research lab in development

[elio]

thanks

i would say
1. without sphere, without the 4 "arms"
2. with sphere (synaptic-link)
3. with the 4 arms (dedicated synaptic-link)

what do you think?

[craigengbrecht]

thanks

i would say
1. without sphere, without the 4 "arms"
2. with sphere (synaptic-link)
3. with the 4 arms (dedicated synaptic-link)

what do you think?

1. Sounds Good, so it would be a square, with a cut out corner.
2. Square with the new Sphere.
3. All connected peices.

Curious, as it was originaly a single upgrade setup, how hard is it to change to a 3 layer set?

[elio]

1. Sounds Good, so it would be a square, with a cut out corner.
2. Square with the new Sphere.
3. All connected peices.

Curious, as it was originaly a single upgrade setup, how hard is it to change to a 3 layer set?

em.. i don't know what you've changed except my words..

that's not my area, zarel surely will tell us when he pops in

regards
elio

[Mysteryem]

Where do you get/make those textures?!
Other than that it looks very good, the modules are a great idea aswell.

[elio]

Where do you get/make those textures?!
Other than that it looks very good, the modules are a great idea aswell.

i intend to write a content creationing tutorial soon

i get all textures from gpl.imageafter.com
the gpl is important, because we don't have to ask them always for permission to use them as gpl

i use a self-modified variant from http://www.imageafter.com/image.php?ima ... oer034.jpg
also take a look at http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/warzone/orig ... tructures/ especially the .xcf.gz files (open with GIMP)

regards
elio

[whippersnapper]

.

1st class art - geometry, textures, crafting it all. The detail is impressive and will hold up well to close-up Machinima too.

Cool to the max, Elio. xD

Regards, whipper.

[Zarel]

"Curious, as it was originaly a single upgrade setup, how hard is it to change to a 3 layer set?"
that's not my area, zarel surely will tell us when he pops in

Well, if you want the dedicated research facility to be something you have to build the upgrade for, it shouldn't be too hard. You'd have to take a different approach than the factory, since the two modules will have different prereqs. I'd probably require a bit of rewriting, but I'm sure Buggy would be able to do it in minutes.

[craigengbrecht]

Well, if you want the dedicated research facility to be something you have to build the upgrade for, it shouldn't be too hard. You'd have to take a different approach than the factory, since the two modules will have different prereqs. I'd probably require a bit of rewriting, but I'm sure Buggy would be able to do it in minutes.

That would be awesome, I guess I didnt think about it hard enough.
Either way, I hope to see this ingame soon, this with the new terrain and the Factory and New Command Tower will be a really sweet change from the older graphics, but I wonder, it would still be fun to play the Old graphics once in a while... ( Sorry off topic...)

[elio]

i intend to write a content creationing tutorial soon

here is the uncompleted information text: Artwork respectively Creating3DContent

regards
elio

[Deus Siddis]

here is the uncompleted information text: Artwork respectively Creating3DContent

Looks like a good start into an area of this project (new content) previously offering very few clues or answers to those not coming in with prior knowledge of these arts.

A couple things jumped out at me though:

1) Your recommended triangle counts for vehicle modules are the same as (in fact, lower than in a number of cases) those of the legacy models for them that originally shipped with warzone back over a decade ago! Not only is that forever in the world of computers, but it defeats the purpose of making new models in the first place.

Also, your polycounts and texture resolutions seem like they are out of balance, your main structures (which have a build limit of about 5) are about only 500 vertices and yet use 1024x1024 textures.

2) You description of creating things in blender skips over the easy process of ambient occlusion backing for the textures. I think this self-shadowing would be very effective if used on your own buildings as well, I have attached a quick and rough bake of your research facility as an example for you to experiment with (like, put it atop your latest version research facility texture on a higher layer and save flattened as PNG, then apply it to the model and render it or try it in-game). Note that I didn't bake it with a floor plane, though that might be a good idea since being a structure, it will always be in contact with the ground.

[elio]

1) Your recommended triangle counts for vehicle modules are the same as (in fact, lower than in a number of cases) those of the legacy models for them that originally shipped with warzone back over a decade ago! Not only is that forever in the world of computers, but it defeats the purpose of making new models in the first place.

do you also have some suggestions?

Also, your polycounts and texture resolutions seem like they are out of balance, your main structures (which have a build limit of about 5) are about only 500 vertices and yet use 1024x1024 textures.

hehe, you know, scaling down is always possible.

2) You description of creating things in blender skips over the easy process of ambient occlusion backing for the textures. I think this self-shadowing would be very effective if used on your own buildings as well, I have attached a quick and rough bake of your research facility as an example for you to experiment with (like, put it atop your latest version research facility texture on a higher layer and save flattened as PNG, then apply it to the model and render it or try it in-game). Note that I didn't bake it with a floor plane, though that might be a good idea since being a structure, it will always be in contact with the ground.

thanks, i'll try it

regards
elio

[Deus Siddis]

do you also have some suggestions?

Well you calculated 160 faces per vehicle, which is a good about-average estimate for what we see with the current models which are about 11 years old. But let's reduce that timespan by a couple years down to 9 years since alot of folks on this forum seem to have nightmares of their decade new wonder machines (capable of running minesweeper at 60 fps, talk about a benchmark), being eaten alive by a beautifully realistically modeled, high poly shark, slowly, bite by bite, from the zip drive to its ethernet card, using high budget teeth (four tri faces per) with normal-mapped serrations, chewing and spewing copious blood particles, each of which is a billboard for a 16x16 diffuse and 8x8 specular animated textures of 3 frames . . .

But I digress. So what's-his-name's law says that every 18 months computer power doubles. 1.5 years fits into our 9 years 6 times, which means 2^6 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 64, now times yours and old warzone's vehicle of 160 tris is 64 x 160 = 10,240 triangles . You used 50 tanks as an example, so 50 x 10,000 = 500,000, which is basically a screencap from gears of war (which I think is for an xbox 360, not a bleeding edge alienware or skynet). That's 5,000 quads per a vehicle, which with LoDs would be the highest level of detail, to save alot more resources. But what if the coders implement much higher detail terrain, like Spring uses to BSOD the six and a half year old graphics card of yours truly? Well then let's get it down to 2,500 quads modeled for a complete vehicle (that is, hull, propulsion, turrets and guns), and that is for the top LoD used in game.

But alas, I forget the global economic recession, folks can't afford a 50 usd/euro graphics card to run a game that cost them nothing, in addition to running decently so many other free open games. Well then fear not, for help comes to us in the form of a similar crunch we have here in the open source economy's own currency- time. That is, none of us have the time to fix the content pipeline and produce enough new high poly military hardware to fill up a screenful of WZ's camera's low-ish altitude battleview with a balanced mixture of AFVs, within the span of a year or probably even two years of freetime content creation. So people's hardware limitations of today don't really matter, because the content will take long into tomorrow to put together. That's why I keep saying we should get started from now forward on tomorrow's content, instead of last month's.

hehe, you know, scaling down is always possible.

But why scale down if your texture resolution hasn't caused any problems? Why not just bring up the polycount to match it?

thanks, i'll try it

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it occlude your destiny.

A short list of suggestions when baking ambient occlusion textures:

1) Set samples to 1 or 3 for a test fire, then for the final set "Samples" to at least 16 or better yet 32 and bake when you won't need you machine again for a long while because it could take an hour. This get rid of graininess without you having to introduce in bluriness in gimp.

(For even better results, bevel a copy of your model first (a 0.1 or .05 bevel for your research facility appears to work well) and then add the subsurf modifier and set it to level 2 and apply, and then set smooth. Next put this model in the same place as your original model, select the beveled, subsurfed model first, then shift-select the original model, and bake the AO with the "Select to Active" option used. Then set the baker from AO to tangent space normal map and bake one of those while you're at it, save the normal map for future shader usage as WZ is migrated to higher OpenGL versions).

2) Always set "Energy" to 2.0 and the background to white before baking, and after baking, open the texture up in gimp and then use "Color to Alpha" and choose white, which will leave only shadows behind. Use this result as a layer on top of the rest of the model (unless you have a layer for building lights, which would then go on the very top).

3) Set "Margin" to a larger amount of pixels as a buffer against mipmapping (which if WZ doesn't already use, will be used by it eventually).

4) Experiment with adding a plane underneath the building that extends outwards a good ways beyond it and not painting any shadowing on the texture by hand. Also try using two duplicate layers of the AO bake instead of just one for a darker, grittier, post-apocalyptic-er feel.

[elio]

thanks for your informations deus

i'll update my other work asap

regards
elio

PS: it seems the PIE format with it's integer values doesn't give sufficient precision

[Deus Siddis]

PS: it seems the PIE format with it's integer values doesn't give sufficient precision

I'm not sure what you mean, could you describe more of the specifics of this problem?

[elio]

there are some edges which appear grey instead of green. and take a look at the sphere the version with black lines.