Nosslaks stuff

[Nosslak]

Depends what you do with a shadowmesh, I guess. Our mounted antler model is about 900 polys with a 300 poly shadowmesh. You might be able to double those numbers, but more than that would be pushing it.

Alright so can I use a maximum of 1800 polys for the skull, skull + antlers, everything or what? Please be more specific. If you meant 1800 for all, then I'll have to use alpha maps, make it really lowpoly and it won't be very pretty. So far I've managed to cut away about 300 polygons without losing too much of the shape, so it's currently at 1700 polygons.

 

The deer skull is looking awesome!

Thank you!

Edited September 20, 2010 by Nosslak

[Tels]

That would be awesome! How do I file a tracker request?

 

http://bugs.angua.at/login_page.php

 

You might need to request an account first, I think greebo manually enables them. Then just select your project "Dark Mod", and add it under the proper section. Someone will then grab the bug and close it (hopefully

[Tels]

Alright so can I use a maximum of 1800 polys for the skull, skull + antlers, everything or what? Please be more specific. If you meant 1800 for all, then I'll have to use alpha maps, make it really lowpoly and it won't be very pretty. So far I've managed to cut away about 300 polygons without losing too much of the shape, so it's currently at 1700 polygons.

 

Regardless on how many polygons it contains, please make a mid-poly version (roughly half of whatever your final version has), and a low-poly (roughly 1/4) as well as another version with even less polygons. (Yeah, these can be done later with automatic tools, but since we don't have someone with these tools or an idea how to use them, it is much easier if the original modeller does these versions).

 

These versions will help performance due to the LOD system that can use them when the player is far away. 1700 polys for such a small model is way overkill from 5m to further away (Not to speak of giant forest with one of these planted alongside a way in 50m distance

 

Thank you!

 

you too Good work!

[Nosslak]

http://bugs.angua.at/login_page.php

 

You might need to request an account first, I think greebo manually enables them. Then just select your project "Dark Mod", and add it under the proper section. Someone will then grab the bug and close it (hopefully

Alright, I've made a new entry on the tracker now.

 

Regardless on how many polygons it contains, please make a mid-poly version (roughly half of whatever your final version has), and a low-poly (roughly 1/4) as well as another version with even less polygons. (Yeah, these can be done later with automatic tools, but since we don't have someone with these tools or an idea how to use them, it is much easier if the original modeller does these versions).

I'll try to make one of the LOD-models at the very least, but I really don't like to redo work and I'm not too fond of removing details from my models either so it might take a while.

 

These versions will help performance due to the LOD system that can use them when the player is far away. 1700 polys for such a small model is way overkill from 5m to further away (Not to speak of giant forest with one of these planted alongside a way in 50m distance

Just so we're on the same page: It'll use quite a bit more than 1700 polygons, they're just for the skull.

 

Right now I'm down to 1492 polygons and I can't really optimize it much more now (for real this time).

[Springheel]

Alright so can I use a maximum of 1800 polys for the skull, skull + antlers, everything or what? Please be more specific.

 

Anything more than that is awfully high for a relatively small model. But the shadowmesh is ultimately more important.

[Tels]

Alright, I've made a new entry on the tracker now.

 

Thanx.

 

Just so we're on the same page: It'll use quite a bit more than 1700 polygons, they're just for the skull.

 

Right now I'm down to 1492 polygons and I can't really optimize it much more now (for real this time).

 

Believe me, young padawan, you are not trying hard enough

 

If your normalmap is good enough, it will look convincingly with 100 tris, tops. As Springheel said, the shadowmap is more important for performance, tho. Also, we can also reduce the number of tris later, so having 1492 high-quality is better than having 142 crappy ones

 

So, if you want to move on to other models, thats fine.

[Nosslak]

Anything more than that is awfully high for a relatively small model. But the shadowmesh is ultimately more important.

Okey, but I fear that it'll be hard to make a lowpoly shadowmesh that is entirely contained withing the skull, just as with the cutlass.

 

Believe me, young padawan, you are not trying hard enough

Seems like you were right, I just managed to cut away about 400 triangles, so right now it uses 1054 of them.

 

So, if you want to move on to other models, thats fine.

I'll try to make one LOD version for it but that'll probably be the only one.

 

Here's how it looks:

I'll use an alpha-map for the holes.

 

I won't even bother saying it this time.

Edited September 21, 2010 by Nosslak

[Baddcog]

With alpha I bet you could get the main skull down to 400 easy.

 

You might want to test the shadow mesh. It's been a long time sice I've done those tests, maybe there was another factor that was causing issues.

Guess I should retest myself, I just recall having issues with the shadow showing if it stuck out....

[Nosslak]

With alpha I bet you could get the main skull down to 400 easy.

I'm making that thing in the hole under the eyes out of a plane with alpha instead, so now it's using only 890 polygons. I'm pretty sure I can't reduce it to 400, perhaps 600 but not much more.

 

You might want to test the shadow mesh. It's been a long time sice I've done those tests, maybe there was another factor that was causing issues.

Guess I should retest myself, I just recall having issues with the shadow showing if it stuck out....

I don't even know. I have no idea what you're talking about. If you're perhaps talking about some of the shading on my mesh then that is because I've had to reduce the amount of polygons a lot and also I'm just rendering it from Blender without any shadow mesh.

Edited September 21, 2010 by Nosslak

[Tels]

Okey, but I fear that it'll be hard to make a lowpoly shadowmesh that is entirely contained withing the skull, just as with the cutlass.

 

I think you can do a very very simple shadowmesh and it will still look ok, nobody is able to calculate in their head how the shadow has to look, anyway

 

Seems like you were right, I just managed to cut away about 400 triangles, so right now it uses 1054 of them.

 

Man, I should go into the "motivator" business

 

Any,way, thank you for your work, its awesome to get new stuff for TDM

[Baddcog]

I think you can do a very very simple shadowmesh and it will still look ok, nobody is able to calculate in their head how the shadow has to look, anyway

 

 

 

Man, I should go into the "motivator" business

 

Any,way, thank you for your work, its awesome to get new stuff for TDM

 

I am. lol. serious though.

 

But still, a similar size/shaped blob is good enough for shadow.

 

-------

@ Noss,

 

Not taking the shadows on your mesh (though you might wanna check smooth groups if you get weird shadows), viewports are never the best at displaying lighting anyway.

 

I'm taking about whether or not the shadow mesh sticking out actually casts weird shadows onto your model in game.

 

Maybe I'll just do a test tonight and make sure I'm not wrong (or that I am wrong).

[Nosslak]

I think you can do a very very simple shadowmesh and it will still look ok, nobody is able to calculate in their head how the shadow has to look, anyway

But still, a similar size/shaped blob is good enough for shadow.

Yeah, but as far as I've understood the shadowmesh have to be entirely inside the regular lowpoly surface otherwise it will cause shading errors and because my skull has a very thin thickness it will be hard to make the shadow mesh much more lowpoly without making it intersect with the regular mesh.

 

Anyway, thank you for your work, its awesome to get new stuff for TDM

It's great to be part of a big project, so thank you too.

 

Not taking the shadows on your mesh (though you might wanna check smooth groups if you get weird shadows), viewports are never the best at displaying lighting anyway.

Yeah, I've noticed this too.

 

I'm taking about whether or not the shadow mesh sticking out actually casts weird shadows onto your model in game.

 

Maybe I'll just do a test tonight and make sure I'm not wrong (or that I am wrong).

Yeah, it'd be great if you could test this as it would help me make a lot more lowpoly shadowmeshes.

[Baddcog]

Well, for that model you don't need to model 'inside the bone', just inside the shape of the skull. aka, the shadow mesh doesn't need to have the holes and hollow structure of the model.

 

Basically it could be shaped like a lightbulb, probably under 24 tris. Of course the antlers shadow mesh would have to be a bit more complicated.

 

-----

Shadow meshes can also be more like an old school bush. basically just an x from one direction (doesn't have to be a 'hull'.). That would still cast the volume of the model pretty well in most cases.

[Baddcog]

OK, confirmed.

 

I just did a quick ase in DR (I'm really digging this option for simpler stuff) and got the same results I had gotten before.

Notice how the bottom tri casts shadows onto the object in game. Looks like it's the backside of the shadow material that does it. I tried shadow2 (instead of shadow) also, this is a NoSelfShadow tex I believe, and yet it still had the same effect.

 

I'm sure it has something to do with ase, as Spring said he's done models like this and they are fine. I even remember seeing lwo's that I could see the shadow sticking out of in editor, but in game they rendered fine.

I don't know WHY it would matter between file types, but it does seem to.

[Nosslak]

Shadow meshes can also be more like an old school bush. basically just an x from one direction (doesn't have to be a 'hull'.). That would still cast the volume of the model pretty well in most cases.

I don't understand what you're talking about, again.

 

I just did a quick ase in DR (I'm really digging this option for simpler stuff) and got the same results I had gotten before.

Notice how the bottom tri casts shadows onto the object in game. Looks like it's the backside of the shadow material that does it. I tried shadow2 (instead of shadow) also, this is a NoSelfShadow tex I believe, and yet it still had the same effect.

Damn, that's no fun.

 

I'm sure it has something to do with ase, as Spring said he's done models like this and they are fine. I even remember seeing lwo's that I could see the shadow sticking out of in editor, but in game they rendered fine.

I don't know WHY it would matter between file types, but it does seem to.

Perhaps I can get Spring to export my model to .lwo later on then.

 

Off to better news: I think I'm finished with the modelling of my staff. Here's how it looks:

1678 polygons total.

Edited September 22, 2010 by Nosslak

[Springheel]

Looks great!

[rich_is_bored]

The shadow mesh is clipping through the visible mesh in that screenshot. That's why there is an artifact. I can't think of a practical reason to ever do this.

 

Do the same with an LWO or coax Springheel if you are unable. Less than five minutes of work could dispel this myth or confirm it as truth. The mysterious and elusive ASE format... BOOO!

[Baddcog]

The practical reason is simple.

 

It's alot easier to build a lower poly shadow mesh if you don't have to be so worried about whether or not it clips through the actual mesh of the model.

 

There are models that I could probably cut the shadow count in half on if I didn't have to worry about it. But since I do I have to use 400 tris instead of 200... that's a big deal.

[Nosslak]

I've finally unwrapped the model. I'm not very happy with the unwrapping but I don't think I can improve it much more than this:

 

Here's the model with Serpentines bone tex and some other raw textures (no baking, no normals, no anything, just raw diffuse textures):

 

What do you think?

Edited September 27, 2010 by Nosslak

[Bikerdude]

As usual Noss, you are a master at this making models business...!!!

 

[Nosslak]

As usual Noss, you are a master at this making models business...!!!

 

Thanks a lot!

[Baddcog]

well, i can't see any detail, acroos room on tv from hospital bed.

 

but does look like you have a few overlapping poly and seems like you could squeeze them elsewhere.

 

have you ever tried applying checkboard to them to check pixel density? probably won't matter too much on this on anyway as it's organic .

 

probably this widescreen but it doesn't look square.

 

-

have you tried bake to texture feature? i've been messing with it in max, perfect for this tex cause you can just bake onto that bone tex

 

im really bored, sorry lol

[Serpentine]

Very cool Noss

 

I played around with the diffuse a bit after giving it to you. I'll give you the later version which I think is a bit better. If you want to bake a normal map for that you can then use 'addnormals' in the material def to merge the tiling texture's normal map with the more model detail one from baking. I'm all for minimal effort

[Baddcog]

might be best to overlay the tiling noraml onto baked normal in gimp/ps then renormalize it so all detail is in one tex,normals are the biggest waste of gpu space(since they are large tgas).

 

Tels ha been pointing out draw calls lately and I never realized how all those stages can add up. keeping those draw calls down is probably the best way to optimize models that are already a bit hi in polys.

[Tels]

What do you think?

 

Looks good to me!

 

Would you be willing to make a very very low-poly version of it (something like 50 polies, can be quite boxy as long as the silhouette is ok)? That be cool!