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Maximius

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Not a bad start. It looks a little washed out though, compared to some of our other assets. Not sure whether that's the texture or the lighting.

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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Probably the textures.

I just got them together for the very first time in those screenshots, and took them just to see what to do next; not really to show off but then I felt like what the hell. This is like a diary for my first object.

 

I still have a lot of work to do with them re: color coordination and contrast and border work, etc.

 

Looking at all the source photos, though, it's generally a pretty pale, spare little instrument, and this look fits right in (do a google image search on lute and you'll see what I mean), so I started with what's most typical, but looking at it, you're right it doesn't make a very good aesthetic impression, so now I'm thinking about getting a lot more yellows, browns, and oranges in, like this or this, so it has a lot more medieval classic look, like you'd see it on a table with some candles and a skull.

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.

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Yeah, I realise it's WIP. Just sayin'. :)

 

Your latter links look good. Definitely go with one of those looks. (Or, heck, go with both as two different skins if you're really keen.)

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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Still playing around...

This looks like a better color combination.

 

This is the first version I'm actually starting to get a feeling I want to pick it up and start playing. :)

 

Maybe a little too modern? ... with the pick shield, which anyway needs some more tweaking to smooth it out.

I could probably make the string-bridge more interesting; I saw one fastened on by an ornate wrought iron fastener.

Also debating about having the fret board come down further, actually onto the body, which I've seen a few times.

And still thinking of ideas for the border.

 

Etc, etc...

 

 

Edit: I just noticed the textures are getting mirrored! You can tell by the pick shield going the wrong direction. That's strange.

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.

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UV mapping problem. Just select the UVs for that face and flip them. I can't give more specific instructions, since how you do that depends on which app you're using. And unless it's Maya I wouldn't know anyway. :)

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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I stumbled into a solution when I rotated the model 180deg for completely independent reasons.

Apparently it (Lightwave) doesn't care as a default which way the face is actually pointing, only which direction is the positive one on the Cartesian graph.

I suspect it doesn't matter anyway, since the Doom3 Engine will render it its own way, so I don't even need to worry.

 

I think I've done all the modeling I want to do ... I tried to put all the strings on one rectangle alpha mapped with transparent negative space (to save triangles), but that just made the default color of the surface show through, then I tried to make the surface itself transparent, and that just made the strings go transparent with it ... I can't win! Looking at that door-hinge screenshot, I got the idea that in D3 you can really get the negative space fully transparent and the texture fully opaque. But I thought screw it anyway, I'll just use 4 triangles per string and it's not that bad, and now they can cast a shadow ... so the final triangle count is 487. I think that's decent.

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.

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Yeah, that look really good. The color deffinately makes the ornate hole trim stand out alot more. It looks like the trim is shiny, might just be the tex? But deffinately give it more specular than the wood since it's metal. I might give the wood a touch of specular sicne it is an instrument and probably glazed somehow.

 

50/50 on the fretboard. Could look good longer but I think it looks fine as is. Really the only reason to have it longer is if the player(lute player that is) could actually reach the frets.

 

And yeah, doom will work the transparencies per shader so that will be much better.

 

The strings might be a little high poly but I think it's a good budget of polys overall so I'd say it's fine. On my DoubleBass I used 3 sided strings. Same thing, better with shadows. (although a shadow mesh could be added that has 2 sided strings if you wanted to use a plane for the strings and alpha them out. normal maps work pretty good to give things like that enough shape to be convincing)

A major reason I choose to model my strings anyway is that they have 2 bends in them, one bend into headstock, one bend over bridge, plus they have a curve to them left/right so I was using as many polys to alpha map them as it took to model them anyway.

 

Good work though, I can deffinately see the finish product being included with Dark.

 

Now on to the shaders eh? :D They aren't that bad once you figure em out.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Didn't read the whole thread so far, but really many questions are answered in nice videotutorials on 3dbuzz.com. You have to create a login but it's sure worth it for beginners and even for advanced people in some areas. Tutorials for gamedesign on the most important engines (Doom 3 aparently, but of course in DoomED) and for Rendering-/Modeling studios, as well as c++ and other stuff. Although I don't know where a Videotutorial could be of any use in learning c++? :)

 

Also, since I was forced to use 3ds max, I found that it's a really nice to for gamemodelling. Haven't used Maya so far though, but Cinema 4d, which I normally use for any renderwork, surely sucks for gamemodelling!! :D I am definitely going to stick to 3ds max... It's simply structured and you can work very fast in optimizing polycount by hand.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I found a nice inlay for the fretboard ... thought I'd show it off.

 

lute12li7.th.jpg

 

Still things I want to do (for one thing, make the upper-fretboard surface longer to make the inlay longer; & change that black to a black-wood texture, and as always the outside border needs fixing), but I like the direction it's going.

 

I'm debating having the fretboard end with an arabesque pointed arrowhead rather than just meeting the rosette. It might be tricky to draw, but it'd look cool, I think.

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.

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Hi guys, been a while, I've been lurking on occasion but busy as Heck. I've been working with Blender again and I have some samples here. Some basic objects and a concept piece, please tell me what you think.

 

http://aycu20.webshots.com/image/36659/200...29889672_rs.jpg

 

http://aycu32.webshots.com/image/39511/200...91588481_rs.jpg

 

http://aycu03.webshots.com/image/40162/200...19222079_rs.jpg

 

Those are some laboratory pieces and a simple wine tray set. As you can see I've managed to figure out how to apply color, but I'm stuck at applying an image file to an object, I've followed the tutorials but when I render I get gray blocks and no texture or materials or whatever they call it. I don't know if I've missed some settings or what but Im stumped and the tutorials Ive found dont help.

 

Here is the concept piece, I call it the Air Muskatoon, its a breach loading shotgun that uses compressed air as a propellent. I thought it would be interesting to discuss the idea. The air is stored in the tank which serves as the weapons butt. Air powered guns might seem odd but I found that air was used for real hunting firearms pretty early in their development and it gave me the idea as a twist on the introduction of firearms for guards. They would be suitably odd looking and sounding as well as clunky to develop the sense of their primitiveness. I imagine a loud PoP! and then a shredding hail of pellets or shot. I also thought about attaching a bayonet to the end as well.

 

http://aycu37.webshots.com/image/39396/200...85580725_rs.jpg

 

http://aycu09.webshots.com/image/36968/200...06508276_rs.jpg

 

http://aycu24.webshots.com/image/39343/200...93671057_rs.jpg

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I like the lab pieces. We do need that stuff but it does need UV mapped.

 

For the albemic I'd say I have the same impression as the wine bottle. I think you use too many polys vertically that don't really change the shape very much. They'd be better used if you didn't have so many vertical segments and instead increased the horizontal segments.

 

The albemic looks like 8 sides, it's gonna look low poly in game 'cause of that (unless you want an octagonal one). If you are going for round use at least 10 sides, I think 14 sides is really the point where things start to look good and round.

You might have to sacrificy a bit of vertical detail to get there though, you should post the tri's count so we have an idea how many polys you are using.

Most likely a mission wouldn't have more than 1 to 5 albemics. Most likely no more than 2 in a room, maybe 3... So you could probably get it up to 1,000 polys and be alright. 500 is probably a better count to aim for and if you go a bit over you're golden. The neck segment is 4 polys tall but not much shape, I think you could use 2 polys high there with smoothing and it would look just as good. The crook in the neck looks like about 5-6 segments. 4 is probably enough, or you could leave 6 up top and weld some verts in the bottom so the tight inside of the crook is only 4 segments, that would save quite a few polys where they aren't needed. Altogether a cool model though, I like the stand and accessories.

 

The flasks are cool, but again you could save polys. I'd use the polys you have but instead of having them inside use those to make a thick lip around the top. Then you can use a double sided material and it'll look like glass inside and out. They are small enough I don't think you need polys inside to make the glass have thickness.

They are also small enough that 8 sides is probably enough.

 

Wine set is cool but like I said above, probably too many vertical segments that don't really contribute much shape.

The goblet though really needs a lip around the top for 2 reasons.

1-it looks paper thin.

2-if you use smoothing which it needs you will get a real ugly shadow along the rim because there aren't enough verts to distribute the normals along for smoothing. Having a rim up there like on the wine bottle will allow the goblet to smooth correctly.

Again though, they look very low poly 'cause they are 6 sided.

 

 

I like the musket alot, pretty cool design overall. But I'd say that it won't catch much favor for the Darkmod as I think most of the team is anti-guns.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Badcog, thanks for the points, I'm remaking the alembic now along those specs. The gun was a lark anyways, glad you liked it though.

 

Why do those items need uv mapping? Couldn't I just apply a clear texure/material to the alembic for example? Why would I need to skin that stuff? I thought uv mapping was for complex models like faces and detailed stuff. Can't I just slap a tarnished bronze image file on that wineset?

 

I cannot get the damned BLender to apply image files yet. I can load them, they comeup in the preview window, but then Im doing something wrong. rawr.

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I don't know Blender at all. Maybe someone else can point you in the right direction there.

 

You do need UV maps for all models/materials. After all a glass material is just a texture with certian properties like transparency applied.

 

T2 was a little more lienant (?), a little more forgiving (Yeah, I know how to spell that :) ) in that you could apply just a rgb color and transparency or illumination. But with D3 you gotta UV map.

----------

 

I really don't know what you've tried, and i've only looked at Blender. It is so foriegn to me and I really don't want to dive into learning a new program and spen a ton of time learning how to do stuff I already know how to do.

 

I did open Blender and take another look though. After about 10 minutes of random button pushing i did get a model loaded, and a texture loaded.

I also found the uv mapping modifiers but can't tell you how I got there. Maybe you already know this, but since I was there I took a screeny.

blenderuvpy4.th.jpg

 

Can't tell you what it means :)

At least mouse over gives some info. Somehow you need to decide which mapping modifier to use (see bottom right hand corner) and the combo of x,y,z will map the object that way. I haven't even figured out how to change views so I can only see from top, doesn't help much.

 

Hopefully that helps some.

 

In that pick I used Win (which I take as window, so it must be applying the texture from that view) and I chose flat which is basically coordinates from left/right and up/down (a planar map if you will). If I am correct then it would map a cube with the full texture on top and bottom (since I am in top view) and the texture edges would stretch along the sides.

 

Cube instead of Flat would probably map the texture to each side of the cube, so you wouldn't get the stretching.

 

Tube most likely would be like the Flat mapping top and bottom, but should wrap the texture around the sides, like wrapping paper around a soda pop can. This would probably be best for a goblet or bottle, possibly the albemic although there'd be some weird stretching issues on the top elbow thing.

 

However it might be best to just try and get any kind of basic map applied first, see if it works, test it in D3 and go from there.

 

Sometimes it's good just to get something through the entire process, even if wrong, just to see what's involved. See what mistakes you made, or what needs fixed, then try again to make it the way you intend. That way you can spend more time trouble shooting stuff you don't know yet.

You've obviously got a good start on modelling so I'd like to see you get something in game, then worry more about how many polys to use, ect... I think once you've got every step down you'll have a better time with the entire process.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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You can apply procedural 3D textures and "solid colour" type textures without UV mapping. 2D textures do require it though. Depending on the object, you may be able to get away with a simple planar or cylindrical or occasionally spherical map, but for anything remotely complex you need to UV map. Automatic UV mapping is something that Blender is better at than many other apps, so this isn't as painful as it sometimes is.

 

I've actually just started learning Blender myself, and I must say I really don't like it. Not intuitive at all. I'm used to Maya, in which a lot of basic operations are really easy. Like snapping one vertex to another: Just turn on vertex snap, select the vertex you want to move, and use the move tool to drag it onto the target vertex. Done. I often use this in combination with vertex welding to remove excess polygons.

 

But I've been puzzling over this for a while and still haven't worked out how to do it in Blender! Problem is, there's no interactive snapping. If you want to snap something, you have to move it close by and choose something to snap to from the Shift-S menu. And you can only snap to the cursor or the grid. And you can't snap only on certain axes (which in Maya was a simple matter of only dragging one axis of the move tool when you were snapping). Argh. Totally fucking useless.

 

Another thing that's really pissing me off: I'm doing some texturing of a model (after going through the horribly convoluted steps on the Blender wiki to assign a texture - admittedly Maya's way is a little convoluted as well, but at least it's visual and easy to remember), and I want to view my updated texture in action (i.e. rendered, because viewports don't display nearly enough detail for the purpose), from a different angle. In Maya you just rotate your view and hit render, dead easy, takes about a second. In Blender, well...

 

1. Create a new camera object.

2. Set up your viewports so that you're looking through that camera in one 3D view, and you have a normal 3D view in another pane.

3. Use the move and rotate tools to slowly and painstakingly move the camera into position, using the normal 3D view to move it and looking at the camera's 3D view to see how you're going. This can take 15-30 seconds.

4. Set the camera to be the active camera.

5. Render.

 

By the time you've done all that, the guy in the next cubicle using Maya has already finished his texturing and has gone for an early lunch. And you have to do this (at least steps 3-5) again each time you want to make a tiny adjustment to your viewing angle! Fucking hopeless.

 

If there's a decent texturing workflow in Blender, I haven't found 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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You can apply procedural 3D textures and "solid colour" type textures without UV mapping.

 

But do they work in Doom3?

 

In my experience they don't, I can do that in Max too but if I can't turn it into a shader it's useless. If it can be turned into a shader I'd like to know how. It's not useful very often but somethimes it could be.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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But do they work in Doom3?

Ah, no, they don't. I was speaking more generally. :)

 

I'd be surprised if there wasn't a way to "bake" a procedural 3D texture into a 2D one, based on a given UV mapping, but I don't know how to do 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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I've actually just started learning Blender myself, and I must say I really don't like it. Not intuitive at all.

 

No application that does something complex (such as 3D modelling, music production etc) will seem intuitive if you are used to a different application. There is a good article about this on JoelOnSoftware which I can't be bothered to look up right now, but it points out that even the supposedly well-designed and intuitive Mac interface seems clunky and strange to Windows users, because it is unfamiliar.

 

But I've been puzzling over this for a while and still haven't worked out how to do it in Blender! Problem is, there's no interactive snapping. If you want to snap something, you have to move it close by and choose something to snap to from the Shift-S menu. And you can only snap to the cursor or the grid. And you can't snap only on certain axes (which in Maya was a simple matter of only dragging one axis of the move tool when you were snapping). Argh. Totally fucking useless.

 

Find this control on the bottom bar of the 3D view, and set to "Closest", or hit SHIFT-TAB (which activates "Median" not "Closest", but I have no idea what the difference is).

 

th_82476_snap_122_195lo.jpg

 

Then select the vertex you want to move, hit G, drag over the vertex you want to snap to and hold down CTRL. Instant snap.

 

Another thing that's really pissing me off: I'm doing some texturing of a model (after going through the horribly convoluted steps on the Blender wiki to assign a texture - admittedly Maya's way is a little convoluted as well, but at least it's visual and easy to remember), and I want to view my updated texture in action (i.e. rendered, because viewports don't display nearly enough detail for the purpose), from a different angle. In Maya you just rotate your view and hit render, dead easy, takes about a second. In Blender, well...

 

I'm not sure what you want to do here, do you just want to render the scene from a different position? Try using SHIFT-P to create a sizable, draggable preview overlay in any 3D view, which responds to the underlying rotations or translations of the 3D window.

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Since it's just a real quick and hopyfully easy to answer question, I thought I'd post it here. I am currently playing around a little with the darkradiant but when I run my map my custom textures don't show up, altough they do in the editor's preview, with normal, specular and all. But ingame it's just all black. If I replace all with default textures it works like a charm. Any ideas how to fix this?

 

This is my mtr:

textures/darkmod/stone/natural/rock_large_holey_001

{

surftype15

description "rock"

qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/stone/natural/rock_large_holey_001_ed

diffusemap textures/darkmod/stone/natural/rock_large_holey_001

normalmap textures/darkmod/stone/natural/rock_large_holey_001_local

specularmap textures/darkmod/stone/natural/rock_large_holey_001_s

}

 

Diffuse and specular are dds (with dxt3) in the proper dds/textures-folder and editorimage/normal are jpg/tga in the textures-folder.

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I used DXT3, cause it's said on the "Texture Guidelines" Wiki page to either use dxt1 or dxt3 for diffusemaps. For compressing I use the nvidia normalmap dds exporter for photoshop.

 

When compiling I get the following warnings:

WARNING: Couldn't load image: textures/darkmod/stone/natural/rock_large_holey_

001

WARNING: Couldn't load image: textures/darkmod/stone/natural/rock_large_holey_

001_s

 

So at least I know now that it's the dds files that don't work. They are located in the folder dds/textures/darkmod/stone/natural/ . Wiki says that there is no need to clarify that dds files are actually located in a different folder than the other files in the mtr . Please verify this. Also I found that my mtr was actually wrong, although I copypasted it from the wiki. It should say bumpmap but in the wiki it says normalmap. Better correct it here.

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By looking a little closer at the structures I finally found the solution and it absolutely makes sense. On Ultra High you got no compression at all. Every channel is used in uncompressed tga format, so every texture-channel must be present in the default textures directory. :) What a shame I didn't see that earlier. Maybe you guys should correct this also here in the wiki. Those TGAs are actually necessary...

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I fixed the normalmap>bumpmap thing. Sorry, I missed that earlier.

 

Also, I was unaware that running ultr-high required the use of the TGA's. But this is from the Wiki so it is correct, I'm not gonna change that.

Diffusemaps: DDS (DXT1/DXT3) as well as an TGA for the hires repository (can be RLE-compressed)

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Ok, then I misunderstood "repository". I thought it was just a place to store the highres textures for future alterations. But you still need the specular map as a TGA on Ultra High. I just tested it... Don't want to picky, but I wrote a little replacement for the list... :)

 

On Ultra High Doom 3 uses uncompressed textures (TGA) only, but on lower settings it looks for compressed files first and uses those instead.

  • Diffusemaps: DDS (DXT1/DXT3) and TGA (can be RLE-compressed)
  • Normalmap: TGA
  • Specularmap: DDS (DXT1) and TGA
  • Editor Image: JPG (not over-compressed)

Remember to put the compressed dds files into the dds/textures/.../[texturegroup] folder and the uncompressed into textures/.../[texturegroup] .

 

 

At that point, a link to the Texture Folder Structure would be usefull too.

 

Another thought now. Since the only difference between ultra high and high detail apears to be the use of uncompressed textures, why not create a real ultra high mode, which doesn't limit us to dimensions of 1024, but 2048 instead for example. Nothing would have to be changed. The TGAs would be 2048x2048 or something like that, but the compressed only 1024x1024. Ah wait, we'd have to make a smaller normal maps as well for the lower settings then. So it would be a bit of extra work, but so damn detailed... =)

Edited by STiFU
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