Character Modelling For Doom 3

[sparhawk]

When I look at oddities character models they are really looking great, as probably everybody agrees.

 

What I wonder though, is as how they will look in-game. Remember BlackThiefs problems with the Zombie skinning? Because the models are mirrored. So I would suggest to start skinning at least on one character from Oddity to see how they turn out when they are ported into D3.

 

I would really hate to loose that great look of them, but we should get some experience with this.

[oDDity]

Well of course the models won't look as good in-game. THe single biggest difference will be the lighting.

THe D3 renderer is worthless shit, it's as simple as that (when compared with the Lightwave renderer that is)

Though having said that, some of the doom characterss look pretty good, even though they only have one 512 texture for the whole head and body, and the models themselves are low res (mostly around 2k polys, that's even lower than UT2K3 models, and UT's models have two 1024 textures per character as well)

It's just a matter of working out the normal mapping and the best way to apply it, that's the key in this engine.

I suppose I can hook one up and shoot it in-game as a static mesh to see what it'll look like.

[sparhawk]

I suppose I can hook one up and shoot it in-game as a static mesh to see what it'll look like.

That would be great. So we can see how this will work out then.

 

I think the problem is that the zombies are usually not being looked at that much. There is no time for that in D3 gameplay. It's quite different with our mod. The player usually has plenty of time to look at the models when he is hiding in the shadows.

 

I hope that having less polys means, that we can render more of them. Would be a shame if two guards on screen would already hog the machine.

[oDDity]

I'd certainly like to have two 1024 sized textures per character like I have for Ut charcaters. THe spec maps can be smller, maybe even 256, but the normal maps will also have to be full size and non compressed, though I thinkl we should DXT compress all the color maps, since you can 't really see the differene in-game anyway, and it saves a lot on memory.

A 1024 tga which is 3mb can be DXT 1 compressed to 500k.

[BlackThief]

I'd certainly like to have two 1024 sized textures per character like I have  for Ut charcaters. THe spec maps can be smller, maybe even 256, but the normal maps will also have to be full size and non compressed, though I thinkl we should DXT compress all the color maps, since you can 't really see the differene in-game anyway, and it saves a lot on memory.

A 1024 tga which is 3mb can be DXT 1 compressed to 500k.

yeah, I also thought about that. the difference in quality is so small between them that's not really worth it. and it'd make the file-size of the whole mod a lot smaller --> more people are going to download it

[Springheel]

I've been asking around at D3W, and I'm getting the sense that we don't have to stick with the mirrored textures as D3 currently does. We just have to create our own UV map for the character models. Is this true? If so, we should certainly do that for your zombie, BT.

[BlackThief]

yes you certainly don't HAVE to use mirrored skins. they just used that to get more high-res skins with less memory. we would just have to reskin the zombie-model.

but I think the zombie is not a very important object for our mansion pack, so I'll continue my work on it later.

[sparhawk]

but I think the zombie is not a very important object for our mansion pack, so I'll continue my work on it later.

There are all kind of Zombies in MY mansion. I can see them every day I get home. And they are mumbling something like "DAAAAAADYYYYYY".

[oDDity]

Some chocolate arrows should soon sort them out.

And just to clear up once and for all: The plural of the oDDity (used as a proper noun) would be 'Oddity's' - i.e belonging to oDDity, not 'oddites'

'Oddities' means a collection of odd things,...I have got an unusually large penis, but it doesn't amount to a collection.

[Fingernail]

That's one for the quote scroll.