Ai Modelling Task Tracking Page

[Springheel]

Tasks that are completed or in progress:

 

 

 

Builder Guard: [COMPLETE] -- Ascottk

- resized

- head cut off & added head with animations (blinks & closes eyes when dead)

- hands added

- removed weapons, & added collision mesh & frob code for the hammer (drops hammer when dead/unconscious)

- separated materials organized by armor/cloth/metal etc. (now tdm_ai_builders.mtr)

- added tdm_ai_weapons.def

- restructured textures: moved them into models/md5/chars/builders/guard

 

Tweaks Needed: clipping of legs through armour when walking

-- hand texture needs modifying

-- hand size is rather small

 

 

 

Elite City Watch -- Ascottk

- hands added

- head cut off

 

Thief -- Domarius

- resized (?)

[Domarius]

Shouldn't we sticky this?

 

If you plan on updating it by editing the post, it'll get buried

[Springheel]

I'm hoping these tasks won't take long enough for it to be buried.

 

updated.

[ascottk]

Done (may need some tweaking):

Builder Guard: -- Ascottk

- resized

- head cut off & added head with animations (blinks & closes eyes when dead)

- hands added

- removed weapons, & added collision mesh & frob code for the hammer (drops hammer when dead/unconscious)

- separated materials organized by armor/cloth/metal etc. (now tdm_ai_builders.mtr)

- added tdm_ai_weapons.def

- restructured textures: moved them into models/md5/chars/builders/guard

 

May need to revise rigging & hand textures.

 

Soon on a Dark Mod cvs near you!

[Springheel]

Well crap, that's everything, isn't it?

 

Can't wait to test it out!

[New Horizon]

Wow. Great job ascottk.

[sparhawk]

Great!

[Domarius]

The builder size may need to be adjusted after I make one that's resized exactly off Spring's chart. I'll send it to him via FTP rather than upload it to CVS. Basically he'll compare the size with what I send, and adjust his modified one as nessecary.

[ascottk]

The builder size may need to be adjusted after I make one that's resized exactly off Spring's chart. I'll send it to him via FTP rather than upload it to CVS. Basically he'll compare the size with what I send, and adjust his modified one as nessecary.

 

Why? Afterall I used oDD's skeleton with the scale set to .95.

[Springheel]

I don't see why there would be any problem. It's not like everyone is using differently-sized builder models...

 

 

BTW, I know this is still a WIP so you may already know about this, but I noticed that there is some significant clipping of the legs through the armour when he's walking (from behind).

[ascottk]

BTW, I know this is still a WIP so you may already know about this, but I noticed that there is some significant clipping of the legs through the armour when he's walking (from behind).

That's the trickiest part of the model. There's actually 4 meshes in that area & if the weights for any of them are off, then the clipping starts. I'll fiddle around with those & resize the hands as well.

[Domarius]

Why? Afterall I used oDD's skeleton with the scale set to .95.

Because I did exactly what you just said, and the thief model came out bigger that everyone wanted it. The reason I got spring to make the chart is because we can be absolutely sure they will be the right size he said. We've been through this already in the thief resizing thread.

 

Anyway, I thought you were okay with this?

[Springheel]

Because I did exactly what you just said, and the thief model came out bigger that everyone wanted it.

 

You used the scale variable in the md5mesh file? I thought you said you resized it in Maya?

 

Well, it doesn't matter, I'll be able to check the size of the Builder when I get home. I'd like to be able to check the Thief too, but I still can't.

[New Horizon]

I've compared the new builder that ascottk resized with the md5mesh -scale variable, and it looks pretty much spot on. Had we known earlier, we could have done the same thing with the Thief mesh.

[Springheel]

I just double-checked, and it's perfect.

[Domarius]

Oh I didn't realise he was using the def file setting, I thought he was talking about Maya.

 

Okay well that's a tedious task I don't have to do anymore...

 

I think the next most useful thing on my list is to make the changes to the character folder structure (whatever we agree on), and remove the sword from the final anims of the guards.

[ascottk]

I think the next most useful thing on my list is to make the changes to the character folder structure (whatever we agree on), and remove the sword from the final anims of the guards.

We really don't need to remove the swords from the animations since they were removed from the mesh, although I should double check because I have a nodraw skin on the weapons for when they're dropped. Seeing if we don't need the nodraw skin anymore was something else I was going to check this weekend.

[Domarius]

I thought the nodraw solution was more of a workaround - hiding the sword then showing it when nessecary - when what we acutally want is for Doom 3 to dynamically attach any weapon we want to an AI's hand so that they can swing any weapon, rather than the specific one embedded in the mesh. Is this correct?

[ascottk]

I thought the nodraw solution was more of a workaround - hiding the sword then showing it when nessecary - when what we acutally want is for Doom 3 to dynamically attach any weapon we want to an AI's hand so that they can swing any weapon, rather than the specific one embedded in the mesh. Is this correct?

The original hammer for the builder guard is no longer with the md5. What you see is the actual attachment.

 

The nodraw solution was there when I thought we couldn't attach any models to the hands, this turned out to be a buggy max exporter so the nodraw is no longer necessary.

[Domarius]

Okay I get it now. So I'll remove that one from my list of tasks too.

[Domarius]

As a QA thing, we should put on that list (or some list, for some future task) - each model should be checked to see if the polycount can be improved.

 

A few characters, people have brought up randomly in the past that the polycounts were much more than optimal, but it's never been on any to do list or anything yet.

[sparhawk]

With the huge numbers of modelers that we have on the team, I will tell Spring to set at least 10 at this task at once.

[Domarius]

Yeah I did say "future task". It just needs to be noted somewhere.

[sparhawk]

Yup. But I dont consider it very important at the moment. And over time it will matter less, when computers get faster. Not that I like that as an excuse ...

[OrbWeaver]

With limited resources it would be better to spend the time making reduce-poly shadowmeshes for the AI rather than reducing the actual polycount. Shadows are MUCH more performance-intensive than simply rendering polygons (which all use the same texture anyway so they can just be dumped into a vertex buffer and sent to the card in one go).