Jerboa's Models

[greebo]

Could you please show me an example mtr file?

Im not sure that I'm correctly editing it. This is what my mtr looks like.

This looks fine as it is. The material definitions for the collision and shadow textures are already existing, so you don't need to do anything to be able to use them in your model. Just name the surface accordingly and the engine will find it.

 

I assume you know that, but I'll post it here anyway: In Lightwave, select your collision surfaces, go to the Surface Editor (F5) and rename the surface to "tdm_collision_wood". Same goes for the shadow mesh, but use textures/common/shadow.

[Jerboa]

I use a different modeller, so the terminoligy is different from yours. Here are some shots of the model with the shadow and collision meshes in them. Basically I renamed the materials from there defaults to what you specified.

 

Note: the shadow thats being cast isnt the same shape or form as the shadow mesh I made.

[Baddcog]

I actually don't see ANY shadow.

[New Horizon]

I see no shadow either.

[Jerboa]

here's a retake. I believe its working as intended.

[Baddcog]

Looks good to me.

[Jerboa]

Heres a sickle.

[Baddcog]

Looks pretty good, I'm guessing around 250-300 polys.

[Springheel]

Nice. You're really cranking these out quickly.

[Jerboa]

Right now it's at 717 polys. I could simplify the handle abit more.Let me see if I can shave some off the blade.

[Jerboa]

I was able to shave the blade considerably. It's now at 643 polys.

 

It takes me about two days to finalize a model.

[greebo]

The sickle looks cool, a tad on the hipoly side, but still looking good.

 

Have you received your SVN username and password from sparhawk already?

[Jerboa]

No word from Sparhawk yet.

[Jerboa]

Simplified the handle abit and weathered the bolts. It's now sitting at 575.

[Springheel]

The bolts should really just be added with a normalmap. They don't need to actually be modeled.

[Jerboa]

I dont have the artistic artice for that. Maybe I could clone a bolt thru my texture editor.

 

I mapped the handle like you would a box (4sided). Cylindrical mapping left some streches. So, I would have to make some extra room on my texture for the bolts. That would sacrifice metal quality, making that texture smaller.

 

But, I could use a simple 8 sided flat cylinder face in modeler. Instead of a more rounded shape of a half sphere with the front tip/weathered and the back deleted.

 

I'll try to clone a bolt on. If I can find a bolt face.

[New Horizon]

I dont have the artistic artice for that. Maybe I could clone a bolt thru my texture editor.

 

I mapped the handle like you would a box (4sided). Cylindrical mapping left some streches. So, I would have to make some extra room on my texture for the bolts. That would sacrifice metal quality, making that texture smaller.

 

But, I could use a simple 8 sided flat cylinder face in modeler. Instead of a more rounded shape of a half sphere with the front tip/weathered and the back deleted.

 

I'll try to clone a bolt on. If I can find a bolt face.

 

Isn't the normal map made from the high poly version of the model? From my understanding, that's how you capture the detail of your model.

[Jerboa]

Not sure, I'm still new and learning certain things. But, I do know by using a flat cylinder, I've shaved 100 polys. w/o suffering quality on the appearance. The model is now under 470.

[New Horizon]

Yeah, you don't need to have the bolt on the low poly model. Just model it into the high poly version and then the normal map is baked from the high detail in your high poly model. We'll have to get you schooled up on that stuff.

[Jerboa]

Sounds good, The model is now sitting at 446 polys.

[greebo]

I don't know the process in your specific modeling program, but you should be able to get this running by saving the lowpoly and hipoly model to LWO.

 

You need:

- A highpoly model (untextured, no uvmap)

- A lowpoly model (this must be properly uv-mapped and textured)

- Save them both to LWO

- Get the xNormals software and try to render a normalmap using that program.

- Use that generated image in the "bumpmap" stage in your model.

 

The step with xNormals is not very trivial, but you might figure it out yourself. Maybe angua can help you a bit here.

[Tels]

To save you 5 minutes with google

 

http://www.xnormal.net/

[Springheel]

You don't even need to get that complicated. Something like a bolt end can be made in Photoshop by making a black surface the same size as your texture, and putting white dots where the bolts should be (soft edges will make the bolts appear rounded, hard edges make them more nail-like). Then run the image through the nvidia filter (it's available for download many places if you don't have it).

 

That will give you the basic shape of the bolt. Then you just overlay that image with your regular normalmap. It's a lot easier than it probably sounds.

[greebo]

Jerboa, thanks for the models, good work. I uploaded them and prepared the shaders and the skin files for them (plus made them moveable).

 

The changes I made were:

- I used only one model: pan_pipes01 - I achieved the texture variation by creating .skin files

- I removed the existing collision mesh and cloned a new one from the shadow mesh. The existing collision mesh was rectangular and did not represent the model as good as the shadow mesh did, so I just copied the shadow mesh and textured it with tdm_collision_wood.

- I created the .skin files (skins/musical.skin) where the texture substituions are defined.

- I created an entityDef to make the model moveable and let it have collision sounds.

[Jerboa]

Thank you Greebo for the work. Hopefully I'll get to the point where you wont have to do anything.

 

Right now I'm working on a cauldran. Poly count 710. It will come in 2 different sizes.