trees by DaBasto

[DaBasto]

Hello,
I would like to cooperate in the development of Warzone 2100. After that, I'm an architectural draftsman, I can get involved in creating of buildings, plants and objects from outside.

I'll start with this one tree. I've searched for 3 days for a way to create a low poly tree that looks good in all perspectives. This tree comes with 33 polygons. and is particularly handsome, with sharp angles. the texture map is 512x512 in size.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obabQu8fZ9U

I would like to make a test in the game, before I continue in this way create trees - can anyone tell me how I do it or where I can read it after?

and where can I upload finished elements?

[Jorzi]

That's excellent
You can upload files as attachements, just put your models (preferably 3ds/obj for models and png for textures) into a .zip and attach them to a post. You can upload up to three files at once and each post has a size limit of about 3 megabytes (I think)

Unfortunately the current model export tool (called WMIT) is very alpha atm and you will have to do some manual editing in a text editor, but I can probably export it for you if you want.
Do you use normal maps by the way? Warzone currently supports object space normal maps. We're planning to add tangent space support, but that will require extensive changes to the model format...

[Goth Zagog-Thou]

Anything that adds to the eyecandy and is lowpoly I'm all for. Your trees look really good.

[Jorzi]

It really does look good and high quality
Unfortunately the self shadowing in warzone might not look as good because it doesn't take alpha into account. It also currently does not interpolate normals, which might give it a slightly polygonal look.
Normal interpolation will probably be added in the future, but alpha shadows would require a different type of shadow engine...

[DaBasto]

Alpa shadow would be an advantage - if they do not use too much CPU.
Maybe it can be usde precomputed bitmap shadows. do not know if something is possible.

in the video the standart cinema 4d interpolation has been used (MIP).
I've new pictures without interpolation - it does not look so good.

[Jorzi]

Are there rendered using the cpu based renderer or are they realtime snapshots?
Mipmapping is supported in warzone so no problem with that...
http://wz2100.net/~safety0ff/wmit/ here you can find the export tool if you want to try it out yourself
http://developer.wz2100.net/wiki/PIE_format here are some technical specifications of the format (you'll probably be using pie 3)
The problem with shadows is not system requirements but the fact that someone would need the knowledge & time to rewrite all of the shadow code...