Contributing in 3D?

[Rman Virgil]

Rman:
Actually, my intellectual field is history.  Any artistic capacity is purely self-taught (and hard fought for).  And as for "Fine Art" -- I don't really know squat... I just like purty pictures.
But since your prodding -- my favorites include Rubens, Durer, Frazetta, Giger... and, um... yah, any suggestion that Looney Toons don't qualify as "fine art" is simply heretical.

* On your ECM model - agree 100% with Freddie aka EG.

* Know the diff (at least how it's presented academically between Fine & Commercial art) but as far as my own likes - it don't matter a bit.

* Like purty stuff too but also work with an "emtional edge" - like Giger or Goya or El Greco, for example.

* Grew up on Frank Frazetta paperback book covers (like for Robert E. Howard's "Conan" & Edgar Rice Burroughs entire corpus of yarns published by Ace Books).... also Roy G. Krenkel - just loved his pencil drawings.

* Heck I could go on & on about my fav artists ("fine" & otherwise)....

* Absolutely agree 'bout "Looney Toons" (& much of comix & anime art).

* History eh.... hmmm... am novice buff myself & am making use of that in my WZ 2200 work.... Maybe I could "pick your brain" now  'n then about some of my "virtual history" formulations ? Maybe not.... just a fanciful thought...

* Thanks for sharing cathuria.


- L8rs,  Rman.

* EDIT: Fair is fair.... these are some my all-time art heroes:

* Leonardo, Picasso, Kandinsky, Wm. Turner, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Frederick Catherwood, Dave Park, Romare Bearden, Jerome Whitkin, Frank Miller, STERANKO, Jack Kirby, Miyazaki, Leo & Diane Dillon,..... I also have a thing for the anonymous prehistoric cave paintings of Spain & France.... Navaho sand-painting & Pre-Columbian pictographs & petroglyphs... plus etchings, engravings & woodcuts from all eras.

[DevUrandom]

It looks ... WOW *eyes wide open*

[Per]

Very impressive.

It contains 254 triangles, though? That is a lot. Probably too many for the current renderer. Is it possible to halve the number of vertices (or go even lower) without destroying the look?

[DevUrandom]

If you go down by reducing details, you may also want to release the high-res variant for when the renderer gets updated...

[kage]

yeah. also, that's why we need normal mapping support -- everyone can get the low-res model, and the low-end comps see it in low res, while the high end comps apply the normal maps, and it has the appearance of having an order of magnitude more polys if correctly done.

[Buginator]

Well, here's my first attempt finished...


254 Tri's with a 256x256 bmp image map.
It seems to work fine as an OBJ file, but I'm not sure about final conversion yet -- I still might have to redo the UVs depending on what I find out about how team colors are implemented.  And of course I can alter the basic color scheme easily.
I can also export it in different units; Modo has a game units setting -- right now, it's in meters & such.
Also, does anything need to be done with it to differentiate a vehicular & tower version?
Please forgive me all my questions -- like I said, I've never done this before -- but it is something fun & different.

Very nice!
As other have stated, it would be best to keep a high polygon version, and a low polygon version.
What is the low polygon version?  Well, I have been told 20-30 max  polygons.

You got to remember that right now, it is very hard to make out details in the current pie models.  If you want, you should open a few of them in pie slicer or pie toaster, so you can get a rough idea what to expect.

You can also use utilities to chop the polygon count down a bit, but I think it still needs hand editing.

[cathuria]

Greetings;

"It contains 254 triangles, though? That is a lot." -- Sorry; made me chuckle 
You should remember you're talking to a guy who thinks if a scene comes in under 50,000 that counts as "low poly".

Here's a version with 137 tri's (86 verts)...


I can horse-whip it down under 100 poly's if you need -- but that would involve substantial simplification of some of the base shapes.

[EvilGuru]

Premature simplification in modelling is like premature optimisation in programming --- a sin at the best of times. I do not think it is worth cutting it down until it has been tested in-game first. If some of the polygons are not visible or if it does adversely affect performance then cutting down should be an option.

Regards, Freddie.

[Rman Virgil]

-------->

* That still looks good cathuria.

* And while Freddie's point is well taken, there is a corpus of research already that can predict the outcome.

* That said -  It's all bout what you can actually see in-game vs. polys that you can't see but are there time's multiple instances (imagine the logarithmic progression in an 8-MP game) and CPUs taking hits for all those "invisibles"...

* Taking a lateral, analogical,  PoV you can also think of it this way..... medium contraints can yield masterful outcomes via a compelled ingenuity (the terribly  flawed slab of marble that Michaelangelo had to work with that resulted in his masterful "David").

* Or take a literary masterpiece like "Hamlet"..

* Now compose a masterfull "Haiku", every bit as powerful  in it's own form, that captures "Hamlet's" essence. Can be done. (Actually The Bard himself did it in one of the famous monologues.)

* Or how about the complexity of a historical event involving a nation &  the suffering of millions over the course of years.... captured forever in its awful fullness on a single canvas, in 2D space - "Guernica".

* Or let's take an example from animation: "Southpark" (coulda been created in the 1st ver. of MacPaint) or the "Simpsons" vis-a-vis, let's say, Walt Disney's "Fantasia" or Miyazaki's "Princess Monoke" or "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within"

- Cheers, RV

[DevUrandom]

Fred has a point.
Can someone create weapon table which adds this turret, so cathuria can spawn a few hundreds of it and see how it affects performance? (In comparison with current turrets, that is.)

[Per]

I can make a weapons table entry for it, but I need a PIE model file to go with it. cathuria, did you figure out how to export it as a PIE model?

[cathuria]

Sorry -- been up to my ears in other things lately (mutter, mutter... gotta change my web-editing software yet again... grumble, grumble).
Anyhow, prior to downloading Blender again, I went searching for that pie export plug-in and couldn't find anything... is it native in Blender?  - or does someone know where to get it?
(I tried Googling Blender and PIE and got a lot of stuff involving Key Lime and Pumpkin --  ;D )

Edit: alternatively, of course, I could upload the OBJ files somewhere and let those of you who actually know what you're doing mess with it... what's a "weapons table"?

[kage]

you can find the blender plugins here: http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/warzone/trunk/tools/blender/

at a minimum for both import and export capability, you need:

pie.py
pie_common.py
pie_export.py
pie_import.py

pie_levels_to_layers.py is something that can be useful (gives each pie level, used mostly for certain kinds of animation, its own layer, up to the limit imposed by blender).

if you have any questions, feature requests, bug reports, etc, feel free to ask me about them.

[DevUrandom]

[me=DevUrandom]looks at Kamaze for upload space...[/me]

[cathuria]

whee!  Having fun fumbling around in Blender (What does this thingy do?      oops... )

So, how about a quick tutorial on that pie exporter?
I can load up the obj into Blender okay, but I can't seem to push the right buttons to export it.

First, is there anything I need to do to adjust the scale for WZ? (Not that I actually know where the scale doohickeys are on Blender yet, but the obj comes in kind of teeny.)

When I try to use the warzone export, I get an error stating "No valid PIE object found" and then it moves to the script window where it seems to be asking for an export path... so I entered a path and name for the file and it complained that it was not a valid path -- nuttin' happens.