Getting Our House In Order

[Springheel]

Ok, here's a list of things that need to be addressed in the models divison:

 

Taking stock of our assets

Now that Oddity has left, what models do we have? Which can be modified and used and which must be discarded?

 

Modifying the existing character height

Changing the AI models to match the player's height.

 

Size Standard

Picking an AI to use as a standard measuring stick for future models. Fixing the size of models that are currently too big/small.

 

Deciding on Hands (Full fingers it is)

Full fingers or mitten hands?

 

Origins

Checking the origin and bounding box on models.

 

Material Type (done)

Add material type (wood, etc) to the materials.

 

 

We are planning on releasing our next alpha release on May 31st, so I'd like to have these issues solved by then. BT, can you think of anything else? Can we start assigning these to people?

[Dram]

I can easily do one of those if you want, such as the materials or the origins.

[sparhawk]

I must note that the date is not 100% fixed, because I would like to include the menu and startup screen, which is currently under development. The assumption is, that this will be finished by then, but if it is a few days off, we move the milestone as well.

[New Horizon]

A request for to fix the light gem clipping through the floor before the next release. It just needs to be offset from the eyeheight so that the tip of the tip of the gem is at the top of the players head and not in his neck.

[sparhawk]

There nothing to fix. Just adjust the values.

[New Horizon]

There nothing to fix. Just adjust the values.

 

Well, unless you changed something Spar, I don't think I can adjust the values without affecting the players eye height. Aside from that, you told me NOT to change the values, becuase you were going to find a way to 'scale' the light gem while the player crouches. The lightgem is tied to the player view height, and I already made the adjustments to put the tip of the gem in the players head months ago, but the problem happens when the player crouches. Upon crouching, the eye height drops to the player models chest.

 

Here is where you discussed scaling the model.

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=2890&hl=

[sparhawk]

Yah! Ok.

[Springheel]

I can easily do one of those if you want, such as the materials or the origins.

 

Ok, Dram, why don't you go ahead and start on the materials? You and NH were going to be doing those anyway. I think I added wood to a few of them, but that's it.

 

In cases where the model is made up of different material types, just pick the one you think is most important (for example, paintings should probably be made wood, since even though there is canvas as well, the wooden back would absorb arrows and make a wood sound if dropped).

[Dram]

Ok, Dram, why don't you go ahead and start on the materials? You and NH were going to be doing those anyway. I think I added wood to a few of them, but that's it.

 

In cases where the model is made up of different material types, just pick the one you think is most important (for example, paintings should probably be made wood, since even though there is canvas as well, the wooden back would absorb arrows and make a wood sound if dropped).

 

Understood. Will do this tomorrow. It's 10:24pm here atm.

[Dram]

Doing it now...

[Dram]

Well it's a bit late to post it but I'm done

 

It's all on cvs and everything, along with my models etc.

[Springheel]

So this is done for the models as well as the brush textures? Great, I'll cross it off the list.

[Dram]

So this is done for the models as well as the brush textures? Great, I'll cross it off the list.

Like I said, -everything- hehe.

 

However, Gild told me not to put the frob code in as he wants to put the hybrid one in so yeah. Basically I cleaned them up a bit and added definitions.

 

We should review the characters that oDD made though, as many of them have a face in the same texture as the armor for example (the revenant for one) which means that you either have armor pointless or have the face made of steel.

 

Basically we just need to regroup those parts - it can use the same texture but not the same material. Off the top of my head the Revenant has this (he's too high poly btw), and the city watch elite guard too. The revenant has his face with his clothing, which is bad cos his face is bones; and the city watch elite has his boots with his armour, which means atm they're BOOTS OF STEEL...

[Springheel]

@Dram:

 

Are you able to shrink the size of the AI models, and to optimize the polys at the same time?

 

Second, would this have any impact on the animations Dom has been doing or mess up anything else you (or anyone else) can think of?

 

Third, how many of Oddity's models are you able to do this for (meaning we actually have the required files)?

 

 

 

If this turns out to be fairly straightforward, then I think we should go ahead and do it now. We'd just have to establish exactly how tall we wanted each model to be.

[BlackThief]

about reducing polycount - this will most likely break the model. so we'd have to rig it again and you mustn't forget that these are animated objects, so they may have edges loops that don't add to the shape, but are needed for proper deformation.

[Dram]

Well the reduce polys think in milkshape is ok I guess if you're reduceing not too many polys. Like I said before, I did'nt notice any difference when i halved the poly count, except it got glitchy below the kilt on the revenant - that can be fixed though. It's not too great an idea but it's better then having 6000 polys on each guy.

 

In milkshape i can easily regroup things and then export it to an lwo. I can easily reduce the poly count and also reduce the size. But reducing the size might break anims slightly.

 

It could work like this:

*I use the reduction option on each part of the model making sure it causes no glitches and still looks good.

*I regroup parts which should have separate materials.

*I reduce the size to fit a certain height.

*I then pass this to BT or someone who then rigs it (if its not that is) and from there to md5 again.

 

 

BTW, oDD's textures are too high res according to the texture guidelines. Anyways.

 

Though as BT said, it might be a bad idea reducing polys.

[BlackThief]

ehm, you say you reduce polys automatically with a tool?? please don't do that! these tools really mess up the topology of the mesh, since they work with simple algorithms and don't consider things like proper shading and deformations. and btw I think the uv-maps will be messed up as well, so we'd have to uvmap the whole shit again, too!

[New Horizon]

ehm, you say you reduce polys automatically with a tool?? please don't do that! these tools really mess up the topology of the mesh, since they work with simple algorithms and don't consider things like proper shading and deformations. and btw I think the uv-maps will be messed up as well, so we'd have to uvmap the whole shit again, too!

 

Everyone, on the count of three!!! DAMN YOU ODDITY!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Springheel]

Ok, so reducing polys is a bad idea for right now. Perhaps what we should do is just reduce the polys of the hands? Odd was going to do that anyway, so Dom hasn't done any hand animations, as I understand it. Would that mess anything up?

 

Secondly, how badly will changing the size of the model mess up the animations? Is this (shrinking the AI) something we absolutely must do? If it is, I guess we'd better do it sooner rather than later.

 

BT, I'd like to hear your expert opinion on all this.

[BlackThief]

since I made a major step forward towards importing animated models into d3 today I hope I'll be able to finally rig my character this weekend. Then if everything works fine I can test how the deformations of my lowpoly hand look ingame and then decide which hand model we'll go for.

 

regarding resizing the models I'm not 100% sure how animation files work. I guess the animations will probably look extremly exaggerated, when the animation simply defines that joint x is moved by vector a->, because the vector would still be the same, but the model smaller.

what I mean is that the joint of the foot is for example still moved 5 units on the z-axis eventhough the model is now only 10 units tall, which would mean that the foot is raised up to the hip. while the original model was 20units tall and thus the animation looked ok on this one.

 

hope that makes any sense...

[New Horizon]

I have to say, from looking at the stuff oDD uploaded to CVS, he set things up in an extremely inefficient way. It seems like each character folder has its own set of animations, I can't tell if there is any type of 'basic movement sharing' going on, or if they all use their own files. Seems a bit of a waste to me. I would personally have setup an animations folder, as I think we discussed before. It's nice that he followed our goals.

[Springheel]

It would be nice to get Dom's input on how this will affect the animations, but I guess leaving the AI as they are just isn't an option. So the next question is:

 

Who wants to handle the resizing? BT, that's your department, so I'll let you decide if you want to delegate that or check it out yourself.

 

And lastly, how many models are we actually able to do this for? I assume we can do it for all the models currently on CVS (builder guard, pro guard, elite city watch, revenant and prelate).

 

What about the others?

[Ishtvan]

Hmm, I wonder if we can apply a mathematical "shrinking" to the animation files.

[Dram]

ehm, you say you reduce polys automatically with a tool?? please don't do that! these tools really mess up the topology of the mesh, since they work with simple algorithms and don't consider things like proper shading and deformations. and btw I think the uv-maps will be messed up as well, so we'd have to uvmap the whole shit again, too!

 

I never thought about that hmm...

 

It'd probably be better to reduce polys by snapping vertices together, has the same effect and you have more control.

 

I think this is what you already do but as I'm no modeller you'd know better.

[BlackThief]

It would be nice to get Dom's input on how this will affect the animations, but I guess leaving the AI as they are just isn't an option. So the next question is:

 

Who wants to handle the resizing? BT, that's your department, so I'll let you decide if you want to delegate that or check it out yourself.

 

And lastly, how many models are we actually able to do this for? I assume we can do it for all the models currently on CVS (builder guard, pro guard, elite city watch, revenant and prelate).

 

What about the others?

 

I'll put this onto my list for this weekend. It shouldn't take too long to import the models and resize them in maya and then I can simply test them in the md5 viewer.

 

 

@ dram yes if you don't want to screw up the deformation you have to merge each edge together by hand, though this will probably end up with texture stretching as well. it'd probably not that bad, since you'll only merge edges that are close together anyway, but it may cause some additonal uv-map tweaking.

 

that's basically the reason I haven't uv-mapped my character yet - I want to rig him frist and test how the deformation works, then I can optimize the mesh and at last uv-map everything.

 

 

 

Another thing we have to consider now is animating the faces - even if we just want to have some very basic facial animations, like a talk animation, shout animation, expression of fear or whatever - we'll have to setup the heads properly! in the worst case this will mean I have to remodel every head of oddity's model, since they all have a totally different topology and sometimes quite bad edge loops for animation, which mean that we wouldn't be able to share face animations at all. I think I have to check out id's head models, I believe they all share their face animations and we can probably use these animations if we're going to rig our heads with exactly the same bone structure.

 

a lot of work ahead....