!

 

Don't worry about 4 faces, 20 or so is good enough. (Side-note: with 300 polies it really should have its own shadow mesh which would be much simpler)

I thought about that too, but I'm not sure if it should cast shadows at all. Here's my reasons:

- It should sit tightly on the face at all times so it would barely change the silhouette and therefore the shadows.

- I want to have a nodraw skin as well for the feathers so that they won't be shown at all to enable more variation.

- The masks themselves look very different (one bigger, one smaller) so it'd probably look weird.

 

Also it might be wort mentioning that the mask itself is only 188 polys and the feathers take up 256 polys (128x2 for double-sided).

If the feathers are colored via the material, then the material gets the color from the entity, and since the entity is the same (it just switches the model around), the LOD stages would keep the colors. Haven't tried it, but would be surprised if it does not work (and even then we can fix it - we have he source now

Good!

 

(And good idea to make the feathers colorable! Maybe one can even do this with the white part of the mask? Is the white sep. from the gold?)

Thanks! The gold is just a part of the texture so as long as it isn't possible to do a stencil/mask for the effect it wouldn't be possible.

[Nosslak]

Here's a render with improved textures for the first version:

One of the feathers clip through the mask a bit but it's easily fixable.

[Tels]

Verrry nice!

[Baddcog]

I think you should leave the material as shadowcasting. It doesn't have that many polys anyway, and if used as a moveable it would be consistant mod wise.

 

If it casts weird shadows (alpha eye holes maybe?) on the face or whatever authors can always tag it with NoShadows as they see fit. (but if that tag is in the material then they have to make a new material if they want shadows...

If it's best we can just make the entitiy noshadows but that allows authors to unflag it if they really want to.

 

If they eye holes are just alpha you might want to spend a few more polys anyway to have actual holes (still alphaed the same) to let light through in roughly the same shape as the eyes.

-------

 

As far as that goes, you can always have two shadow meshes, just export two materials (easy to do with ase), then each skin can have Shadow or NoDraw for the shadow mesh that needs to show for that skin version.

 

Same with collision

 

To keep it seperate from the feathers though you need to just export with some random material so nodraw can be put in multiple spots in a skin.

ie:

 

feathers>nodraw

collision 1>nodraw

shadow 1>nodraw

nodraw>shadow 2

nodraw(exported with wood tex)>collision 2

nodraw exported with metal>feather 2

[Nosslak]

I think you should leave the material as shadowcasting. It doesn't have that many polys anyway, and if used as a moveable it would be consistant mod wise.

 

If it casts weird shadows (alpha eye holes maybe?) on the face or whatever authors can always tag it with NoShadows as they see fit. (but if that tag is in the material then they have to make a new material if they want shadows...

If it's best we can just make the entitiy noshadows but that allows authors to unflag it if they really want to.

 

If they eye holes are just alpha you might want to spend a few more polys anyway to have actual holes (still alphaed the same) to let light through in roughly the same shape as the eyes.

Yeah, I'm really not sure how well it'll cast shadows. Here's how the mesh looks:

 

As far as that goes, you can always have two shadow meshes, just export two materials (easy to do with ase), then each skin can have Shadow or NoDraw for the shadow mesh that needs to show for that skin version.

 

Same with collision

That's probably the best solution even if it does require extra work.

 

To keep it seperate from the feathers though you need to just export with some random material so nodraw can be put in multiple spots in a skin.

ie:

 

feathers>nodraw

collision 1>nodraw

shadow 1>nodraw

nodraw>shadow 2

nodraw(exported with wood tex)>collision 2

nodraw exported with metal>feather 2

I'm not sure what you're meaning. Wouldn't it be easier to just combine the mask and feathers as a prefab? I've never really mapped or used prefabs so I might be completely wrong.

[Baddcog]

Well, you could bind them in a prefab. That would require two models...

 

If you just have skins the feathers could just be a nodraw on one skin, then you get two masks. One with feathers, one without.

 

The skin is basically this format... texture>replace texture

 

With your idea of two masks changed by skin you just add more skins for those two without feathers. But each skin can have many materials. So you can also throw the shadowmeshes and collision meshes into the mix.

 

The problem is you want to use nodraw on every piece, but you don't want the nodraw swap to happen on all pieces at the same time... So you make a base mask with a bunch of non-use materials (ie, wood and metal) and the authors should only use the skinned vesions.

 

It's a fairly complicated model in that respect so it's hard to type out ...

 

Default export, every piece needs a unique material. (it's the collision and shadow meshes for unique versions that screw us here) Not to be used in game.

 

Mesh /Texture:

Mask/male_mask.tga

female_mask/wood.tga

Feathers/feather.tga

collision mesh male/collision.tga

shadowmesh male/shadow.tga

collision mesh female/nodraw

shadow mesh female/ metal (can't be same as the above, even though we will want to swap it to the same nodraw material [ so it wont draw on the male mask], we'll need to be able to swap them to seperate materials also [shadow and collision])

 

These will be used in game.

 

Skin #1 (male with feather) - all this one does is add nodraw to the female shadow/mask meshes (female collision started out as nodraw). (so now all female parts are no draw)

 

old tex/new tex (the old tex is the one named in the exported model, the new one is the tex we want to use in this particular skin)

 

metal/nodraw

wood/nodraw

 

Skin #2 (male without feather) - this does the same but removes feathers. (I would not make the collision cover the feathers or you need an additional material to make that collision go away when there are no feathers...)

 

feathers/nodraw

metal/nodraw

wood/nodraw

 

 

Skin #3 (female with feather) - all this one does is add nodraw to the female shadow mesh.

 

male_mask/female_mask

wood/female_mask

collision mesh male/nodraw

shadowmesh male/nodraw

metal/shadow

nodraw/collision (we originally used nodraw on the female collision mesh)

 

Skin #4 (female without feather) - this does the same but removes feathers.

 

male_mask/female_mask

wood/female_mask

feathers/nodraw

collision mesh male/nodraw

shadowmesh male/nodraw

metal/shadow

nodraw/collision (we originally used nodraw on the female collision mesh)

 

 

hope that makes more sense. just using wood and metal as placeholders for nodraw, so when we swap textures swapping nodraw doesn't change all 3 meshes to that single texture.

[Tels]

Noss, here is another thing that you might consider. Now, I am no modeller, so this might be something silly, but I think the mask has way to many poligons in some places.

 

Here is a screenshow that shows how you could combine some:

 

I mean if the border is alpha-mapped, anyway, why waste so many poligons to accurately track the outline? Instead make the mesh more coarse, and adjust the texture

 

 

@baddcogg: I don't think adding 300 shadow casting polies to an AI is a good idea, esp. because the shadow casted is VERY simple - it could be as much as 10 polies or so and nobody could tell it isn't accurately.

[Nosslak]

I'm still confused. Right now I am making a second set of feathers so wouldn't it be a good idea to just make it a prefab so we won't need to load in two similar versions of the mask at the same time (however small the model may be)? I also feel that it'd be a lot easier to make the skins for it as I think you could just do it like this:

 

Feather1 and 2:

- Default (visible with shadows without collision)

- NoDraw (invisible without shadows or collision)

 

Mask:

- Mask 1 with shadows and collision

- Mask 2 with shadows and collision

 

Then the mapper could unflag what they don't want as you said, there wouldn't be a bunch of confusing skins/materials (confusing to me at the very least) and the mapper would be free to mix and match however the see fit.

 

Noss, here is another thing that you might consider. Now, I am no modeller, so this might be something silly, but I think the mask has way to many poligons in some places.

 

Here is a screenshow that shows how you could combine some:

 

I mean if the border is alpha-mapped, anyway, why waste so many poligons to accurately track the outline? Instead make the mesh more coarse, and adjust the texture

You are absolutely right, I thought I had added those so that the mask wouldn't clip with the face but I tried simplifying it and there were essentially no difference. You really shouldn't make any adjustments to the mesh after you've baked your textures (the normalmap won't match the highpoly as well anymore) but I think I managed to make it similar enough so that won't matter. I am just saving 16 triangles so there's not that much of a difference.

 

@baddcogg: I don't think adding 300 shadow casting polies to an AI is a good idea, esp. because the shadow casted is VERY simple - it could be as much as 10 polies or so and nobody could tell it isn't accurately.

I'm not sure people understand how little 10 polys are. A cube takes up 12 polys and a single-sided plane takes 2 polys. If I were to make up the different sides of the mask with 2 planes and then cut a foursided hole in each for the eyes that would already use 16 polys.

[Tels]

I'm still confused. Right now I am making a second set of feathers so wouldn't it be a good idea to just make it a prefab so we won't need to load in two similar versions of the mask at the same time (however small the model may be)? I also feel that it'd be a lot easier to make the skins for it as I think you could just do it like this:

 

Prefabs for models are not a good idea. Apart from the fact that it is impossible to modify prefabs once they are in a released FM (if you change the model, it will change it all FMs. If you change the prefab, only new FMs will be afected), it also makes it much much harder to attach things. This is esp. important for wearable stuff.

 

We really want to be able to control everything with spawnargs, so you can make pre-fabricated AI by simple writing an entity def - and the mapper then simply places the entity in his map an everything is allright.

 

Having only one model with 20 skins is definitely easier there.

 

You are absolutely right, I thought I had added those so that the mask wouldn't clip with the face but I tried simplifying it and there were essentially no difference. You really shouldn't make any adjustments to the mesh after you've baked your textures (the normalmap won't match the highpoly as well anymore) but I think I managed to make it similar enough so that won't matter. I am just saving 16 triangles so there's not that much of a difference.

 

Yeah, but I thought that you could maybe do this in more places. The "don't clip the face" is important, tho and hard to see from the screenshots how the mask is formed in 3D.

 

But if you saved 16polies, cool, and saving more is not that important esp if you need to redo large parts.

 

I wonder tho why the feathers are all single polies, and not a simple mesh covering all of them? Was that easier to create, or does it look better or is there any other reason?

 

(Edit: Me thinks it would be cool create a script that "detach/make invisible" the feathers by a skin-change, and then creates 16 single feathers and spawns them - so if the AI dies, the mask drops and the feathers fall out

[Nosslak]

Prefabs for models are not a good idea. Apart from the fact that it is impossible to modify prefabs once they are in a released FM (if you change the model, it will change it all FMs. If you change the prefab, only new FMs will be afected), it also makes it much much harder to attach things. This is esp. important for wearable stuff.

 

We really want to be able to control everything with spawnargs, so you can make pre-fabricated AI by simple writing an entity def - and the mapper then simply places the entity in his map an everything is allright.

 

Having only one model with 20 skins is definitely easier there.

Alright, I weren't aware of any drawbacks of prefabs. How about just spawning in and attaching the feathers and mask separately?

 

Yeah, but I thought that you could maybe do this in more places. The "don't clip the face" is important, tho and hard to see from the screenshots how the mask is formed in 3D.

 

But if you saved 16polies, cool, and saving more is not that important esp if you need to redo large parts.

I found one more place where I could easily optimize a bit more, which saved an additional 12 polygons. So all in all I've saved 28 polys (almost 10%) I doubt it'll do much of a difference if we don't use this mesh for the shadows though.

 

I wonder tho why the feathers are all single polies, and not a simple mesh covering all of them? Was that easier to create, or does it look better or is there any other reason?

They're all single as it gives me greater control of them, makes it easier to give them more volume (they're not all completely flat, some overlap others) and it makes it possible to re-use the texture elsewhere (as the feathers are separate there). It does require more polygons though.

 

(Edit: Me thinks it would be cool create a script that "detach/make invisible" the feathers by a skin-change, and then creates 16 single feathers and spawns them - so if the AI dies, the mask drops and the feathers fall out

Yeah, that would be pretty cool.

[Tels]

Alright, I weren't aware of any drawbacks of prefabs. How about just spawning in and attaching the feathers and mask separately?

 

That is not a problem, if they are two sep. models, you can attach one model to the other with no problems.

 

Although engine wise, two sep. models use a little bit more resources than one model, as they need to be two entitites, too. This isn't really a problem, because A: the feathers use a different texture, anyway, so they cannot be combined into a drawcall with the mask and thus get rendered in a sep. pass, anyway. And B : there won't be that many masks in a mission (maybe a dozend tops?) that havign another dozend entities is a problem.

 

And if all fails, we can still hack the engine and create multi-model entitites (in fact, we want to do this anyway. Entities carry a HUGE overhead, and if the entity consists of just a model, you have that huge overhead just to render a little model. That is why SEED can combine entities together by creating a mega-model. And we really want to use that with instancing, anyway.

 

So yeah, making the feathers a sep. model is okay.

 

Btw, a little known fact is that if you use a no-draw skin, then the entire polies are loaded anyway, it is just that they are not rendered in game. The reason is that a model is never modified once loaded - only the visibility changes. That has curious side-effects, like no-draw hinges on doors are still metal when considering collision. This is another thing we really need to fix inside the engine.

 

See http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=2678

 

Before we had the source, models needed to be constructed to work with the engine in the best way. Now I think we should fix the engine problems, instead of placing the same (stupid) restrictions on every model.

 

I found one more place where I could easily optimize a bit more, which saved an additional 12 polygons. So all in all I've saved 28 polys (almost 10%) I doubt it'll do much of a difference if we don't use this mesh for the shadows though.

 

True. But maybe one day we can use the full mesh for collision detection (another engine issue) and then it will help And not rendering 28 polies will help, too.

 

They're all single as it gives me greater control of them, makes it easier to give them more volume (they're not all completely flat, some overlap others) and it makes it possible to re-use the texture elsewhere (as the feathers are separate there). It does require more polygons though.

 

Yeah, that would be pretty cool.

 

Yeah, if you can please make one or two "single-feather" models, and maybe even a "half-feather" or "teared one". We can really use more "flinder" objects that get spawned when the player destroys things - makes the world feel more real than the indestructable stuff we usually have