Nosslaks stuff

[Baddcog]

Looks great.

 

I'd just do the metal of the albemic. Makes it a lot more 'generic' so mappers can place it where ever they want.

[Nosslak]

Looks great.

 

I'd just do the metal of the albemic. Makes it a lot more 'generic' so mappers can place it where ever they want.

Thanks! I thought that'd be the preferred way to do it.

 

The highpoly's almost done:

[nbohr1more]

WOW!!!!!!

 

That is magnificent!

[PranQster]

That's awesome!

I like checking this thread. It's always got things to drool over

[Springheel]

Sweet!

[Nosslak]

WOW!!!!!!

 

That is magnificent!

That's awesome!

I like checking this thread. It's always got things to drool over

Sweet!

Thanks!

 

Here's the latest and probably last update on the HP:

Would it be possible to have smoke/steam coming out of the chimney on the top? That would be awesome!

[SiyahParsomen]

lookin sweet Nosslak. I can use it on my mission without doubt.

 

and yes there are many particles that emit smoke/steam. Mapper can place them easly.

Edited October 12, 2011 by SiyahParsomen

[demagogue]

Pretty! Nice steampunk vibe.

Yes a little steam particle effect would be cool with this.

[Nosslak]

lookin sweet Nosslak. I can use it on my mission without doubt.

Pretty! Nice steampunk vibe.

Yes a little steam particle effect would be cool with this.

Thanks!

 

and yes there are many particles that emit smoke/steam. Mapper can place them easly.

I was hoping to have it included in a prefab or something, otherwise I guess it'd work if it was just mapper placed.

 

More goodies for you:

I almost thought I'd have to re-do the LP as the computer crashed last night, turns out it got auto-saved.

[Melan]

There is no real need to prefab that; placing a particle is an easy operation (which everyone making maps should learn anyway). What we need are, or course, a few skins like a lot of the other objects: brass, copper, black iron, rusted iron (in two varieties). The standard ones ought to do.

[Tels]

There is no real need to prefab that; placing a particle is an easy operation (which everyone making maps should learn anyway). What we need are, or course, a few skins like a lot of the other objects: brass, copper, black iron, rusted iron (in two varieties). The standard ones ought to do.

 

Still, creating the particle, and then creating an entityDef, so that the particle is emitted (together in sync with a sound) every now and then would be good, so that not every mapper would need to recreate that. We have done the same with our steambots.

[Baddcog]

Well, the steambot has keyframes, and you just tell it which frame to release the puff at.

 

Sounds and particles can probably be tied together with a trigger. I did this with the print press, but the player has to frob the lever to start it. If it's just a running noise/steam puff combo it probably needs a script to be tied into the prefab.

If it's just a steady stream of steam doesn't the particle already have a sound?

--------

 

I was going to mention, I think you should leave the bolts on the low poly. Sure, it's a lot of polys but that's what the shadow mesh is for.

 

Reason being is the player will be looking at them from right at the side, not top like this view. So having flat normal map bolts will be pretty ugly, and totally obvious from players perspective.

 

 

I think Normals are fine for small rivets and stuff, but the big bolts give it a really meaty, raw feel and it would suck to loose that when the polycount doesn't matter all that much anyway.

--------

Maybe just deleting every other bolt would be the best comprimise.

[Nosslak]

I was going to mention, I think you should leave the bolts on the low poly. Sure, it's a lot of polys but that's what the shadow mesh is for.

 

Reason being is the player will be looking at them from right at the side, not top like this view. So having flat normal map bolts will be pretty ugly, and totally obvious from players perspective.

 

 

I think Normals are fine for small rivets and stuff, but the big bolts give it a really meaty, raw feel and it would suck to loose that when the polycount doesn't matter all that much anyway.

--------

Maybe just deleting every other bolt would be the best comprimise.

Wow, that'd be really crazy. As it is right now most of the bolts are made of hexagons so assuming that's what I'll be making the bolts off of that'll result in a lot of polys as one single bolt would need 16 triangles, but then I've got 53 bolts on every rim and 3 rims with bolts on 2 sides (could/should potentially be removed?), so with some quick math that'll result in 5088 triangles (on top of about 1100 already existing polys). Assuming that I delete every other bolt and the bolts on the bottom-sides of the rims we get 1272 polygons, which is a little bit more respectable but still feels like too many to me. I guess we could use the LOD-system for this but it still feels like a huge waste of performance-resources. I know you think that the shadowmesh is all that counts but surely 1200+ polygons will make a difference?

[Tels]

Well, the steambot has keyframes, and you just tell it which frame to release the puff at.

 

Sounds and particles can probably be tied together with a trigger. I did this with the print press, but the player has to frob the lever to start it. If it's just a running noise/steam puff combo it probably needs a script to be tied into the prefab.

If it's just a steady stream of steam doesn't the particle already have a sound?

 

No particles do not have sounds. But you can have an "fx", which ties together sounds, particles and lights (it was used to weapon lighting up when firing).

 

And such an fx can, just as a particle, run in a loop. E.g.

 

* release steam, make sound

* wait X seconds

* go to step 1

 

And such an fx can be set up with an emitter, and that emitter can be bound to any entity.

 

If the model is available, I can easily make that entityDef. I think it might be even possible to vary the frequency of the steam with a spawnarg.

[Baddcog]

Doom3 really does handle polys quite well. having 60,000 plus in a scene is no big deal. it's how many lights hit how many tris. That's where the shadow mesh comes in.

[Tels]

Doom3 really does handle polys quite well. having 60,000 plus in a scene is no big deal. it's how many lights hit how many tris. That's where the shadow mesh comes in.

 

I agree, a simple shadow mesh + 60000 tris with the bolts is not a problem, esp. as I don't think anyone will build a warehouse full of these things Also, make a LOD model with the bolts as normal mapped, from 4m away you won't see the bolts, anyway.

 

Not only do we get best of boths (super detals close up), but also a can decide if we want to use the high-poly, or not.

 

(In an ideal world, we'd have triangulations or continuos-LOD, but this has to wait until the engine is open source. But I guess at that time we need the high poly, anyway).

[Nosslak]

Alright, I've added every other bolt on the top of the rims and started the texturing:

2636 polys

[Baddcog]

Yeah, that'll look great in game.

[Nosslak]

Almost finished with the diffuse texture:

[PranQster]

Man that's cool.

[Tels]

Almost finished with the diffuse texture:

 

Very cool. Would it be possible that you use a two-stage material? E.g. a simple basic diffuse - which means we can than switch that diffuse to the myriad of metal textures we already have, thus creating skins, w/o having to add yet another 4 Mbyte-per-texture set to the mod).

 

Then on top provide a diffuse that adds colored streaks, drip marks, dirt around the rims etc. Basically a second stage that just darkens/recolors the original diffuse.

[Nosslak]

Man that's cool.

Thank you!

 

Very cool. Would it be possible that you use a two-stage material? E.g. a simple basic diffuse - which means we can than switch that diffuse to the myriad of metal textures we already have, thus creating skins, w/o having to add yet another 4 Mbyte-per-texture set to the mod).

 

Then on top provide a diffuse that adds colored streaks, drip marks, dirt around the rims etc. Basically a second stage that just darkens/recolors the original diffuse.

It'd be great if that could work but I don't see any way to do it, at least not if it isn't possible to do masks/stencils for the different colored textures (in this case copper and brass). The reason that it wouldn't work is that I haven't added actual geometry in all the places where the textures shift (among other places the little brass chimneys base and some of the bolts). I also believe that if we were to just multiply my texture over another it would make the textures look a lot more boring as I think it'd remove all the subtle color-changes that I've added (e.g brown dirt in crevices).

[Baddcog]

Yeah, tis the issue with modeling..

 

You either have a large, great looking texture for one object. Or you use the 'generic' textures from the mod for lower file size/more skin options and you lose object specific AO and detailing.

 

I think it's just fine with only the one skin, not everything in game needs a rainbow of colors.

 

-----------

There are ways to overlay, so you can just use the greyscale AO bake as the base texture. Then overlay standard materials.

 

But that has it's issues too. I can be very hard to get good looking results without the result being too dark, too light, etc... Blend is tricky. It also increases draw calls. Then you also have issues with how a model is uv'ed, whether or not the acutal materials tiles match up, so you can get ugly seams, etc..

[Nosslak]

Yeah, tis the issue with modeling..

 

You either have a large, great looking texture for one object. Or you use the 'generic' textures from the mod for lower file size/more skin options and you lose object specific AO and detailing.

 

I think it's just fine with only the one skin, not everything in game needs a rainbow of colors.

 

-----------

There are ways to overlay, so you can just use the greyscale AO bake as the base texture. Then overlay standard materials.

 

But that has it's issues too. I can be very hard to get good looking results without the result being too dark, too light, etc... Blend is tricky. It also increases draw calls. Then you also have issues with how a model is uv'ed, whether or not the acutal materials tiles match up, so you can get ugly seams, etc..

Yeah, that's more or less what I thought as well. So I think I might just go with this one material. I could pretty easily do more so if you want me to do that just state what other materials you want and I'll be happy to oblige.

 

I think I'm done:

2620 polys and 2048*1024 textures (will resize).

 

BTW how high should I make this? I've got a character that I can use for reference and I would guess it should be about as high as he is, but I don't have any real idea about how high these were.

 

EDIT: How many polygons should I aim to use for the shadow and collisionmeshes? As it is right now I've already used ~150 polys for the bare essentials (body without any rims) and it doesn't seem like I 'll be able to optimize those big protruding parts much more than 100 polys each either. Also will it matter if the shadowmesh penetrates the 100% black parts of the inside of the chimney of the visible mesh?

Edited October 15, 2011 by Nosslak

[SiyahParsomen]

that's sweet.