Gord's Application

[New Horizon]

Found a welcome application in my inbox this morning.

 

Greetings!

 

I'll introduce myself a bit first. I learned of your project from Springheel/Eric, whom I've known for quite a number of years now. I'm a fan of the Thief-style gameplay, and of the Thief games themselves. Not so big a fan of Doom 3, but the engine is gorgeous.

 

I recently graduated from a video game design and development project so I have an enormous list of skills to bring to the table; in particular I'm most interested in helping out in the areas of modeling and texturing, and probably some animation as well. There are a number of other things I can do, but that's a start. For a look at what I'm all about, check my portfolio at http://www.octobersfools.ca.

 

Hope to hear back from you soon! Feel free to ask if there's anything you want to know.

 

We could definately use help in the modeling/ texturing department.

[sparhawk]

Yeah! Would be good if he can do his stuff.

[Gord]

Yeah! Would be good if he can do his stuff.

 

Sure can, especially the texturing. There'll be no problem with modeling either, I'll just have to get software reinstalled for that and brush off a small bit of rust, but that's easy enough. I understand there are a variety of 3D packages being used in the modeling work on this project? My primarily familiarity is with Max, though I've played a little with Maya too.

[sparhawk]

We are primarily using Lightwave (and I use Blender), but that shouldn't reall be a problem. Max is supported natively by the Doom engine IMO.

[New Horizon]

We could probably benefit most from some assett modeling and plain texturing. We need to populate the mod with several map themes. If you're into character modeling as well, that's also no problem. The only thing with character modeling is that we will ask you to use the male and female templates created by oDDity so that there is a unity amongst the style of our characters. Obviously you can manipulate them to look as you wish, but the foundation will help maintain a sense of cohesiveness.

 

You also mentioned animation, how experienced are you at that?

[Gord]

You also mentioned animation, how experienced are you at that?

 

I've had training, but it wasn't my focus... the rust on that would be a lot thicker. I'd have to practice. I know enough to help though, and actually I would love an excuse to brush up on my animation skills a bit. Probably best to start me off on simpler animations first.

[Springheel]

Hey Gord! (not DireWolf anymore, huh?)

 

Well, textures, modeling and animation are all three areas where we can certainly use some help. There are already several other people doing textures and models, but we currently have only ONE animator, and a LOT of animations we hope to have. So any assistance there would be great, especially if you don't mind learning as you go.

 

On the other hand, if you'd rather get your feet wet with textures and models while you're shaking the rust off, that's fine too.

[sparhawk]

Did you give him an assignment yet?

[Springheel]

Nope. As I said, it depends what he wants to start with, texturing, models, or animating.

[sparhawk]

Why wait?

[Gord]

Why wait?

 

Well if you'd like me to start immediately, texturing is the best bet; I'm good to go right away. It'll take me a short time to get set up for modeling/animating, I'll need to track down my software and get it set up. Not long, a day or two at the longest I would hope; less if I can find one of my archival CDs. But texturing, I could be going in 5 minutes if you needed it.

[Springheel]

Ok, cool. Well, Gildoran is the head of the texture department, so he can give you some more details about what we're lacking right now. I think we're currently working on city theme textures.

[Gildoran]

I've heard that we're lacking city textures the most. In truth any nicely done texture is welcome (including non-city textures), but if you want suggestions, I would recommend masonry, wood beams and the sort of stucco/plaster that you see the outsides of houses made from. Also, we only have a couple of different roof textures.

 

The images you use need to have their dimensions be powers of 2 (eg, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, etc), but they don't have to be square; things like 256x1024 are fine. The recommended image size is 1024x1024 or 512x512. Since we'll be using DDS files, we'd prefer 1024x1024 images. (but an individual source image shouldn't be more than around 1.5 megabytes in size when compressed via DDS)

[Gord]

I've heard that we're lacking city textures the most. In truth any nicely done texture is welcome (including non-city textures), but if you want suggestions, I would recommend masonry, wood beams and the sort of stucco/plaster that you see the outsides of houses made from. Also, we only have a couple of different roof textures.

 

The images you use need to have their dimensions be powers of 2 (eg, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, etc), but they don't have to be square; things like 256x1024 are fine. The recommended image size is 1024x1024 or 512x512. Since we'll be using DDS files, we'd prefer 1024x1024 images. (but an individual source image shouldn't be more than around 1.5 megabytes in size when compressed via DDS)

 

Okay; well, I'm in some major luck; I discovered a backup CD of my texture library, which I'd believed lost. And as luck would have it, it has many excellent components for creating masonry, wood, stucco/plaster and probably roof images. Is there a repository of existing textures somewhere so I can see what types of things have already been done?

[sparhawk]

Did you already download the new release? This is from yesterday, so if you download this one, then you have all the textures available that we currently have created.

[New Horizon]

Did you already download the new release? This is from yesterday, so if you download this one, then you have all the textures available that we currently have created.

 

He's still only setup as an applicant. I'll give him contributor status.

[Ishtvan]

You might also want to do a search and look at the various documents on creating normal maps that work well with Doom3. It seems like we always have that conversation when a new texture person joins up.

[Springheel]

I've been talking to Gord in PMs...he apparently can't see this forum so can't post in this thread anymore. He's currently working on some low-poly statues for Sneaksie, but he doesn't have access to the modelling forum. Can we add that somehow?

[sparhawk]

Well, he should get the proper permissions, right?

[Springheel]

I don't know what the proper permissions are...it doesn't make sense to have a contributor status that doesn't let them see the applicant forums though.

[sparhawk]

Right. That's why I said somebody should fix the permissions.

[OrbWeaver]

I suppose the idea is that once someone's application is successful they become a contributor/beta mapper and no longer need access to the applicant forum.

[SneaksieDave]

Could that be a reason (many) new signups seem to disappear into the void? Maybe they can't access the forum and they "take the hint" and disappear...

[OrbWeaver]

They can still access the forum in general, just not the Applicants forum.

 

I would have thought that suddenly being able to see Contributor Tasks or Level Editing would be a pretty big hint that the application was successful, even supposing that they weren't actually informed as such.

[sparhawk]

I also thought the same. Even if they can access the public forum, they might still think that they were considered to be not good enough and never ask for it. That's why you should always send a PM accopanying the new setup and telling them that their permission has been changed accordingly and if something doesn't work they should speak up.