Application - Flix Modeller

[Dram 123]

heeeey, that's pretty sweet!

 

Well hell, i guess your choice now is if you want to be a beta mapper or a team member. The only differences are:

 

Team Members:

*Always have access to most recent mod crap

*Have sort of a deadline - for example: when we make our campaign us mappers will have to crank out levels like they're cheeseburgers

*Are LEETER (jk )

*Usually have to be quite active on forums (ie: not disappear for years)

 

Beta Mappers:

*Get Builds rather then constant access

*No deadline - they are doing just their own things for themselves - their own fm's rather then predetermined things

*No obligation to be super active but feedback is expected from them, such as bugs possible improvements etc

 

Both:

*Both take part in making tutorials for FM-making directly related to DarkMod. They don't need to do this but it helps if they discover a new way of doing things and document it for the whole community to use in the future

*Give their resources to the DarkMod team to be packed with the mod so there are more models etc to use upon release (no point keeping a model to yourself - plus it's part of the agreement of joining the team - whatever you create you have rights over but the community is free to use it only for DarkMod related missions or tools etc [i don't know if it encompasses T1/2/3 too])

 

 

 

Basically now you have to choose which suits you better. I have spare time usually quite regularly, so I have enough time to be a Team Member, but if you have very sparse time then it might be a better idea to join the beta mappers. None is better then the other, just depends how much time you are willing to spend into TDM.

 

Once you choose NH or Spar or whoever will give you the correct privileges etc.

 

Welcome on board wherever you choose

 

@NH: I'm expecting he's coming on board - he's good at mapping AND modelling - which is excellent

[FliX 0]

well generaly speaking i would be prety happy to be a team member, i supose i could usualy spare my sundays more or less entirely. ie a couple of hours a week.

but one thing you will have to understand university and studying always takes priority

that is the reason why i havnt modded for the last half year. but now that i have gotten used to university life im confident to get back into my beloved hobby.

 

how many hours a week is expected from the other team members?

 

 

edit

 

something i gathered that cant miss out in TDM, even though you probly already have one.

As i said im in the process of practicing and extending my skills

120polys

[Dram 123]

hehe nice harp

 

Well, there is no real expectation. It's just you're meant to be relatively active for the most part. I am in uni too, and studying takes priority, everyone knows and understands that so there's no problem there. You are working for free after all

 

Anyways, if you want to be a Team Member then ok, just gotta wait for one of the admins to change your status , unless they want to discuss some more issues or whatever, but I think i've pretty much dealt the dish

 

oh but always remember that we're Fingernail's Bitches and for the first week you must wear the "Fingernail's Bitch" tag.

 

Anyways, it'll be good to see what you can achieve with Darkmod as compared to the older engines you've worked on - those looked bloody good those maps. If you have'nt used D3Edit you might want to head over to Doom3World.org and check out the D3 basics, then we can help you learn how to add the Darkmod specific crap.

[Springheel 4676]

Hi FliX. At the moment we really need to see that you can effectively use normal-maps to create detailed objects. Your models so far don't have a lot of obvious detail on them. If you've seen our screenshots you'll see that we already have some pretty talented modellers and we want to maintain a consistant level of quality.

[Dram 123]

umm, Spring, look at his maps too. He's good at mapping, but yes we do need modellers who can texture and bumpmap well

[FliX 0]

well i can make high poly models too,

so i will atempt to make a lowpolymodel of something and then make a highpoly of the same object.

and then i will see if i can get a normal map onto it.

im currently till sunday at my parents, i will install Doom3 again when i get home on sunday.

then i will try to get a model ingame, (another thing i havnt done before).

 

as i have said before im not a born texture artist. i can work decently with PS, but im not nearly as talented in making textures as i should be. agreedly i have never realy tried to do something high quality, texture wise... we will see.

 

so unless it would be pointless, i will try to get the piano ingame, and i will atempt at building a high poly version of it.

then i will have to ither be told by somebody from the team, how to exactly get the highpoly model over the lowpoly model ingame, or i will need a few good step by step tutorials to guide me through my first tries.

i will also try to texture it decently. and get it all together ingame.

 

i guess i will start with the highpoly piano tomorrow (saturday) i'll try to get the highpoly model up to scratch by sunday, so that by sunday evening i will try to get it all together.

i hope that is ok, and i also hope there will be use for my piano then

 

 

BTW:

I have allready mapped for D3, i used to be on the D3Mod d3 Genetic, that sadly died.

and some of you might even know me from D3files, i used to be site admin there, till i fell out with leading FilesNetwork people.

 

incase anybody is interested in my past modding activities:

 

Mods Ive worked on

 

 

Mapper - Elite Force - Colony 7

Mapper - Elite Force 2 - A Gate 2 Birds and a Beautiful Sky

Mapper - Doom 3 - D3 Genetic

Mapper - Half Life 2 - Elite Force Total Conversion

Mapper - Elite Force - Star Gate Mod

(thats all i can think of right now, but im prety sure there have been more )

 

Games I have mapped for:

 

Duke Nukem 3D

Quake 3

Elite Force

Elite Force 2

Doom 3

Unreal Tournament

Half Life

Half Life 2

Jedi Knight - Jedi Outcast

 

Command and Conquer Red Alert

Command and Conquer Generals

Command and Conquer Zero Hour

Age Of Empires I

Age Of Empires II

and more...

 

 

 

edit

 

btw, how many polys should a high poly model have? or doesnt it matter for the creation of the normalmap?....

im not yet used to modeling for games

 

edit

 

another thing i wanted to add, i realy have allready learnt a great deal in the last few days, especialy concerning UVmapping and such...

 

edit

 

lol, another thing, would it be possible to see some of your done models, with their respective meshes, of the high and lowpoly model.

i would just like to actualy see some referances concerning polys, detail, ect...

 

edit

 

one more practical question, do you later texture the highpoly model or the lowpolymodel?

 

edit

 

another important question, does D3 suport polygons with 4 corners/sides? or only triangles?

because i prefer modeling with 4-gons, and i have been told that maked animation much easyer!

[Dram 123]

thats quite some portfolio lol

[Springheel 4676]

I don't have any images with a mesh on them handy, but here's an example of a texture and normalmap.

 

 

 

and here's the normal map generated from the highpoly model with d3's renderbump:

 

Which was used for the following model:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?act=A...ype=post&id=774

[oDDity 3]

Not really a good example of normal map usage.

THe spikes on that chair should have been modeled, not normal mapped,

You can make a spike with 4 triangles.

[FliX 0]

i cant see the model anyway, i dont have the clearance!

 

but anyway

i would appriciate answers to my various questions

 

i have btw started on the highres piano model

[oDDity 3]

btw, how many polys should a high poly model have? or doesnt it matter for the creation of the normalmap?....

As many as you need for the detial you want to include. THere is no limit, they often run into hundreds of thousands, or even millions of polygons.

 

 

 

lol, another thing, would it be possible to see some of your done models, with their respective meshes, of the high and lowpoly model.

i would just like to actualy see some referances concerning polys, detail, ect...

 

Its perecty simple. You make a high poly version with as much details as you deem necessary, triangulate it, set smoothing on, save it as myobject_high

Make a low poly version matching the high poly pone as closly as possible, but wiht as few triangles as possible, and save it as myobject_low

using the doom renderbump, or the normal mapper of your choice you end up with the high res model mapped onto the low res model.

 

one more practical question, do you later texture the highpoly model or the lowpolymodel?

You don't texture the high poly model, you don't even have to UV map it.

You take the nomal map you produced into photoshop, overlay that with a screenshot of the low poly model's uv map, and start texturing.

 

 

 

another important question, does D3 suport polygons with 4 corners/sides? or only triangles?

because i prefer modeling with 4-gons, and i have been told that maked animation much easyer!

Like every game engine ever made, it only supports triangles, becasue triangles by their nature must be perfectly flat.

YOu can still model it using quads and then triangulate it when you're finished, every 3d app has a triple command.

[FliX 0]

ok, thanx, thats a good start

 

anybody know of tutorials for

using the doom renderbump, or the normal mapper of your choice you end up with the high res model mapped onto the low res model.

that part...

[Magnesius 0]

Try this:

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=529&

[FliX 0]

progress report

[FliX 0]

 

if that model is ok, as it is now.

 

then i will now have to try to make a normalmap from the model

and then get it to work with the lowpoly model.

 

 

 

2 things concerning the model, should i add 2 pedestals at the bottom?

and should i add candle holders to the front of the piano, as this used to be the case in the middle ages.

[Magnesius 0]

2 things concerning the model, should i add 2 pedestals at the bottom?

That would be a must.

 

Concerning the normal maps: I am using Orb now, and I advise you to use it as well:

1) Open "settings.ini" and insert your desired resolution.

2) Open "autoexec.cfg" and insert the string "FlipYInNormalMap on" at the bottom. This is a requirement for D3.

3) Get into your modeling application, and place both the high and low polygon mesh directly on each other. Is is important that their point of origin is at the very same position.

4) Export the meshes (OBJ worked best for me)

5) Edit the "head.cfg" with your new mesh names, keep the other settings.

 

Notify me if you encounter any problems with it, Flix.

 

Edit: Note that only the low polygon count mesh needs an UV map.

[FliX 0]

Magnesius, do you also use C4D?

and do you have ICQ or msn?

[Magnesius 0]

Magnesius, do you also use C4D?

and do you have ICQ or msn?

No, I am using Blender. It is free software, and quite effective. I do not use ICQ or such at the moment, let us keep the discussion here in the board. If you really are up to instant messaging, connect to the IRC server "irc.starchat.net", join the channel "#darkmod" and post a message here that you are online.

[FliX 0]

i quit the rendering of the normalmap yesterday after 6 hours.

im gonna try again tonight, .... with the hope that it will be done by tomorrow morning...

[oDDity 3]

Use the renderbmup tool in doom. It will render a map in a few minutes.

using antialiasing increases the time, but it's rarely necessary to use more than 1x aa.

 

To use it, you give you low poly object a surface name like

models/mymodels/object

 

Write a material filed called mymodels.mtr

with this shader in it:

 models/mymodels/object

 {
 renderbump -size 512 512 
-aa 0 
-trace 0.02
 models/mymodels/object_local.tga 
 models/mymodels/object_high.lwo

 }

 

The first line indicates the size of the normal map you want

The second line is how much antialiasing

The third line is to do with how closely your low poly model matches the high poly model. You can try making this bigger if you aren't getting the right results, but 0.02 works for me all the time.

The fourth line is where you want the normal map to be stored and what you want to call it

the ffith line is the path to your high poly object.

 

Then you just have to go into the doom editor and type

 renderbump models/mymodels/object.lwo

[FliX 0]

http://hive-dev.net/flix/model/head_local.tga

orb did obviously not work, ill try again with the doom3 one this evening.

[Dram 123]

Are you sure that's not just unwrapped to the way the model is? I doubt it, but hey, it never hurts to make sure

[FliX 0]

na, the unwrap looks like this.

http://hive-dev.net/flix/model/piano_txt.jpg

[Dram 123]

hot damn, that is pretty fucked up then. Hmm, hopefully odd or someone can help you with that - i've never done it before hehe

[Magnesius 0]

http://hive-dev.net/flix/model/head_local.tga

orb did obviously not work, ill try again with the doom3 one this evening.

Flix, you have not set up the normal map resolution properly. According to your posted image, it's 1024x512. Switch it to 512x512 (as explained above, settings.ini) and try again:

 

ORB's settings.ini:

 

#
# Window size AND texture map output size
#
#
# Must be power of 2
# otherwise, results cannot be view directly after Renderbump command
#
# Recommender modes are:
# 1024x1024
# 1024x512
# 512x512
# 512x256
# 256x256
#
# Note: whole screen must be visible during renderbump
#

WIDTH 512 HEIGHT 512

 

Read again...