Squill's Props

[squill]

just before the new year.. I started earlier skinning this model(not mine) but other things came in between...

i already finished uv mapping.

 

so this week i continued texturing. Also doing normalmaps was tricky using ORB but usefull.

 

 

[sparhawk]

Looks very good. Can the pendulum also swing? Maybe we should create an md5, but even so it looks quite nice.

[Springheel]

The pendulum should either swing or should be straight down. I think swinging would be a nice touch.

 

The texture itself looks good, although does it have a specular? Maybe it's just the way the light is hitting it in those shots.

[squill]

Looks very good. Can the pendulum also swing? Maybe we should create an md5, but even so it looks quite nice.

 

it could swing.. then it also needs a sound attached.

 

The pendulum should either swing or should be straight down. I think swinging would be a nice touch.

 

The texture itself looks good, although does it have a specular? Maybe it's just the way the light is hitting it in those shots.

 

or if it's down i can make it look more broken. It does have specular, very little on the wood, and you can see it clearly on the pendulum.

[_Atti_]

looks great..maybe that ornament on the bottom should be made more visible by adding it on the diffuse map..its barely visible now(guess its just on the normalmap atm)..

[oDDity]

The model is ok, but in those pictures it looks like the wood has all been painted with a flat brown colour.

I dont' think we need a separate thread every time someone makes a simple object like a stool or a clock, just change the name of this thread to 'squills props' and put them all in here as you make them, like BT does.

[_Atti_]

also..that is my mistake however..the back polys of the swinger and those weights was removed because i thought they are unvisible anyway..but the shadows are not working correctly this way..so either self shadowing should be disabled or those polys replaced..

[Subjective Effect]

Looks good.

 

May I suggest, for hte sake of ease, not showing the pendulum. Many grandfather clocks have closed and ornate fronts and if you did this you wouldn't need to have a swinging pendulum.

 

Whatever happens you'd have to have a ticking sound on it though, and ticking is very atmospheric too.

[squill]

i'll work on the textures. I also think the quality of the texture is a bit low. The resolution is now 512x512 but it has many parts which loses some details after texturing. I already scaled some parts up like the clock to make it look more sharper.

 

i think the pendulum could hold still. So no problem with synchronizing/distracting sounds. I'll add some polies to the back for the shadow problem. Do you think the size is ok?

[_Atti_]

i think the size is good

[SneaksieDave]

As for the pendulum staying still, you can bet it won't take long before a T2 fan points out that its grandfather clock kept and displayed proper time with the minute and hour arms. Crazy, that. See, one just did.

[Darkness_Falls]

I just played some of the Bank level in Thief 2, and there are several grandfather clocks in it. They all have swinging pendulums while they tick, which is a nice effect. It would look kinda strange, like a very static 3-D model/texture, if it didn't swing while ticking.

 

Considering T2's swing, I think it would look kinda bad if ours didn't swing.

 

May I suggest, for hte sake of ease, not showing the pendulum. Many grandfather clocks have closed and ornate fronts and if you did this you wouldn't need to have a swinging pendulum.

I think if someone can model it, it couldn't hurt to have a closed/ornate front one for variety. But I rather like watching the pendulum swing on clocks and think it'd be worth it to figure it out.

[sparhawk]

I think a non-swining pendulum should either be in the middle position, or it should be hidden. Having a pendulum that is frozen in time is pretty strange in a normal map, and also is always a reminder that you are playing a game with partially frozen time. I can see something like that working in a map like that strange and twisted mansion in T1, but this is rather limited.

[SneaksieDave]

For the record, I wasn't kidding above. I thought it was well known, but maybe it's not so common knowledge - the clocks in T2 keep the time. You can watch the minute hand move very, very slowly. IIRC, it sets to a start time, or maybe even your system time, and then keeps it accurately. If you've been playing a mission 2.5 hours, it will have progressed 2.5 hours.

 

Man, after all that, I sure hope it wasn't a dream...

 

Anyway, that would be a calling down point. I would expect people to say, "oh yeah real good step backwards, TDM!" all sarcastic 'n hostile 'n stuff.

[Subjective Effect]

Actually Sneaksie, I think that one of the clocks in T2 actually was set to open a vault but you had to wait for it to reach the actual time when the auto open sequence was started. It was the subject of an easter egg thread that one of LGS had input in over at TTLG.

 

And because of this we cannot, just cannot, have a less functional clock. Ticking is great, I'm telling you. It's like an audible heartbeat, lite version. Causes tension.

[sparhawk]

I think this was in the bank mission. But I don't think that the opening was really triggered by time. IMO it was triggered by some other objective but it looked like it was timed, and the readables also implied it, thus enforcing the illusion. The only mission I remember with real timing was an FM and I hated it, because you had to reach a certain point within some timelimit. Don't remeber the name though.

[SneaksieDave]

I think that one of the clocks in T2 actually was set to open a vault but you had to wait for it to reach the actual time when the auto open sequence was started. It was the subject of an easter egg thread that one of LGS had input in over at TTLG.

Yep, I always thought it would have been great if, in addition to the easter egg, they made the sky change to daytime. So yes, you could defeat the vault by waiting for the timeclock to spring, but then you had to sneak out during the day!

[Darkness_Falls]

Interesting, SneaksieDave. I'm not sure I knew the clocks kept actual play-time in T2. If I noticed it long ago, I've obviously long forgotten it. So since I'm still on the Bank level (which has quite a few clocks), I'll be sure to check next time I play. I also love the sounds of ticking clocks and they did a good job on the sounds in T2. I'm always amazed by Thief 1 & 2 when I play them. The non-linearity, the huge levels, the rooftops, everything. I think I find a new room, item or rooftop every time I play it!

[sparhawk]

T1 and especially T2 feels alive. Which is missing in TDS.

[Springheel]

I don't think it matters much if the hands of the clock move, but I think the pendulum should definitely be swinging (and ticking is a must--remember how atmospheric the ticking was in the cradle?).

[squill]

alright i'll animate the swing. But to let it show the proper time would require some scripting?

[Dram]

hmm, i think it'd be possible if it was an entity setting, basically it'd have to be a new entity blah blah blah

[sparhawk]

Maybe it would be good to have an 'update_time' flag for entities? We could trigger a script function for timer updates on entites that have this set. This way it would also be easy to make timed missions or other time related stuff, like objectives expiring or similar.

[squill]

update

 

i re-did the uvmapping and texturing.

 

 

 

So that's finished but the only problem is exporting the animation. I have an animated version which a gentle swinging pendulum but i could't find an md5 export plugin for maya 7 . Anyone know where or how?

 

Also i made the pendulum a separated object, animated and combined the 2 objects again to a single object, don't know if it works...

[Springheel]

Looks good Squill.