Model Polycount

[Renzatic]

I think I'm gonna drop Xnormal for now. Modo and Zbrush have been outputting far, far more detailed normals than what I saw it produce.

 

I'm also gonna be spending about 25 bucks for what looks like a good tutorial on the Modo site. It covers about everything I need to know. If things go well and I get my learn on, I'll have something good to show off late tomorrow night.

[Renzatic]

Gentlemen....ladies . Things are finally starting to look decent. I've still got some seams to take care of, and all of the fins to do, but at least I have a goodly chunk done.

 

Kinda depresses me that it took two damn weeks to do a simple square shutter, though. Jeroba in the thread above looks like he's spitting out models like he's breathing polys and exhaling meshes. Gotta get some speed on.

[Tels]

Gentlemen....ladies . Things are finally starting to look decent. I've still got some seams to take care of, and all of the fins to do, but at least I have a goodly chunk done.

 

Kinda depresses me that it took two damn weeks to do a simple square shutter, though. Jeroba in the thread above looks like he's spitting out models like he's breathing polys and exhaling meshes. Gotta get some speed on.

 

Don't worry. Your work is more quality over quantity (jerboa, don't take that personal, you are still learning

 

Anyway, I love your work, renzatic and I think it will look awesome and totally worth it!

[Baddcog]

Well, I can say that you are deffinately putting in the time to learn and perfect the normal mapping technique which isn't easy. I could (should) still put in a bit of work on that stuff myself.

But I think it's really gonna pay off, that shutter is looking pretty good. Looking foward to ingame screeny.

[Renzatic]

Aw shucks, guys.

 

I've got one question that's kind of, but not quite, off topic here. I was cruising about town earlier today and stopped in Best Buy to check out all the neat stuff they have there. I came across a Wacom Bamboo Fun, and came pretty close to buying one. I only stopped because I wasn't sure if it'd be beneficial enough to plunk down $100 for (plus I had to spend some cash on a couple of tutorials).

 

So, for all I do, and considering I can do it fairly well with a mouse, is it worth picking up a tablet? Anyone here use one?

[Baddcog]

I got a wacom tablet aq little while back. Was on sale at best buy for $60. As far as I knew they were always a few hundred. So I thought what the hell, that's pretty cheap. It was probably clearance to make way for the new bamboo line.

 

I used it a little with photoshop. It was cool, but had to keep going back to keyboard for ctrl-Z and stuff I was used to. Really nice when painting to get varied strokes that you can't do with mouse.

 

Then it sat for awhile as I wasn't doing much painting anyway.

 

A few days ago I learned of the 'polypaint tool' in 3ds Max. Alot like terrain painting in engines like Hammer and Morrowind. It was really cool being able to use a pen tool and paint shapes in 3d. Not sure how much use it'll get right now, but I can see it being really handy if I get into making more detialed high polys stuff.

 

So I don't know. I bought it 'cause it was cheap and I had been curious for along time. Haven't used it much but I can be a creature of habit. I think the more I use it and get used to it the more it will g et used. Right now it's one of those things that is sometimes harder than what I already know so it gets pushed aside a bit.

Much like Blender and Lightwave, I tried them but I didn't want to releaern a 3d program to do what I can do with Max. However I think in the long run I'll be able to do more with tablet than with mouse.

[Renzatic]

The good news: NO SEAMS! The bad news: another set of bullshit I have to deal with.

 

I figured out that jacking the smoothing angle up to obscene amounts before baking helps alleviate seams. The downside to that is it bakes all the glossy humps into the final map. Once I figure out how to fix those, I can make perfect normalmaps from high poly sources.

 

I might write up a tutorial afterwords, but it might be too Modo specific to be of any use to anyone.

 

And lastly, I've realized this would've been a far quicker process if I just baked a frozen subpatch object for the curves and added the rest of the normalmap in in Photoshop. C'est la vie.

[Jerboa]

I cant wait for your tutorial. I'm still learning in that department.

[Renzatic]

Without much more ado than what I've already heaped on it, I give you...a shutter. 532 polys after tripling. Not too shabby.

 

This is what I've learned over the past three weeks:

 

-Modo kinda sucks for baking normalmaps. I've had to jab it, tweak it, and take about 50,000 shortcuts and cheats just to get the thing to look halfway like the HP model. Xnormal is quite a bit better, but I need to learn my way around it.

 

-I bought and downloaded a couple of Eat3D tutorials. Turns out 3DS Max is about the best texture baker out there. I figured this out by baking the low and high poly sources that were provided in the tutorial. Modo was never able to put out a normalmap bake as detailed and error free as Max. I've only got one problem with that...I don't like Max. Guess I'll have to suck it up and at least learn my way around the material editor.

 

-Other stuff.

 

What I have left to do on the model:

 

-Some touch up work on the diffuse. Also scale it down from 2048 to 1024, like the normals and specs.

 

-Figure out how to convert my model to .ASE. My love affair with Modo is on rocky ground here. At first, it was great. Best editor I've used. But after figuring out that A. it has a middling renderer, and B. it doesn't have an option to convert to .ASE, my relationship with it is a little strained.

 

-combine my UVs. I dunno why, but the basic cut and paste UV thing isn't working here. But hey, by now, I'm used to random unintended bullshit. I'll figure it out.

 

And there you have it. 3 weeks of work on a very, very simple model. I learned alot though, so it ain't all bad.

[Tels]

Without much more ado than what I've already heaped on it, I give you...a shutter. 532 polys after tripling. Not too shabby.

 

 

-Other stuff.

-Some touch up work on the diffuse. Also scale it down from 2048 to 1024, like the normals and specs.

 

Please keep the highres, it omes handy for the TDM highres mod

 

And there you have it. 3 weeks of work on a very, very simple model. I learned alot though, so it ain't all bad.

 

Well, I could never have done this, so you still rock Looking forward to more of your work.

[Renzatic]

Well, I could never have done this, so you still rock. Looking forward to more of your work.

 

The way I figure it, if I can do it, anyone can. Ain't that hard.

 

Please keep the highres, it omes handy for the TDM highres mod

 

I will. I'll pack them in there along with the rest when I upload it.

 

Which brings me to a quick question. How and where do I upload my models? I want to get this thing stored somewhere. I figure that since I've spent too much time on it, my hard drive is gonna crash on me any second now.

[Tels]

The way I figure it, if I can do it, anyone can. Ain't that hard.

 

Not having windows, the programs and the time disqualifies me

 

I will. I'll pack them in there along with the rest when I upload it.

 

Which brings me to a quick question. How and where do I upload my models? I want to get this thing stored somewhere. I figure that since I've spent too much time on it, my hard drive is gonna crash on me any second now.

 

Do you have access to SVN? That is the prefered way. Otherwise, you can also email it to someone here or use our FTP server and we sort it into SVN.

[Renzatic]

Do you have access to SVN? That is the prefered way. Otherwise, you can also email it to someone here or use our FTP server and we sort it into SVN.

 

Nope on both counts. Though I wouldn't mind having access to the FTP again. I used to have tons of stuff on there I'd love to have again.

[Baddcog]

Yeah, looks really nice.

 

There is an .ase exporter for Max. I'll try and look it up but shouldn't be hard to find with google. Vers. 6 and older has an ase importer, doesn't work with 7 though

 

Looks like you're gonna be using max to bake probably so while you've got your models there... The uv Unwrap modifier is sweet too for aligning uv's.

[Renzatic]

Lightwave comes stock with an ase exporter, right? Modo reads and writes lwo files by default, so I can always port my models into it and send them out again.

 

Thing is, my hard drive space is at a premium at the moment. I don't want to install Lightwave again unless I have to. Is there another stand alone program out there that'll do the same thing, like Deep Exploration or something?

[Springheel]

You don't have to save them as .ase. Most of our modelers use Lightwave.

[Renzatic]

Then that comes to the next question. .ASE tutorials are everywhere, but I've yet to find a tutorial on how to get .lwo files into Doom 3 with textures. I've searched the TDM wiki, Modwiki, IDDevnet, googled it...nothing.

 

I've got the model in, but no textures. Also, how do I add collision and shadow meshes?

 

Ah, shit. I realized I have a space between the Doom and the 3. Gotta fix that.

[Baddcog]

Not sure about the lwo stuff. ase is nice cause you can edit with notepad, I'm used to that from the T2 days and e files.

 

Anyway, collision models and shadows need exported with your object.

 

shadows need the material /common/shadow (or shadow2 if you don't want the object to self shadow). I always name my mesh shadow for easy of use but the name doesn't matter.

shadow mesh needs to be fully inside the object or you get weird black spots. (unless shadow2 is used)

 

 

Collision is kindof the same, I know this is on Wiki and I'm tired so short vers. We have specific collision materials something like tdm/collision_wood, ...ceramic, etc... lots of em. Moveable collision models need to be simple, like 16 polys or less, cubes/cylinders...

 

static props can have very complex collision. of course simple best. they can also have multiple material collision (ie: wood and metal). They might be able to script move (I don't know), but can't be picked up and thrown.

[Renzatic]

Collision sounds simple enough, but I'm still a bit confused on what the shadow mesh does. From the sound of it, it's just a block with a material applied to it that acts, I assume, as a projector of sorts.

 

I'll look up all this stuff on the wiki tomorrow, but I still could use some help on getting it all in the mod. Everything I've read makes this about as clear as mud, and Modo, with it's weird material editor, isn't making the issue any easier on me.

 

Edit: I wasn't quite satisfied with one thing, so I went and added 3 extra shutters to round things out and make it look better. Current poly count now sits at 628. Too high?

[Crispy]

I'm still a bit confused on what the shadow mesh does. From the sound of it, it's just a block with a material applied to it that acts, I assume, as a projector of sorts.

Yes. The shadow mesh, if present, is used to cast the object's shadow. This calculation is done separately from rendering the visual model's polygons.

 

The point is just to have fewer polys involved in shadowcasting, because shadowcasting is a lot more expensive than rendering the visual model.

 

In case it's not clear, the shadow mesh does not influence the appearance of received shadows (shadows cast by other objects onto the shutter). They always "fall on" the visual model. The shadow mesh is purely for the purposes of casting shadows.

[Springheel]

Then that comes to the next question. .ASE tutorials are everywhere, but I've yet to find a tutorial on how to get .lwo files into Doom 3 with textures. I've searched the TDM wiki, Modwiki, IDDevnet, googled it...nothing.

 

I don't know what program you're using, but you just need to make sure that the surface material name corresponds to the material shader name you're using.

 

The shadow mesh is invisible to the renderer but is used to cast a shadow. It will cast a shadow on the visible model, however, so you have to make sure it fits inside. Shouldn't be too hard with something this shape. As for a collision mesh, you could just use a basic box. Each of those would be a separate mesh with a separate surface name.

[Renzatic]

I'm using Modo. Basically Lightwave, but slicked up for the 21st century.

 

I just got through looking at the models and material files that came along with Thiefs Den. It looks like there needs to be a seperate material for every stage of the texture. I just had one with all three textures packed in underneath it, and the material name pointed towards the folder, not the texture itself. I think that might've been my problem right there.

 

I'm still not sure how I add the collision and shadow meshes, though. I didn't see anything in the TD folders that pointed towards any extra meshes, and there aren't any extra layers on the model with them in there. How do you do that?

[Baddcog]

for the collision just add a cube the size of the whole shutter. It really doesn't need to be any more complex. Would be hard to shoot an arrow through the gaps....

 

The add the material

(check Wiki- I think I'm right but...)

base/tdm_collision_wood

 

Export that mesh along with your shutter mesh. Do the same with shadow but use

base/shadow (for a shadow that casts on itself) or

base/shadow2 (for a shadow that does not cast on the shutter itself)

 

This shape should be more complex than the collision. The collision simplifies calculations for things bouncing off of it.

 

For the shadow mesh I would make a simple frame for the outside (make sure it's entirely within the shutter frame)

For the flaps I would just make flat planes. 2 polys per side. 4 verts/4 polys. Put them inside the flaps. That way light can shine more realistically in or out of them but still get blocked from the right direction. They will also be simple enough not to make the shadow calculations too complex.

 

That polycount might be kindof high but the shadow and collision will help that out alot. I know there are a few ways to cut it that I already mentioned.

 

What you should do though is upload that for shutters that authors can have on useable windows (ones that player can access both sides of and/or windows that are open).

 

Then upload another version that has all of the backfacing polys deleted. I'd go as far as deleting all the outer frame polys too. Authors can stick these inside a window frame for looks and some black tex behind them. Use the same collision mesh for this. Don't put a shadow mesh on this one, but instead make a copy of your shutter material in your mtr file and add noshadows to it. apply this material to the low polys so no processing will be wasted on shadow cast9ing (as it will be used for dark empty windows anyway).

 

name them

 

shutter_wood_01

shutter_wood_prop_01

 

or something similar.

[Springheel]

The shadowmesh and collisionmesh have to be part of the same layer, but just with a different surface name.

 

I make them on another layer and then copy and paste them into a single layer when I'm done.

[Renzatic]

To show I'm not totally dead here: arches.

 

Haven't had much time here as of late. Hell, I still haven't managed to get my shutter into Doom 3 properly yet. But I'm still here, working in my spare time.