Nosslaks stuff

[Nosslak]

Anyway, that model you are working on, Nosslak, also looks as if it has a valve to control the gas? Maybe frob/toggle-able too? As the quiet option?

I never really thought through the design of it, I just modeled after the reference, but it sounds reasonable that one could use that to put it out.

 

Springs: Do the globes CM need to consist of 16 polys or less (it will rotate if you frob it)?

 

Here's a small update on the lamp:

I optimized it a bit and smoothed some parts. All in all I the difference is just 8 polygons (634 polys now) so it's not a lot but I don't think I'll be able to optimize it much more without sacrificing any detail/smoothness. Is it too highpoly? If not I'll just proceed with the texturing.

[Springheel]

Springs: Do the globes CM need to consist of 16 polys or less (it will rotate if you frob it)?

 

I don't believe so, but I'm not sure how Fidcal planned to implement it. If it's using a rotate function, then no.

[Springheel]

(634 polys now) so it's not a lot but I don't I'll be able to optimize it much more without sacrificing any detail/smoothness. Is it too highpoly?

 

It's a bit high but we've got lights that are higher, I believe. I'd just make sure to create a simple shadowmesh for it.

[Tels]

About those unextinguishable lights with brittle looking glass shielding.

 

If we had a broken model variant, doesen't that mean that we could make a prefab light which could be broken with a well placed arrow or sword/blackjack blow? Gameplay variety and it would make broadheads more useful. When the glass is broken, the gas leaks out and the light is extinguished.

 

Breaking the glass would make a lot of noise attracting nearby guards.

 

Just for the record, you don't need to do anything special for "lights with a model", just set the spawnargs "broken" (the broken model) and "health" (integer, usually 5, and off it goes.

 

For entities with attached light it is a bit more complicated, but can be easily done by extending the script object.

 

The general question is instead: Do we really want this, and if so, which lights should be breakable, and by what? If broadheads break lights, then:

 

* water arrows are not so useful anymore

* guards need to hear the noise, need to be alerted by the shattered glas/light when they see it etc etc.

* how does the player know which light he can break?

 

etc.

[Fidcal]

Not sure myself but probably either a func_rotating that is turned on by frob then times out somehow or else completely a script rotation that slows down to a stop. No idea about cms except moveables. I could do a test but when I don't know.

[Berny]

hahaha, i love your stuff ... the owl looks fantastic and very funny

[Nosslak]

It's a bit high but we've got lights that are higher, I believe. I'd just make sure to create a simple shadowmesh for it.

Alright, I'll do that then.

 

Not sure myself but probably either a func_rotating that is turned on by frob then times out somehow or else completely a script rotation that slows down to a stop. No idea about cms except moveables. I could do a test but when I don't know.

I'll try to finish it up till tomorrow and then you can hopefully take a look soonish.

 

hahaha, i love your stuff

Thanks!

 

... the owl looks fantastic and very funny

I don't even know. What are you talking about? I haven't made any owls, I wanted to do a raven once but I got put off, no owls though.

[nbohr1more]

He's probably referring to Atti's owl (from his long awaited mission... awaited... )

[Nosslak]

He's probably referring to Atti's owl (from his long awaited mission... awaited... )

Oh. I still can't play most missions so I'm not keeping tabs on the FMs.

 

Quick question: Should I use a separate material/unwrap for the lamp itself for this model just as I did with the streetlamp?

[Baddcog]

nice lamp.

 

@Tels. I think the breakable should be no. It was in the past and saying yes now means redoing all those lamps again... Everylamp would need a broken model, that leads to more than just broken glass, because the opaque glass hides the 'empty insides'. If you break that glass then the model needs rebuilt...

[Tels]

nice lamp.

 

@Tels. I think the breakable should be no. It was in the past and saying yes now means redoing all those lamps again... Everylamp would need a broken model, that leads to more than just broken glass, because the opaque glass hides the 'empty insides'. If you break that glass then the model needs rebuilt...

 

Yeah, that is a valid concern. And if we make only "new" lamps breakable, the player will wonder why they can't break some and not others.

 

@Nosslak: This is nice work, and I don't want to pull you down, but IMO this model shows why (with the current "poly-renderer" technique) you shouldn't try to model "round" things. Look at the high poly count (> 600) for a model that still does not look round at all, instead it looks jagged. I bet our current square lamp models use much less polies, and still look "perfect" because a square is a square, even when represented by only one poly. Just for the record, we have the same problems with heads, fruit and anything else that should appear round - you can often see the edges in the silouette even if the shading tries to hide this by smoothing.

 

It's a shame real-time raytracing isn't there yet...

[Nosslak]

nice lamp.

Thanks!

 

@Nosslak: This is nice work, and I don't want to pull you down, but IMO this model shows why (with the current "poly-renderer" technique) you shouldn't try to model "round" things. Look at the high poly count (> 600) for a model that still does not look round at all, instead it looks jagged. I bet our current square lamp models use much less polies, and still look "perfect" because a square is a square, even when represented by only one poly. Just for the record, we have the same problems with heads, fruit and anything else that should appear round - you can often see the edges in the silouette even if the shading tries to hide this by smoothing.

I can't believe it but you are right and Epic, Valve, Blizzard and the rest of their friends are all wrong. Instead of trying to make anything look round and realistic, everyone should instead just go back to making games with very abstract shapes or try some cubism instead because if we can't get the models to be completely round you should just as well give up. /sarcasm

 

It's a shame real-time raytracing isn't there yet...

Wouldn't that just enable better shadows/reflections/transparency?

[Springheel]

Should I use a separate material/unwrap for the lamp itself for this model just as I did with the streetlamp?

 

Do you mean separate textures for the glass vs metal?

[Nosslak]

Do you mean separate textures for the glass vs metal?

Yeah.

[Serpentine]

Yeah.

 

Definitely two sets of UV's for something like this, the glass will most likely need to change colour and such, while the metal is a more or less constant. I'm sure you can play around with some of the existing glass materials and find something to showcase it with, but even if not it's far better for skinning and manipulating in general

[Springheel]

Yeah, what Serp said. I also want to plug again the philosophy of re-using existing textures whenever possible. The more that textures are re-used, the fewer textures have to be pre-loaded, and the less time necessary to load maps (not to mention that it can save time making new shaders). We're to the point now where we have at least a dozen different "lit glass" textures to choose from.

[Baddcog]

There should be a fairly plain glass that would work good for the globe too, I used it for my sphere lamps I believe (shader name could be found in dr by looking at them.).

 

I actually think a pure cubeism game would be really cool, great idea! but it would have to be very painterly so it looks like a cubist painting. I can't recal ever seeing that done before.

 

As for round things, what can you do? They have to be higher polys than most stuff and that's where you just have to do your best as a modeller to balance tri count/shape/details.

Personally i'd rather see one less 'ridge' in the mount, and those tris used in the globe . IF you HAD to stay at or under that count.

 

But it is a light model, so the shadow mesh really only needs to be very simple, a small base against the wall just so it doesn't appear to float. (but I can't remember if we were toggling shadow meshes on lights...)

 

I do think the globe is kindof 'blocky' looking. Did you use a geosphere? IMO they always make spheres look jagged, but using a regular sphere (while maybe a bit higher in polycount) always looks better.

What I notice odd about that sphere is the segments are not equal from that view (that's why I think its a geosphere). Up top there are a few short edges, then down from there a few long ones... The inconsistancy is what makes them look 'not round' imo.

By now almost everyone has excepted that round game objects don't always look round (especially in silohette).

[Springheel]

Huh, you know what? I have to eat my words regarding something I said earlier. When it comes to static meshes, apparently projectiles DO collide with the CM, not the visible mesh. Apparently it's only md5meshes where they use the visible mesh.

 

I shot some arrows at a movable chair, and they did indeed still right between the legs in the CM. Bummer.

[Aprilsister]

Well that's what you get for shooting arrows at a chair. Shame and disappointment.

[Tels]

I can't believe it but you are right and Epic, Valve, Blizzard and the rest of their friends are all wrong. Instead of trying to make anything look round and realistic, everyone should instead just go back to making games with very abstract shapes or try some cubism instead because if we can't get the models to be completely round you should just as well give up. /sarcasm

 

Man, you are really taking this personal, right?

 

I just mentioned that despite all the effort and polies, a round object still does not look round. If you can't avoid that, well, we have to suck it down (heads, orbs, whatever), but if you can avoid it, then better make a square thing.

 

People on the team consistently blast us for wasting performance, even when the "wasted" performance is very small. But now imaging what happens if we replace all our square lamps in a scene with round ones - oops.

 

So I never said you should destroy your lamp, or make it into a square, I was just pointing out the (hopefully) obvious. Something that every modeller should keep in mind, because you don't make objets for some fancy pre-rendered whatever art project, but for a game where things need to run in real-time. And targeting your goal should be part of your job as modeller - so no need to get your panties in a twist

 

Wouldn't that just enable better shadows/reflections/transparency?

 

No, not only, raytracers can also deal with hard mathematic definitons. (unless you build a raytracer which can only raytrace models build form polygons, but then you are doing it wrong

 

That means you can tell the raytracer "this is a spere" and it will always render it with pixel perfect quality, no matter how close you are. You will never see errors below a (sub) pixel.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing_%28graphics%29

 

Unfortunately, it is not really usable in a game engine yet. (Or at least not in idtech4)

[Tels]

Huh, you know what? I have to eat my words regarding something I said earlier. When it comes to static meshes, apparently projectiles DO collide with the CM, not the visible mesh. Apparently it's only md5meshes where they use the visible mesh.

 

I shot some arrows at a movable chair, and they did indeed still right between the legs in the CM. Bummer.

 

Did you mean "static char" in your last sentence here? And yeah, I wondered why static-mesh-plus-CM should be different for projectiles than for moveables, but I didn't actually try it.

 

Anyway, static meshes with no CM (where the entire visible mesh is the CM) work just fine, even if the visible mesh is 10000 polies. However, if one can use tricks like "3-sided legs" and "simplify some surfaces", I am sure the engine will not complain

 

One thing to keep in mind is that every CM is a copy. That is, if you have a static table and clone it 10 times, you get 10 clones of the CM (not 1 CM and 10 times the distance difference stored). Was a bit shocked to find that out, and I think we might one day change this to save memory, but for now simpler CMs are certainly welcome if the visible model is complicated. Just don't simplify them to the point where they don't work anymore.

[Nosslak]

Yeah, what Serp said. I also want to plug again the philosophy of re-using existing textures whenever possible. The more that textures are re-used, the fewer textures have to be pre-loaded, and the less time necessary to load maps (not to mention that it can save time making new shaders). We're to the point now where we have at least a dozen different "lit glass" textures to choose from.

Yeah, but I could only really find one texture that I felt that I could use and that isn't a particalarly good texture anyway, lamp_glass_colorme_lit. It's got a 1px line at the left side, there seems to be no higher res version than the editor version (I couldn't find one in the dds folder of the window textures, there is a tga version in the textures folder though it is only slightly darker not higher res and it doesn't have any suffix).

 

There should be a fairly plain glass that would work good for the globe too, I used it for my sphere lamps I believe (shader name could be found in dr by looking at them.).

I think I found it lamp_wall_sphere.ase and I can see that it has multiple skins (could be materials but I doubt it) but I can't find the pk4 that's containing the skin files.

 

I actually think a pure cubeism game would be really cool, great idea! but it would have to be very painterly so it looks like a cubist painting. I can't recal ever seeing that done before.

There is Minecraft, but that isn't so painterly.

 

But it is a light model, so the shadow mesh really only needs to be very simple, a small base against the wall just so it doesn't appear to float. (but I can't remember if we were toggling shadow meshes on lights...)

Yeah, how should I make that? Should I just make a spike that's pointing out of the wall to the end horizontal part of the mount or should it be more than that?

 

I do think the globe is kindof 'blocky' looking. Did you use a geosphere? IMO they always make spheres look jagged, but using a regular sphere (while maybe a bit higher in polycount) always looks better.

What I notice odd about that sphere is the segments are not equal from that view (that's why I think its a geosphere). Up top there are a few short edges, then down from there a few long ones... The inconsistancy is what makes them look 'not round' imo.

By now almost everyone has excepted that round game objects don't always look round (especially in silohette).

I'm using Blender and that's got two different spheres (three if you count subdivided cubes) and Blender calls them UV-spheres and ICO-spheres. Which of these do you mean? It sound like you're probably referring to ico-spheres but I want to be sure (also when I google geosphere the results showed bith ico- and uv-sphere).

 

I actually started making it out of an ico-sphere but then decided that it was important that there was a clean line separating the globe from the mount so I just went with the uv one instead. I can pretty easily make a clean line with ico as well with just a little bit more work, so it was mostly a choice I made out of laziness tbh.

 

Huh, you know what? I have to eat my words regarding something I said earlier. When it comes to static meshes, apparently projectiles DO collide with the CM, not the visible mesh. Apparently it's only md5meshes where they use the visible mesh.

 

I shot some arrows at a movable chair, and they did indeed still right between the legs in the CM. Bummer.

Damn, that is a bummer. I don't really feel motivated to go back and remake the globes CM to account for this, at least not now, most other CMs should probably still work fine though. I also just realized that when I made the globe frames CM I just made a cylinder and extruded and merged this into the middle where the globe itself is so that might cause problems so I might have to fix that as well.

 

Man, you are really taking this personal, right?

Yeah, I might've overreacted. It felt like you told me that my model was crap because it wasn't round, but I re-read it now and that's not at all what you said. I'm sorry.

 

People on the team consistently blast us for wasting performance, even when the "wasted" performance is very small.

What, I just can't believe that. I've been feeling the total opposite of that, that you've "wasted" too little, that there are too many models that's just using stock textures without unique normals, AO or anything.

[Nosslak]

I apparently used too many quotes so I'll just continue from above:

 

So I never said you should destroy your lamp, or make it into a square, I was just pointing out the (hopefully) obvious. Something that every modeller should keep in mind, because you don't make objets for some fancy pre-rendered whatever art project, but for a game where things need to run in real-time. And targeting your goal should be part of your job as modeller - so no need to get your panties in a twist

Yeah, I know. That is one of the reasons for me to often ask if something is too highpoly and such.

 

No, not only, raytracers can also deal with hard mathematic definitons. (unless you build a raytracer which can only raytrace models build form polygons, but then you are doing it wrong

 

That means you can tell the raytracer "this is a spere" and it will always render it with pixel perfect quality, no matter how close you are. You will never see errors below a (sub) pixel.

 

http://en.wikipedia...._%28graphics% 29

 

Unfortunately, it is not really usable in a game engine yet. (Or at least not in idtech4)

I did not know that. Thanks!

 

Did you mean "static char" in your last sentence here? And yeah, I wondered why static-mesh-plus-CM should be different for projectiles than for moveables, but I didn't actually try it.

It sounded too good to be true, while at the same time it sounded reasonable as arrows will stick to some surfaces but most moveables will just react to physics and fall down so it wouldn't be as obvious there.

[Springheel]

Yes, arrows stick into CMs regardless of whether it is a static mesh or movable (both are static meshes as far as the engine is concerned). It must only be with animated meshes that per-poly detection is used.

 

That means that CMs for wooden non-movables should follow the original shape as much as possible, and try to avoid sticking out of the visible mesh. For metal, stone, or other materials that arrows simply break on, it is less important.

 

I still think the globe one is fine, though.

[Baddcog]

The UV sphere would be a regular sphere in Max, those give the best overall look imo. The Ico sphere link doesn't work, but from your descript I'm sure it's comparable to the geo sphere.

(The Ico is based on quads [4 sided polys], the others are based on tris, or octogons or something. So the edge loops don't go straight around, that gives the uneven look I mentioned from different angles) In Max the geo sphere has several settings, octo and a few others. (octo I suppose is based on 8 tris to form a 'loop' and the loops overlap with others).

 

Minecraft is made of cubes, but when you said cubeism (or whatever...) I thought of the cubist painting movement.

ie:

That imo would be a very cool game world, the minegraft cube thing to me is blah.