Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Something for the Ladies! *<;o)


Maximius

Recommended Posts

This is all making sense guys. We'll have to talk more about shadow and collision meshes and all that jive. It would seem that in a castle setting there would be a need for two models of the same sword, hi poly ones for guards and matching but simpler models for an armory weapons rack.

 

I'm reworking the sword and Im going to try a battle hammer and axe as well, I found a webpage that has clear photos of the real things. Results soon!

Edited by Maximius
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 68
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I wouldn't woory about lower poly swords for weapon racks. Since Doom3 is so interactive and the physics are great all objects like weapon rack stuff should be abloe to be picked up, dropped, thrown, ect...

 

But you can make a VERY high poly, detailed sword and a low poly version. The high poly one would be to bake the normal maps with. Then apply the normal map to the low poly and you get much closer to the look of the high poly one.

 

For instance, you could actually model the stiches in a sword handle. Bake them into normals and add to low poly vers. Then the low poly version in game would look like it actually had those stitches modeled in.

 

Another example:

http://www.tjoff.com/jens/darkmod/gallery/...amp;imageID=313

The low poly version is 800 (mostly the 'balls' on top of legs and the rings [14 sides]) without those details the chest is about 200 polys.

A little high in polys but those details wouldn't bake very well. Can't fake those rings, they are either round or not.

The high poly version used to make the normals map (so all the details have shadows) is around 25,000 polys. I got it in game (to test) but is deffinately overkill.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We'll have to talk more about shadow and collision meshes and all that jive.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't worry about that yet. Shadowmeshes are really only needed for particularly complicated objects. Collision meshes aren't hard to add after the fact--probably 75% of our models that eventually need collision meshes don't have them yet.

 

It would seem that in a castle setting there would be a need for two models of the same sword, hi poly ones for guards and matching but simpler models for an armory weapons rack.

 

It's not really necessary to have two different models when the difference is only 100-200 polys or so. And as baddcog said, it's not hard to bake most details into a lower poly version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Heres another try at the longsword:

 

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/4598/bi...ongswordib2.jpg

 

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/605/lon...tcloseuput5.jpg

 

Im not in love with the blade as it is, I want to fine tune the curve of its edges. Total polys is like 270 so there is plenty of room for detailing and such.

Edited by Maximius
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's looking much better. I think the pommel might need to be larger to balance that length of blade, and the quillons (crossguard) needs to be thicker (usually they're thicker than they are wide).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's looking much better. I think the pommel might need to be larger to balance that length of blade, and the quillons (crossguard) needs to be thicker (usually they're thicker than they are wide).

 

Will do. I should have a battle axe done today or tomorrow as well.

 

Looking better.

 

I'd love to see some detail with a high poly normal map. How far are you to learning how to do that?

 

thanks bob, in regards to mapping I'm trying to get a plugin installed into my Lightwave that will allow me to make normals in LW right from the object in the renderer rather than having to move everything to GIMP. I waiting for a friend to get back to me about the installation but I haven't heard back yet so if anyone has any information about this please let me know. The problem is that the website Ifound with the plugins says that before installing it you have to replace a file in the zip with another file. Problem is there are two files in the zip with similar names, do I replace both, one, or what? I may repost this question as its own thread to get some feedback. So for the moment Im concentrating on modeling but Ill get into the mapping again soon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just wanted to announce my hat is officially in the ring (at least while I have some time for a while).

I made my first LW object today, following a tutorial, for a so-so looking glass bowl; I mean I followed the directions exactly so it's not exactly original.

It's "only" ~6000 polys, but not bad for my first object ever; it was just a learning experience not to be used or anything.

I'm going to try to make a few simple things on my own first, like a glass and a candle, again as a learning experience, and move on from there.

 

I'm wondering whether I should start my own thread when I make some of my own objects, or whether I should just keep them here in Max's thread? The advantage of the former is I don't crowd his thread; the advantage of the latter is that we can concentrate Darkmod specific object-making advice to a single thread, which might be good all around. Either way is fine with me.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

... to say the least. :laugh:

 

 

 

Edit: Well, anyway, I'll keep my questions here until I have something to show.

Newbie question. How do I select and move individual shapes, say a cylinder that I want to stick out of a rectangle? I want to just move the cylinder around without it deforming. It seems like that should be so simple. I did it with one cylinder just fine using the drag net. But with another cylinder, so far I'm moving either individual points, a collection of points not necessarily the whole cylinder, or every object (cylinder and rectangle) en masse.

Maybe I need to go through a few more tutorials. I know what you mean by being stumped on the most simple seeming stuff, Max.

 

edit2: ok, now drag net is letting me move a single object again. But I still should know why it sometimes does that, and other times just moves a collection of points, deforming the thing.

 

edit3: Ok, my first original object more or less done, at least a rough draft version. Now I need to figure out how to texture it.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe I need to go through a few more tutorials. I know what you mean by being stumped on the most simple seeming stuff, Max.

 

Welcome to LightSlave.... :wacko:

 

edit2: ok, now drag net is letting me move a single object again. But I still should know why it sometimes does that, and other times just moves a collection of points, deforming the thing.

 

I >think< that the drag net lasso is window dependent, meaning that if you use the upper left hand window and select something it selects the whole thing while if you use it in another window, it selects only the polys in view. But double check this, I cant remember for certain.

 

Ive noticed too that LW has some functions that seem to "quit" sometimes, Ill be using them and then suddenly they wont work. Muy annoying, as you will soon learn. Im probably missing some step or thing but I find the easiest thing to do in these cases is to save, reboot LW, and try it again.

 

 

edit3: Ok, my first original object more or less done, at least a rough draft version. Now I need to figure out how to texture it.

 

WHen you are still in the modeler side, hit the "q" button and assign your object a "working color" from the palette, this is an initial color really only used to make it easier to distinguish different parts of the object for different textures later on or to distinguish different objects in a scene in Layout, IIRC. e.g. my swords blade has two shades of grey, in this instance to highlight it for display. You may not need to bother with this if your object is a simple, one texture surface. Unclick the "make default" tab here too or all your objects will get this initial color.

 

Give your now objects new surface a name, you will see it again in the layout side of LW. You can also select "smoothing" to set the object as smoothed but this rings up the polys way fast, per my conversations with Spring and cog.

 

Save this and then go to the upper right hand corner of LW, above the upper right view window, and you will find a small black arrow with a drop down menu, it says three things one of which is "Send object to layout" hit it and the layout side of LW will open with your object, a camera and one light. IF the dropdown menu is not available, if you cannot make a selection, I think you have to restart LW and make sure the LW node icon is open in your toolbar, it looks like a mini LW logo. This allows one half of LW to talk, and to open up on command, the other half. Check again and if its available, send it to layout.

 

Layout is where you actually put real textures on your objects. WHen you are there with your object, hit the shift F3 button or look on the left hand side for the button to bring up the surface editor. You should see the surface name you gave your object with the "q" function in modeler in the list. Now remember my makeup set, I used the stock textures that come with LW for that, they aren't special but you can tweak them and it looks better than nothing. Go to the Window dropdown menu and click "Presets" to access the palette. When the preset window opens, I think its empty, so go to the dropdown menu at the upper left, there you will see titles like "metals" "organic" "space" "nature" , a decent selection of simple textures. You can simply double click one and it will ask if you want to use it, click yes and it will be applied, although generally looking nothing like you want.

 

Now, turn to your number key pad, and if you hit the 7 i think it gives you the ability to select the camera, the light, and to change their perspective or position. The number pad is dedicated to the positioning of lights and the camera. One view is a birdseye view, one is from the cameras eye, one from the lights eye, play around here to get an idea. WHen you have either the light or camera selected, you can change the way it moves by hitting space bar and then move it about with the mouse and its buttons. Play around here to get a feel, then set up a simple scene by placing the object in the field of the light, and then moving the camera (use the camera eye view for this, its easiest) so that the object is centered in its view.

 

IMPORTANT: WHen you move the light or camera, hit the return key to make a fram or they will return to their original positions when you render them. Do this every time you move a light or camera. ALso, when you save, there are two steps, select "save all objects" and then "save scene", all found under the save menu

 

Go to the render tab at the top of the Layout screen and select the VIPER button to set it on automatic, this is your preview renderer. You will get an error message but thats ok, close it out and then hit the F9 key. F9 acutally renders the object. Now a small rendering window will appear and then a larger VIPER window, with the object in it, should open next. Voila!

 

I've probably missed something so if you are stuck, post and Ill try to help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks.

 

Well, I didn't start with something very simple like I probably should have.

I'll try to remake a low-poly version after I make this (turning out to be high poly) one just to know what I'm doing. I'll definitely have to do it over, but now that I've gotten as far with this one, I want to at least texture it, and then I can go back and remake it with fewer sides and no smoothing.

 

Well, here is the untextured model.

It's a lute, as you can see:

 

http://i14.tinypic.com/4vfmjcg.jpg

 

Now that I am on to texturing, I am realizing I should not have made this all one piece, but should have made a separate layer for each texture-set, each with its own surface (right?). Basically, I was going to use various shades of wood for the front, fretboard, back and neck-back, head, and tuning keys, with a few custom designs thrown in (a hole pattern on the front, strings and the stuff that supports it, frets, and stuff on the head.

 

I found a tutorial that shows me how to import a specific texture to use on a surface. I don't have a particular problem with making each texture in photoshop to apply to a surface, since it's just adding a few simple designs to a generic wood texture, but I'm not sure I can make a single texture cover the entire object as one surface.

 

So I guess I would have to break the parts down into layers at least for 1. the back, 2. the front surface, 3. the neck front surface (fretboard), 4. the stem back, 5. the head, 6. the tuning keys? (should these stay part of the head, or each be an individual layer?). I think that's right. Now I'm wondering if there's an easy way to push a sub-part into its own layer (the head, for example), or if I have to remake all the parts again as new layers.

 

I guess I could cut and paste them.

Edit: Yes, that does the trick very easily.

Ok, separate layer and now surface for each part I want to separately texture. Onwards.

 

edit2, low-poly version (6 sides, pentagons for tuning keys, 270 polys), with separate layers:

 

http://i15.tinypic.com/53t6dli.jpg

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't really help you with Lightwave specifics but can help with general modelling stuff. Most programs use the same techniques but sometimes name them differently. (pointing out the obvious, I have a knack for that)

 

Anyway, it's probably best to try and make only one texture per model IF you are making a custom texture. The other way would be to use many existing textures to get the look you want.

A custom texture is usually easiest with low poly stuff cause you can add details instead of modelling them all for different textures.

 

Anyway, there are several ways to do it. This is the way I use modtly now and I think the easiest for most stuff.

 

First split your objects into pieces (it's easier to model one piece, then do this as needed rather than trying to model a bunch of pieces and make them fit each other).

You'll probably want the same wood tex on the back of loot and up the neck so select all those polys and detach.

Now select all the front polys that you want on one tex and detach.

Then detach the fretboard... until divided into one part per texture.

 

Now you have several options and it gets more complicated. To start I'd probably try to planar map each piece.

 

You may want to lay out the tex in Photoshop first.

 

then apply the same tex to all pieces. The problem now is that the front will have the entire texture on it, but the fronts texture is probably only one corner of your texture map.

Use the UV Unwrap tool to size/scale/move rotate the verts on the map until the polys for the front are only using the corner of texture with front on it. Then adjust verts for neck, back ect...

----------------------sorry short vers just to give you ideas

 

another option is using several textures. I did this with my Upright Bass. I used a gold key textuyre for the keys, I used the gold goblet texture for the strings, a dark wood for the fretboard, a reddish brown wood for the body, then I made a bump map for ONLY the front of body to trim the edge and F holes.

 

http://www.tjoff.com/jens/darkmod/gallery/...amp;imageID=335

 

So basically the front and back are 2 different materials in the .mtr file that both use the same diffues map so they match, but the front and sides of headstock have a bump map applied.

 

I modeled the strings as they didn't use too many polys (3 sided cylinders) but I could've made a new tga with an alpha. That's how I started but I had to shape the planes to fit the curved fingerboard and it ended up being as lowpoly to model them than to use an alpha, saved some mod bloat this way too.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now that I am on to texturing, I am realizing I should not have made this all one piece, but should have made a separate layer for each texture-set, each with its own surface (right?). Basically, I was going to use various shades of wood for the front, fretboard, back and neck-back, head, and tuning keys, with a few custom designs thrown in (a hole pattern on the front, strings and the stuff that supports it, frets, and stuff on the head.

 

Yes, its very helpful to make each separate piece on a different layer, infinitely easier to select and move that way for one thing. Nice work on the lute, it looks really good for a first stab!

 

I found a tutorial that shows me how to import a specific texture to use on a surface. I don't have a particular problem with making each texture in photoshop to apply to a surface, since it's just adding a few simple designs to a generic wood texture, but I'm not sure I can make a single texture cover the entire object as one surface.

 

Ill have to pick your brain about doing that sometime soon.

 

 

Nice bass badcog!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually, that was just a place holder, well, in retrospect anyway.

I've already made those pentagrams skinny to be the axles and am just about to put flat end pieces on them, like normal tuning keys. I've also made some strings, a fret board, frets (I even looked up the proper spacing in mm's so it's fretted exactly like a real lute), tapered the bridge on the ends ... the more I get into it, the more I find little things to make it look more realistic.

 

I should ask Badcog, for the f-holes you *only* used bump-mapping?

I haven't figured out yet how to easily do subtractive-geometry, for the center-hole and for the little grooves into which the strings wrap into the tuning keys (right now they just lay against the headboard, stopping at the appropriate place). But if I can just use bump mapping to make it look like a hole is there, maybe it works out(?).

 

Edit: getting better - http://i14.tinypic.com/4ujj3a0.jpg

 

This is 700 polys. I think I would save a lot if I just painted on the frets, the hole, and the strings on the head, and changed the pentagram axles into triangles, that would be 50-100 saved right there.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well the F-holes and head stock holes werwe done 2 different ways.

 

The body and the f-holes started as lines, I drew the shapes out by hand. Then combined em and hit the extrude button.I didn't extrude any depth though, just tapped the botton so it gave me a cap.

This can be kindof messy so I had to turn alot of edges that actually went across the hole. The problem with this method is the program really doesn't understand HOW you want the lines filled in, just takes some manual labor is all.

 

Then I selected the outside edge and extruded it for body depth I believe, it's been awhile, and capped the back side. Then I put a box inside the holes a little ways and applied a black texture to help give some depth (reverse normals and deleted top face - it's like looking at the inside of a box), but not let player see thru inside (otherwise I'd have had to duplicate alot of faces to build thge inside shape.)

Had I known before hand I might've just made the material two sided. Ah hindsight eh?

 

For the head stock, it started out as a box,it had 3 dividsions across the front face, I adjusted their widths so the hole was correct size, selected the middle face, extruded it backwards until it was aligned with back of headstock, deleted it, deleted the matching face from back of headstock and welded the verts.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I >think< that the drag net lasso is window dependent, meaning that if you use the upper left hand window and select something it selects the whole thing while if you use it in another window, it selects only the polys in view. But double check this, I cant remember for certain.

 

Yes, if you're using a perspective view, it will only select the points/polys facing you. If it's an axis view, it selects everything on that axis.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Recent Status Updates

    • Petike the Taffer  »  DeTeEff

      I've updated the articles for your FMs and your author category at the wiki. Your newer nickname (DeTeEff) now comes first, and the one in parentheses is your older nickname (Fieldmedic). Just to avoid confusing people who played your FMs years ago and remember your older nickname. I've added a wiki article for your latest FM, Who Watches the Watcher?, as part of my current updating efforts. Unless I overlooked something, you have five different FMs so far.
      · 0 replies
    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
×
×
  • Create New...