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Something for the Ladies! *<;o)


Maximius

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:D I didn't forget to mention that, I didn't know it. I'm still learning myself. It's not obvious, if it adds a flat normal map you would see it anyway.

 

For a bowl with handles I'd probably extrude the bowl (or lathe it from a side profile) and most likely cylindrical map it.

 

I'd draw the handles from the side view (using line tool, but click don't drag. If you drag you get handles and TONS of verts which won't optimize good). Then extrude to thickness desired and edit as an editable mesh.

Most likely it would get planar mapped. You could use a different tex for each object. Then the handle could be reused on other items and the bowl tex could be reused also.

 

Then just position the handles and export bowl and handles all at once.

 

In Max I have to leave pieces that use seperate textures as individual pieces. If I combine themn they end up using one map in game. I'm not sure what the case is with lwo's. The Wiki does have that info though.

 

this is an item I made as described above, then handles are planar mapped with the same tex, I just uv editted so they only shoiwed gold and non of the details. This is the goblet texture. the 'weave' looks like bumps, just the noprmal map though. The model would look dull without them (not that it is really exciting anyway).

trophy.jpg

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Thats a great looking trophy. I really like the delicate looking handles. Here is the punchbowl set in the nude, I got the cup handles by extruding one poly and welding it to another after bending it out around and back again. It could be straightened a bit but it looks decent I think. The bowl is 66 polys, the ladle 94, and the cup 112 or something like that.

 

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/6073/punchbowlset1ke3.jpg

 

http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/5995/punchcup1kx6.jpg

 

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/2296/punchladle1uu5.jpg

 

Edit: Crap I just realized I forgot to crop those jpegs. I think they are big enough though to get the general drift.

Edited by Maximius
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Those look pretty cool. I like the punchbowl and ladle set together.

(are they going to be glass?)

 

If all 3 are going to be glass you could basically cylindrical map the cup/bowl and scoop of ladle and use same maps.

The handle of ladle and cup could both share a planar map even if they each only use half of it. Or each it's own, combining em would keep the overall number of maps down (easier to organize, not necessairly a file size thing)

Sometimes I'll cylindrical map and item like this, but if I want the tex to cover each side I'll go into uvw edit and drag all faces on top of each other. That way you can have a more detailed pattern on each of the 8 sides instead of a less detailed wrapped all the way around.

Or you could delete one half of bowl, uv map the saved half, then clone/mirror and reattach to saved half, so the tex would tile twice, once on each side of bowl.

I'm doing this with a crown right now.

 

I think the cup handles could be thinner though, easy enough to drag some verts eh?

 

The polycounts are good. Depends what your ultimate goal is. We had a discussion in another thread about this. 8 sides will never look round, you need at least 10 sides, maybe 12.

Of course the style of this set could be octagonal which I think looks fine. In that case 8 sides works just fine.

 

Sorry if I mention things you are aware of, not trying to be a know it all, just things that might help.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Those look pretty cool. I like the punchbowl and ladle set together.

(are they going to be glass?)

 

Thanks, but there is a problem. Everything but the cup smooths nicely. Around the cups handle though are a bunch of polys that wont smooth until I Triple them, breaking them up into triangular parts, and then they smooth but they look crappy.

 

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/853/cup...gproblemtg5.jpg

 

Here it is unsmoothed with the handles adjusted.

 

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/8113/cup2iy9.jpg

 

If all 3 are going to be glass you could basically cylindrical map the cup/bowl and scoop of ladle and use same maps.

The handle of ladle and cup could both share a planar map even if they each only use half of it. Or each it's own, combining em would keep the overall number of maps down (easier to organize, not necessairly a file size thing)

Sometimes I'll cylindrical map and item like this, but if I want the tex to cover each side I'll go into uvw edit and drag all faces on top of each other. That way you can have a more detailed pattern on each of the 8 sides instead of a less detailed wrapped all the way around.

Or you could delete one half of bowl, uv map the saved half, then clone/mirror and reattach to saved half, so the tex would tile twice, once on each side of bowl.

I'm doing this with a crown right now.

 

This is where we are going to have to take some baby steps, I've drawn some normal maps before but I have never been able to apply them. Lets come back to this in a short bit.

 

The polycounts are good. Depends what your ultimate goal is. We had a discussion in another thread about this. 8 sides will never look round, you need at least 10 sides, maybe 12.

Of course the style of this set could be octagonal which I think looks fine. In that case 8 sides works just fine.

I had thought that it was best to use multiples of 8 in LightWave but maybe thats not correct. I did want to make it glass so I think it would work in this instance.

 

I think we can create several skins for it. I also like the ladle and the bowl. :)

 

Glad you like them spar. While Im trying to map them, Im also messing about with trying to make a set of kitchen knives, starting with a nice cleaver and chopping block set.

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hmmm, might want to ask PinkDot about the smoothing issues. I use Max which is quite different from that shot.

Even when I zoom in it's a bit small and hard to see.

 

If you are using 8 sides and then 'smoothing' to make it round like that then I am sorry if I confused you a bit.

 

'smoothing groups' or the 'smooth modifier' in max (same thing) just smooth the surface so the edges aren't hard. If you have a cube unsmoothed and light it it will have very crisp edges. If you smooth it you make the edges appear round when lit, so the light flows over the edges a bit and give an appearance of smoothness that doesn't actually exist. With an 8 sided bowl it would still be 8 sided, just smooth not sharp.

 

'mesh smooth' however is a completely different modifier that adds polys at all the edges to actually make a model smooth (not just appear smooth). I think what you are doing is more like this. You are actually changing the model.

 

Like I said though, I don't use Lightwave so take this with a grain of salt. I might be wrong.

 

mesh smooth is great for movies, it sucks for games. Because... you add polys and make the model very high poly.

for games it's best to get as much detail as possbile actually modeled from the start so you know exactly where your polycount is. Then add a smooth modifier to make it look smooth, but not increase polys.

 

--------

another prob you MIGHT be having is that your handle is attached. It might be better to have seperate cup and handle. Smooth each on it's own. (the joint between thm will be sharp though).

But that way the cup would smooth all the way around and not be affected by handle.

 

Then export them both at once and in game they will be one item.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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OK, I looked closer and you are deffinately doing a mesh smooth type operation. (whatever Lightwave calls it I don't know, but lightwave should do both types of smooth in any case).

 

I outlined the polys you now have in the cup (well, some of the easier to see ones anyway)

You'll notice that I probably outlined 40 triangles. That means the cup is probably now in the 300+ poly range, way too much.

 

cuphy0.th.jpg

 

You'll also notice that even though there are that many and the cup is alot more round now, it is not 'smooth' because the square poly edges can be seen in the light.

 

What you really need to do is model the cup with about 12 sides (instead of 8 - now I'm pretty sure you want it round). That's a pretty good round shape for low-poly modelling. (8 reminds people of a stop sign, too easy to recognize the fact that it ISN'T round, even 7 or 9 are vetter choices in my opinion because they are easily identifiable as a common shape)

But 12 sides is good and round.

It might seem like too many polys but it will stay this amount, it won't increase 3fold with the mesh smooth.

 

Then find the smooth modifier which only effects lighting, but doesn't add polys. I'm sure you have a lightwave tut.

 

Here's the first one I found, it explains the type of smoothing you want pretty well, although he uses higher poly edges in the final example. You should be fine with one flat edge on top of cup, and inside, outside (not five edges to round the top of cup.

 

http://www.meshweaver.com/

 

look for tutorial link on side menu, and the 'what is smoothing? tut'

 

---------

I guess I should mention as it might help. Look at my trophy above.

Look at the base of it, you can see a few of the sides on the left hand side easily. I do belive I made this with 14 sides so it would be nice and round. But you can still see the sides at bottom if you look close enough.

 

But notice how the middle of it really looks round. It's not, it's as sharp edged as the base is, but it is 'smoothed'. So the light doesn';t show the edges. The edges are easy to see on base because it is against another object/shadow.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Ok Im remaking the cup with 12, flat top. I find out about the light smoothing as well. I know that LW has a plug in too that reduces polys for you so I'll see if I can hunt that down for what its worth.

 

Thanks for explaining with your trophy, it makes it instantly understandable what light smoothing versus poly smoothing is.

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No prob, the plug for reducing polys is probably Optimize

 

It can come in handy sometimes, but usually best to build optimized, same as adding polys. Try and build the final product the first time without too many poly tweaks and it'll be best for you in the long run. You'll get exactly what you want, not what the 3d program wants to give you.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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No prob, the plug for reducing polys is probably Optimize

 

It can come in handy sometimes, but usually best to build optimized, same as adding polys. Try and build the final product the first time without too many poly tweaks and it'll be best for you in the long run. You'll get exactly what you want, not what the 3d program wants to give you.

 

Here is an 8 sided version and a 12 sided version. The 12 is 74 polys minus the handle, the 8 is 72 with the handle, and the handle itself is 24 which will become 26 or 28 when I cut it again to bend it properly where the lower section of it joins the cup. I may be able to reduce its poly count a bit by simplifying it. The handle is not attached yet, Im trying to figure out the best approach to that. The way I have tried increases the poly count by like 2 or 4 or something, I split one of the cups big polys foursquare and now Im trying to weld points from the handle to points on the cups side. Unsuccessful so far though.

 

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/2379/pu...v28sideslv9.jpg

 

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/562/pun...212sidestz3.jpg

 

Optimization from the ground up certainly makes sense. Ill look into that plugin too. Give me a day or so and Ill have that cleaver I mentioned too, or at least a version.

Edited by Maximius
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New style on this cup eh?

 

I wouldn't worry too much about actually attaching the handle. No reason to increase polys just so it is 'welded' to rest of cup. Once exported they will be one piece anyway, they will not detach.

 

It used to be alot more important to make sure everything was solid and clean with models. But rendering in games has gotten better. Static meshes like this won't deform either so you don't have to worry about the handle pulling away from cup.

 

I've heard it called 'floating polys'. The handle can just float there and be fine.

 

It's funny, I spent years making models for Dromed the 'right way'. Trying to make complete meshes with NO floating polys. Then I realized how much easier it was to float polys, then last year I realized that when converting thru BSP for Dromed BSp would run a booleen function on all intersecting polys. Sometimes doubling polys, sometimes worse.

So then it was back to building correctly again. No floating. As soon as I got back into that habit I started doing models for Darkmod, now I am back to floating polys again. :wacko:

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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New style on this cup eh?

 

I was going for minimal polys, I could add a cut at the base to give it more of a bowl appearance and less of a sherbertbut it will add 12 polys I think.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about actually attaching the handle. No reason to increase polys just so it is 'welded' to rest of cup. Once exported they will be one piece anyway, they will not detach.

 

I've heard it called 'floating polys'. The handle can just float there and be fine.

 

p would run a booleen function on all intersecting polys. Sometimes doubling polys, sometimes worse.

So then it was back to building correctly again. No floating. As soon as I got back into that habit I started doing models for Darkmod, now I am back to floating polys again. :wacko:

 

That blows my mind. When I started modeling I had assumed that everything had to be welded together or somehow joined, knowing this opens up a lot of avenues. This is a cardinal example of a tiny bit of information that holds up a noob for no reason other than no one has yet to think to mention it because its so trivial. This is why an extended conversation amongst beginners would advance the general cause: beginners questions come up all the time and the easy problems can get sorted out sooner versus later.

Edited by Maximius
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Someone posted this link on another forum: http://www.et.byu.edu/~csharp2/ It's basically a tutorial of modelling terms and concepts. Don't know how useful it is but maybe someone will get something out of it

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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Here is a redesigned cup, but its a bit hefty at around 126 polys, 26 of which are in the handle:

 

http://aycu09.webshots.com/image/23048/200...26973499_rs.jpg

 

And here is a pretty nifty cleaver, I dare say:

 

http://aycu02.webshots.com/image/22561/200...58264223_rs.jpg

 

Note the full metal tang, one of the marks of a quality knife:

 

http://aycu07.webshots.com/image/24046/200...08818708_rs.jpg

 

Cleaver totals only around 32 or 36 polys, Ill make a chopping block table for it too. Thanks for the link Crispy, I've been reading it through a bit and its helpful.

Edited by Maximius
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they look good. Texture that cleaver already would ya? :laugh:

 

Seriously, that should be an easy tex start. You could use the anvil metal as a diffuse, might want to make your own normal though. Could use white 0.35 as specular (see materials, that's just a guess on specular value)

 

The anvil diffuse is big enough you could place the blade so none of the rusty stuff appears.

 

There are basic wood materials too that you could use for the handle (I've used em for several things like broom handle and coatrack). you'd probably only want to use about an 8th of the wood tex so the handle would use about the same amount of pixels as everything else.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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That would work if he had access to the mod assets, but I don't believe that's the case. :mellow:

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they look good. Texture that cleaver already would ya? :laugh:

 

I just wanted to show off the tang against the handle. ;)

 

Seriously, that should be an easy tex start. You could use the anvil metal as a diffuse, might want to make your own normal though. Could use white 0.35 as specular (see materials, that's just a guess on specular value)

 

The anvil diffuse is big enough you could place the blade so none of the rusty stuff appears.

 

There are basic wood materials too that you could use for the handle (I've used em for several things like broom handle and coatrack). you'd probably only want to use about an 8th of the wood tex so the handle would use about the same amount of pixels as everything else.

 

Ok, I will reread my notes and try to whip up some maps, give me a bit to refresh myself on that stuff. I have to get going with GIMP again but that won't take too long to pick back up. If you don't mind, Ill post my questions here as I go for you to assist. Im trying to make a sword right now for the heck of it, having a bit of trouble getting the double sided blade to look right though.

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What do you mean double sided blade? like a standard sword with 2 edges? or using a 'double' sided texture?

 

Two edged sword, not the texture. Here is the chopping block for the cleaver, Ill put the two together tomorrow. The table is 66 polys.

 

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/9433/ch...ocktableyl7.jpg

Edited by Maximius
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Heres the sword:

 

http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/1685/sw...ighrangelw6.jpg

 

http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/904/swo...tcloseupca4.jpg

 

Its only about 108 polys and I could reduce it more but I wanted it a little fancy for right now.

 

Im looking into a normal map plugin for LW8, when I get that set up Ill get the cleaver and block texturing started.

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I think your modeling work is coming along, but you should definitely start using photoreferences for your work. The proportions on the sword do not look very believable, and that can ruin the whole effect. The grip is quite thin, there doesn't appear to be much of a pommel and the crossguard sticks out way too much for a sword with a handle of that length.

 

Compare yours with our longsword model:

 

sword2.jpg

 

You also don't have to be quite so stingy with polys. Our longsword is about 325.

 

Find a picture of a sword that you like and start stretching and resizing things to look more like it, and you'll find it starts making a huge improvement.

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I think your modeling work is coming along, but you should definitely start using photoreferences for your work. The proportions on the sword do not look very believable, and that can ruin the whole effect. The grip is quite thin, there doesn't appear to be much of a pommel and the crossguard sticks out way too much for a sword with a handle of that length.

 

Compare yours with our longsword model:

 

sword2.jpg

 

You also don't have to be quite so stingy with polys. Our longsword is about 325.

 

Find a picture of a sword that you like and start stretching and resizing things to look more like it, and you'll find it starts making a huge improvement.

 

Thank you Springheel, I appreciate your points. A question: Why does the sword get a higher poly allowance, is it because its an item the player will encounter often and in clear view, while other items, say the cleaver I made, would generally get at best a cursory view and most of the time only a quick glance?

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I think this sword in particular is also used for the player's weapon, so you will see it close-up during animations.

 

However, even a weapon like a warhammer, which a player won't use themselves, is still about 250 polys. About 200-250 polys is the average for most smallish size props, like weapons or lights. Even our wide bookshelf model is less than 250 polys, so it's not always dependent on size.

 

If you can do it for less, that's great, but you don't generally need to sacrifice detail just to get a model less than 200 polys.

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I agree with Spring on the poly counts. maybe you are shooting a bit low for some stuff.

 

I'd say swords should get more than say cups for these reasons:

 

bigger, more detail can easily be seen. On cups the same amount of polys could end up with such small details that they'd be hard to see and a normal map can bring out small details just as well.

Polys really need to be used to bring out details that a normal map can't.

For instance, a nose on an AI NEEDS to be polys because when seen from the side it needs to stick out from the head. From a front only view a normal map might be OK for nose, but not from the side. However a normal map is perfect for details like the inside of the ear, will add shapes and shadows and make it alot more realistic, but those details are so small it would be a waste of polys to try and model them.

 

importance. I'd generally say a weapon is more important than a cup. Cups are boring, there are alot of them, they generally aren't carried by AI and thus not thought of as 'part of an AI'. Players won't examine them too much. They will see a cup, note whether or not it's worth stealing and grab it. Not too much excitement about it. But they should still be round because we can afford at least enough polys for round cups.

The hexagonal soda cans in Doom3 really bugged me. I bought this game that was supposed to be so sweet and good for graphics and it has soda cans straight out of 1985. Everything else looked really good, they were a sore thumb indeed and I don't want people seeing our stuff and having that same feeling. ID could have easily used 100 polys per can instead of 24 and I don't think there would have been any performance hit at all.

 

# of objects used. generally there will be alot of little things strewn about a level. On a dining room table probably 10 cups, 10 plates, 2 candles, silverware....food... it all adds up. So for small things of little importance 200 and under is probably OK. Generally there wouldn't be too many swords in view at once so the limit could easily be 250-300 for a normal sword. A pretty decent sword with normals can be made in that range.

If it's the crown jewel of all swords, a special quest item, only one per mission type sword I'd say even 1,000 polys could be exceptable. But probably wasteful as like the ear descrip above, the poly details would get so fine that a normal map could replace them with little visible difference.

Recently I made a carrot and a turnip. These are both about 125 polys. I thought acceptable as they look good but not overkill. Keep in mind that these have both collision and shadow meshes which add polys (125 is total count).

Collision models for movables can only be 16 polys, very basic but saves renderer from calculating 100.

Shadows aren't limited, but same thing, simple is better. If they aren't simple might as well use the model for shadow. Try to flesh out the basic shape with as few polys as possible, but enough so the shadow isn't just grotescly(?) weird. That's probably a good thing to practice with now too. (One option would be to clone your object and optimize the clone ALOT to make it simpler but same shape. Then tweak by hand as needed)

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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