ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 11:31 pm :
here are 3 images of the first staircase and nearby paving stones.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 2:10 am :
just a small update. this image below shows one of the d3 derivative dirt textures I recently made.

Image

I've been working on some different stone models for a new area but I'm not ready to show those yet.



BJA@Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 8:35 pm :
Nice stones and stairmodels you've got there, the terrain in the last shot is pretty cool. Maybe a slightly different color for the diffuse texture, so it doesn't look too doomish? though the progress of this map is a bit slow (first post 2006 ;D), it's always good stuff you're showing.



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 6:43 am :
I'm curious to see how this looks in game. Do you have any in-game shots?



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:41 am :
bja and rich, sorry I didn't reply to your posts sooner, the forum isn't sending me email notifications despite me checking it has my latest address.

@bja, thanks a lot :) and I'll admit my progress is very slow, but a lot of my time is still spent learning the tools and doing research for my concept designs. saying all that I am getting faster at the new objects I've been working on so hopefully I'll have more to show you guys soon.

@rich, I would gladly post some ingame images if we had d3 installed on my dad's pc here which I'm still sharing with him, but atm I've only got blender and psp8, not even the map editors. although my dad is planning on getting a lap top to do his work on so I'll then have more chance of installing the other stuff. and eventually I'll have a pc of my own again but that's not likely for the next few months.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:43 am :
just another small update from me, I decided to rebuild the horn type objects from my hell map, when I find time I'll make a new texture for these instead of using the orignal d3 one.

Image



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 1:45 pm :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've not done any more work on the crack normal layer today, but I think I've improved the diffuse and basic/detail normal layers.

in this perspective image, the camera is quite close to the cliff face and there is still a lot of high frequency detail. next on my to do list is try to mix in some more variation to the diffuse and then add to some cracks, over the next few days I'll then work on the other 2 sections of this cliff.

Image

Nicely done :twisted:



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 9:39 pm :
thanks sturm :)

I need to do more work on the diffuse and I've decided that the other 2 sections of the this cliff model (which join onto the end nearest the camera in the latest image) will probably have a smoother shape to them, ie look less like bolders.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 11:17 pm :
here's two images of the latest diffuse tests. I used a photo source of real rocks for the basic diffuse layer and a smaller tiled dirt texture for the detail layer. the normal maps are the same as in the last images. also none of these recent images have ao or spec maps, just the uniform spec lighting that comes with blender.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 11:07 am :
in between mainly doing real life stuff over the last few days, I've managed to do enough of the new rock material to be satisfied for the time being. so for the next few days I can focus on the meshes again. after that I'll probably do some more work on the crack normals.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:35 am :
I've had a ton of real life distractions so far this year, but over the last 3 days I finally got some work done in blender.

the red section of this cliff face is new and I've tried to get more of a flow to the edgeloops.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:01 am :
I managed to do some more blender work today. here is the 2 cliff sections with their unique normal (low frequency) layers. they share the same diffuse, spec and normal detail (high frequency) layers.

Image Image

although not very obvious from this camera distance and fov, I couldn't find a way to tile the materials across the sections so there is a seam. this was due to apparently the baking needing all the uv's to be within the default image space, usually uv's can extend beyond that space if the materials use tiling diffuse, spec layers etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:39 am :
although it was quite easily to model a deep crack in the meshes to hide the texture seam, I didn't realise the shared spec map would look wrong. as shown in the image below. I don't want to make unique spec maps for each cliff section so I'm going back to the previous version of the mesh and see what else I can do.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 3:39 pm :
I haven't had much time over the last few days to work in blender but the 2nd image below shows the progress I've made with the seam. still wip though.

Image Image



Sebultura@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 8:44 pm :
It's cool to see the progress of your stuff & putting some picture with descriptions really helps enjoying the thing.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 4:07 pm :
@ Sebultura, thanks and this latest workflow is a lot faster then I've previously been able to do, but frustratingly I've not had much time this year to do any blender work until the last few days. I do hope to make up for lost time though.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 4:14 pm :
while I'm working on the mesh for the 3rd cliff section, here's an image of the seam between the first two sections. the results turned out better then I thought they would, with only really the smooth group shading indicating where the seam is, and from a distance it's barely noticeable :)

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 2:58 am :
for the first time since my hdd died last week, I've been able to get on with my blender work. these images show the 3rd cliff section (in blue)

Image Image Image

tomorrow I hope to get the uv's and baking done.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:25 am :
I think I've finally finished the meshes, uv's and baking for these 3 cliff sections.

Image Image Image Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 4:48 am :
very, very sweet. :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 6:04 am :
thanks a lot friar 8)

I've done some tweaking today to the mesh's edge loops and rebaked the normals. the last two posts of mine have had their images updated. the differences are subtle but I think the rocks look slightly more natural.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 1:04 am :
just a text update: I had more pc and isp problems and went several weeks without a computer to work on. I've since then moved flats and now have a better broadband service. and although I don't have my own pc yet, I've been borrowing my gf's laptop and have successfully installed blender on after udating the video drivers. hopefully within the next few days I'll be working on the hell map project again. I'll ul some wip images as soon as I have something to show.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am :
1 : What that tutorial/tip was really refering to was orientation of heightmap 'templates' when used to generate normalmaps. If you render out a normal map from the 1st image by then applying that verticle 'trim' to a model along the horizontal you'll create a 'flipped' channel becasue of the way the Nmap was created.

Rotating and moving UVWs don't make any difference in terms of 'fixing' the problem becasue it's a problem at source, on the image itself.

But using a 'correct' normal map has no effect when UVWmapped as the game 'compensates' for it (for want of a better term)

2 : I've not yet fully tested LWO models other than to solve that smoothing issue mentioned in the 'prepping LWO models tutorial'. I've got a multimaterial terrain mesh section to try out but have yet to do so.

3 : You mean an actual UVWmap split? A map physically broken into two sections (for example). Yes whereever there is a break in a UVWmap you get a seam in game, you can't avoid that (for terrain you can't use that tangentspace material parameter you see in character models).

If you're talking about Blender UVW (mark) seams then no those have no effect whatsoever one the exported model; it's basically just an 'internal' helper for Blender.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:45 am :
thanks kat,

1. understood and that`s good to hear, so I assume in blender I could even have my uv maps upside down or rotated 90 degrees on the terrain models, as long as the local map used in game as been generated using correct axis, yes?

2. understood and I`ll go read that tut of yours again as it was months ago I last read it.

3. understood and sorry, I ment a physical split where two or more meshes with different materials in blender are combined and exported as one .ase or .lwo which then produces a shadow seam in game.

and I remember in the past trying out the unsmoothedtangents global keyword on my blender terrain materials, but never got it working, do you know why it only works on character models?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 1:15 pm :
kat, I`m adding some low poly details to the large cave, and wondered whether to keep it all as one .ase model or export it as several model sections, similar to how you appear to of built your d3 and q4 terrain maps?

and is there any advantage if the engine can`t see the model even if it`s in the same vis portal area? I did a quick search on this but wasn`t sure I understood what the other guys were saying.

with my first area of this map, I`m only intending to use brushes for the sky box, but should I split them and caulk the parts of the hull that the player can`t see, ie brush faces that would be behind the models?



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 4:33 am :
carnage over at katsbits.com forums suggested I tried using a custom light texture for the lava pit. it took me a few days of dev to get results I was really happy with. anyway, here's some shots of the new lighting, still wip as I need to add one or two more lights to the upper left corner of the lava pit, but if that goes well then its still half the amount of lights I had with the last version, and imo this looks even better :)

Image Image Image Image



mikebart@Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:13 am :
its looking really good ratty, smart move using the custom light texture

this is something someone once told me about lighting that really sunk in:

Quote:
its all in how you do your lighting, if you're using something like deferred shading where you do your entire lighting calc in one pass, you can probably get away with lots of materials and such. But in a system like doom3, where you have 1 pass per light that touches every material, if you have a building with 16 mats, and you have 8 lights touching it, you're rendering 128 seperate passes. Hope that helps explain to anyone who dosent get the advantages of using less textures/materials.

[edit] 8 lights touching all 16 materials, not just 8 lights in your scene.






ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 2:39 pm :
cool and understood, thanks mikebart :)

do you have any advise on the image size and amount of light textures we can use?



mikebart@Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:47 am :
Ive never actually used a light texture before so im not really too sure about that, if you use a textureatlas with lots of different textures on it you could easily go 2048x2048, it depends on how many textures you want to use overall.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:48 am :
mikebart, understood and using a textureatlas (assuming its the same as a texturesheet) is a cool idea, I'll keep that in mind, thanks :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 6:37 am :
in between finishing off the lighting in the lava pit, I've been adding more polys to the rest of the cave model and working on its lighting. I haven't worked on the wooden bridges or ladders recently, they are some of the next items on my to do list.

as for the lava pit, its only using 4 lights as opposed the 8 lights I was previously using iirc.

the single ambient light for the pit now uses a custom light texture to add a dark orange ambient glow which extends slightly above the 3 brighter orange blendlights each of which also use custom light textures. I've just added a makealpha stage to the blendlights material shaders so there is a subtle light caustics effect on the walls of the lava pit. it doesn't really show up in the static shots but when I have more of this area done I'll try and record a fraps vid to show you guys.

Image

I've also manually tweaked the uv's of the lava to get it to flow along its path.

that took some time to figure how to do this in blender but should in future be relatively easy for me to do with other lava flows in this hell map, I also distorted some of the lava uv's to add fluctuations when its animated, so it looks more like a liquid and less like a scrolling texture imo.

I'm especially pleased with how it appears to speed up on the steeper slopes of the lava pit :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am :
1 : What that tutorial/tip was really refering to was orientation of heightmap 'templates' when used to generate normalmaps. If you render out a normal map from the 1st image by then applying that verticle 'trim' to a model along the horizontal you'll create a 'flipped' channel becasue of the way the Nmap was created.

Rotating and moving UVWs don't make any difference in terms of 'fixing' the problem becasue it's a problem at source, on the image itself.

But using a 'correct' normal map has no effect when UVWmapped as the game 'compensates' for it (for want of a better term)

2 : I've not yet fully tested LWO models other than to solve that smoothing issue mentioned in the 'prepping LWO models tutorial'. I've got a multimaterial terrain mesh section to try out but have yet to do so.

3 : You mean an actual UVWmap split? A map physically broken into two sections (for example). Yes whereever there is a break in a UVWmap you get a seam in game, you can't avoid that (for terrain you can't use that tangentspace material parameter you see in character models).

If you're talking about Blender UVW (mark) seams then no those have no effect whatsoever one the exported model; it's basically just an 'internal' helper for Blender.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:45 am :
thanks kat,

1. understood and that`s good to hear, so I assume in blender I could even have my uv maps upside down or rotated 90 degrees on the terrain models, as long as the local map used in game as been generated using correct axis, yes?

2. understood and I`ll go read that tut of yours again as it was months ago I last read it.

3. understood and sorry, I ment a physical split where two or more meshes with different materials in blender are combined and exported as one .ase or .lwo which then produces a shadow seam in game.

and I remember in the past trying out the unsmoothedtangents global keyword on my blender terrain materials, but never got it working, do you know why it only works on character models?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 1:15 pm :
kat, I`m adding some low poly details to the large cave, and wondered whether to keep it all as one .ase model or export it as several model sections, similar to how you appear to of built your d3 and q4 terrain maps?

and is there any advantage if the engine can`t see the model even if it`s in the same vis portal area? I did a quick search on this but wasn`t sure I understood what the other guys were saying.

with my first area of this map, I`m only intending to use brushes for the sky box, but should I split them and caulk the parts of the hull that the player can`t see, ie brush faces that would be behind the models?



phantazm11@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:39 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
ratty redemption wrote:
here's an image of my particle rock objects,


??? You can use models as particles in Doom 3?


In Blender.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 9:05 pm :
oh. ok. then what would they be used for in doom 3? IE Why is he making them for his map?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:43 am :
phantazm11 wrote:

Have you tried using the same rock particles, but maybe just scaling them up in size?

thanks and yes I have. the first tests I did with these particle rocks used a higher scale on their particle emitter, which was the original low poly rock face. I then experimented to see how small I could scale the rocks while shrink wrapping a mesh over them.

from a technical point of view, the larger the particles the easier it is to work with them and the shrink wrapping. but artistically I'm trying some variations on the style of rock face which might end up looking as good but requiring less detail.

The Happy Friar wrote:
oh. ok. then what would they be used for in doom 3? IE Why is he making them for his map?

sorry for any confusion guys. friar if you look at this recent post of mine.

viewtopic.php?p=217418#p217418

it shows how these rock objects can be turned into particle models in blender and either automatically spawned over a larger mesh or painted onto a mesh. the tools can also be used to quickly place trees in a forest or any group of library objects around a map, again all within blender.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 1:11 pm :
that's pretty neat. Sounds like ETQW's stuff generator or a RTS stuff paintbrush. I'll have to look in to that. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:15 pm :
friar, agreed and the particle objects are one of the most powerful tools I've ever worked with, although I've heard there are more options in some of the pro apps like maya with their versions of this tool.

kernon dillon from blender newbies made an excellent video tutorial, although it doesn't cover the shrink wrapping stage I do, but you can learn how to plant trees etc.

http://www.cgcookie.com/articles/2009/0 ... nder-scene



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:24 am :
I've been working on a new dark rock material using blender's glsl lighting. all the textures were only 256 size. the high level of detail was achieved by scaling some of them, which hopefully will also work with the d3 engine.

Image Image Image

I'm thinking I could use some of my particle rocks for boulders at the bottom of rock faces etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:45 am :
just a text update for now.

after a couple of weeks of not really using blender due to real life distractions, I'm currently trying to bake some hi to lo poly textures but I'm having a lot of crashes from blender which is making my progress very slow :x

as soon as I get some thing worth showing I'll be updating this thread.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:57 pm :
I finally got blender stable again. it was previously crashing a lot with my recent normal baking.

here's a couple of images of a crack normalmap and ao bake I've been adding as detail layers to the glsl material.

Image Image

I know I could use crazy bump to add cracks to the rock but I wanted to see if I could do them all from within blender, next step is to add more cracks which I hope to get done over the next few days.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:54 am :
here's another image. I'm really pleased with these results artistically, and I hope they are technically correct so far.

Image

note this images doesn't yet have ao or spec maps, so the spec is just from blender's uniform lighting with the spec value turned down in the glsl material.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:31 am :
comparing my normal bake with one of the default d3 brick textures, it looks like the left to right channel in my normals is inverted? I think I can easily fix that in blender with the image editor's rgb curve tool.

Image

edit: yep, the red channel in blender's baking seems to be inverted compared to d3's format.

Image

thanks a lot to kat for spotting something was wrong.



Theftbot@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 8:44 am :
Yup idk why but blender has a reversed red channel.



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:40 am :
That looks great. Small details like that really seem to make textures pop.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:25 pm :
thanks a lot guys and I'm really enjoying this work again, now blender isn't crashing very few minutes. so I'll hopefully be posting more frequently again :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:35 am :
I've been doing some comparisons between the inverted red channel and the d3 normals format, and in blender I think the inverted looks slightly better. so maybe I dev my work in blender and save a different version for d3, rather then them share the same assets.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 6:46 am :
here are two shots of the crack model which started off as a bevel object extruded along a path, then converted to a mesh and a few modifiers added.

Image Image

now I know it works both artistically and technically I should be able to quickly add in more cracks.



Lord Zurra@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 11:39 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've been doing some comparisons between the inverted red channel and the d3 normals format, and in blender I think the inverted looks slightly better. so maybe I dev my work in blender and save a different version for d3, rather then them share the same assets.


I don't know why but blender uses normal maps which are inverted on X axis. In your comparison shots take doom3 normal map and move light around, you will see that normal map is inverted on X axis in blender viewport, that means it will look wrong in blender but does look just what you want in doom3, keep this in mind when you bake normal maps in blender, remember to invert X axis.

Two shots to illustrate this better.

blender normal map in blender
Image
doom3 normal map in blender
Image

Normal map from the dark mod.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:07 pm :
it might be doom 3 itself. the d3 editor has the side view on the wrong side of the axes so if you rotate clockwise in the editor it's actually a negative angle in game space.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:03 pm :
thanks guys and those were very good examples lord zurra, I'll just keep this is mind when saving out any blender baked normals to be used in d3.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:55 pm :
this image shows the bevel object, bevel taper and curve path used in the crack.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 3:27 am :
thanks to rich_is_bored pointing me in the right direction, I've had some surprisingly good results with mixing normal maps in blender. the images below are just rendering tests, I will probably use the texture node system to mix some smaller cracks with my larger crack normals because they can use the same texture scales, then use the d3 shaders to mix the other normals.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 5:24 am :
I've improved the node setup and the results better match the original colors. and although not perfect I am pleased with the results considering I have no idea how the maths works and just did this by tweaking the red and green color ramps.

Image Image



rich_is_bored@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:01 am :
You could lose two mixer nodes and a decompose node by splitting the image into it's component channels after performing the mix and get the same result. I'm not sure if you're worried about it though. I doubt 3 extra nodes are going to kill performance.

The math is actually really simple. The mix node as you have it setup is just averaging the color between the two images. Changing the factor to something other than .50 would make it a weighted average. The color ramp node is just remapping the input to a different range. It's like doing a levels adjustment in Photoshop.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 7:40 am :
rich, thanks and understood, I'll try that tomorrow. in the mean time this is my latest test. I added in a color ramp for the blue channel.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 11:18 pm :
rich, your suggestion for optimizing the node setup worked perfectly :)

Image Image

edit: oh and it's the maths behind the color ramps (rgb levels) that I don't understand. so if anyone can explain how those particular sliders and values I used on the ramps ended up producing the desried results, I'd appreciate hearing from them :)



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 10:52 am :
Image

Does this help you visualize what is going on?

Essentially all you've done is take each channel of the normal map and compress the range making the slopes appear steeper.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 6:26 pm :
understood and thanks a lot rich, that graph did help :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 8:52 am :
I've been doing more tests with baking and layering normals, this time using the material slots instead of nodes.

the first image shows two meshes using the same displace modifers and procedural cloud textures, but mapped to the position of 2 empties to produce variations.

Image

this image shows the normals baked from the blue mesh.

Image

the next three show the normal material slots layered together.

Image Image Image

I've still more work to do on the crack normals and my bumpy detail layer isn't tiling yet which I hope to get more done over the next few days.



Lord Zurra@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 12:14 pm :
If you are already familiar with nodes, then just stick with em. With material textures you have that limit of 16 textures per material, it might sound enough amount to make miracles but it is not. I uploaded a rather big (29MB) .blend of my old test if you want to take a look at how complicated baking can get. This blend includes many UV Layers, masks, many textures and materials. If I would like to add more details with textures, I could not do that because my limit of 16 texture slots is already used on some materials.

At blender layer one you see the mesh with materials I use with baking. Layer two holds the final material with only diffuse, specular and normal map. And if you test it, remember to use GLSL materials!

here is the file

http://etana.kapsi.fi/shieldTest.blend

file should be uploaded after 5min of this post.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 9:47 pm :
lord zurra, thanks a lot for the .blend file I'm dl now and will study it later :)

the only reason for me still using the material slots is just to emulate what I imagine adding normals in d3 would be like, as I don't have d3 installed on this pc I can't actually test it.

regarding the d3 shaders are we limited to how many normal maps we add at map load or run time?



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 12:22 am :
these images show the results of my first projection painting with normalmaps to make a tileable texture. this tool could also be used to add or remove details to an existing normalmap in a similar way to using a clone brush in an iamge editor.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 7:04 am :
here's some images of my latest tests with projection painting and layering normal maps in blender:

the 1st image shows the result of projection painting used to make the rock's base normalmap. the 2nd image shows one of the normalmap layers used in the projection painting and the rock's high frequency normals enabled in the material slot. and the 3rd image has the crack normals enabled.

Image Image Image

one of coolest things I found was that projection painting will work with glsl mode, so we can see a real time preview as we paint the normalmaps :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:37 pm :
I think I've got the basic art and tech worked out now for these rocks, so next on my to do list is add in more cracks to their detail layer, which will also be tileable so can be used on the rest of the rocks in this group.

Image

edit: there isn't any custom spec or ao maps shown here, I'll make those after I've finished the crack layer.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 1:09 am :
I've just completed a test with using vertex weight painting to determine the strength of the displacements around the edges of my cracks. also as this was only a small part of the model, the baking was very quick.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:08 pm :
dersaidin from katsbits asked me to make a cliff face for his map, which is a good practical use of my recent tests. I'll update this thread with a few images from that as the art style and workflow will likely be used in my hell map project.

the first image shows the cliff model (colored green) which he sent me with some of my particle rocks (red and blue) painted onto it.

the 2nd image shows the shrink wrapped mesh still with the off cut verts which I'll remove when I decimate and clean up the mesh.

Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:28 pm :
i've been playing around with the particle painting: very neat. Thanks for pointing that out! :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 5:02 am :
friar, cool and what was it I said or showed that helped you?

also happy xmas everyone :wink:



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 5:59 am :
here is the cleaned up mesh after skrink wrapping.

Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 8:23 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
friar, cool and what was it I said or showed that helped you?


on page 10 of this thread you explained that you're using particle painting in blender for your map & linked to a tutorial. I've shown that to a few people & I'm having a lot of fun with it. All thanks to you. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 9:56 am :
friar, understood and that's great to hear :)

my final update before getting some sleep today:

after some tweaking of the new mesh to help baking, I've now got a working normal map. I also tested my glsl material from my rocks on this cliff face with a few scale values increased. I'm intending the crack layer to have more cracks, even if it's not going to be used on this model.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 9:00 am :
I've not done any more work on the crack normal layer today, but I think I've improved the diffuse and basic/detail normal layers.

in this perspective image, the camera is quite close to the cliff face and there is still a lot of high frequency detail. next on my to do list is try to mix in some more variation to the diffuse and then add to some cracks, over the next few days I'll then work on the other 2 sections of this cliff.

Image



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 1:45 pm :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've not done any more work on the crack normal layer today, but I think I've improved the diffuse and basic/detail normal layers.

in this perspective image, the camera is quite close to the cliff face and there is still a lot of high frequency detail. next on my to do list is try to mix in some more variation to the diffuse and then add to some cracks, over the next few days I'll then work on the other 2 sections of this cliff.

Image

Nicely done :twisted:



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 9:39 pm :
thanks sturm :)

I need to do more work on the diffuse and I've decided that the other 2 sections of the this cliff model (which join onto the end nearest the camera in the latest image) will probably have a smoother shape to them, ie look less like bolders.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 11:17 pm :
here's two images of the latest diffuse tests. I used a photo source of real rocks for the basic diffuse layer and a smaller tiled dirt texture for the detail layer. the normal maps are the same as in the last images. also none of these recent images have ao or spec maps, just the uniform spec lighting that comes with blender.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 11:07 am :
in between mainly doing real life stuff over the last few days, I've managed to do enough of the new rock material to be satisfied for the time being. so for the next few days I can focus on the meshes again. after that I'll probably do some more work on the crack normals.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:35 am :
I've had a ton of real life distractions so far this year, but over the last 3 days I finally got some work done in blender.

the red section of this cliff face is new and I've tried to get more of a flow to the edgeloops.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:01 am :
I managed to do some more blender work today. here is the 2 cliff sections with their unique normal (low frequency) layers. they share the same diffuse, spec and normal detail (high frequency) layers.

Image Image

although not very obvious from this camera distance and fov, I couldn't find a way to tile the materials across the sections so there is a seam. this was due to apparently the baking needing all the uv's to be within the default image space, usually uv's can extend beyond that space if the materials use tiling diffuse, spec layers etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:39 am :
although it was quite easily to model a deep crack in the meshes to hide the texture seam, I didn't realise the shared spec map would look wrong. as shown in the image below. I don't want to make unique spec maps for each cliff section so I'm going back to the previous version of the mesh and see what else I can do.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 3:39 pm :
I haven't had much time over the last few days to work in blender but the 2nd image below shows the progress I've made with the seam. still wip though.

Image Image



Sebultura@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 8:44 pm :
It's cool to see the progress of your stuff & putting some picture with descriptions really helps enjoying the thing.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 4:07 pm :
@ Sebultura, thanks and this latest workflow is a lot faster then I've previously been able to do, but frustratingly I've not had much time this year to do any blender work until the last few days. I do hope to make up for lost time though.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 4:14 pm :
while I'm working on the mesh for the 3rd cliff section, here's an image of the seam between the first two sections. the results turned out better then I thought they would, with only really the smooth group shading indicating where the seam is, and from a distance it's barely noticeable :)

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 2:58 am :
for the first time since my hdd died last week, I've been able to get on with my blender work. these images show the 3rd cliff section (in blue)

Image Image Image

tomorrow I hope to get the uv's and baking done.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:25 am :
I think I've finally finished the meshes, uv's and baking for these 3 cliff sections.

Image Image Image Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 4:48 am :
very, very sweet. :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 6:04 am :
thanks a lot friar 8)

I've done some tweaking today to the mesh's edge loops and rebaked the normals. the last two posts of mine have had their images updated. the differences are subtle but I think the rocks look slightly more natural.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 1:04 am :
just a text update: I had more pc and isp problems and went several weeks without a computer to work on. I've since then moved flats and now have a better broadband service. and although I don't have my own pc yet, I've been borrowing my gf's laptop and have successfully installed blender on after udating the video drivers. hopefully within the next few days I'll be working on the hell map project again. I'll ul some wip images as soon as I have something to show.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am :
1 : What that tutorial/tip was really refering to was orientation of heightmap 'templates' when used to generate normalmaps. If you render out a normal map from the 1st image by then applying that verticle 'trim' to a model along the horizontal you'll create a 'flipped' channel becasue of the way the Nmap was created.

Rotating and moving UVWs don't make any difference in terms of 'fixing' the problem becasue it's a problem at source, on the image itself.

But using a 'correct' normal map has no effect when UVWmapped as the game 'compensates' for it (for want of a better term)

2 : I've not yet fully tested LWO models other than to solve that smoothing issue mentioned in the 'prepping LWO models tutorial'. I've got a multimaterial terrain mesh section to try out but have yet to do so.

3 : You mean an actual UVWmap split? A map physically broken into two sections (for example). Yes whereever there is a break in a UVWmap you get a seam in game, you can't avoid that (for terrain you can't use that tangentspace material parameter you see in character models).

If you're talking about Blender UVW (mark) seams then no those have no effect whatsoever one the exported model; it's basically just an 'internal' helper for Blender.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:45 am :
thanks kat,

1. understood and that`s good to hear, so I assume in blender I could even have my uv maps upside down or rotated 90 degrees on the terrain models, as long as the local map used in game as been generated using correct axis, yes?

2. understood and I`ll go read that tut of yours again as it was months ago I last read it.

3. understood and sorry, I ment a physical split where two or more meshes with different materials in blender are combined and exported as one .ase or .lwo which then produces a shadow seam in game.

and I remember in the past trying out the unsmoothedtangents global keyword on my blender terrain materials, but never got it working, do you know why it only works on character models?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 1:15 pm :
kat, I`m adding some low poly details to the large cave, and wondered whether to keep it all as one .ase model or export it as several model sections, similar to how you appear to of built your d3 and q4 terrain maps?

and is there any advantage if the engine can`t see the model even if it`s in the same vis portal area? I did a quick search on this but wasn`t sure I understood what the other guys were saying.

with my first area of this map, I`m only intending to use brushes for the sky box, but should I split them and caulk the parts of the hull that the player can`t see, ie brush faces that would be behind the models?



phantazm11@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:39 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
ratty redemption wrote:
here's an image of my particle rock objects,


??? You can use models as particles in Doom 3?


In Blender.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 9:05 pm :
oh. ok. then what would they be used for in doom 3? IE Why is he making them for his map?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:43 am :
phantazm11 wrote:

Have you tried using the same rock particles, but maybe just scaling them up in size?

thanks and yes I have. the first tests I did with these particle rocks used a higher scale on their particle emitter, which was the original low poly rock face. I then experimented to see how small I could scale the rocks while shrink wrapping a mesh over them.

from a technical point of view, the larger the particles the easier it is to work with them and the shrink wrapping. but artistically I'm trying some variations on the style of rock face which might end up looking as good but requiring less detail.

The Happy Friar wrote:
oh. ok. then what would they be used for in doom 3? IE Why is he making them for his map?

sorry for any confusion guys. friar if you look at this recent post of mine.

viewtopic.php?p=217418#p217418

it shows how these rock objects can be turned into particle models in blender and either automatically spawned over a larger mesh or painted onto a mesh. the tools can also be used to quickly place trees in a forest or any group of library objects around a map, again all within blender.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 1:11 pm :
that's pretty neat. Sounds like ETQW's stuff generator or a RTS stuff paintbrush. I'll have to look in to that. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:15 pm :
friar, agreed and the particle objects are one of the most powerful tools I've ever worked with, although I've heard there are more options in some of the pro apps like maya with their versions of this tool.

kernon dillon from blender newbies made an excellent video tutorial, although it doesn't cover the shrink wrapping stage I do, but you can learn how to plant trees etc.

http://www.cgcookie.com/articles/2009/0 ... nder-scene



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:24 am :
I've been working on a new dark rock material using blender's glsl lighting. all the textures were only 256 size. the high level of detail was achieved by scaling some of them, which hopefully will also work with the d3 engine.

Image Image Image

I'm thinking I could use some of my particle rocks for boulders at the bottom of rock faces etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:45 am :
just a text update for now.

after a couple of weeks of not really using blender due to real life distractions, I'm currently trying to bake some hi to lo poly textures but I'm having a lot of crashes from blender which is making my progress very slow :x

as soon as I get some thing worth showing I'll be updating this thread.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:57 pm :
I finally got blender stable again. it was previously crashing a lot with my recent normal baking.

here's a couple of images of a crack normalmap and ao bake I've been adding as detail layers to the glsl material.

Image Image

I know I could use crazy bump to add cracks to the rock but I wanted to see if I could do them all from within blender, next step is to add more cracks which I hope to get done over the next few days.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:54 am :
here's another image. I'm really pleased with these results artistically, and I hope they are technically correct so far.

Image

note this images doesn't yet have ao or spec maps, so the spec is just from blender's uniform lighting with the spec value turned down in the glsl material.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:31 am :
comparing my normal bake with one of the default d3 brick textures, it looks like the left to right channel in my normals is inverted? I think I can easily fix that in blender with the image editor's rgb curve tool.

Image

edit: yep, the red channel in blender's baking seems to be inverted compared to d3's format.

Image

thanks a lot to kat for spotting something was wrong.



Theftbot@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 8:44 am :
Yup idk why but blender has a reversed red channel.



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:40 am :
That looks great. Small details like that really seem to make textures pop.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:25 pm :
thanks a lot guys and I'm really enjoying this work again, now blender isn't crashing very few minutes. so I'll hopefully be posting more frequently again :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:35 am :
I've been doing some comparisons between the inverted red channel and the d3 normals format, and in blender I think the inverted looks slightly better. so maybe I dev my work in blender and save a different version for d3, rather then them share the same assets.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 6:46 am :
here are two shots of the crack model which started off as a bevel object extruded along a path, then converted to a mesh and a few modifiers added.

Image Image

now I know it works both artistically and technically I should be able to quickly add in more cracks.



Lord Zurra@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 11:39 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've been doing some comparisons between the inverted red channel and the d3 normals format, and in blender I think the inverted looks slightly better. so maybe I dev my work in blender and save a different version for d3, rather then them share the same assets.


I don't know why but blender uses normal maps which are inverted on X axis. In your comparison shots take doom3 normal map and move light around, you will see that normal map is inverted on X axis in blender viewport, that means it will look wrong in blender but does look just what you want in doom3, keep this in mind when you bake normal maps in blender, remember to invert X axis.

Two shots to illustrate this better.

blender normal map in blender
Image
doom3 normal map in blender
Image

Normal map from the dark mod.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:07 pm :
it might be doom 3 itself. the d3 editor has the side view on the wrong side of the axes so if you rotate clockwise in the editor it's actually a negative angle in game space.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:03 pm :
thanks guys and those were very good examples lord zurra, I'll just keep this is mind when saving out any blender baked normals to be used in d3.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:55 pm :
this image shows the bevel object, bevel taper and curve path used in the crack.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 3:27 am :
thanks to rich_is_bored pointing me in the right direction, I've had some surprisingly good results with mixing normal maps in blender. the images below are just rendering tests, I will probably use the texture node system to mix some smaller cracks with my larger crack normals because they can use the same texture scales, then use the d3 shaders to mix the other normals.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 5:24 am :
I've improved the node setup and the results better match the original colors. and although not perfect I am pleased with the results considering I have no idea how the maths works and just did this by tweaking the red and green color ramps.

Image Image



rich_is_bored@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:01 am :
You could lose two mixer nodes and a decompose node by splitting the image into it's component channels after performing the mix and get the same result. I'm not sure if you're worried about it though. I doubt 3 extra nodes are going to kill performance.

The math is actually really simple. The mix node as you have it setup is just averaging the color between the two images. Changing the factor to something other than .50 would make it a weighted average. The color ramp node is just remapping the input to a different range. It's like doing a levels adjustment in Photoshop.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 7:40 am :
rich, thanks and understood, I'll try that tomorrow. in the mean time this is my latest test. I added in a color ramp for the blue channel.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 11:18 pm :
rich, your suggestion for optimizing the node setup worked perfectly :)

Image Image

edit: oh and it's the maths behind the color ramps (rgb levels) that I don't understand. so if anyone can explain how those particular sliders and values I used on the ramps ended up producing the desried results, I'd appreciate hearing from them :)



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 10:52 am :
Image

Does this help you visualize what is going on?

Essentially all you've done is take each channel of the normal map and compress the range making the slopes appear steeper.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 6:26 pm :
understood and thanks a lot rich, that graph did help :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 8:52 am :
I've been doing more tests with baking and layering normals, this time using the material slots instead of nodes.

the first image shows two meshes using the same displace modifers and procedural cloud textures, but mapped to the position of 2 empties to produce variations.

Image

this image shows the normals baked from the blue mesh.

Image

the next three show the normal material slots layered together.

Image Image Image

I've still more work to do on the crack normals and my bumpy detail layer isn't tiling yet which I hope to get more done over the next few days.



Lord Zurra@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 12:14 pm :
If you are already familiar with nodes, then just stick with em. With material textures you have that limit of 16 textures per material, it might sound enough amount to make miracles but it is not. I uploaded a rather big (29MB) .blend of my old test if you want to take a look at how complicated baking can get. This blend includes many UV Layers, masks, many textures and materials. If I would like to add more details with textures, I could not do that because my limit of 16 texture slots is already used on some materials.

At blender layer one you see the mesh with materials I use with baking. Layer two holds the final material with only diffuse, specular and normal map. And if you test it, remember to use GLSL materials!

here is the file

http://etana.kapsi.fi/shieldTest.blend

file should be uploaded after 5min of this post.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 9:47 pm :
lord zurra, thanks a lot for the .blend file I'm dl now and will study it later :)

the only reason for me still using the material slots is just to emulate what I imagine adding normals in d3 would be like, as I don't have d3 installed on this pc I can't actually test it.

regarding the d3 shaders are we limited to how many normal maps we add at map load or run time?



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 12:22 am :
these images show the results of my first projection painting with normalmaps to make a tileable texture. this tool could also be used to add or remove details to an existing normalmap in a similar way to using a clone brush in an iamge editor.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 7:04 am :
here's some images of my latest tests with projection painting and layering normal maps in blender:

the 1st image shows the result of projection painting used to make the rock's base normalmap. the 2nd image shows one of the normalmap layers used in the projection painting and the rock's high frequency normals enabled in the material slot. and the 3rd image has the crack normals enabled.

Image Image Image

one of coolest things I found was that projection painting will work with glsl mode, so we can see a real time preview as we paint the normalmaps :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:37 pm :
I think I've got the basic art and tech worked out now for these rocks, so next on my to do list is add in more cracks to their detail layer, which will also be tileable so can be used on the rest of the rocks in this group.

Image

edit: there isn't any custom spec or ao maps shown here, I'll make those after I've finished the crack layer.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 1:09 am :
I've just completed a test with using vertex weight painting to determine the strength of the displacements around the edges of my cracks. also as this was only a small part of the model, the baking was very quick.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:08 pm :
dersaidin from katsbits asked me to make a cliff face for his map, which is a good practical use of my recent tests. I'll update this thread with a few images from that as the art style and workflow will likely be used in my hell map project.

the first image shows the cliff model (colored green) which he sent me with some of my particle rocks (red and blue) painted onto it.

the 2nd image shows the shrink wrapped mesh still with the off cut verts which I'll remove when I decimate and clean up the mesh.

Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 8:28 pm :
i've been playing around with the particle painting: very neat. Thanks for pointing that out! :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 5:02 am :
friar, cool and what was it I said or showed that helped you?

also happy xmas everyone :wink:



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 5:59 am :
here is the cleaned up mesh after skrink wrapping.

Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 8:23 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
friar, cool and what was it I said or showed that helped you?


on page 10 of this thread you explained that you're using particle painting in blender for your map & linked to a tutorial. I've shown that to a few people & I'm having a lot of fun with it. All thanks to you. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 9:56 am :
friar, understood and that's great to hear :)

my final update before getting some sleep today:

after some tweaking of the new mesh to help baking, I've now got a working normal map. I also tested my glsl material from my rocks on this cliff face with a few scale values increased. I'm intending the crack layer to have more cracks, even if it's not going to be used on this model.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 9:00 am :
I've not done any more work on the crack normal layer today, but I think I've improved the diffuse and basic/detail normal layers.

in this perspective image, the camera is quite close to the cliff face and there is still a lot of high frequency detail. next on my to do list is try to mix in some more variation to the diffuse and then add to some cracks, over the next few days I'll then work on the other 2 sections of this cliff.

Image



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 1:45 pm :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've not done any more work on the crack normal layer today, but I think I've improved the diffuse and basic/detail normal layers.

in this perspective image, the camera is quite close to the cliff face and there is still a lot of high frequency detail. next on my to do list is try to mix in some more variation to the diffuse and then add to some cracks, over the next few days I'll then work on the other 2 sections of this cliff.

Image

Nicely done :twisted:



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 9:39 pm :
thanks sturm :)

I need to do more work on the diffuse and I've decided that the other 2 sections of the this cliff model (which join onto the end nearest the camera in the latest image) will probably have a smoother shape to them, ie look less like bolders.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 11:17 pm :
here's two images of the latest diffuse tests. I used a photo source of real rocks for the basic diffuse layer and a smaller tiled dirt texture for the detail layer. the normal maps are the same as in the last images. also none of these recent images have ao or spec maps, just the uniform spec lighting that comes with blender.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 11:07 am :
in between mainly doing real life stuff over the last few days, I've managed to do enough of the new rock material to be satisfied for the time being. so for the next few days I can focus on the meshes again. after that I'll probably do some more work on the crack normals.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:35 am :
I've had a ton of real life distractions so far this year, but over the last 3 days I finally got some work done in blender.

the red section of this cliff face is new and I've tried to get more of a flow to the edgeloops.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:01 am :
I managed to do some more blender work today. here is the 2 cliff sections with their unique normal (low frequency) layers. they share the same diffuse, spec and normal detail (high frequency) layers.

Image Image

although not very obvious from this camera distance and fov, I couldn't find a way to tile the materials across the sections so there is a seam. this was due to apparently the baking needing all the uv's to be within the default image space, usually uv's can extend beyond that space if the materials use tiling diffuse, spec layers etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:39 am :
although it was quite easily to model a deep crack in the meshes to hide the texture seam, I didn't realise the shared spec map would look wrong. as shown in the image below. I don't want to make unique spec maps for each cliff section so I'm going back to the previous version of the mesh and see what else I can do.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 3:39 pm :
I haven't had much time over the last few days to work in blender but the 2nd image below shows the progress I've made with the seam. still wip though.

Image Image



Sebultura@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 8:44 pm :
It's cool to see the progress of your stuff & putting some picture with descriptions really helps enjoying the thing.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 4:07 pm :
@ Sebultura, thanks and this latest workflow is a lot faster then I've previously been able to do, but frustratingly I've not had much time this year to do any blender work until the last few days. I do hope to make up for lost time though.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 4:14 pm :
while I'm working on the mesh for the 3rd cliff section, here's an image of the seam between the first two sections. the results turned out better then I thought they would, with only really the smooth group shading indicating where the seam is, and from a distance it's barely noticeable :)

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 2:58 am :
for the first time since my hdd died last week, I've been able to get on with my blender work. these images show the 3rd cliff section (in blue)

Image Image Image

tomorrow I hope to get the uv's and baking done.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:25 am :
I think I've finally finished the meshes, uv's and baking for these 3 cliff sections.

Image Image Image Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 4:48 am :
very, very sweet. :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 6:04 am :
thanks a lot friar 8)

I've done some tweaking today to the mesh's edge loops and rebaked the normals. the last two posts of mine have had their images updated. the differences are subtle but I think the rocks look slightly more natural.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 1:04 am :
just a text update: I had more pc and isp problems and went several weeks without a computer to work on. I've since then moved flats and now have a better broadband service. and although I don't have my own pc yet, I've been borrowing my gf's laptop and have successfully installed blender on after udating the video drivers. hopefully within the next few days I'll be working on the hell map project again. I'll ul some wip images as soon as I have something to show.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 4:33 am :
carnage over at katsbits.com forums suggested I tried using a custom light texture for the lava pit. it took me a few days of dev to get results I was really happy with. anyway, here's some shots of the new lighting, still wip as I need to add one or two more lights to the upper left corner of the lava pit, but if that goes well then its still half the amount of lights I had with the last version, and imo this looks even better :)

Image Image Image Image



mikebart@Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:13 am :
its looking really good ratty, smart move using the custom light texture

this is something someone once told me about lighting that really sunk in:

Quote:
its all in how you do your lighting, if you're using something like deferred shading where you do your entire lighting calc in one pass, you can probably get away with lots of materials and such. But in a system like doom3, where you have 1 pass per light that touches every material, if you have a building with 16 mats, and you have 8 lights touching it, you're rendering 128 seperate passes. Hope that helps explain to anyone who dosent get the advantages of using less textures/materials.

[edit] 8 lights touching all 16 materials, not just 8 lights in your scene.






ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 2:39 pm :
cool and understood, thanks mikebart :)

do you have any advise on the image size and amount of light textures we can use?



mikebart@Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:47 am :
Ive never actually used a light texture before so im not really too sure about that, if you use a textureatlas with lots of different textures on it you could easily go 2048x2048, it depends on how many textures you want to use overall.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:48 am :
mikebart, understood and using a textureatlas (assuming its the same as a texturesheet) is a cool idea, I'll keep that in mind, thanks :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 6:37 am :
in between finishing off the lighting in the lava pit, I've been adding more polys to the rest of the cave model and working on its lighting. I haven't worked on the wooden bridges or ladders recently, they are some of the next items on my to do list.

as for the lava pit, its only using 4 lights as opposed the 8 lights I was previously using iirc.

the single ambient light for the pit now uses a custom light texture to add a dark orange ambient glow which extends slightly above the 3 brighter orange blendlights each of which also use custom light textures. I've just added a makealpha stage to the blendlights material shaders so there is a subtle light caustics effect on the walls of the lava pit. it doesn't really show up in the static shots but when I have more of this area done I'll try and record a fraps vid to show you guys.

Image

I've also manually tweaked the uv's of the lava to get it to flow along its path.

that took some time to figure how to do this in blender but should in future be relatively easy for me to do with other lava flows in this hell map, I also distorted some of the lava uv's to add fluctuations when its animated, so it looks more like a liquid and less like a scrolling texture imo.

I'm especially pleased with how it appears to speed up on the steeper slopes of the lava pit :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 7:13 pm :
hi guys, I'm back ;)

a few months ago I moved cities to live again near my parents and friends in bath, england. the flat I intended to move into has only recently been fitted with broadband and I'm currently without a pc of my own, so have been working on my brother's pc when I get a chance. my progress has been slower then I would of liked but I haven't given up on this project.

here's some shots of one of the models I've been working on over the last couple of months.

a lot of experimentation went into these paving stones, both in modeling the meshes and the uv mapping. finally I'm satisfied with the results and my workflow. I intend to post some of the other models soon.

the first shot shows the simple starting blocks I modeled in blender. they are 16 game units high, although some of that height will be embedded in the ground.

Image

this next one shows the damaged parts of the models.

Image

and here is the model after using sculpt to distort it.

Image

this wire frame shot shows the difference between the 2nd and 3rd versions of the model. the yellow lines have been subdivided and sculpted.

Image

these next 3 show one of the editor textures (including orange guide lines, which is a slightly modified doom3 texture) uv mapped onto the 3 models. I tried to keep each version mapped as close as I could to compare how much was being distorted. one of the hardest things was trying to keep the mortar (orange guide lines) looking natural while not stretching the texture too much.

Image Image Image

and finally for now are 2 shots of my uv test texture.

Image Image



blushing_bride@Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 11:02 am :
I just moved out of Bath, beautiful place, was really sad to leave. Not sure if I'll miss the amazing architecture or the beer the most :(

This map of yours is turning into a proper epic, the first post in this thread was years ago :) It looks amazingly good. I might have to reinstall D3 when you finish it just to have a look at it! Keep up the good work



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 6:57 pm :
blushing_bride, off topic: bath is certainly a lot more interesting to walk around then milton keynes, where my gf and I lived for 2 years together and her several years before that. mk was not very inspiring for my creativity, whereby there is so much here in bath, I'm very glad to be back in this senes. unfortunately my gf is still stuck flat sharing in london near her work while she tries to sell her flat in mk. at least our relationship is strong but she can't wait to move down here when she can.

on topic: and thanks alot for your comments about my work, I know I'm very slow at getting this map anywhere near a playable state, but I work hard to make it as good as I can, and I often spend weeks at a time practicing or learning how to improve my work. I do then get faster but there is still a lot of models and textures I plan to make. luckily this is the only project I'm working on atm so it has my full attention.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 12:21 am :
I'm back again. soon after my last post here we lost our broadband but now we've got it back, I intend to ul several images over the next week if I get enough access to my dad's pc, I currently still don't have one of my own.

anyway, for now here are two near identical stone blocks/paving stones, which I've been practicing uv mapping and making some variations of the doom3 textures.

the first image shows the blender's solid mode and one of the original textures.

Image

the second image is in texture mode and shows a modified version I made in psp8 for the damaged/cracked parts of the model.

Image

the third image shows my attempts at uv mapping the original d3 normalmap to my model.

Image

over the last few months I've been working on a library of various size and shaped stones and their debris, as well as textures for them.

after seeing how successfully kat used crazybump to make realistic looking cracks for his recent cave model and textures, I'm considering removing the thin cracks like these from my meshes and using textures instead.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 2:47 am :
here's some more of the paving stone library objects I've been working on.

Image Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 8:53 pm :
here's an image showing how I've been trying to uv map my damaged stone texture to match the original d3 texture on the undamaged parts of the model. the results aren't perfect, but hopefully it helps create more of an illusion that the object is made from one material.

Image

I do intend to start making some unique diffuse textures as well as unique normal and spec textures, but my recent work has been testing how much I could recycle assets incase I end up with too many in the map. I have more confidence now that I can save texture memory or decrease the dl file size if need be.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 1:39 am :
these are the other stone debris objects I've been working on. some are just texture variations but there are a few unique models.

Image Image Image



phantazm11@Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 4:32 am :
Really cool stuff here, ratty.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:40 pm :
phantazm11, thanks man :)

I've more to show you guys, just got to do some minor tweaks then sort out the screen shots. also I've been doing a huge amount of research and concept designing for this project, although I don't have any concept drawings as I do the design work in my head.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 4:33 am :
this stair case model may not look it but I think its one of the most complex models (including uv mapping) I've done to date. I probrably rebuilt it 4-5 times until I was happy with the art style and my workflow.

Image Image Image

I may further tweak this one at a later date but I'm half way through a 2nd stair case which I need to get done first. both of them will be recyled a few times throughout the hell map, hopefully without getting boring too look at.



6th Venom@Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 9:06 am :
this one looks pretty good! :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 2:28 pm :
6th Venom, thanks :)



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 5:57 pm :
staircase looks like it was cut out of existing rock. Nice.

Is that the case?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 8:36 pm :
thanks friar :)

the design concept here was the blocks which make up the staircase were cut from rock or rough stone, but it wasn't intended to be carved straight from the rock.

one of the reasons is I'm tryinig to have subtle texture variations where possible. I made another variation of one of the d3 stone textures for some of those steps, and they are all embedded slightly into the rock/dirt ground hence the smoother underside of that model. I'll try later today to ul some images of these various objects as they fit into the cave I'm previously shown.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 11:31 pm :
here are 3 images of the first staircase and nearby paving stones.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 2:10 am :
just a small update. this image below shows one of the d3 derivative dirt textures I recently made.

Image

I've been working on some different stone models for a new area but I'm not ready to show those yet.



BJA@Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 8:35 pm :
Nice stones and stairmodels you've got there, the terrain in the last shot is pretty cool. Maybe a slightly different color for the diffuse texture, so it doesn't look too doomish? though the progress of this map is a bit slow (first post 2006 ;D), it's always good stuff you're showing.



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 6:43 am :
I'm curious to see how this looks in game. Do you have any in-game shots?



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:41 am :
bja and rich, sorry I didn't reply to your posts sooner, the forum isn't sending me email notifications despite me checking it has my latest address.

@bja, thanks a lot :) and I'll admit my progress is very slow, but a lot of my time is still spent learning the tools and doing research for my concept designs. saying all that I am getting faster at the new objects I've been working on so hopefully I'll have more to show you guys soon.

@rich, I would gladly post some ingame images if we had d3 installed on my dad's pc here which I'm still sharing with him, but atm I've only got blender and psp8, not even the map editors. although my dad is planning on getting a lap top to do his work on so I'll then have more chance of installing the other stuff. and eventually I'll have a pc of my own again but that's not likely for the next few months.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:43 am :
just another small update from me, I decided to rebuild the horn type objects from my hell map, when I find time I'll make a new texture for these instead of using the orignal d3 one.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 1:36 am :
I've been rebuilding one of the floating spawn rocks, I think this is the art direction I want to go in with these, although I might try some other styles for some of the other rocks.

Image Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 4:48 pm :
these are some of the debris objects I've been working on. the texture is a place holder.

Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 4:50 pm :
interesting blender setup you have there! Is the grid texture so you know how the texture is deformed on the mesh when unwrapped?



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 9:57 pm :
@friar, yes thats one of my uv test images which helps me judge the uv stretching, scale and in the case of wooden objects the direction of the grain.

here's another debris object, which started as a copy of one of my previous wooden bridge objects. I think I'll update the bridge at some point as this tweaked version has better splinters imo.

Image Image Image



blushing_bride@Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 11:11 am :
Do you think you'll finish this map before doom 4 comes out :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 2:21 pm :
tbh, probably not, but I do intend to release it for both d3 and d4 if possible. I know my map is taking ages but I'm not giving up on it and the only other project I'm working on is one where the assests of both projects are being shared.



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 9:17 pm :
how big is it? :twisted:



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 1:36 am :
as in file size or the viewable area the map takes up?

either way I can't really say as I still have a lot of assets I plan on making and the cave I keep showing with the lava flowing through it is just a small area of the overall map.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 2:23 am :
here's my latest two wood debris objects, shown in close up on the left of the image.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun May 24, 2009 12:11 am :
another small update from me while I work on some other objects.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:46 pm :
I've been working on a few models for my hell map. shown below is one of them, which is a larger horn/tooth type object. the mesh work was straight forward but it's taken me days to figure out the uv mapping, finally I'm pleased with the results.

over the next couple of days I hope to ul images of the damaged versions. I've done their meshes, just have to do their uv mapping but it should be easier now I know what I'm doing.

Image Image Image

and this image shows how I've been using a wireframe version of the intact objects to help model the damaged versions. this is one of the smaller horns on the side of the main object.

Image

edit: I've updated an edit of the 2nd textured image so you guys can see the model without the wireframe.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 1:48 am :
I've not had much opportunity to model recently, but have just reached the dev stage I wanted to with the first versions of these large hell horns. I have more variations planned for other parts of the hell map.

in the 1st image below the purple polys show the intact version of the horn, the grey and green polys (with the latter set to blender's xray draw mode) show the 2nd damaged version.

Image Image

I know there are a lot of polys in the green section of the model but I wanted it to look as jagged as possible.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:53 pm :
here's a textured image of the most damaged version.

Image



obihb@Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2009 11:39 am :
You know, this stuff you're doing is pretty cool. I really like all the little pieces you build up and maybe this sounds really geeky but you have a very systematical approach it seems and I can appreciate that. It of course would be cool as mentioned before to see some in game shots when you get round to getting Doom back up and running.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2009 1:06 pm :
can you show the UV layout that you have for that spikey thing?



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2009 1:49 pm :
looks very good :mrgreen:



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 2:51 am :
@sturm, cool thanks :)

@friar, sure.

here are some uv tests and textured versions. your probably notice there is an ugly texture seam running down the underside of the large horn, I intend to blend the diffuse colors as much as possible when I get round to making my own horn textures from scratch.

Image Image Image Image

@obihb, thanks a lot and I have worked hard on concept designing both the epic scale of the whole map (within d3 engine restrictions) as well as designing the smallest of details.

sometimes it is a little frustrating to spend days or weeks working on somethings the players might not even notice, but as this is my pet project I have to be be reasonably satisfied with every thing I create before moving on to the next thing on my to do list.

although I have recently started to switch work between various library objects as the branching paths in the map start to take form.

edit: reading that back, it sounded like I have built more then I actaully have, but as I'm now using more of my library models in the various areas, the progress is picking up, be it still slowly.



phantazm11@Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 6:15 am :
As usual, great job Ratty. Can't wait to see this map.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 1:26 pm :
phantazm11, thanks :)

if things go to plan over the next few days I'll be able to show you guys some images of how these recent objects are fitting together, all still inside blender but I'm personally finding it exciting to see the player paths slowly taking shape.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 2:13 pm :
over the last couple of weeks I've been trying to dev a quicker worflow for modeling rockfaces, here's an image of one of the tests I'm actually pleased with. still have some way to go in the art direction but the technical side is working well.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:24 pm :
just a text update this week.

I've recently been learning some very cool new tools in blender which I'll be able to show the results of soon. they include painting seamless custom textures on models, and a very quick way of placing library objects into the map, again all done in blender but saving huge amounts of man hours. I've also refined my rock face workflow again this time using the new tools. the results should be more realistic and quicker then previous workflows.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:54 am :
here's an image showing one of my latest tests, using vertex weight painting to help control the distribution and scaling of randomly seleceted library objects.

considering I've been previously placing all of the objects by hand, which was very time consuming, this new workflow in blender is very fast even by my standards.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:56 am :
these images show some more of my tests with particle instancing and shrink wrapping. the results could do with some polish but the proof of concept works imo :)

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:36 pm :
in this test I painted by hand the instances onto one of my previous rock faces. no shrink wrapping yet until I've modeled more of the new library objects for the instancing.

Image

this was also about the poly limit my dad's pc could comfortably handle while in particle mode, but the intention is to work on the rock faces one at a time so that hopefully shouldn't be problem.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 2:54 pm :
I haven't done much work in blender over the last couple of weeks, but here are some images of my latest tests with shrink wrapping meshes over the new particle instancing objects I recently modeled.

Image Image Image



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:16 pm :
looks very good.
Btw, where is everyone? :twisted:



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 9:41 pm :
thanks sturm :)



rich_is_bored@Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:29 am :
What version of Blender are you using? If you're running 2.48 or later you can make use of GLSL shaders in the 3D viewports. This should be a good approximation of what things would look like in lieu of having Doom 3 installed.

Quote:
to enable GLSL, go into the game tab at the upper left hand corner, then select "Enable Blender GLSL Materials." be warned though that not all graphics cards support it. so don't save your project until you know for sure its stable.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 2:44 am :
thanks rich and I'm using the lastest stable release 2.49a

I have seen some video tutorials where people have used the glsl mode as part of their workflow, but I haven't yet really tried it. ie I haven't dug out the various texture layers I intend to use in d3 or set up some lights in blender. saying all that it is on my todo list, especially now I'm spending less time experienting with the rock faces.



rich_is_bored@Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:19 am :
I was curious so I snagged one of the rock textures and tried it...

Attachment:
glsltest.jpg


The only thing I don't like is that only spot lights appear to be able to cast shadows. None the less it's pretty damn awesome.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 1:06 pm :
rich, understood and agreed, and I will try to get the glsl materials set up for my next wip images I post. if there are any tips you have for using them then please post your findings.

due to real life stuff, I haven't had much time recently to do blender work, but I hope to make up for it over the next few weeks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 4:21 pm :
here's a test image of blender's booleon tools used to join my particle rock objects with the orignal cliff face and remove the overlaps.

Image

I spent a few mins cleaning up the mesh as I previous did with the shrink wrapping method. although the main pros and cons of the boolean appear to be:

cons: each particle object needs to be joined with its neighbour by hand which is a lot of work.

pros: closer resembles the shape and poly count (after decimating) of the original particle objects.

the pros and cons of the shrink wrapping I found are:

cons: restricted to projecting the skrink wrapped mesh in 45 degree angles towards the original objects. also looses detail and can take several mins to calculate.

pros: can skrink wrap large sections of a rock face in one go.

conclusion, I might use the skink wrapping for most of the rock faces, and use the boolean for areas where the detail is being lost from the shrink wrapping.

edit: another con for boolean appears to be frequent non manifold errors when joining several objects together at the same time. these are time consuming and very tedious to fix.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 2:57 am :
I've been using my recent workflow to actually produce something although I'm not quite ready to show that work yet, so here's a test I've done today of a tiling srink wrapped prefab mesh.

Image

the mesh hasn't been cleaned up so there are a few polys not perfectly aligned but those are easily fixed.

my intention is to use tiling prefabs for large rock faces like the inside of the sink holes in my hell map, I could also use them for some cave roofs or floors, although with the latter I would add in some smoother paths for the players to walk on.

I'm also going to do some tests with baking ao and normal maps for the glsl materials in blender.

in theory I should be able to deform tiled meshes to follow the rough topology of the large caves, while I can use the particle objects for smaller caves or rock faces.

edit: hopefully I will be able to bake textures from these and use lower poly versions of the prefabs in the areas with larger draw distances, then for smaller areas use more of the prefabs detail.

also not all my rock faces will be this broken up. this is a style I like from the fallout 3 media I've seen, but I also plan some smoother rock faces as well



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 3:54 am :
here are images of the prefab's particle emitter before shrink wrapping a mesh over them.

Image Image

these two images show my tests with deforming the particle emitter in real time with hook and displace modifiers. this would also allow me to quickly make variations of the tiling prefabs.

Image Image

more variation can be achieved by changing the number of particle objects spawned on the emitter, although in the above tests I left those settings the same.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 9:06 pm :
just a text update for now:

I've been getting some success with baking ao and normal maps in blender with my rock faces, and using them with the new glsl mode in blender's editing windows. a slight problem is trying to match the basic lighting to what I was getting with d3, but as soon as that's working I'll be posting some images.

I think this will be a major step forward in the dev of my project and should hopefully make the images more interesting for you guys to follow.



chuckdood@Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 9:25 pm :
this stuff looks great! what's the final objective?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 7:35 pm :
thanks. I'm hoping to release a sp map for d3 and possibly d4 if I can port the assets. I might also release some of the assets so other mappers, moddlers etc can build mp or more sp maps with them.

currently I'm trying to design prefab assets that can be quickly joined together inbetween the setpiece areas. as well as speeding up my workflow, this would help any mappers who prefer to work with the radiant editors and not blender, although I'll probably release the assets under a creative commons license allowing modification.

as far as objectives in the game, ideally I would like this to be an ongoing project with more hell maps released over the years, perhaps built around a hub map, so I probably won't include a teleport returning the player to mars, or earth etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 5:12 am :
after several days of experimenting with glsl mode and baking normal and ao maps in blender, I'm finally pleased with the results. these could still be improved but I'm over the steepest part of the learning curve I think.

Image Image

kats tutorial on baking ao maps for terrain helped a lot.

http://katsbits.com/htm/tutorials/blend ... errain.htm

edit: here are scaled down versions of the normal and ao bakes from the above tests.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 12:47 am :
I've been doing more tests with layering normal maps in blender.

the 1st of the following images is without any layering. the 2nd image is using a hi to low tangent space bake, and the 3rd image a camera space bake of just one mesh.

Image Image Image

I'm pleasantly surprised with how much detail is being rendered, considering the low end system I'm working on.



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 2:35 pm :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've been doing more tests with layering normal maps in blender.

the 1st of the following images is without any layering. the 2nd image is using a hi to low tangent space bake, and the 3rd image a camera space bake of just one mesh.

Image Image Image

I'm pleasantly surprised with how much detail is being rendered, considering the low end system I'm working on.

That's Very good indeed.
One good thing i am doing with my mod, It's using detailmaps.
You addnormals (a 2048x2048 normal map with lot of "details: bumps") and you add it to your own texture local map. This allows a very hi quallity texture that it's very noticiable and kills the famous "blurred" texture. This was very used with the Alpha labs zero from Sixth_Venom, but you can optimize it a lot by using only this detail map and a medium size local map.
This have a great pro: It will take less resources than using lots of very high res local maps

textures/xxx/xxx
{
diffusemap textures/xxx/xxx_d.tga
bumpmap addnormals(textures/detail_map.tga, textures/xxx/xxx_local.tga)
specularmap textures/xxx/xxx_s.tga
}


The results are very good sometimes and may improve the quallity:
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/7633/detailsn.jpg

Etqw/Wolfenstein, for example use something better than this thing i posted, because they have upgraded the engine.



phantazm11@Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 5:33 pm :
Looking really good, ratty. Great detail you captured in those last pics.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 4:19 pm :
thanks a lot guys :)

this image shows the ao bake settings I ended up using after a lot of experimentation. their faster to render than what kat used in his tutorial, but that might be due to the older version of blender kat was using at the time.

Image

these two images show the same glsl material but with a hi to low bake in the 1st image and a single mesh bake in the 2nd image. it appears to be the camera space (as opposed to tangent) baking used in the latter which is inverting the normals.

Image Image

@sturm, I understand the principle and we can also use detail maps in blender. am I correct in thinking your not using any scaling commands in the d3 shader, and that the local maps are being scaled up automatically to the size of the detail map at run time? if so that's cool and I will certainly try those when I have d3 installed again.



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 4:55 pm :
Yes, I didn't use any scale cmd on the material... It sems to scale itself (maybe it's not true) to the same texture size.
The bigger the detail map is, the better (at least on some kind textures like: Metal, rock, flesh, sand...)



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 6:49 pm :
cool and I'm about to do some tests in blender with 256 or 512 size local maps and layer them with the 1024 size detail normals I rendered earlier. I will have to use a scale command in blender but that shouldn't be a problem.

do you know if d3 can load in 8bit ao maps and blendfunc multiply them with diffuse maps?



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:45 pm :
this images shows a 256 size low frequency normal map layered in a glsl material with a 1024 size high frequency (detail) normal map.

something else which was cool was blender upscaled the former without me having to set the scale.

Image

edit: I had to use a different blend mode for the diffuse as the previous 'color' blend mode started turning everything yellow with the two normal maps.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 8:57 pm :
I've been doing some tests with deforming this prefab model using curve modifiers. not sure if this method is quicker or more powerful than lattice modifiers. iirc both can deform duplicated objects without affecting the original mesh, helping keep the blend file size down as there would be less need for unique meshes or textures.

Image Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:54 am :
I've been doing some tiling tests with the prefabs. the meshes align well but the textures would need a little work along the seams, I might not do that for these tests, although I'm guessing I could use the new projection painting on the seams. also these images show my black rock texture, hope the images aren't too dark for you guys?

Image Image Image Image

because all the prefabs use the same baked ao, spec and normal maps there are a few faces on the stretched parts of the deformed prefab that don't look as natural as the original prefabs. I could bake some new textures if need be, I guess it would depend on whether the player would notice in game?



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 8:12 pm :
looking at the uv stretch overlay (shown in blue and green) in blender's image editor window, as well as one of my uv test images, I can see how bad that stretching was from the curve deforming.

the following pairs of images show before and after the deformed perfab section was recalculated (uv's and baking)

Image Image Image Image Image Image

and here is an image showing the glsl material applied to the after version.

Image



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 10:16 pm :
Impressive work so far 8)
Good luck



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 12:01 am :
thanks sturm :)

inbetween my testing, I've just started going back to my main project files and redoing/tweaking some of the models with this new workflow. I think its going to be a lot quicker and less daunting now, as previously I realized it would take me ages to model every poly by hand on the terrain and caves.

I should also be able to use the particle object method to quickly build stair cases, loose brink walls etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 2:06 am :
I've finsihed tidying up the skrink wrapping on this model which I last worked on a few weeks ago. in this case all the particles were hand painted onto the emitter surface and there wasn't any tiling prefabs used.

Image

although I'm reasonably pleased with the results, and in total it didn't take long to make using the rock particles I had in my library. but I think there is too much detail, so over the next few days I intend to have another go at this.

I'm confident the workflow is refined enough for me to start using it properly, but I might experiment with some different artistic styles of rock faces.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 10:32 pm :
here's an image of my particle rock objects, but this time I'm experimenting with adding detail directly to them rather then the shrink wrapped mesh. I'm learning several things from these tests but they might not became part of my main workflow.

I also need to model some more particle rocks as these ones aren't providing all the different shapes I need in my main project files. which I'll show some images of after these latest tests are over.

Image



phantazm11@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 4:23 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
I think there is too much detail, so over the next few days I intend to have another go at this.



Have you tried using the same rock particles, but maybe just scaling them up in size? ATM it looks as though the rockface is made of a jumble of smaller rocks (which is cool if that is what you were intending). If you made the particles bigger then the shapes could form larger outcroppings and crevases in the wall, and you could use a normal map for the finer details.

Just my two cents :)



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 1:49 pm :
ratty redemption wrote:
here's an image of my particle rock objects,


??? You can use models as particles in Doom 3?



phantazm11@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:39 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
ratty redemption wrote:
here's an image of my particle rock objects,


??? You can use models as particles in Doom 3?


In Blender.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:05 pm :
oh. ok. then what would they be used for in doom 3? IE Why is he making them for his map?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:43 am :
phantazm11 wrote:

Have you tried using the same rock particles, but maybe just scaling them up in size?

thanks and yes I have. the first tests I did with these particle rocks used a higher scale on their particle emitter, which was the original low poly rock face. I then experimented to see how small I could scale the rocks while shrink wrapping a mesh over them.

from a technical point of view, the larger the particles the easier it is to work with them and the shrink wrapping. but artistically I'm trying some variations on the style of rock face which might end up looking as good but requiring less detail.

The Happy Friar wrote:
oh. ok. then what would they be used for in doom 3? IE Why is he making them for his map?

sorry for any confusion guys. friar if you look at this recent post of mine.

viewtopic.php?p=217418#p217418

it shows how these rock objects can be turned into particle models in blender and either automatically spawned over a larger mesh or painted onto a mesh. the tools can also be used to quickly place trees in a forest or any group of library objects around a map, again all within blender.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 12:11 pm :
that's pretty neat. Sounds like ETQW's stuff generator or a RTS stuff paintbrush. I'll have to look in to that. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:15 pm :
friar, agreed and the particle objects are one of the most powerful tools I've ever worked with, although I've heard there are more options in some of the pro apps like maya with their versions of this tool.

kernon dillon from blender newbies made an excellent video tutorial, although it doesn't cover the shrink wrapping stage I do, but you can learn how to plant trees etc.

http://www.cgcookie.com/articles/2009/0 ... nder-scene



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:24 am :
I've been working on a new dark rock material using blender's glsl lighting. all the textures were only 256 size. the high level of detail was achieved by scaling some of them, which hopefully will also work with the d3 engine.

Image Image Image

I'm thinking I could use some of my particle rocks for boulders at the bottom of rock faces etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 2:45 am :
just a text update for now.

after a couple of weeks of not really using blender due to real life distractions, I'm currently trying to bake some hi to lo poly textures but I'm having a lot of crashes from blender which is making my progress very slow :x

as soon as I get some thing worth showing I'll be updating this thread.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 5:57 pm :
I finally got blender stable again. it was previously crashing a lot with my recent normal baking.

here's a couple of images of a crack normalmap and ao bake I've been adding as detail layers to the glsl material.

Image Image

I know I could use crazy bump to add cracks to the rock but I wanted to see if I could do them all from within blender, next step is to add more cracks which I hope to get done over the next few days.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:54 am :
here's another image. I'm really pleased with these results artistically, and I hope they are technically correct so far.

Image

note this images doesn't yet have ao or spec maps, so the spec is just from blender's uniform lighting with the spec value turned down in the glsl material.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:31 am :
comparing my normal bake with one of the default d3 brick textures, it looks like the left to right channel in my normals is inverted? I think I can easily fix that in blender with the image editor's rgb curve tool.

Image

edit: yep, the red channel in blender's baking seems to be inverted compared to d3's format.

Image

thanks a lot to kat for spotting something was wrong.



Theftbot@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:44 am :
Yup idk why but blender has a reversed red channel.



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:40 am :
That looks great. Small details like that really seem to make textures pop.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:25 pm :
thanks a lot guys and I'm really enjoying this work again, now blender isn't crashing very few minutes. so I'll hopefully be posting more frequently again :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:35 am :
I've been doing some comparisons between the inverted red channel and the d3 normals format, and in blender I think the inverted looks slightly better. so maybe I dev my work in blender and save a different version for d3, rather then them share the same assets.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 5:46 am :
here are two shots of the crack model which started off as a bevel object extruded along a path, then converted to a mesh and a few modifiers added.

Image Image

now I know it works both artistically and technically I should be able to quickly add in more cracks.



Lord Zurra@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 10:39 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've been doing some comparisons between the inverted red channel and the d3 normals format, and in blender I think the inverted looks slightly better. so maybe I dev my work in blender and save a different version for d3, rather then them share the same assets.


I don't know why but blender uses normal maps which are inverted on X axis. In your comparison shots take doom3 normal map and move light around, you will see that normal map is inverted on X axis in blender viewport, that means it will look wrong in blender but does look just what you want in doom3, keep this in mind when you bake normal maps in blender, remember to invert X axis.

Two shots to illustrate this better.

blender normal map in blender
Image
doom3 normal map in blender
Image

Normal map from the dark mod.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:07 pm :
it might be doom 3 itself. the d3 editor has the side view on the wrong side of the axes so if you rotate clockwise in the editor it's actually a negative angle in game space.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:03 pm :
thanks guys and those were very good examples lord zurra, I'll just keep this is mind when saving out any blender baked normals to be used in d3.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:55 pm :
this image shows the bevel object, bevel taper and curve path used in the crack.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 2:27 am :
thanks to rich_is_bored pointing me in the right direction, I've had some surprisingly good results with mixing normal maps in blender. the images below are just rendering tests, I will probably use the texture node system to mix some smaller cracks with my larger crack normals because they can use the same texture scales, then use the d3 shaders to mix the other normals.

Image Image



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 1:50 pm :
If you can see the whole cave (or pretty much all of it) then don't bother splitting it as it won't give you any performance gains.

If the engine can't see a model but it's still within a portal 'block' it's my understanding that it will at least be pulled into memory (although it might not physically be rendered to screen). Having said that you *do* want to be breaking models into smaller sections anyway where possible but you have to do that based on 'VIS' i.e. what you can see when standing in one portal block looking towards another.

The downside to this is 'smoothgroup' edges, hard lines that run along a mesh split/join. So yes, basically break the model up so that it fits more or less into the portal blocks.

Having said all that though, the real killer is what zombie said above about lights and surface rendering; don't go above 4 ('area' lights - lights that illuminate large areas of the map) if you can help it.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:09 pm :
thanks kat, and after reading your post a couple of times I think I understand all of that.

I read earlier that visportals will split brushes into more polys along the edges of the visportals, does that also apply to models? and if so should we ideally model the edges of our split models to be straight lines where we plan on putting visportals in the map editors?

regarding the r_showlightcount results, so far I have a couple of rows of the large polys on the cave walls that are blue, the rest of the polys are either red or green. and the reason I ended up with the dark blue ones was I wanted a transition between the lava glow light and the blue and orange sky lights, is that ok lightcount wise?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:26 pm :
Models are pretty much handled the same way they were with Q3, so if any part of it can be seen the whole hting will be (object) rendered, D3/Q4 et-al are the same.

How you split the model will depend on what the thing looks like, stright lines make things obvious, but at the same time if sections overlap portal blocks it'll render what it can see; cutting models up in more 'art' than 'science'; you'll have to go with the best result you can given what you've got.

Buildings are easy to do with all this stuff becasue they have straight walls everywhere, introduce a few bends and wonkey surfaces and your optimisation problems explode.

If you've got Kat's Basket (katq4dm2), run up to the top of the map and look down into the 'atrium' with lightcount on, note what you see in relation to performance in Q4. That's top end of the spectrum in terms of performace vs polycount/lightcount which you don't want to go over, unless it's a relatively big area like it is in that Q4 map I did.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:42 pm :
thanks again kat, this really is helping me :)

I currently don`t have a system that runs q4 but my bro is upgrading and passing on a system to me that will, hopefully in a couple of weeks, although we`ve been talking about it for months, but as soon as I get that system I`ll be installing q4, and hopefully prey, and then I`ll test out your maps.

one thing I`m surprised at with the official d3 hell maps is the amount of small overlapping lights they use, as opposed to a few large sky lights.

do you think they weren`t aware they could do this with those maps? as I notice in some of the other official maps, where they have outdoor sections, like with the tram rides, then they have used sky lights like we are using.



Black Dog@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 9:33 pm :
Quote:
if any part of it can be seen the whole hting will be (object) rendered, D3/Q4 et-al are the same.


You can easily change this by adding the keyval "inline 1", and then the model geometry should be surfaced and split by the compiler as if it were ordinary world geometry.

This is not always going to be a clear performance win, since multiple surfaces are going to batch separately (and there will be geometry introduced by splits). However, it might be useful to have the compiler split up something which is contiguous but requires vis culling, say a large seamless cavern model, rather than having to do it yourself. Also, the compiler may make more vis-friendly splits.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 10:46 pm :
thanks black dog, and although I had heard of that entity keyword, I didn`t understand what we could use it for.

as I progress with adding detail and some particle emitters to this map area I`m working on, I`ll try and do some tests to see if "inline" helps in this case :)



6th Venom@Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:49 am :
Black Dog wrote:
You can easily change this by adding the keyval "inline 1", and then the model geometry should be surfaced and split by the compiler as if it were ordinary world geometry.


By memory, "inline" "1" turn your model into brush, but remove the collision... so you got to make "clip" brushes every where, and for complex surfaces, it's very hard to make manually somtimes.

to be confirmed.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 1:01 am :
understood and agreed, if we have to clip all our rock surfaces when using "inline 1" that could be a lot of extra work.



Black Dog@Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:01 am :
Uh, you are quite right. I didn't remember that.



kat@Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:05 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
understood and agreed, if we have to clip all our rock surfaces when using "inline 1" that could be a lot of extra work.
Don't use inline on complex none-axial models as it's can't handle those types of shapes too well, result in broken collision data as well as introducing render errors (brushwork flickers and 'misrenders' when viewed in game).



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:16 am :
understood and thanks kat. from the sounds of it, I won`t be touching that inline keyword with a ten foot barge pole, not that us ratties can lift those things anyway ;)



Zombie13@Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:05 pm :
As I haven't fully tried and tested this, but you could make another mesh in the same model for collision using textures/common/collision (but make the collision mesh have fewer polygons where the player can't acess, or to smooth out rough areas in the rock/terrain where the player would bounce a lot).

This should over-ride the mesh itself, using the mesh with textures/common/collision as the mesh to get the collision data from.

Try it out and tell me how it goes.

Z



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:14 pm :
good idea zombie13, and it`s easy enough for me to test these so I`ll do so this evening.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 4:44 am :
sorry for lack of updates this week. I`ve been distracted by another smaller project I`m working on with someone else, and things in real life so haven`t spent as much time as I intended working on this hell map, but I`ve nearly finished a rock bridge and small cave entrances built into my hell maps large cave. hopefully will have some images to ul later on today.

zombie13, I will then test the inline command and some collision meshes and or brush work on one or two of these models.

in the mean time, can anyone advise me on how resource hungry it is to have multi stage materials in d3 using their vertex color tests?

eg. a rock to dirt material blend for my rock bridge, should I try to keep as few polys as possible using the multi stage material, or could I have the whole area using multi stage materials with little or no impact in performance?



kat@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 5:39 am :
Has little effect, my quake 4 map is pretty much completely made with blended materials (I'm assuming this is what you mean as opposed to "multi stage"), the main rock surface is a blend of a smooth and rough texture via a blend material. D3 should pretty much be the same, at least from a pure polygon and basic material assignment point of view (i.e. you're not then doing something complicated with the mesh or using some FPS heavy material effects)/



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 5:48 am :
thanks kat, and to clarify this is one of the multi stage materials as I think of them, are we talking about the same way of blending textures?

Code:
models/ratty/lava_rock1
{
qer_editorimage textures/hell/hhlava_fx.tga
//noselfshadow
stone
{
  blend bumpmap
  map textures/hell/hhlava_local.tga
  translate time * 0, time * -0.06
}
{
  blend add
  map textures/hell/hhlava_fx.tga
  translate time * 0, time * -0.06
  vertexcolor
}
{
  blend specularmap
  map textures/hell/hhlava_s.tga
  vertexcolor
}
{
  blend bumpmap
  map addnormals (textures/rock/sharprock_local, heightmap (textures/rock/newdarkrock_bmp.tga, 10) )
  inversevertexcolor
}
{
  blend diffusemap
  map textures/ratty/rock1_d.tga
  inversevertexcolor
}
}


note: I don`t really need a specular stage for my rock, as in tests it made little visual difference so I left it out.



kat@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:22 am :
Yep, that's a 'blend' material so yes same thing. I have to agree with no specular on the rock although you can do some wierd things with it instead of just appling a 'flat' specular, you can add 'viens' to one of the blended rocks textures for example which give an interesting appearence in game.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:29 am :
thanks and using speculars for effects like that sounds interesting, I guess we could use it for gold running through a rock? have you any images where you`ve used this you could show us? :)



kat@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:43 am :
Ha no. It was something I noticed when I was doing the effect for my hanging lantern model, that has crystal viens in it but they're hard to see becasue the whole thing is 'reflective'. Do that with rock though and yeah gold, silver, anything in fact, you could map an environment map to it as well (although I've not tried that yet).



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 7:52 am :
understood :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 4:24 am :
I've improved the node setup and the results better match the original colors. and although not perfect I am pleased with the results considering I have no idea how the maths works and just did this by tweaking the red and green color ramps.

Image Image



rich_is_bored@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 5:01 am :
You could lose two mixer nodes and a decompose node by splitting the image into it's component channels after performing the mix and get the same result. I'm not sure if you're worried about it though. I doubt 3 extra nodes are going to kill performance.

The math is actually really simple. The mix node as you have it setup is just averaging the color between the two images. Changing the factor to something other than .50 would make it a weighted average. The color ramp node is just remapping the input to a different range. It's like doing a levels adjustment in Photoshop.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:40 am :
rich, thanks and understood, I'll try that tomorrow. in the mean time this is my latest test. I added in a color ramp for the blue channel.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 10:18 pm :
rich, your suggestion for optimizing the node setup worked perfectly :)

Image Image

edit: oh and it's the maths behind the color ramps (rgb levels) that I don't understand. so if anyone can explain how those particular sliders and values I used on the ramps ended up producing the desried results, I'd appreciate hearing from them :)



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 9:52 am :
Image

Does this help you visualize what is going on?

Essentially all you've done is take each channel of the normal map and compress the range making the slopes appear steeper.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 5:26 pm :
understood and thanks a lot rich, that graph did help :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 7:52 am :
I've been doing more tests with baking and layering normals, this time using the material slots instead of nodes.

the first image shows two meshes using the same displace modifers and procedural cloud textures, but mapped to the position of 2 empties to produce variations.

Image

this image shows the normals baked from the blue mesh.

Image

the next three show the normal material slots layered together.

Image Image Image

I've still more work to do on the crack normals and my bumpy detail layer isn't tiling yet which I hope to get more done over the next few days.



Lord Zurra@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:14 am :
If you are already familiar with nodes, then just stick with em. With material textures you have that limit of 16 textures per material, it might sound enough amount to make miracles but it is not. I uploaded a rather big (29MB) .blend of my old test if you want to take a look at how complicated baking can get. This blend includes many UV Layers, masks, many textures and materials. If I would like to add more details with textures, I could not do that because my limit of 16 texture slots is already used on some materials.

At blender layer one you see the mesh with materials I use with baking. Layer two holds the final material with only diffuse, specular and normal map. And if you test it, remember to use GLSL materials!

here is the file

http://etana.kapsi.fi/shieldTest.blend

file should be uploaded after 5min of this post.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 8:47 pm :
lord zurra, thanks a lot for the .blend file I'm dl now and will study it later :)

the only reason for me still using the material slots is just to emulate what I imagine adding normals in d3 would be like, as I don't have d3 installed on this pc I can't actually test it.

regarding the d3 shaders are we limited to how many normal maps we add at map load or run time?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 11:22 pm :
these images show the results of my first projection painting with normalmaps to make a tileable texture. this tool could also be used to add or remove details to an existing normalmap in a similar way to using a clone brush in an iamge editor.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 6:04 am :
here's some images of my latest tests with projection painting and layering normal maps in blender:

the 1st image shows the result of projection painting used to make the rock's base normalmap. the 2nd image shows one of the normalmap layers used in the projection painting and the rock's high frequency normals enabled in the material slot. and the 3rd image has the crack normals enabled.

Image Image Image

one of coolest things I found was that projection painting will work with glsl mode, so we can see a real time preview as we paint the normalmaps :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 7:37 pm :
I think I've got the basic art and tech worked out now for these rocks, so next on my to do list is add in more cracks to their detail layer, which will also be tileable so can be used on the rest of the rocks in this group.

Image

edit: there isn't any custom spec or ao maps shown here, I'll make those after I've finished the crack layer.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 12:09 am :
I've just completed a test with using vertex weight painting to determine the strength of the displacements around the edges of my cracks. also as this was only a small part of the model, the baking was very quick.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 7:08 pm :
dersaidin from katsbits asked me to make a cliff face for his map, which is a good practical use of my recent tests. I'll update this thread with a few images from that as the art style and workflow will likely be used in my hell map project.

the first image shows the cliff model (colored green) which he sent me with some of my particle rocks (red and blue) painted onto it.

the 2nd image shows the shrink wrapped mesh still with the off cut verts which I'll remove when I decimate and clean up the mesh.

Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 7:28 pm :
i've been playing around with the particle painting: very neat. Thanks for pointing that out! :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 4:02 am :
friar, cool and what was it I said or showed that helped you?

also happy xmas everyone :wink:



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 4:59 am :
here is the cleaned up mesh after skrink wrapping.

Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 7:23 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
friar, cool and what was it I said or showed that helped you?


on page 10 of this thread you explained that you're using particle painting in blender for your map & linked to a tutorial. I've shown that to a few people & I'm having a lot of fun with it. All thanks to you. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 8:56 am :
friar, understood and that's great to hear :)

my final update before getting some sleep today:

after some tweaking of the new mesh to help baking, I've now got a working normal map. I also tested my glsl material from my rocks on this cliff face with a few scale values increased. I'm intending the crack layer to have more cracks, even if it's not going to be used on this model.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 8:00 am :
I've not done any more work on the crack normal layer today, but I think I've improved the diffuse and basic/detail normal layers.

in this perspective image, the camera is quite close to the cliff face and there is still a lot of high frequency detail. next on my to do list is try to mix in some more variation to the diffuse and then add to some cracks, over the next few days I'll then work on the other 2 sections of this cliff.

Image



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 12:45 pm :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've not done any more work on the crack normal layer today, but I think I've improved the diffuse and basic/detail normal layers.

in this perspective image, the camera is quite close to the cliff face and there is still a lot of high frequency detail. next on my to do list is try to mix in some more variation to the diffuse and then add to some cracks, over the next few days I'll then work on the other 2 sections of this cliff.

Image

Nicely done :twisted:



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 8:39 pm :
thanks sturm :)

I need to do more work on the diffuse and I've decided that the other 2 sections of the this cliff model (which join onto the end nearest the camera in the latest image) will probably have a smoother shape to them, ie look less like bolders.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 10:17 pm :
here's two images of the latest diffuse tests. I used a photo source of real rocks for the basic diffuse layer and a smaller tiled dirt texture for the detail layer. the normal maps are the same as in the last images. also none of these recent images have ao or spec maps, just the uniform spec lighting that comes with blender.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 10:07 am :
in between mainly doing real life stuff over the last few days, I've managed to do enough of the new rock material to be satisfied for the time being. so for the next few days I can focus on the meshes again. after that I'll probably do some more work on the crack normals.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 1:35 am :
I've had a ton of real life distractions so far this year, but over the last 3 days I finally got some work done in blender.

the red section of this cliff face is new and I've tried to get more of a flow to the edgeloops.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 1:01 am :
I managed to do some more blender work today. here is the 2 cliff sections with their unique normal (low frequency) layers. they share the same diffuse, spec and normal detail (high frequency) layers.

Image Image

although not very obvious from this camera distance and fov, I couldn't find a way to tile the materials across the sections so there is a seam. this was due to apparently the baking needing all the uv's to be within the default image space, usually uv's can extend beyond that space if the materials use tiling diffuse, spec layers etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 1:39 am :
although it was quite easily to model a deep crack in the meshes to hide the texture seam, I didn't realise the shared spec map would look wrong. as shown in the image below. I don't want to make unique spec maps for each cliff section so I'm going back to the previous version of the mesh and see what else I can do.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:39 pm :
I haven't had much time over the last few days to work in blender but the 2nd image below shows the progress I've made with the seam. still wip though.

Image Image



Sebultura@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 7:44 pm :
It's cool to see the progress of your stuff & putting some picture with descriptions really helps enjoying the thing.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 3:07 pm :
@ Sebultura, thanks and this latest workflow is a lot faster then I've previously been able to do, but frustratingly I've not had much time this year to do any blender work until the last few days. I do hope to make up for lost time though.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 3:14 pm :
while I'm working on the mesh for the 3rd cliff section, here's an image of the seam between the first two sections. the results turned out better then I thought they would, with only really the smooth group shading indicating where the seam is, and from a distance it's barely noticeable :)

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:58 am :
for the first time since my hdd died last week, I've been able to get on with my blender work. these images show the 3rd cliff section (in blue)

Image Image Image

tomorrow I hope to get the uv's and baking done.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:25 am :
I think I've finally finished the meshes, uv's and baking for these 3 cliff sections.

Image Image Image Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:48 am :
very, very sweet. :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 5:04 am :
thanks a lot friar 8)

I've done some tweaking today to the mesh's edge loops and rebaked the normals. the last two posts of mine have had their images updated. the differences are subtle but I think the rocks look slightly more natural.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:04 am :
just a text update: I had more pc and isp problems and went several weeks without a computer to work on. I've since then moved flats and now have a better broadband service. and although I don't have my own pc yet, I've been borrowing my gf's laptop and have successfully installed blender on after udating the video drivers. hopefully within the next few days I'll be working on the hell map project again. I'll ul some wip images as soon as I have something to show.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 3:36 pm :
ot: why when I try to click on page 3 of this topic do I get the following error?

Quote:
No posts exist for this topic



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 3:50 pm :
some of you might be interested to see a section of the rock bridge model I`ve been working on this week.

although I ended up doing quite a lot of tweaking to the mesh, what was really time consuming was the uv map, or uvw as kat calls them.

Image

until I got the mesh exactly how I wanted, I realize now I should of tested the model with simple planar texture projections done in blender (uv calculation panel\from window button) which takes only moments to set up, although we don`t have much control of the results and they can come out looking stretched on certain faces not aligned with the projection angle.

then when the model was "finished" that would of been the time to use blender`s "live lscm" mapping, as seen in the image above, which in my opinion gives the best quality.

the tricky part with a model like this is first setting up the texture seams, shown here with the light blue lines, then dragging the little red dots around to get the best scale and alignment and least texture distortion, which took me hours in this case. although the previous rounder shaped rock were easy in comparison as their uv maps looked radial in general as opposed to elongated.

anyway, I will make faster progress with this now and have nearly finished the other sections of the rock bridge, which I`ll ul in game images of asap.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 3:58 pm :
I forgot to mention that I`m building this bridge with a few more polys then the previous rocks, so some of you might be able to make out the beveling on the bridge`s crack to the right of it`s center. I intend to add that level of detail to the previous rocks when I have time.



Black Dog@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:37 pm :
The unwrapping function in blender should be able to minimise uv distortion fairly effectively for a given seam choice. If you are still spending ages trying to tweak uvs by hand after running an lcsm, then you probably need to choose seams either more carefully or more aggressively.

When doing rocks I personally prefer to work by placing seams and unwrapping, without any pinning or manual moving whatsoever (apart from moving/scaling/rotating the entire uvset). If the mapping is bad, I place better seams and unwrap again. Herding uvs around your mesh is basically a huge pain in the ass, and it's really best to let the tools handle that for you.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:53 pm :
thanks blackdog, and maybe I could of placed the seams in better locations but I was trying to keep them so the player couldn`t see them if possible, which also ment me not using as many seams as I would otherwise.

also with the bump mapping I`m using on these rocks being large, it`s often very noticeable when a seam splits a rock surface, as the bumps don`t align along the seam edges. hmmm, thinking about that, if I placed the seams across the dirt parts of the model, then they might not be as noticeable as the rock ones, due to dirt having a much finer local and height map for the bumps.

the problem I was getting with the unpinned lscm results were uv`s overlapping or creating pixel thin mapping which ment the textures got very stretched on my mesh work.

thankfully the live lscm does save time by moving the unpinned uv`s around to compensate for the pinned uv`s being edited by us, but as I haven`t really used it before, it`s taken a few days to learn how to use it. in future I`ll be quicker at using live lscm.



Black Dog@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:00 pm :
Quote:
the problem I was getting with the unpinned lscm results were uv`s overlapping or creating pixel thin mapping which ment the textures got very stretched on my mesh work.


That's because you don't have seams in the right places to get a low distortion mapping. With seaming around the sides like that you basically have a refined planar mapping at the moment, and that's pretty restrictive.

Looking at that model, it should be fairly easy to find a layout that would minimise stretching without having any seams on the top of the model. I'll mock up a similar model and show you what I mean.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:05 pm :
understood and thanks a lot. and if you have blender, I can ul that model`s .blend file or export it to a couple of over formats which your modeling app might be able to use.



obihb@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:06 pm :
I actaully think for that mesh from your previous screenshot, you can get even less seaming in there. If you think about it like unwrapping a character, or maybe the limb of a character, you'll see that you can have fewer seams and just about perfectly hidden seams.

I don't really know the capabilities of Blender's UV tools but even without special tools to help align verticies, you can get a pretty decent layout in a fairly short time there. I assume that Blender has a similar function that Max does which is called Relax. This pretty much will try and align the verts for you to try and minimise stretching in the UV. With a tool like this you can get really good UV in just about no time.

So, what I mean with less seams n this case is that you can have the seam running down the bottom in the middle of the mesh. This way you'll have a nice seamless texture going all the way around the edge of the rock. Even if you have a bit of stretching on the UV to make that happen, most of the times the stretching is preferred there above seams. Maybe that's a bit of personal choice but I do think that seams are much uglier than a bit of stretch to get rid of them. But then of course the stretch has it's limits aswell before going into seams is better.



Black Dog@Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:35 pm :
Example 1

Example 2

These are not great examples, but you can see what ohihb is talking about. There's a little stretching on the corner there (could easily get rid of that with some care, this is just an example), but no visible seams. The whole thing is one uv island, and you could easily get more aggresive with slicing up things in order to kill the stretching.

I took a few minutes to place the seams, unwrapping itself wouldn't have been more than ten seconds.

[EDIT]ULR/Link fixed. kat



ajm113@Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 10:26 pm :
Thats pretty good! Can you tell a noob on Blender some tips to make great models like that? Ever since I actuly started to play with it more its been pretty easy to use. I play around with it at school all the time now that its that good. :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 12:58 am :
Thanks ajm113, and we continued the thread here as the first version of this thread got corrupted on page 3, so I’m surprised you could post on it, especially as I couldn’t even read it until you posted.

Personally I’m still trying to get a system set up in my new home so I can carry on working on this project, but the best advise I can give for anyone who wants to learn blender 3d to make terrain similar to mine is to dl the video tutorials on kat’s site.



6th Venom@Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:01 am :
What are the news in hell? :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 4:37 pm :
hehe, thanks for asking 6th venom :)

I've recently been struggling to finish a large terrain model and camera flight animation for another project, but have decided over the last few days to have a break from that and get back to my hell map , partly as I really miss being able to test my models and textures in a game engine, as opposed to just playing back countless video renders of this other project.

anyway, hopefully I'll be able to post some updated screen shots of the hell map later this week :)

also I don't intend to have this long a break from the hell map again in the future, as its the main project I want to work on. but I promised I'd make an e-card type camera flight for my girlfriend, so I got stuck with that over xmas and throughout January.



kit89@Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 10:33 pm :
I always enjoyed keeping an eye on this project Ratty, hope you get it completed!

So whats your idea for the e-card?



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:20 am :
thanks kit89, and I'm determined to release some thing playable from my hell map project this year, as I've spent the last few years just building models or doing test maps, but nothing actually playable.

ot: the e-card concept my girl friend and I came up with was a large terrain model built and animated in blender, with a camera flight hugging the ground and with movement similar to a helicopter, ie being able to fly forward but aim the camera in other directions. then when the camera reaches a certain mountain, it orbits around it and bump mapped writing is revealed on one side of the mountain.

it sounded straight forward but I've had several technical hurdles to over come, and I built the terrain all by hand which took a lot longer then I predicted it would, plus the new material node system in blender doesn't seem to like displacement maps, as opposed to normal maps, so again I had to add in a lot of detail by hand rather then use bump mapping, although I could use some for small details.

with the new sculpt and retopo tools being included with the next major release of blender, it looks like terrain modeling will be a lot quicker to work with then manually subdividing and dragging verts around a mesh.

so in a way, the timing of me getting back to the hell map should coincide well with blenders next release.

I'm also going to release the terrain mesh from the e-card to the quake and doom communities, in case anyone wants to use the model in their projects. this is partly as I would like to see it in game but don't have the time to spend on it, and it's a different scale and style to the hell terrain I've been building.



kit89@Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:02 pm :
For the e-card have you tried using a camera parented to a path? with the camera pointing to an Empty to allow for easier movements?

You may find this very useful: http://www.3d-synthesis.com/tutorialsenglish.html

There's a tutorial right at the top named "Cars Animation Tutorial.pdf " which goes into fair detail on how to get the most out of path animation. It may be using cars but the features & abilities shown can be implemented to anything.

Hope it's helpful :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:14 pm :
ot: thanks a lot kit89, and those tutorials look interesting, just a shame they are in .pdf format as I much prefer .htm or .avi etc

anyway, the animation of my e-card was easy so that only took a couple of days, and yes I used the method you mention above.

but its mainly been working with such a large mesh on my girlfriend's somewhat underpowered pc, and figuring out how to use blenders new material nodes that have been the difficulties.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 3:14 pm :
update:

I've done a little work on my hell map over the last week, modeling some chains which are going to suspend the various cages over the lava pit, and some of the chains the player will be able to walk along to get to secrets in the map.

but I mainly worked on a new blender e-card for valentines day. this e-card animation went really well and I tried several things in blender which I had only previously read about or seen in tutorials.

I definitely have more skills and knowledge now then when I was previously working on the hell map last year, and with blender's new retopo and sculpt tools, which I'm currently experimenting with, the hell map should make good progress over the next few months :)

sorry I don't have any screen shots yet, but I should do over the next week if all goes well.

its also such a cool feeling to see my work inside a game engine again, as the last few months I've just been working on blender animations, and sadly they didn't involve blasting any imps or hell knights with shotguns which I've also missed doing :twisted:

that's the main downside of living with my girlfriend, between doing my share of the house keeping and spending time with her, which I do enjoy doing but it leaves less time for me to work compared to when I lived on my own, and I've not found time to do any gaming since I moved in here :(

saying that I wouldn't go back to my old life given the choice, and we're very much in love but its taking some adjusting and I'm having to learn to manage my time better.

anyway back on topic, I'm planning on releasing an alpha version of the map once the first area is done, so you guys can test it and give me some feedback on the single player gameplay, also if any skilled mappers or modelers are interested in turning my single player content into a mp map for either d3 or q4, the latter just using my custom content of course, then either post in here or pm me.



Bo$bevok@Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 3:42 pm :
hey ratty,

good to hear you're still at it. also its good that you have found someone you really love.
I look forward to playing the map

good luck



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:04 pm :
Bo$bevok, thanks and as wendores (her online name) works in IT for a london insurance company, she is also quite geeky, which is a quality I've been looking for in a girl friend for years, plus we're both into metal and goth which helps and she is very supportive of my work, especially anything like this hell map project, but she's not really a gamer. you also might be interested to hear she moved here about 7 years ago from south africa, where she literally came with a couple of suit cases, and started off doing temp work, before working her way up through the ranks, so to speak. the significance of this is we're both really hard working and don't like doing jobs half heartedly. saying that, she's been encouraging me to learn to work faster, so when I hopefully get a job in the games industry, I can make most if not all of my dead lines. at least that's the plan ;)



Bo$bevok@Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:19 pm :
if shes south african she must be great :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:33 pm :
ot: hehe, and one of the first things that attracted me to her was her accent. it's not a heavy accent but it has a certain effect on me ;)



mikebart@Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:10 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
that's the main downside of living with my girlfriend, between doing my share of the house keeping and spending time with her, which I do enjoy doing but it leaves less time for me to work compared to when I lived on my own, and I've not found time to do any gaming since I moved in here :(


see? I told you, thats what happens. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 2:22 am :
hehe, I know ;)



mikebart@Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 11:46 am :
If you want to speed up your UVWmapping you should check out unfold3d. Theres a free demo version, it has a few restrictions like you can only unfold models under 1000 polys, the mesh must be fully closed and you cant split the UVW up into more than one peice.
Its very handy for lowpoly organic stuff like your rock formations, you just make cuts where you want the seams to go and press the magic button and thats all :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 2:41 pm :
thanks mikebart. it does look cool, except they seem to of changed their demo license.
Quote:
UNFOLD3D Demo version is based on UNFOLD3D Magic Edition generation 5. All features are available except saving feature. That way, you can check and make use of every feature

and I can't afford it atm.



mikebart@Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 7:11 am :
damn, they must have changed it quite recently, I havent had it for more than a month



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 8:14 am :
np and thanks anyway for the link to their site.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 8:19 pm :
just a small update.

I've been very busy this last month working on my port folio and forming a new team intending to work with the blender game engine. unfortunately this has meant I've hardly worked directly on the d3 hell map project.

but as I've been spending a lot of time learning the new material node system in blender, a byproduct of that work is I've nearly finished some organic procedural textures I can use in the d3 hell map. I'll try and show you guys some screen shots as soon as they have been converted to bitmaps and tested in game.

I also have been practicing animating with bones in blender, and one of my blender abstract animations has tentacles so combined with the new textures it could make some interesting map objects, perhaps even a monster.

anyway, despite the slow progress on this d3 project, I have no intention of giving up, especially as I also plan it to go towards my port folio.



chuckdood@Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:52 am :
how's this project coming?



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:07 am :
unfortunately its been on hold for most of the last year since I moved but I'm planning on picking it up again soon. although I have less spare time then I used to, I've mainly be improving my skills in blender, and learning to make normal maps.

I have also been planning a 2nd area of the hell map, which will include a castle. the castle itself will be modeled in blender but I might model the terrain in earth sculptor, which gorker from the sd qw forums has been teaching us about, as I help him and some of the other guys there learn blender.

if possible I will also use the castle for a qw map, but since I don't have a system capable of running qw yet, I won't be able to test the gameplay, so might ask gorker or someone else there to work on the mapping side.

I know it looks like I gave up on this hell map project but I have no intention of doing so, and doubt I will move on from d3 until d4 comes out if it ever does.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 12:27 am :
I just posted this over at katsbits forums because its blender 3d related, but I'll post in here as well ;)

Quote:
here is the first publicly released shot of my d3 hell map rebuild, currently just a very low poly (3,350) cave and tunnel system, poly modeled in blender.

Image

if you can see them, the little green oblongs are iirc the dimensions of the d3 player model, ie 32x32x74 units. so hopefully this will give some sense of scale.

I have several more tunnels and large caves planned which I'll show as I progress, but next on my to do list is start adding steps to the steeper tunnels. some of the others will eventually have lifts and ladders.

I understand by todays pc specs I could probably increase the poly count of the caves and tunnels but I'll do that as I detail each area, for now this stage is mainly about me getting all the main areas built and connected.

the texturing and lighting is lower down on my to do list. I'll probably set up and render a camera fly through of the caves before then.


this is the only modeling and mapping project I'm currently working on, so although I've only recently over the last few weeks picked up this project again, I'm determined to make good progress on it.

I know my way around blender a lot better then I did when previously working on the hell map, and I've been learning how to use crazy bump as part of the texture creation process.

I will need some help with mapping tips, when it comes to that stage. and I have a few questions to ask, should I post them in here or start a thread in the mapping wip forum?



Bo$bevok@Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 7:50 pm :
nice... im glad you've picked this up again.

good luck



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:32 pm :
thanks a lot bo$bevok :)

I must admit that I've been wanting to get back to this pet project of mine for about 6 months but kept putting it off while I worked on some other stuff, including learning to make bump, spec and ao textures in crazy bump, but I feel I'm at a stage now where I can really concentrate on the hell map modeling, plus blender is considerably more powerful then it was a year or so ago, so that should also help my progress.

anyway, expect regular updates from me over the foreseeable months, and if I don't keep you guys updated, then feel free to rant at me.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 1:28 pm :
considering some pc specs are a lot higher then when I first started this project, can anyone give me a poly count to aim for, considering this sp map isn't likely to be finished before next year?



mikebart@Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 11:05 pm :
its really more about the amount of visual entitys and materials being used and how many lights are touching them than polycounts; like if you have a pile of static meshes in a room, say 500 or so, and they all share the same material, you'd be better off attaching all the static meshes in the pile into one static mesh because you know they're going to be drawn on screen roughly at the same time, and that will reduce the amount of visual entitys and reduce draw calls. As long as you avoid worst case scenarios like that you should be able to get better performance with more polys and less total entitys.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 11:13 pm :
mikebart, thanks very much, I had no idea func_statics affected performance like that in d3. any other tips you can give me will be appreciated :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 11:29 pm :
since my last update I've not had much time to work on our pc, much to my frustration as I'm really enjoying working on this project again, but here are some shots of one of the tunnel sections I've been turning into a new cave. its still quite low poly.

next update will likely be of this same cave with more detail added, although I'm still not texturing or lighting yet until I have more of the mesh work done.

Image Image Image
Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:59 pm :
I'm really sorry for lack of updates again. real life has been getting in the way a lot recently, much to my utter frustration. the good news is the hell map is still the only games or cg project I've been working on so its not through lack of me wanting to work on this project or keep you guys updated.

anyway, here is one of the wooden map objects I've been modeling in blender for my d3 hell map. I normally use photobucket for image hosting but their server wouldn't let me log in today.

Image Image

edit: if anyone has difficultly viewing these images hosted on imageshack then I'll replace them with the photobucket ones as I have access to my account there again.

I intend to ul more shots later if I get a chance.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 3:08 am :
kat asked over at katsbits.com forums if I could post a shot of the uv seams, I'll post that shot here as well in case anyone is interested.

the shot also shows another uv test image of mine in the right side window, which has been psp layered on top of the original shot just to make it easier to see the test image without the uvs, but the seams are as they appear in blender.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 3:42 am :
this next shot shows two ladders joined together to make a longer one, the yellow highlighted ladder is a duplicate linked object (clone) which uses the same mesh as the orange highlighted ladder.

edit: I forgot to mention the clone is rotated 180 degrees (ie upside down)

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 1:05 am :
I've asked about the following on katsbits.com as well, hope you guys don't mind me asking in both forums?

does anyone know if the d3 ladders work on non axial brushes?

in the shot below you can see I've dragged out a sloped brush around my long ladder which is leaning against a rock over hang, in d3 the player can't climb it although he can slide down it :roll:

Image

previously my vertical ladder tests worked except the player would have difficultly moving backwards off the bottom of a ladder :?



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 3:30 am :
these shots show the other wooden structure I've been working on recently, an old crooked bridge. the 3rd shot shows the bridges collision hull.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 1:12 am :
a little update on the wooden bridge. I've added another plank leading to one of the other tunnel entrances in the cave these map objects are being initially made for.

Image Image

I'm now working on a second bridge for that cave but don't have enough of it ready to show yet, hopefully soon though :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 4:14 pm :
small update on the shape of the collision hull I'm using for my wooden bridge, the ends have been made more into slopes to help the player on and off the object.

Image

I'm still experimenting with collision hulls and clip brushes for the ladders, although I'm not sure if I even need to as my tests in d3 didn't appear to benefit from having either, and the former are time consuming to build. however it does seem that detailed surfaces the player or monsters walk on do need more then just the visual surfaces.



Bo$bevok@Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 9:47 pm :
nice to see these updates man.
i think it all looks great and i cant wait to play it.
best of luck



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 12:36 am :
Bo$bevok, cool and thanks a lot :)

I've nearly finished the 2nd wooden bridge for that cave which links the upper level above the ladder to another cave tunnel. I'll hopefully post shots of it soon.

as for playing the map, I have a huge amount left to do but I am picking up speed now. its also crossed my mind to possibly release a pre alpha type test map, like that cave when its ready. what do you guys think?

ie would you like to sample some of the gameplay asap and be able to see the various rooms in game as I work on them, or wait until they are all ready and the map is released in one go?



mavrik65@Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 12:58 pm :
nice job!
It had only just dawned on me how much levels change and effect game play, hence why I started putting a hell of a lot more effort and artistic flare into the maps I create. It's clear you've put a lot of effort into this map how long have you been working on it?

I'd personally like to play the map once its finished



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 1:31 pm :
cool, thanks mavrik65, and I have thought about this map a lot over the last couple of years, including concept designing most of it in my head.

but after I moved in with my gf about 19 months ago, building this project was put on hold (until recently) for several reasons, including me needing to learn more about low poly modeling in blender, which I'm now a lot more confident with and blender is more powerful then it was when I started this hell map.

plus I spent several months learning to use crazy bump to make textures with, as well as working on several other projects, although currently this is the only one I'm working on.

also real life has been very stressful for my gf and me, partly due to the area we live in and her job in IT being one of the most demanding and abusive jobs I've ever heard of. to give just a small indication of the kind of (financial insurance) scumbags she works for, they recently made her work 5 weeks in a row without a single day off which was seriously affecting her health, and they tried to get her to cancel a charity hike she and some of her team mates were doing where they climbed ben nevis. she actually stood up for once to her bosses and her IT team raised over £11,000 for charity, which the bosses took some credit for after they realized it would be good publicity for them.

sorry for this off topic rant but the good news is we are moving soon to a better class area with less crime etc, and she isn't likely to carry on working for that particular company, so our future looks a lot brighter, and I should be able to concentrate more on this project.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 12:28 am :
back on topic. here's the 2nd wooden bridge for that cave, highlighted in yellow, hope you guys find it interesting.

Image



chuckdood@Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 12:33 am :
can we see these ingame or are they not textured yet?



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 1:07 am :
chuckdood, their not textured yet, just uv mapped but I have been testing in game. I'll take some in shots in d3 roe soon so you guys can get more of a sense of scale.

also I was planning on starting on the lighting and setting up some place holder textures over the next few days. just keep in mind this is all wip so subject to change but I think the general layout of the models is working so far, also I'll increase the poly count over time if the engine can cope with it.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:36 pm :
I've been doing a little tweaking to the wood models but not really enough to show you guys.

I've also been testing some place holder materials/textures in game with a couple of lights. I'm really rusty with d3 lights since I haven't worked with them in about 18 months, can anyone help with the following problem I'm having?

Image

the large dark blue ambient light is working as I would expect and looks ok, but the smaller orange light selected in the shot is not lighting some of the tris on my cave model, at least not evenly. it seems if I use a light shader with the 'ambientlight' key then the tris do get lit evenly but then the light passes through geometry where it shouldn't.

I've tried making the lights cast shadows or not but that didn't seem to help, nor did adding 'noshadows' key to the rock material.

edit kat helped me track down the issue, it seemed to be due to the .ase meshes smooth groups, and not due to the way I set up the lights in the test map. I just need to do some more experimenting before I ul the next shots, but at least I'm back on track :)



kit89@Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 10:28 pm :
Excellent work Ratty.

With some superb detail, cant wait to see this in game! :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 10:58 pm :
thanks kit89 :)

I'm currently finishing off the uv mapping and vertex color blending for that version of the cave model, so far I have 3 material shaders for the cave. rock, rock to dirt, and rock to lava. the in game tests are working fine now, just need some tweaking then I'll ul some shots of it.

I then need to do some more work on the lighting and the wood objects have smooth group issues, ie the shading on the wood isn't working properly but I think with a little help I should be able to fix that soon.

also I recently dug out a d3 test map I worked on a couple of years ago to refresh my memory with sp entity placement, and I'm reasonably confident this small area will be playable in the near future. I can then move onto the other areas I have planned. this cave being about 1/10 of the hell map planned so far.

also real life is less distracting atm so I'm getting more done which makes a nice change.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 6:42 am :
to date I've redone the uv mapping on this cave 4 or 5 times and the vertex blending at least 2 times, but I finally am pleased with the results (considering some of the apparent limitations of the d3 engine and editing tools) I've also spent the last 3 days working on the lighting in this cave. I will need practice to get faster but I think I've got my workflow sorted out now.

these two test shots only show the lava pit part of the cave, and I'm currently using stock d3 textures for the rock and lava, but I have just made my own light falloff textures to go with the material shaders I wrote for the lava lights.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 7:21 pm :
here's a little update on my hell map, this time with more optimized lighting, recently I had got the results looking good imo but the d3 light count was too high showing pink and white with r_showlightcount on, they now show dark and light blue where the lights overlap.

this shot also shows a custom diffuse texture that metalliandy (from the crazybump forums) sent me, which I darkened and used cb to produce the normal and spec textures. took me a while to get the results I was after but I hadn't touched cb in months so was rusty. the blender model also needs more polys in places and I need to tweak the lava drain type tunnel at the front of the lava pit.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:14 pm :
I've been and increasing the poly count of this cave and sculpting it more. so far the engine hasn't chocked, well no more then usual for this low end system, which is surprising.

I'll have to see if I can keep up this level of detail in the larger more open areas like the sink holes, but so far I'm really pleased with the results and my workflow is getting faster. ie less experimentation and more creation at the moment :)

Image Image Image Image



obihb@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:32 pm :
I didn't really read through all posts so I may repeat some stuff here but anyway.

Doom3 can actually handle quite a lot of polygons pretty easily. It's really the lights that will bog down your system than anything else. A very simple map can be super slow because of bad lighting setup. As you will know as well I assume. In fact, in almost all cases it's better to have more polygons on floors, walls and ceilings, so that less of the polys actually receive lighting from various lights. If you had 4 lights hitting one polygon it's much slower than 4 lights hitting 4 separate polygons. So in your case where you have some tessellations going on, it is really a good thing for the lighting if you wanna use multiple lights in a row like that.

Another way to handle lighting in this sort of area (if you're not doing it already) is to use very few shadow casting lights or none at all. Because that is the real slow down from lighting, the shadows. Then most of the time you can have your shadow casting lights at least not intersect or intersect a very small amount.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 11:24 pm :
obihb wrote:
I didn't really read through all posts so I may repeat some stuff here but anyway.

np, don't worry about repeating anything, besides this thread is so old I can't remember what was said more then a page or so back :wink:

Quote:
Doom3 can actually handle quite a lot of polygons pretty easily. It's really the lights that will bog down your system than anything else. A very simple map can be super slow because of bad lighting setup. As you will know as well I assume. In fact, in almost all cases it's better to have more polygons on floors, walls and ceilings, so that less of the polys actually receive lighting from various lights. If you had 4 lights hitting one polygon it's much slower than 4 lights hitting 4 separate polygons. So in your case where you have some tessellations going on, it is really a good thing for the lighting if you wanna use multiple lights in a row like that.

cool and I knew to keep the overlapping of lights to a min, but I wasn't aware of the polys vs lights you mention, although it does make a lot of sense. I'll keep this in mind :)

Quote:
Another way to handle lighting in this sort of area (if you're not doing it already) is to use very few shadow casting lights or none at all. Because that is the real slow down from lighting, the shadows. Then most of the time you can have your shadow casting lights at least not intersect or intersect a very small amount.

thanks again and iirc kat has had some mixed results with allowing lights to cast shadows in his q4 maps, so I wasn't sure if it was advisable or not for my d3 map here, but so far only the large dark blue ambient light in that cave is set to cast shadows, all the orange blend lights in the lava pit are only set to cast diffuse, since apparently blend lights don't interact with spec maps anyway and I didn't think they needed to cast shadows down there.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 4:33 am :
carnage over at katsbits.com forums suggested I tried using a custom light texture for the lava pit. it took me a few days of dev to get results I was really happy with. anyway, here's some shots of the new lighting, still wip as I need to add one or two more lights to the upper left corner of the lava pit, but if that goes well then its still half the amount of lights I had with the last version, and imo this looks even better :)

Image Image Image Image



mikebart@Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:13 am :
its looking really good ratty, smart move using the custom light texture

this is something someone once told me about lighting that really sunk in:

Quote:
its all in how you do your lighting, if you're using something like deferred shading where you do your entire lighting calc in one pass, you can probably get away with lots of materials and such. But in a system like doom3, where you have 1 pass per light that touches every material, if you have a building with 16 mats, and you have 8 lights touching it, you're rendering 128 seperate passes. Hope that helps explain to anyone who dosent get the advantages of using less textures/materials.

[edit] 8 lights touching all 16 materials, not just 8 lights in your scene.






ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 2:39 pm :
cool and understood, thanks mikebart :)

do you have any advise on the image size and amount of light textures we can use?



mikebart@Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:47 am :
Ive never actually used a light texture before so im not really too sure about that, if you use a textureatlas with lots of different textures on it you could easily go 2048x2048, it depends on how many textures you want to use overall.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:48 am :
mikebart, understood and using a textureatlas (assuming its the same as a texturesheet) is a cool idea, I'll keep that in mind, thanks :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 6:37 am :
in between finishing off the lighting in the lava pit, I've been adding more polys to the rest of the cave model and working on its lighting. I haven't worked on the wooden bridges or ladders recently, they are some of the next items on my to do list.

as for the lava pit, its only using 4 lights as opposed the 8 lights I was previously using iirc.

the single ambient light for the pit now uses a custom light texture to add a dark orange ambient glow which extends slightly above the 3 brighter orange blendlights each of which also use custom light textures. I've just added a makealpha stage to the blendlights material shaders so there is a subtle light caustics effect on the walls of the lava pit. it doesn't really show up in the static shots but when I have more of this area done I'll try and record a fraps vid to show you guys.

Image

I've also manually tweaked the uv's of the lava to get it to flow along its path.

that took some time to figure how to do this in blender but should in future be relatively easy for me to do with other lava flows in this hell map, I also distorted some of the lava uv's to add fluctuations when its animated, so it looks more like a liquid and less like a scrolling texture imo.

I'm especially pleased with how it appears to speed up on the steeper slopes of the lava pit :)



phantazm11@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:39 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
ratty redemption wrote:
here's an image of my particle rock objects,


??? You can use models as particles in Doom 3?


In Blender.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:05 pm :
oh. ok. then what would they be used for in doom 3? IE Why is he making them for his map?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:43 am :
phantazm11 wrote:

Have you tried using the same rock particles, but maybe just scaling them up in size?

thanks and yes I have. the first tests I did with these particle rocks used a higher scale on their particle emitter, which was the original low poly rock face. I then experimented to see how small I could scale the rocks while shrink wrapping a mesh over them.

from a technical point of view, the larger the particles the easier it is to work with them and the shrink wrapping. but artistically I'm trying some variations on the style of rock face which might end up looking as good but requiring less detail.

The Happy Friar wrote:
oh. ok. then what would they be used for in doom 3? IE Why is he making them for his map?

sorry for any confusion guys. friar if you look at this recent post of mine.

viewtopic.php?p=217418#p217418

it shows how these rock objects can be turned into particle models in blender and either automatically spawned over a larger mesh or painted onto a mesh. the tools can also be used to quickly place trees in a forest or any group of library objects around a map, again all within blender.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 12:11 pm :
that's pretty neat. Sounds like ETQW's stuff generator or a RTS stuff paintbrush. I'll have to look in to that. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:15 pm :
friar, agreed and the particle objects are one of the most powerful tools I've ever worked with, although I've heard there are more options in some of the pro apps like maya with their versions of this tool.

kernon dillon from blender newbies made an excellent video tutorial, although it doesn't cover the shrink wrapping stage I do, but you can learn how to plant trees etc.

http://www.cgcookie.com/articles/2009/0 ... nder-scene



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:24 am :
I've been working on a new dark rock material using blender's glsl lighting. all the textures were only 256 size. the high level of detail was achieved by scaling some of them, which hopefully will also work with the d3 engine.

Image Image Image

I'm thinking I could use some of my particle rocks for boulders at the bottom of rock faces etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 2:45 am :
just a text update for now.

after a couple of weeks of not really using blender due to real life distractions, I'm currently trying to bake some hi to lo poly textures but I'm having a lot of crashes from blender which is making my progress very slow :x

as soon as I get some thing worth showing I'll be updating this thread.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 5:57 pm :
I finally got blender stable again. it was previously crashing a lot with my recent normal baking.

here's a couple of images of a crack normalmap and ao bake I've been adding as detail layers to the glsl material.

Image Image

I know I could use crazy bump to add cracks to the rock but I wanted to see if I could do them all from within blender, next step is to add more cracks which I hope to get done over the next few days.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:54 am :
here's another image. I'm really pleased with these results artistically, and I hope they are technically correct so far.

Image

note this images doesn't yet have ao or spec maps, so the spec is just from blender's uniform lighting with the spec value turned down in the glsl material.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:31 am :
comparing my normal bake with one of the default d3 brick textures, it looks like the left to right channel in my normals is inverted? I think I can easily fix that in blender with the image editor's rgb curve tool.

Image

edit: yep, the red channel in blender's baking seems to be inverted compared to d3's format.

Image

thanks a lot to kat for spotting something was wrong.



Theftbot@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:44 am :
Yup idk why but blender has a reversed red channel.



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:40 am :
That looks great. Small details like that really seem to make textures pop.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:25 pm :
thanks a lot guys and I'm really enjoying this work again, now blender isn't crashing very few minutes. so I'll hopefully be posting more frequently again :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:35 am :
I've been doing some comparisons between the inverted red channel and the d3 normals format, and in blender I think the inverted looks slightly better. so maybe I dev my work in blender and save a different version for d3, rather then them share the same assets.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 5:46 am :
here are two shots of the crack model which started off as a bevel object extruded along a path, then converted to a mesh and a few modifiers added.

Image Image

now I know it works both artistically and technically I should be able to quickly add in more cracks.



Lord Zurra@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 10:39 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've been doing some comparisons between the inverted red channel and the d3 normals format, and in blender I think the inverted looks slightly better. so maybe I dev my work in blender and save a different version for d3, rather then them share the same assets.


I don't know why but blender uses normal maps which are inverted on X axis. In your comparison shots take doom3 normal map and move light around, you will see that normal map is inverted on X axis in blender viewport, that means it will look wrong in blender but does look just what you want in doom3, keep this in mind when you bake normal maps in blender, remember to invert X axis.

Two shots to illustrate this better.

blender normal map in blender
Image
doom3 normal map in blender
Image

Normal map from the dark mod.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:07 pm :
it might be doom 3 itself. the d3 editor has the side view on the wrong side of the axes so if you rotate clockwise in the editor it's actually a negative angle in game space.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:03 pm :
thanks guys and those were very good examples lord zurra, I'll just keep this is mind when saving out any blender baked normals to be used in d3.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 3:55 pm :
this image shows the bevel object, bevel taper and curve path used in the crack.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 2:27 am :
thanks to rich_is_bored pointing me in the right direction, I've had some surprisingly good results with mixing normal maps in blender. the images below are just rendering tests, I will probably use the texture node system to mix some smaller cracks with my larger crack normals because they can use the same texture scales, then use the d3 shaders to mix the other normals.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 4:24 am :
I've improved the node setup and the results better match the original colors. and although not perfect I am pleased with the results considering I have no idea how the maths works and just did this by tweaking the red and green color ramps.

Image Image



rich_is_bored@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 5:01 am :
You could lose two mixer nodes and a decompose node by splitting the image into it's component channels after performing the mix and get the same result. I'm not sure if you're worried about it though. I doubt 3 extra nodes are going to kill performance.

The math is actually really simple. The mix node as you have it setup is just averaging the color between the two images. Changing the factor to something other than .50 would make it a weighted average. The color ramp node is just remapping the input to a different range. It's like doing a levels adjustment in Photoshop.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:40 am :
rich, thanks and understood, I'll try that tomorrow. in the mean time this is my latest test. I added in a color ramp for the blue channel.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 10:18 pm :
rich, your suggestion for optimizing the node setup worked perfectly :)

Image Image

edit: oh and it's the maths behind the color ramps (rgb levels) that I don't understand. so if anyone can explain how those particular sliders and values I used on the ramps ended up producing the desried results, I'd appreciate hearing from them :)



rich_is_bored@Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 9:52 am :
Image

Does this help you visualize what is going on?

Essentially all you've done is take each channel of the normal map and compress the range making the slopes appear steeper.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 5:26 pm :
understood and thanks a lot rich, that graph did help :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 7:52 am :
I've been doing more tests with baking and layering normals, this time using the material slots instead of nodes.

the first image shows two meshes using the same displace modifers and procedural cloud textures, but mapped to the position of 2 empties to produce variations.

Image

this image shows the normals baked from the blue mesh.

Image

the next three show the normal material slots layered together.

Image Image Image

I've still more work to do on the crack normals and my bumpy detail layer isn't tiling yet which I hope to get more done over the next few days.



Lord Zurra@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 11:14 am :
If you are already familiar with nodes, then just stick with em. With material textures you have that limit of 16 textures per material, it might sound enough amount to make miracles but it is not. I uploaded a rather big (29MB) .blend of my old test if you want to take a look at how complicated baking can get. This blend includes many UV Layers, masks, many textures and materials. If I would like to add more details with textures, I could not do that because my limit of 16 texture slots is already used on some materials.

At blender layer one you see the mesh with materials I use with baking. Layer two holds the final material with only diffuse, specular and normal map. And if you test it, remember to use GLSL materials!

here is the file

http://etana.kapsi.fi/shieldTest.blend

file should be uploaded after 5min of this post.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 8:47 pm :
lord zurra, thanks a lot for the .blend file I'm dl now and will study it later :)

the only reason for me still using the material slots is just to emulate what I imagine adding normals in d3 would be like, as I don't have d3 installed on this pc I can't actually test it.

regarding the d3 shaders are we limited to how many normal maps we add at map load or run time?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 11:22 pm :
these images show the results of my first projection painting with normalmaps to make a tileable texture. this tool could also be used to add or remove details to an existing normalmap in a similar way to using a clone brush in an iamge editor.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 6:04 am :
here's some images of my latest tests with projection painting and layering normal maps in blender:

the 1st image shows the result of projection painting used to make the rock's base normalmap. the 2nd image shows one of the normalmap layers used in the projection painting and the rock's high frequency normals enabled in the material slot. and the 3rd image has the crack normals enabled.

Image Image Image

one of coolest things I found was that projection painting will work with glsl mode, so we can see a real time preview as we paint the normalmaps :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 7:37 pm :
I think I've got the basic art and tech worked out now for these rocks, so next on my to do list is add in more cracks to their detail layer, which will also be tileable so can be used on the rest of the rocks in this group.

Image

edit: there isn't any custom spec or ao maps shown here, I'll make those after I've finished the crack layer.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 12:09 am :
I've just completed a test with using vertex weight painting to determine the strength of the displacements around the edges of my cracks. also as this was only a small part of the model, the baking was very quick.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 7:08 pm :
dersaidin from katsbits asked me to make a cliff face for his map, which is a good practical use of my recent tests. I'll update this thread with a few images from that as the art style and workflow will likely be used in my hell map project.

the first image shows the cliff model (colored green) which he sent me with some of my particle rocks (red and blue) painted onto it.

the 2nd image shows the shrink wrapped mesh still with the off cut verts which I'll remove when I decimate and clean up the mesh.

Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 7:28 pm :
i've been playing around with the particle painting: very neat. Thanks for pointing that out! :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 4:02 am :
friar, cool and what was it I said or showed that helped you?

also happy xmas everyone :wink:



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 4:59 am :
here is the cleaned up mesh after skrink wrapping.

Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 7:23 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
friar, cool and what was it I said or showed that helped you?


on page 10 of this thread you explained that you're using particle painting in blender for your map & linked to a tutorial. I've shown that to a few people & I'm having a lot of fun with it. All thanks to you. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 8:56 am :
friar, understood and that's great to hear :)

my final update before getting some sleep today:

after some tweaking of the new mesh to help baking, I've now got a working normal map. I also tested my glsl material from my rocks on this cliff face with a few scale values increased. I'm intending the crack layer to have more cracks, even if it's not going to be used on this model.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 8:00 am :
I've not done any more work on the crack normal layer today, but I think I've improved the diffuse and basic/detail normal layers.

in this perspective image, the camera is quite close to the cliff face and there is still a lot of high frequency detail. next on my to do list is try to mix in some more variation to the diffuse and then add to some cracks, over the next few days I'll then work on the other 2 sections of this cliff.

Image



=FF=Sturm@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 12:45 pm :
ratty redemption wrote:
I've not done any more work on the crack normal layer today, but I think I've improved the diffuse and basic/detail normal layers.

in this perspective image, the camera is quite close to the cliff face and there is still a lot of high frequency detail. next on my to do list is try to mix in some more variation to the diffuse and then add to some cracks, over the next few days I'll then work on the other 2 sections of this cliff.

Image

Nicely done :twisted:



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 8:39 pm :
thanks sturm :)

I need to do more work on the diffuse and I've decided that the other 2 sections of the this cliff model (which join onto the end nearest the camera in the latest image) will probably have a smoother shape to them, ie look less like bolders.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 10:17 pm :
here's two images of the latest diffuse tests. I used a photo source of real rocks for the basic diffuse layer and a smaller tiled dirt texture for the detail layer. the normal maps are the same as in the last images. also none of these recent images have ao or spec maps, just the uniform spec lighting that comes with blender.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 10:07 am :
in between mainly doing real life stuff over the last few days, I've managed to do enough of the new rock material to be satisfied for the time being. so for the next few days I can focus on the meshes again. after that I'll probably do some more work on the crack normals.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 1:35 am :
I've had a ton of real life distractions so far this year, but over the last 3 days I finally got some work done in blender.

the red section of this cliff face is new and I've tried to get more of a flow to the edgeloops.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 1:01 am :
I managed to do some more blender work today. here is the 2 cliff sections with their unique normal (low frequency) layers. they share the same diffuse, spec and normal detail (high frequency) layers.

Image Image

although not very obvious from this camera distance and fov, I couldn't find a way to tile the materials across the sections so there is a seam. this was due to apparently the baking needing all the uv's to be within the default image space, usually uv's can extend beyond that space if the materials use tiling diffuse, spec layers etc.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 1:39 am :
although it was quite easily to model a deep crack in the meshes to hide the texture seam, I didn't realise the shared spec map would look wrong. as shown in the image below. I don't want to make unique spec maps for each cliff section so I'm going back to the previous version of the mesh and see what else I can do.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:39 pm :
I haven't had much time over the last few days to work in blender but the 2nd image below shows the progress I've made with the seam. still wip though.

Image Image



Sebultura@Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 7:44 pm :
It's cool to see the progress of your stuff & putting some picture with descriptions really helps enjoying the thing.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 3:07 pm :
@ Sebultura, thanks and this latest workflow is a lot faster then I've previously been able to do, but frustratingly I've not had much time this year to do any blender work until the last few days. I do hope to make up for lost time though.



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 3:14 pm :
while I'm working on the mesh for the 3rd cliff section, here's an image of the seam between the first two sections. the results turned out better then I thought they would, with only really the smooth group shading indicating where the seam is, and from a distance it's barely noticeable :)

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:58 am :
for the first time since my hdd died last week, I've been able to get on with my blender work. these images show the 3rd cliff section (in blue)

Image Image Image

tomorrow I hope to get the uv's and baking done.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 1:25 am :
I think I've finally finished the meshes, uv's and baking for these 3 cliff sections.

Image Image Image Image Image



The Happy Friar@Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:48 am :
very, very sweet. :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 5:04 am :
thanks a lot friar 8)

I've done some tweaking today to the mesh's edge loops and rebaked the normals. the last two posts of mine have had their images updated. the differences are subtle but I think the rocks look slightly more natural.



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:04 am :
just a text update: I had more pc and isp problems and went several weeks without a computer to work on. I've since then moved flats and now have a better broadband service. and although I don't have my own pc yet, I've been borrowing my gf's laptop and have successfully installed blender on after udating the video drivers. hopefully within the next few days I'll be working on the hell map project again. I'll ul some wip images as soon as I have something to show.



Bo$bevok@Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:19 pm :
if shes south african she must be great :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:33 pm :
ot: hehe, and one of the first things that attracted me to her was her accent. it's not a heavy accent but it has a certain effect on me ;)



mikebart@Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:10 am :
ratty redemption wrote:
that's the main downside of living with my girlfriend, between doing my share of the house keeping and spending time with her, which I do enjoy doing but it leaves less time for me to work compared to when I lived on my own, and I've not found time to do any gaming since I moved in here :(


see? I told you, thats what happens. :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 2:22 am :
hehe, I know ;)



mikebart@Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 11:46 am :
If you want to speed up your UVWmapping you should check out unfold3d. Theres a free demo version, it has a few restrictions like you can only unfold models under 1000 polys, the mesh must be fully closed and you cant split the UVW up into more than one peice.
Its very handy for lowpoly organic stuff like your rock formations, you just make cuts where you want the seams to go and press the magic button and thats all :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 2:41 pm :
thanks mikebart. it does look cool, except they seem to of changed their demo license.
Quote:
UNFOLD3D Demo version is based on UNFOLD3D Magic Edition generation 5. All features are available except saving feature. That way, you can check and make use of every feature

and I can't afford it atm.



mikebart@Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 7:11 am :
damn, they must have changed it quite recently, I havent had it for more than a month



ratty redemption@Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 8:14 am :
np and thanks anyway for the link to their site.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 8:19 pm :
just a small update.

I've been very busy this last month working on my port folio and forming a new team intending to work with the blender game engine. unfortunately this has meant I've hardly worked directly on the d3 hell map project.

but as I've been spending a lot of time learning the new material node system in blender, a byproduct of that work is I've nearly finished some organic procedural textures I can use in the d3 hell map. I'll try and show you guys some screen shots as soon as they have been converted to bitmaps and tested in game.

I also have been practicing animating with bones in blender, and one of my blender abstract animations has tentacles so combined with the new textures it could make some interesting map objects, perhaps even a monster.

anyway, despite the slow progress on this d3 project, I have no intention of giving up, especially as I also plan it to go towards my port folio.



chuckdood@Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:52 am :
how's this project coming?



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:07 am :
unfortunately its been on hold for most of the last year since I moved but I'm planning on picking it up again soon. although I have less spare time then I used to, I've mainly be improving my skills in blender, and learning to make normal maps.

I have also been planning a 2nd area of the hell map, which will include a castle. the castle itself will be modeled in blender but I might model the terrain in earth sculptor, which gorker from the sd qw forums has been teaching us about, as I help him and some of the other guys there learn blender.

if possible I will also use the castle for a qw map, but since I don't have a system capable of running qw yet, I won't be able to test the gameplay, so might ask gorker or someone else there to work on the mapping side.

I know it looks like I gave up on this hell map project but I have no intention of doing so, and doubt I will move on from d3 until d4 comes out if it ever does.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 12:27 am :
I just posted this over at katsbits forums because its blender 3d related, but I'll post in here as well ;)

Quote:
here is the first publicly released shot of my d3 hell map rebuild, currently just a very low poly (3,350) cave and tunnel system, poly modeled in blender.

Image

if you can see them, the little green oblongs are iirc the dimensions of the d3 player model, ie 32x32x74 units. so hopefully this will give some sense of scale.

I have several more tunnels and large caves planned which I'll show as I progress, but next on my to do list is start adding steps to the steeper tunnels. some of the others will eventually have lifts and ladders.

I understand by todays pc specs I could probably increase the poly count of the caves and tunnels but I'll do that as I detail each area, for now this stage is mainly about me getting all the main areas built and connected.

the texturing and lighting is lower down on my to do list. I'll probably set up and render a camera fly through of the caves before then.


this is the only modeling and mapping project I'm currently working on, so although I've only recently over the last few weeks picked up this project again, I'm determined to make good progress on it.

I know my way around blender a lot better then I did when previously working on the hell map, and I've been learning how to use crazy bump as part of the texture creation process.

I will need some help with mapping tips, when it comes to that stage. and I have a few questions to ask, should I post them in here or start a thread in the mapping wip forum?



Bo$bevok@Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 7:50 pm :
nice... im glad you've picked this up again.

good luck



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 10:32 pm :
thanks a lot bo$bevok :)

I must admit that I've been wanting to get back to this pet project of mine for about 6 months but kept putting it off while I worked on some other stuff, including learning to make bump, spec and ao textures in crazy bump, but I feel I'm at a stage now where I can really concentrate on the hell map modeling, plus blender is considerably more powerful then it was a year or so ago, so that should also help my progress.

anyway, expect regular updates from me over the foreseeable months, and if I don't keep you guys updated, then feel free to rant at me.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 1:28 pm :
considering some pc specs are a lot higher then when I first started this project, can anyone give me a poly count to aim for, considering this sp map isn't likely to be finished before next year?



mikebart@Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 11:05 pm :
its really more about the amount of visual entitys and materials being used and how many lights are touching them than polycounts; like if you have a pile of static meshes in a room, say 500 or so, and they all share the same material, you'd be better off attaching all the static meshes in the pile into one static mesh because you know they're going to be drawn on screen roughly at the same time, and that will reduce the amount of visual entitys and reduce draw calls. As long as you avoid worst case scenarios like that you should be able to get better performance with more polys and less total entitys.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 11:13 pm :
mikebart, thanks very much, I had no idea func_statics affected performance like that in d3. any other tips you can give me will be appreciated :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 11:29 pm :
since my last update I've not had much time to work on our pc, much to my frustration as I'm really enjoying working on this project again, but here are some shots of one of the tunnel sections I've been turning into a new cave. its still quite low poly.

next update will likely be of this same cave with more detail added, although I'm still not texturing or lighting yet until I have more of the mesh work done.

Image Image Image
Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:59 pm :
I'm really sorry for lack of updates again. real life has been getting in the way a lot recently, much to my utter frustration. the good news is the hell map is still the only games or cg project I've been working on so its not through lack of me wanting to work on this project or keep you guys updated.

anyway, here is one of the wooden map objects I've been modeling in blender for my d3 hell map. I normally use photobucket for image hosting but their server wouldn't let me log in today.

Image Image

edit: if anyone has difficultly viewing these images hosted on imageshack then I'll replace them with the photobucket ones as I have access to my account there again.

I intend to ul more shots later if I get a chance.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 3:08 am :
kat asked over at katsbits.com forums if I could post a shot of the uv seams, I'll post that shot here as well in case anyone is interested.

the shot also shows another uv test image of mine in the right side window, which has been psp layered on top of the original shot just to make it easier to see the test image without the uvs, but the seams are as they appear in blender.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 3:42 am :
this next shot shows two ladders joined together to make a longer one, the yellow highlighted ladder is a duplicate linked object (clone) which uses the same mesh as the orange highlighted ladder.

edit: I forgot to mention the clone is rotated 180 degrees (ie upside down)

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 1:05 am :
I've asked about the following on katsbits.com as well, hope you guys don't mind me asking in both forums?

does anyone know if the d3 ladders work on non axial brushes?

in the shot below you can see I've dragged out a sloped brush around my long ladder which is leaning against a rock over hang, in d3 the player can't climb it although he can slide down it :roll:

Image

previously my vertical ladder tests worked except the player would have difficultly moving backwards off the bottom of a ladder :?



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 3:30 am :
these shots show the other wooden structure I've been working on recently, an old crooked bridge. the 3rd shot shows the bridges collision hull.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 1:12 am :
a little update on the wooden bridge. I've added another plank leading to one of the other tunnel entrances in the cave these map objects are being initially made for.

Image Image

I'm now working on a second bridge for that cave but don't have enough of it ready to show yet, hopefully soon though :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 4:14 pm :
small update on the shape of the collision hull I'm using for my wooden bridge, the ends have been made more into slopes to help the player on and off the object.

Image

I'm still experimenting with collision hulls and clip brushes for the ladders, although I'm not sure if I even need to as my tests in d3 didn't appear to benefit from having either, and the former are time consuming to build. however it does seem that detailed surfaces the player or monsters walk on do need more then just the visual surfaces.



Bo$bevok@Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 9:47 pm :
nice to see these updates man.
i think it all looks great and i cant wait to play it.
best of luck



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 12:36 am :
Bo$bevok, cool and thanks a lot :)

I've nearly finished the 2nd wooden bridge for that cave which links the upper level above the ladder to another cave tunnel. I'll hopefully post shots of it soon.

as for playing the map, I have a huge amount left to do but I am picking up speed now. its also crossed my mind to possibly release a pre alpha type test map, like that cave when its ready. what do you guys think?

ie would you like to sample some of the gameplay asap and be able to see the various rooms in game as I work on them, or wait until they are all ready and the map is released in one go?



mavrik65@Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 12:58 pm :
nice job!
It had only just dawned on me how much levels change and effect game play, hence why I started putting a hell of a lot more effort and artistic flare into the maps I create. It's clear you've put a lot of effort into this map how long have you been working on it?

I'd personally like to play the map once its finished



ratty redemption@Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 1:31 pm :
cool, thanks mavrik65, and I have thought about this map a lot over the last couple of years, including concept designing most of it in my head.

but after I moved in with my gf about 19 months ago, building this project was put on hold (until recently) for several reasons, including me needing to learn more about low poly modeling in blender, which I'm now a lot more confident with and blender is more powerful then it was when I started this hell map.

plus I spent several months learning to use crazy bump to make textures with, as well as working on several other projects, although currently this is the only one I'm working on.

also real life has been very stressful for my gf and me, partly due to the area we live in and her job in IT being one of the most demanding and abusive jobs I've ever heard of. to give just a small indication of the kind of (financial insurance) scumbags she works for, they recently made her work 5 weeks in a row without a single day off which was seriously affecting her health, and they tried to get her to cancel a charity hike she and some of her team mates were doing where they climbed ben nevis. she actually stood up for once to her bosses and her IT team raised over £11,000 for charity, which the bosses took some credit for after they realized it would be good publicity for them.

sorry for this off topic rant but the good news is we are moving soon to a better class area with less crime etc, and she isn't likely to carry on working for that particular company, so our future looks a lot brighter, and I should be able to concentrate more on this project.



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 12:28 am :
back on topic. here's the 2nd wooden bridge for that cave, highlighted in yellow, hope you guys find it interesting.

Image



chuckdood@Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 12:33 am :
can we see these ingame or are they not textured yet?



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 1:07 am :
chuckdood, their not textured yet, just uv mapped but I have been testing in game. I'll take some in shots in d3 roe soon so you guys can get more of a sense of scale.

also I was planning on starting on the lighting and setting up some place holder textures over the next few days. just keep in mind this is all wip so subject to change but I think the general layout of the models is working so far, also I'll increase the poly count over time if the engine can cope with it.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:36 pm :
I've been doing a little tweaking to the wood models but not really enough to show you guys.

I've also been testing some place holder materials/textures in game with a couple of lights. I'm really rusty with d3 lights since I haven't worked with them in about 18 months, can anyone help with the following problem I'm having?

Image

the large dark blue ambient light is working as I would expect and looks ok, but the smaller orange light selected in the shot is not lighting some of the tris on my cave model, at least not evenly. it seems if I use a light shader with the 'ambientlight' key then the tris do get lit evenly but then the light passes through geometry where it shouldn't.

I've tried making the lights cast shadows or not but that didn't seem to help, nor did adding 'noshadows' key to the rock material.

edit kat helped me track down the issue, it seemed to be due to the .ase meshes smooth groups, and not due to the way I set up the lights in the test map. I just need to do some more experimenting before I ul the next shots, but at least I'm back on track :)



kit89@Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 10:28 pm :
Excellent work Ratty.

With some superb detail, cant wait to see this in game! :D



ratty redemption@Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 10:58 pm :
thanks kit89 :)

I'm currently finishing off the uv mapping and vertex color blending for that version of the cave model, so far I have 3 material shaders for the cave. rock, rock to dirt, and rock to lava. the in game tests are working fine now, just need some tweaking then I'll ul some shots of it.

I then need to do some more work on the lighting and the wood objects have smooth group issues, ie the shading on the wood isn't working properly but I think with a little help I should be able to fix that soon.

also I recently dug out a d3 test map I worked on a couple of years ago to refresh my memory with sp entity placement, and I'm reasonably confident this small area will be playable in the near future. I can then move onto the other areas I have planned. this cave being about 1/10 of the hell map planned so far.

also real life is less distracting atm so I'm getting more done which makes a nice change.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 6:42 am :
to date I've redone the uv mapping on this cave 4 or 5 times and the vertex blending at least 2 times, but I finally am pleased with the results (considering some of the apparent limitations of the d3 engine and editing tools) I've also spent the last 3 days working on the lighting in this cave. I will need practice to get faster but I think I've got my workflow sorted out now.

these two test shots only show the lava pit part of the cave, and I'm currently using stock d3 textures for the rock and lava, but I have just made my own light falloff textures to go with the material shaders I wrote for the lava lights.

Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 7:21 pm :
here's a little update on my hell map, this time with more optimized lighting, recently I had got the results looking good imo but the d3 light count was too high showing pink and white with r_showlightcount on, they now show dark and light blue where the lights overlap.

this shot also shows a custom diffuse texture that metalliandy (from the crazybump forums) sent me, which I darkened and used cb to produce the normal and spec textures. took me a while to get the results I was after but I hadn't touched cb in months so was rusty. the blender model also needs more polys in places and I need to tweak the lava drain type tunnel at the front of the lava pit.

Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:14 pm :
I've been and increasing the poly count of this cave and sculpting it more. so far the engine hasn't chocked, well no more then usual for this low end system, which is surprising.

I'll have to see if I can keep up this level of detail in the larger more open areas like the sink holes, but so far I'm really pleased with the results and my workflow is getting faster. ie less experimentation and more creation at the moment :)

Image Image Image Image



obihb@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:32 pm :
I didn't really read through all posts so I may repeat some stuff here but anyway.

Doom3 can actually handle quite a lot of polygons pretty easily. It's really the lights that will bog down your system than anything else. A very simple map can be super slow because of bad lighting setup. As you will know as well I assume. In fact, in almost all cases it's better to have more polygons on floors, walls and ceilings, so that less of the polys actually receive lighting from various lights. If you had 4 lights hitting one polygon it's much slower than 4 lights hitting 4 separate polygons. So in your case where you have some tessellations going on, it is really a good thing for the lighting if you wanna use multiple lights in a row like that.

Another way to handle lighting in this sort of area (if you're not doing it already) is to use very few shadow casting lights or none at all. Because that is the real slow down from lighting, the shadows. Then most of the time you can have your shadow casting lights at least not intersect or intersect a very small amount.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 11:24 pm :
obihb wrote:
I didn't really read through all posts so I may repeat some stuff here but anyway.

np, don't worry about repeating anything, besides this thread is so old I can't remember what was said more then a page or so back :wink:

Quote:
Doom3 can actually handle quite a lot of polygons pretty easily. It's really the lights that will bog down your system than anything else. A very simple map can be super slow because of bad lighting setup. As you will know as well I assume. In fact, in almost all cases it's better to have more polygons on floors, walls and ceilings, so that less of the polys actually receive lighting from various lights. If you had 4 lights hitting one polygon it's much slower than 4 lights hitting 4 separate polygons. So in your case where you have some tessellations going on, it is really a good thing for the lighting if you wanna use multiple lights in a row like that.

cool and I knew to keep the overlapping of lights to a min, but I wasn't aware of the polys vs lights you mention, although it does make a lot of sense. I'll keep this in mind :)

Quote:
Another way to handle lighting in this sort of area (if you're not doing it already) is to use very few shadow casting lights or none at all. Because that is the real slow down from lighting, the shadows. Then most of the time you can have your shadow casting lights at least not intersect or intersect a very small amount.

thanks again and iirc kat has had some mixed results with allowing lights to cast shadows in his q4 maps, so I wasn't sure if it was advisable or not for my d3 map here, but so far only the large dark blue ambient light in that cave is set to cast shadows, all the orange blend lights in the lava pit are only set to cast diffuse, since apparently blend lights don't interact with spec maps anyway and I didn't think they needed to cast shadows down there.



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am :
1 : What that tutorial/tip was really refering to was orientation of heightmap 'templates' when used to generate normalmaps. If you render out a normal map from the 1st image by then applying that verticle 'trim' to a model along the horizontal you'll create a 'flipped' channel becasue of the way the Nmap was created.

Rotating and moving UVWs don't make any difference in terms of 'fixing' the problem becasue it's a problem at source, on the image itself.

But using a 'correct' normal map has no effect when UVWmapped as the game 'compensates' for it (for want of a better term)

2 : I've not yet fully tested LWO models other than to solve that smoothing issue mentioned in the 'prepping LWO models tutorial'. I've got a multimaterial terrain mesh section to try out but have yet to do so.

3 : You mean an actual UVWmap split? A map physically broken into two sections (for example). Yes whereever there is a break in a UVWmap you get a seam in game, you can't avoid that (for terrain you can't use that tangentspace material parameter you see in character models).

If you're talking about Blender UVW (mark) seams then no those have no effect whatsoever one the exported model; it's basically just an 'internal' helper for Blender.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:45 am :
thanks kat,

1. understood and that`s good to hear, so I assume in blender I could even have my uv maps upside down or rotated 90 degrees on the terrain models, as long as the local map used in game as been generated using correct axis, yes?

2. understood and I`ll go read that tut of yours again as it was months ago I last read it.

3. understood and sorry, I ment a physical split where two or more meshes with different materials in blender are combined and exported as one .ase or .lwo which then produces a shadow seam in game.

and I remember in the past trying out the unsmoothedtangents global keyword on my blender terrain materials, but never got it working, do you know why it only works on character models?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 1:15 pm :
kat, I`m adding some low poly details to the large cave, and wondered whether to keep it all as one .ase model or export it as several model sections, similar to how you appear to of built your d3 and q4 terrain maps?

and is there any advantage if the engine can`t see the model even if it`s in the same vis portal area? I did a quick search on this but wasn`t sure I understood what the other guys were saying.

with my first area of this map, I`m only intending to use brushes for the sky box, but should I split them and caulk the parts of the hull that the player can`t see, ie brush faces that would be behind the models?



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am 



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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Last edited by ratty redemption on Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
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Location: milton keynes, england
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
PostPosted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am 
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am 



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
PostPosted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am 
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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Location: milton keynes, england
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am 



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:40 am :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 7:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am : Doom3world • View topic - (WIP) ratty d3 hell map

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 Post subject: (WIP) ratty d3 hell map
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these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!

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thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image

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it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?

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dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc

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thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.

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Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).

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thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)

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Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.

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np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.

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it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image

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the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?

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That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.


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thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?

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r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.


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understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)

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not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?

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PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:24 am 



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 10:05 am :
these are the first images I`ve taken of this wip project. there of some floating (gravity defying) rocks I modeled in blender which the d3 player will traverse. I`ll ul some in game images tomorrow, if all goes well.

also uses one of my own rock textures, but in game I`m still using some local and height maps which came with d3, which I`ll replace with my own when I get round to modeling the local map in blender and painting the hieght map in psp7.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



Zamideus@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 3:57 pm :
It does look good!

You should extract those rooms seperated, because you need visportals if you make large map!

Hurr!



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:22 pm :
thanks Zamideus, although you might be misjudging the scale, these are just rocks the player stands on and jumps between. I haven`t started yet modeling the lava pit room they are will go into but I intend to start on that today.

kit89 asked if I had some wire frame versions of the images so I`ll show you guys as well. I`ve tried to keep the polys as low as possible, and this is the first time I`ve modeled rocks using quads rather then tris, which kat had recommended I use quads where ever possible, and I can see why now, although I had to convert some of them to tris to control exactly where goofos .ase exporter would make the splits.

oh and I registered an account with photobucket.com yesterday but then their site went into some maintenance time, so I couldn`t link to the pics I was going to ul on there, in the mean time we`ll have to do without thumb images.

edit: updated links to use imageshack thumbs.

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:37 pm :
it appears photobucket.com is online again, but being a noob with using their service, let alone html code, how do I post a thumb image in here which links to the larger image?



voldemort@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:24 pm :
dont know about photobucket but image shack gives you 5 of 6 different links for the different purposes-direct, thumb, large version etc



ratty redemption@Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:33 pm :
thanks voldemort and I might set up an account with them instead if I can`t find out how to do that with photobucket.



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:14 am :
Watch out for the height of those 'pathway' blocks from the ground. You'll need to drop them or raise the ground level around the edges so that the flat faces of the boxes are NO MORE THAN 8 units from any given surface otherwise you hit a wall and travel along the edge instead of up and over it (as you would normally do) becasue of the way the collisions system works.

Don't be so stingy with the polycount either! Round off the sharp edges otherwise they'll look naff in game (that'll add a bit to the pCount if you do it on all the sharp/hard edges).



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 3:05 am :
thanks kat, and the height of the "stepping stones" as I like to think of them, seems fine in game, as there is always a side of them which is only a few map units above the rock surface, and I`ve done lots of tests with the player walking, running and jumping on them, as well as comparing them to the ones from the original d3 hell maps, but I agree something we need to keep an eye on when placing these.

encouraging to hear you think I can increase the polycount on these rocks, which I would love to do if I can get away with it. I actually tried to keep about the same poly count as the originals, which I agree do look very angular in places.

saying all that, I think I`ll finish a basic layout of the first area or room that these are going into, then if the sp monsters and particles aren`t slowing the fps down too much I can add more polys :)



kat@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 3:22 am :
Ohhh if they're part of a larger scene then yeah you can still up the polycount a bit to get better smoothing in game but don't go crazy. I thought whta you've shown was a map in it's work right, hense saying you can increase the pCount, obviously don't do that if you've got other things going on.



ratty redemption@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 3:33 am :
np and I welcome any constructive input :)

I think the scale and basic concept will make more sense when I post my next images. atm, I`m working on the rock walls of the map which encase these floating rocks.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:22 am :
it took me almost as long setting up and tweaking the d3 lighting in this map as it did modeling in blender. at least now I should be able to do the lighting quicker for the rest of the map, this being just the first area, and still a wip so a several more models to be done for this area, as well as particle emitters for fire and smoke.

now using imageshack.us so we have thumb images 8)

Image Image Image

Image Image Image



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:54 am :
the two yellow lights which illuminate the glyphs on the small floating rocks, either side of the main floating rock, haven`t yet been bound to the func_bobbing map objects, which make those two rocks bob up and down slightly.

does anyone know is there any slow down with having moving lights instead of static ones, even if the geometry they cast light on is moving?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 11:57 am :
That is looking really nice, I like that sort of stuff!

Like Kat said, up the polys on the edges of the rocks to eliminate hard edges, you want to make the silhouette nice and smooth to make it look like it's got more polys than it looks.

Don't be affraid if you seen hits 100-150k tris and about 50k shadow tris, even cards like the 6600GT can handle that quite easily on high settings.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 12:40 pm :
thanks zombie13, and so far I haven`t noticed any slow down with the models I`ve been adding to this map, although I`ve only been testing it with com_showfps, but I will start taking note of the tris if someone can remind me what the cvar to display them is?

and maybe because I don`t have tons of lights overlapping, but what ever the reason it looks like I will be able to increase the polycount on the parts of the map the player walks on at least :)

interesting suggestion you made about the silhouette edges being given higher polycounts, if I understand you correctly? so combined with the bump textures should give a good impression the over all polycount is higher then it really is, yes?

am I correct in thinking the d3 engine is very efficient at drawing particles, like used in smoke? and is that because they usually are just alpha or additive blended and not have bumps or specular texture stages to slow them down?



Zombie13@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 6:15 pm :
r_showprimitives 1 combined with con_noprint 1 will show you whats going on in your scene.

Every time a light is casting on a surface that surface has to be redendered again, so imagine what something like 8 lights would do? try and keep it to about 2-4 lights (I'm pretty sure there is a section here on D3W about lightcounts etc).

The D3 engine really isn't that efficient at drawing particles unlike some engines where it doesn't really bother it, but in saying that, having 3-4k tris worth of particles isn't going to hinder your scene much.

Yup having higher poly silhouette edges does make for nicer rock/terrain what ever.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 8:28 pm :
understood and thanks for your help zombie13 :)



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:53 am :
not sure where to ask these questions so I`ll post them in here.

kat, I just read your tutorial on texture space and orientation

1. although I think I understand your tut, am I right in thinking it wouldn`t matter with rock textures and their local maps, as they would probably be acceptable in game, even if their orientation on the models and some of the local map axis were not aligned to their original up/down, left/right?

2. also do you have a preference over using .lwo or .ase model formats, both for the in game low poly models and the high poly local map versions?

3. and do all of the static model formats produce a smoothing seam where the uv maps have a seam in blender?



kat@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:24 am :
1 : What that tutorial/tip was really refering to was orientation of heightmap 'templates' when used to generate normalmaps. If you render out a normal map from the 1st image by then applying that verticle 'trim' to a model along the horizontal you'll create a 'flipped' channel becasue of the way the Nmap was created.

Rotating and moving UVWs don't make any difference in terms of 'fixing' the problem becasue it's a problem at source, on the image itself.

But using a 'correct' normal map has no effect when UVWmapped as the game 'compensates' for it (for want of a better term)

2 : I've not yet fully tested LWO models other than to solve that smoothing issue mentioned in the 'prepping LWO models tutorial'. I've got a multimaterial terrain mesh section to try out but have yet to do so.

3 : You mean an actual UVWmap split? A map physically broken into two sections (for example). Yes whereever there is a break in a UVWmap you get a seam in game, you can't avoid that (for terrain you can't use that tangentspace material parameter you see in character models).

If you're talking about Blender UVW (mark) seams then no those have no effect whatsoever one the exported model; it's basically just an 'internal' helper for Blender.



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:45 am :
thanks kat,

1. understood and that`s good to hear, so I assume in blender I could even have my uv maps upside down or rotated 90 degrees on the terrain models, as long as the local map used in game as been generated using correct axis, yes?

2. understood and I`ll go read that tut of yours again as it was months ago I last read it.

3. understood and sorry, I ment a physical split where two or more meshes with different materials in blender are combined and exported as one .ase or .lwo which then produces a shadow seam in game.

and I remember in the past trying out the unsmoothedtangents global keyword on my blender terrain materials, but never got it working, do you know why it only works on character models?



ratty redemption@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:15 pm :
kat, I`m adding some low poly details to the large cave, and wondered whether to keep it all as one .ase model or export it as several model sections, similar to how you appear to of built your d3 and q4 terrain maps?

and is there any advantage if the engine can`t see the model even if it`s in the same vis portal area? I did a quick search on this but wasn`t sure I understood what the other guys were saying.

with my first area of this map, I`m only intending to use brushes for the sky box, but should I split them and caulk the parts of the hull that the player can`t see, ie brush faces that would be behind the models?