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Nosslak

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Ok, it's actually two problems :

Firstly the black areas and such seem to be caused by the mesh, I separated out the main mesh, and ran a script over them to merge close/duplicate verts (I also normalized the face normals(not normal map!)) but I don't think that changed anything noticeable. Pic don't worry about the alpha etc, that's only because I cut out the other meshes. I think you were trying to make hard edges or something, I really don't understand much about actually making models :)

That do look very good. And yeah, you're right, I was trying to make hard edges. I guess I didn't trust the normal map enough and just wanted to make sure it'd look good in-game, but your version without any hard edges looks good. I don't know if it makes any real difference but your version should be a little better performance wise as well.

 

The second problem is the normal map, the one in the pic is greatly modified and still not 100%, so redoing that would be a good thing as the manual changes are quite a pain. Take your time, watch some tutorials or whatever, maybe try a newer version of blender or xnormal just don't get put off by starting out issues :)

I'll try to generate a new one tomorrow and try to find some new tutorials for Xnormal as well.

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Good good - we're on the same page then!

 

I'd give you the mesh, but I did remove everything useful from it including the other objects (shadow etc) as I cant work out how to get MeshLab to not merge everything :(

 

I'd also give the new blender a try if you're not confident with xnormal, it's at release candidate stage iirc and seems pretty stable and fleshed out to me... then again I barely have the skills to use anything like that :)

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Good good - we're on the same page then!

 

I'd give you the mesh, but I did remove everything useful from it including the other objects (shadow etc) as I cant work out how to get MeshLab to not merge everything :(

No worries. If you just merged the vertices together that is easily done in Blender too.

 

I'd also give the new blender a try if you're not confident with xnormal, it's at release candidate stage iirc and seems pretty stable and fleshed out to me... then again I barely have the skills to use anything like that :)

I tried baking some new maps in Blender 2.53 but the results where pretty much same as the one I sent off to you. I also tried to bake my normal in Xnormal like three times or something but it crashed every single time (I didn't even make any fancy settings).

 

If you think it'd help I can send you my normal maps psd file where the arms and the swirls on the pole are separated. Would you like that?

Edited by Nosslak
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Also I am noticing some kind of shading error or something:

DOOM32010-08-0618-09-30-20.jpg

Do you know how to fix it?

I've seen artifacts like this resulting from faulty smoothing. I actually never understood that part right. How are you supposed to add proper smoothing groups to poles? If nothing else works, maybe you could try to investigate on this topic, as it might help to fix the problem.

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The lamp is practically done, just need to get a working normal map. So I started work on another model:

Privacyscreen.jpg?t=1281221348

There you've got the highpoly, I'll just need to add some hinges in-between them and then it's done (as long as you don't think there's anything that needs changing).

 

I made it because I saw it was up on the wanted models list and it's heavily based on the reference that Springheel provided in said thread. What do you think?

Edited by Nosslak
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Looks nice.

 

If you can make it skinnable, or do a few skins.

 

The best way would probably be to just map the flat sections as one plane (but give them a few segments vertically and horizontally for good shading) and then any material (wallpaper, wood, custom, whatever can be used) and do another plane for the normal map of the trims (alph'ed)

 

I'd probably only do a one segment wall. Then authors can have 2,3,4 segments... depending on what they want. And they can rotate them all however they want.

 

As far as hinges,

The biggects thing is how to add hinges (not that they are really needed). Have 2 versions, one with hinge and one without so they can be combined and not have hinges on end caps.

Or just not have hinges and call it good?

or make a seprate hinge piece?

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Looks nice.

Thanks!

 

If you can make it skinnable, or do a few skins.

 

The best way would probably be to just map the flat sections as one plane (but give them a few segments vertically and horizontally for good shading) and then any material (wallpaper, wood, custom, whatever can be used) and do another plane for the normal map of the trims (alph'ed)

I was thinking that this would be a great model to utilize Rich's translucency method for and was trying to figure out a good method to make only the wood/paper/whatever shine through, this seems like the best method for that, thanks. I think I'll do a couple different skins myself for this one. Should be extremely easy to do and that way I can also preserve the AO. Also about that splitting of the plane that you're talking about; I don't know if that really is such a good idea as that is what caused shading artifacts on the bottom of my lamps.

 

I'd probably only do a one segment wall. Then authors can have 2,3,4 segments... depending on what they want. And they can rotate them all however they want.

That's what I was going to do. I just used three of them on the render to show it off better.

 

As far as hinges,

The biggects thing is how to add hinges (not that they are really needed). Have 2 versions, one with hinge and one without so they can be combined and not have hinges on end caps.

Or just not have hinges and call it good?

or make a seprate hinge piece?

Yeah, you might be right. I was struggling myself to find a way to make hinges that would be user-friendly in the editor later, but couldn't really come up with a good solution. So I might just skip those or paint them on the texture.

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Are you sure it's the alpha that's causing issues? All the door hinges are alpha and I haven't seen wierd shading on those. We've got other models too like lamps with alpha planes and no issues.

 

I'll take a look at your model, but I'd have to have a 3ds or obj of it. Can't find an ase importer for Max 7 and I don't want to instal 5 again.

 

And if you use tranlucency I'm sure you'll want to use an alpha plane. Other wise the trim stuff that looks like metal will also be transulcent.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Are you sure it's the alpha that's causing issues? All the door hinges are alpha and I haven't seen wierd shading on those. We've got other models too like lamps with alpha planes and no issues.

 

I'll take a look at your model, but I'd have to have a 3ds or obj of it. Can't find an ase importer for Max 7 and I don't want to instal 5 again.

You seem to have misunderstood. Alpha mapping works without any problems whatsoever (for me at least). I was talking about this:

The best way would probably be to just map the flat sections as one plane (but give them a few segments vertically and horizontally for good shading)

But I realize now that I should think things through a bit more, before I post. I understood it as you said that I should make UV-seams all over the planes, but realize now that you just meant regular subdivides. I blame it on the fact that I posted that at 2 AM in the morning.

 

And if you use tranlucency I'm sure you'll want to use an alpha plane. Other wise the trim stuff that looks like metal will also be transulcent.

Yes, I know! I was just saying it was a good a idea to use an alpha map for the metal parts as they wouldn't be translucent then, I was trying to compliment you on that idea. I blame sleep deprivation.

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Nosslak, no slack. Dude, yer good.

Thanks a lot!

 

Have you found a chance to play much yet? Have you some contact with the builders? the mechanists?

Nah, I haven't played all that much yet, though it has been pretty fun and unfortunately a little frustrating. I was playing Saint Lucia the other day which was a really nice mission, at least up until you have to destroy the statue.

I never managed to do that, I walked around the room for maybe half an hour before giving up. At first I climbed the scaffolding and though that yo were obviously supposed to drop the giant hammer on it, but I was too heavy to push down, there was some kind of mechanism with chains and stuff nearby but I couldn't do anything with that either and then when I had ran out of ideas completely I tried to burn the scaffolding down, I figured it was a long-shot but that it could work, I was wrong, nothing of that seemed to work. Then I realized that I maybe should find the relic first, but the only place that I hadn't search yet was behind some gray doors in the cellar and the catacombs but even though I had searched around everywhere, knocked down or killed every guard and looted them I couldn't find any keys. What should I do?

 

 

I also played Thiefs Den which was pretty good, even if it was short.

It was good up until I had to escape I just couldn't find the key for maybe ten minutes as I thought I had entered through the front door. I found it after a while but it wasn't particularly fun to just look for it that long. I think keys should stand out more from the environment too, even if it's unrealistic they should in my opinion be more colorful, bigger or shine (I think they did this in TDS).

 

 

It haven't all been fun, but I still like the mod.

 

Here's an update on the privacy screen:

Privacyscreen2.jpg

It landed on 272 polygons. I think I'll try to make 2048 texture for this as well and then I'll just scale it down.

Edited by Nosslak
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Looks good. No worries about any miscommunication, it's an international forum, and we're all pros ;)

I probably should've said 'subdivisions' anyway as that's the technical term but meh... Not much for technical terms myself.

 

 

Saint Lucia

 

it's been awhile, I am sure you push the rock down on it, you just have to hunker down and push, it'll move slowly, not like that 10 foot 400 lb metal gear in T3 that would flip away wildly by mearly touching it and sound like a tin can ;)

 

 

But such is the gameplay of FM's. Sometimes they are brilliant by design, sometimes the aren't perfect. Those were both very early FM's also so people were still learning the editor and whatnot.

Obviously you had the right idea about the stone, but just probably aren't used to the game mechanics. Our physics are pretty dialed in so a heavy stone like that is gonna be a tough push. Like I said, been awhile, you MAY need to frob it, then push (rather than just push against it)

 

Fidcal actually wrote a beginner tut at the same time he made Thieves Den, so that just complicates it. The team is decidely against T3 glow though, that's just such a 'console' thing ya know.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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very nice, already thinking of some variations to skin it with :) might be a good idea to texture the metal separately to the "not metal" part (this allows us to easily specify different materials to skin it with)

 

Did you come right with the normal on the lamp? If not can you get me the high-poly version as an obj and I'll more than happily try my hand at baking it; bare in mind I haven't ever tried to do so before... but I'd like to try anyway! and failing that I'll give you my manually fixed version which is really horrible :)

 

But seriously, I can see you're a 'get things done' kinda guy and if you need any help on a more immediate basis feel free to shout.

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Smoothing groups in Doom3 are quite simple.

 

All conected verts are in a smooth group. detach the verts for sharp edges.

Yup, I understood it this far, but sometimes when the faces in one smoothing group extend over a too big range of angles, I noticed awkward shading, e.g. when you have made a valley that is formed approximately like a half tube and all parts are within one smoothing group. To be precise, I had this problem when I did the vertex blending for NHAT-forest, which I eventually fixed by splitting the terrain up to more smoothing groups.

 

So just for my personal understanding, isn't the pole the same problem? Can you put all vertical faces of the pole into the same smoothing group?

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Yeah, all the vertical polys on the pole SHOULD be in one smoothing group imo. Unless there's an 'outward detail' like a rib that he wants a sharp edge at.

 

The verts can still be welded (for one smoothing group) and yet also have a seam 'split' for the uv's. It's possible one of the verts at the bottom of that split is actually 2 verts that aren't welded, that would make 2 tris there not shaded together, thus giving a triangular weird shadow.

 

I'll look at the low poly model is I can get an obj or 3ds file for it. I'm sure that's all it is.

 

And even if the polys above that line are a seperate group than the ones below, they should still shade smoothly all the way up, because all their normals are facing the same direction. The only way (other than split verts) that you'd get a weird shading issue is if one of the cylinder segments was capped, thus the smoothing would try to go from the vertical to the horizontal cap.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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The verts can still be welded (for one smoothing group) and yet also have a seam 'split' for the uv's. It's possible one of the verts at the bottom of that split is actually 2 verts that aren't welded, that would make 2 tris there not shaded together, thus giving a triangular weird shadow.

That's what the problem was, and I suspect it's also the reason the normal map doesn't bake correctly, it was messing up the blue channel something aweful which in my head would be something that could happen if this was the case. Even correcting the levels of the blue channel left areas that were far too 'deep' than they should be and seemed to show up a few extra areas were in the bake but I couldn't see on the model at the time.

 

But yeah, in the case of the streetlamp I did test with a fully welded mesh and one in which only the vertical sections were changed to welded and merged. due to the smoothing groups all having independent lighting it looked a bit strange and I actually preferred the look of the fully merged one.

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Well, of course setting smoothing groups on a high poly will transfer over in the baked normal to a degree, and I guess it would be quite possible to get nice crisp edges that way.

 

I've been doing alot of objects though that just use base materials, so no object specific normals. And on those it's the ONLY way to smooth or get sharp edges. I know onw area he wanted sharp was the squares on the base so you might want to look at how that looks with the fully welded obj.

 

 

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Saint Lucia

 

it's been awhile, I am sure you push the rock down on it, you just have to hunker down and push, it'll move slowly, not like that 10 foot 400 lb metal gear in T3 that would flip away wildly by mearly touching it and sound like a tin can ;)

 

 

But such is the gameplay of FM's. Sometimes they are brilliant by design, sometimes the aren't perfect. Those were both very early FM's also so people were still learning the editor and whatnot.

Obviously you had the right idea about the stone, but just probably aren't used to the game mechanics. Our physics are pretty dialed in so a heavy stone like that is gonna be a tough push. Like I said, been awhile, you MAY need to frob it, then push (rather than just push against it)

Well I tried hitting it with my sword and blackjack several times and if you were lucky it would move maybe 3 cm if it'd move at all, but I'll try it again.

The team is decidely against T3 glow though, that's just such a 'console' thing ya know.

I'm not very fond of dumbing down games either, but I could barely see it even though I was looking right at it and when it is like that with something that important then something's wrong IMO.

 

very nice, already thinking of some variations to skin it with :) might be a good idea to texture the metal separately to the "not metal" part (this allows us to easily specify different materials to skin it with)

I'm not sure about the Doom engine but AFAIK texture calls are one of the things that slow down the framerates the most, so those should probably be limited as much as possible. Besides it will be pretty easy to skin this version too.

 

Did you come right with the normal on the lamp? If not can you get me the high-poly version as an obj and I'll more than happily try my hand at baking it; bare in mind I haven't ever tried to do so before... but I'd like to try anyway! and failing that I'll give you my manually fixed version which is really horrible :)

Nah, nothing changed. When I look at the picture on the wiki that you showed me for normal map correction, I think my normal map looks pretty good, but I don't have any real experience with it so I wouldn't really know. Here you go!

 

But seriously, I can see you're a 'get things done' kinda guy and if you need any help on a more immediate basis feel free to shout.

Yeah, I'd like to call myself that, but truth to be told, I have barely finished anything that I've started working on. The problem for me have been that I lose my motivation as I've mostly just modeled my stuff for training and/or portfolio, but now I've got a real reason to finish stuff, all thanks to you, guys. On another note; the only thing I need any real help with would be to make/bake normal maps as I've barely done it at all and Blender keeps screwing me over. Hopefully Xnormal won't crash with my other models.

Edited by Nosslak
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I'm not sure about the Doom engine but AFAIK texture calls are one of the things that slow down the framerates the most, so those should probably be limited as much as possible. Besides it will be pretty easy to skin this version too.

 

Believe me, or not, one more texture call won't hurt framerate. We are usually getting concerned if it gets higher than 200. Plus, having the metal sep. makes it possible to do variants like metal A + skin B and metal C plus skin B.

 

We have exactly the same problem with our paintings where the frame is fused in texture to the frame - meaning you always get the same frame to go with the same painting, and believe me, that looks repetitive when you see the same 15 combos in all missions...

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Actually the metal and the translucent part need to be separate materials anyway lest the whole thing be translucent.

I was under the impression that as long as I used different floating parts of the same mesh I would be able to keep the metal from being non-translucent because I think you were talking about vertex painting and I thought you could do that on a part of a mesh.

 

Got a pretty decent normal from xnormal after playing around, just having a little issue with seams, but should be able to sort that out :)

Nice. Would you mind telling me what settings you used, because both Blender and Xnormal is trying to screw me over again on this new model that I'm making?

 

Believe me, or not, one more texture call won't hurt framerate. We are usually getting concerned if it gets higher than 200. Plus, having the metal sep. makes it possible to do variants like metal A + skin B and metal C plus skin B.

 

We have exactly the same problem with our paintings where the frame is fused in texture to the frame - meaning you always get the same frame to go with the same painting, and believe me, that looks repetitive when you see the same 15 combos in all missions...

Alright, I'll make the materials separately then.

 

Also of note is that I seem to have solved this old mystery:

Also do anyone know why lamps undersides look like they have split edges? I checked the mesh and the normal map there was nothing that should make it look like that. The only reason I could think of was that every edge that goes out from the center has UV-split seams, but that doesn't seem to affect the pole or other places.

Apparently, the problem was that I was keeping all tiled textures (except one of them) outside the 1:1 space of texture (or whatever it's called) for the sake of baking and because I never moved it back I got these weird artifacts, that's how I solved the problem on this new model anyways. I just thought this might help someone else out there.

Edited by Nosslak
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You're right.

Always nice to hear!

 

I wasn't thinking clearly.

Yeah, I was suspecting this as it have been like this for all programs I have ever heard of mentioning vertex painting.

 

Quick question: Can Doom handle non-square textures (f.i 256x512 px)? I think it does but I'm not sure.

Edited by Nosslak
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