Sparhawk's Props

[sparhawk]

I created a pianostool and also skinned it myself. It's now on CVS and ready to use.

 

I planned to do some other music related models, because we currently have absolutely nothing. Since I'm not really feeling like coding, right now, I wanted to do something else. And finally I know how to skin my models as well. Even though it is a quite painfull process.

 

I'm not sure wether the image on the top is a good idea, so maybe I have to replace it. If somebody has a used leather that can fit there then I can replace it. If you think it is ok as it is, then I leave it that way though.

 

[Macsen]

Very nice! You are a man of many talents.

 

The only problem I can see is that the texture on the top of the stool looks a bit low-res and not normal-mapped?

[sparhawk]

Yeah. The texture is pretty lowres. 128x128. Why should I normalmap it? It's a flat surface anyway. I thought normalmaps are used to extrude details where is none. I also would have to learn how to do normalmaps first.

But I thought I could apply a bumpmap with some leather texture, to give it more surface. I'm not sure what the difference between a bumpmap and a normalmap is, because according to my understanding, it would achieve the same, right?

[pakmannen]

You should convert it to lwo before uploading to CVS!

(Looks nice btw)

[BlackThief]

there's no bumpmapping in D3 - everything is converted to normalmaps.

 

the proportions of your model are off - the legs are way too thin in comparison to the upper part. it also looks like the legs on the left are placed closer to the middle than the other ones, but that maybe the perspective.

 

reference for the legs:

[oDDity]

Normal maps and bunmp maps are the same when rendered in the engine, it's just the way you make them that's different. Bump maps just use a grayscale version of your texture images to make very verr small details show up as bumps on the model, details that would be impractical to model into the high resolutiion version.

Bump maps are obsolete though, just take your normal map and bump map, and paste the bump map on top of the normal map in overlay mode.

When making a bump map from a greysacle image using the nvidia tool, it's generally best to set it to 4 sample

 

We all seem to be switching jobs lately. I'm currently mapping, domarius is animating, sparhawk's now started modeling, and SH is doing textures.

[sparhawk]

You should convert it to lwo before uploading to CVS!

 

Why? ASE is an accepted format, in Doom 3 and I don't see a point to convert it in a format I can't even use. And talking about traditions there is no point in converting each and every model into LWO.

 

(Looks nice btw)

 

Thx.

[sparhawk]

there's no bumpmapping in D3 - everything is converted to normalmaps.

 

I still don't know why I should use a normalmap here.

 

the proportions of your model are off - the legs are way too thin in comparison to the upper part.

 

Yeah. You are right. Guess I have to adjust it. I hope I can do this easily, because it was a hell of work to make it this far.

 

it also looks like the legs on the left are placed closer to the middle than the other ones, but that maybe the perspective.

 

They should be pretty symetric. At least in the wireframewindow it looks ok, but I can check it.

 

reference for the legs:

 

I have another reference, but the feet are thicker there as well. Didn't notice it before that it looks so bad.

 

Actually my reference has the flat part of the stool smaller, but I don't mind about this. I made it slightly broader than the doom player bounding box. So I guess it is ok, but I definitely have to take a look at the legs.

[sparhawk]

Bump maps are obsolete though, just take your normal map and bump map, and paste the bump map on top of the normal map in overlay mode.

 

I have some bump maps for the texturepacks that I downloaded, but I must see how I create normal maps. I thought I can use a leathery normal map at the top of the seat, to give it some surface. Must see how that looks.

 

When making a bump map from a greysacle image using the nvidia tool, it's generally best to set it to 4 sample

 

How do I do that? Do you mean that I should render a high-poly version in grayscale (or convert it to grayscale) and run this image through the nvidia normalmapper tool?

 

We all seem to be switching jobs lately. I'm currently mapping, domarius is animating, sparhawk's now started modeling, and SH is doing textures.

 

Don't worry. Actually I always liked modelling since several years, but I never had a real purpose, so I didn't do much, only played around with it. But I find it a bit annoying to always have to ask you modelers for models so I thought I can at least try some of the easier models. I doubt that I will ever get to really complex models, but I always wanted to try some human models as well, so who knows.

 

And I know that, when this phase is over I will switch back to coding, because I always have such cycles, where I like to do one thing more then the other.

[pakmannen]

Hum, I thought we decided to use the lwo format since there was some problem with the ase files? We did convert all them ase models into lwo objects didn't we? I might be wrong about this, I don't really remember...

[sparhawk]

There is no problem with the ASE format. The only problem was, in the beginning, untiol we found out how to texture it and how to use it. There is no problem per se with it.

[New Horizon]

There is no problem with the ASE format. The only problem was, in the beginning, untiol we found out how to texture it and how to use it. There is no problem per se with it.

 

We did run into some problems with it aside from that. Not rendering properly at times or something in that vein, but in the end, we agreed to use .lwo to remain consistent and not have two or three different formats floating around. We can convert it later, so that's no problem.

[sparhawk]

I made the legs now thicker. I hope they are not too thick now.

 

[Macsen]

The stool has been eating pies!

 

Looks great now.

[sparhawk]

Thx. It's also on CVS, so you can take a look at it if you want. Only the rotation is not correct, but that's not really a big problem because the center point is still correct.

 

When I first put it in D3, the rotation was wrong, so I rotated the model, but it's still wrong. I guess I have to find out what way it has to be, but it's not really a big deal.

 

Next thing I wanted to give a try is a matching piano. That's why i started the stool in the first place. It's easier to get aquainted with Blender.

[Springheel]

Don't we have access to a piano that's already made on D3? That even plays music?

[Ishtvan]

There was a player piano on D3World, think I posted it in the Off Topic forum or possibly Documentation here. This is someone else's asset tho so we'd have to get permission to distribute it if we want to use it.

[sparhawk]

Since nobody commented on the textuer (except for reslution) I take it, it's ok. Anyway, I try to find a leathery texture and make another skin for it. Maybe I find something more drab, so we have a more used version as well.

[sparhawk]

I made the legs a bit smaller, but thicker than in the first shot. I think they were much to big, and I think this time they are ok now.

 

[oDDity]

I was thinking of doing a full scale grand pipe organ for my cathedral level. Maybe we can even get it working for real.

[sparhawk]

I was thinking similar about a piano. One where you could actually press the keyboard and use it. But I'm not sure wether this can be done, because it would probably require either a whole lot of entites, or some special handling.

[Ishtvan]

Hmm, I wonder how that D3World player piano was animated. Did they make the piano one big AF entity with all the keys as separate bodies? That might work for what you guys want, since we could limit the frobhighlight to just the particular body (i.e., one key), but still keep it as one entity.

[sparhawk]

Can the piano really be played? Or does it just play the same sequence over again?

[Ishtvan]

The D3World one played sequences, you didn't play it yourself, although I think you could import different sequences as text or MIDI files, not sure.

[sparhawk]

That would be easy then. Just make it frobabble and assign differnt tunes to it, and play them in random order.