Finally, I uploaded a model for WZ2100!

[yahodahan]

Well, about a billion +1 years ago, I promised some models for WZ2100 (love what everyone here is doing!)

Here, finally, is one small and simple model, sorry to not get ANYTHING else done in all this time.
Enjoy!
Free for all use on WZ2100, please credit me if you use it, and let me know how you like it!
Preview Image:



And a link to the zip file containing the Mesh (.obj), Materials (Diffuse, Specular, and Normal Maps):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/589952/SM_ConcreteWall.zip

If anyone has questions, please reply here, or for fast response, email me (contact -at- ofgabriel.com), hope this finds some use!

[Per]

That is a very nice model! I like the fact that you have included material maps, those can be interesting to play with to see if we can add support for bump mapping or real normals to the engine. It does have a bit many polygons for such a small and commonly used structure, though. The current warzone engine does not handle high polygons models very well.

[MaNGusT]

Per, I can fix a polycount to a normal level if you want.

[Per]

That would be interesting, yes.

[yahodahan]

Ahhg, you are right, I forgot to chop the polys better for an older game. Go ahead and hack it up if you need to! I'll try to work on that, too.

Glad it's liked!
Wasn't certain if the normal/spec maps could be used, but figured it couldn't hurt to include 'em

[Olrox]

This is of great quality, you surely can develop your skills to excellent levels if you want to. The small "mistakes" (like the poly count for a common model) are just too frequent with new artists, so don't worry about it!

Actually everyone can develop the technique to make something, it just varies on the easiness each person has. But making models with good proportionality is something that only talented people can make, and I think that yours is really good in this aspect.

A little tip from me is to explore more the benefits of fake relief effects on the textures. Quoting myself,

In layered images, you can make shadows, relief, reflection, transparency and shapes in a way that the spectator will be surprised when looking at your model with and without textures. In the best results, people will even think that you are cheating, and made additional geometry.

That is, taking benefits from using several layers while creating the textures, you can deceive the expectator, especially in the case of warzone, in which he is looking at the models from a far zoom 99% of the time. It is harder than adding graphical features to the game, like bump-mapping, raytraced shadows, depth of field lighting etc., but the effort-quality tradeoff is much more advantageous!

[MaNGusT]

That would be interesting, yes.

Ok, Now i have the model with 263 faces(original model has 344) without visual degradation. Is this enough or do I need to reduce more faces? if you want to reduce more so the model will lose some small parts such as baseplate
.

[yahodahan]

Thanks for the insights Olrox, I definitely agree, having actually been doing this for 4 years now Guess I'm just used to building toward engines like Unreal, Source, etc... forgot to optimize for the much older WZ engine. Well, optimize isn't the word- more like, entirely rebuild!

Faking geometry through textures is the best of all tricks, no doubt- without that there is just no way to create good game models, period (not with today's technology, anyway).

Although, they are getting close- have you seen the new DX11 games that feature full in-game tessellation of the models? It's a amazing, really.

Polycount is something I tend to debate with LOTS of people about- personally, I believe it is much better to error on the side of higher poly than lower, and am in general rather, well...lets just say I'm sick of new games looking like UT2004. I mean, if an artist wants to put a curved object in their level, they need to MAKE IT CURVED (not shouting at anyone in particular, just generally disgusted with this issue). If the game can't handle the extra polys it would take to make it COMPLETELY curved and not a chunky mash of obviously force-cut polys, then the artist needs to re-design that level, or simply not put in that curved object.

There is nothing, simply NOTHING, that turns me off in-game more than a simple object or scene, ruined by a circle made with 8 sides, or some other such ridiculous joke...

Lol, sorry- there is a lot of rant pent up in me about this I agree with all your thoughts, and thanks for the insights, but it just brought to the surface old grievances...

Thanks!
btw, more of my work at www.ofgabriel.com

[Olrox]

Hey, great work on your webpage! - I was sure that I was dealing with a talented person here, hehehehe
I, too, like to make my models with small, even milimetrical detailment, using autocad mainly, so that I can achieve the precision I want. By all means, I agree with you that 8-sided curves look horrible, and I wished that every game engine and computer could handle real-time rendering a scenario full of at least 64-step curves. But warzone just can't handle nothing more detailed (after all, it was one of, if not THE, first completely 3D rts game). When making models for warzone, I always feel terrible because I must be fussy about even 6-step "circles", and that's just not enough to be sure that the graphical engine won't be overloaded.

I'll save your contact, because I plan on working with artwork production for games in the future, and maybe you'd be interested in taking part in any of the projects or simply take a look at it! Since I'm going to make every development stage open, everyone can contribute with ideas, suggestions and comments, just as the games progress.

Keep up the dedication!

[MaNGusT]

Can you upload textures in the TGA format? please. JPG reduce a quality of images.

[Zarel]

...why not just PNG? It's Warzone's built-in texture format, and it's lossless.

[MaNGusT]

...why not just PNG? It's Warzone's built-in texture format, and it's lossless.

because..... even WarCraft III uses tga textures.... png is cool but worse than tga.
PNG is portable network graphics and was created to replace the GIF format. It doesn't have layers, for example. I understand why love the png format - it's free.

Ok. yahodahan, can you upload textures in png or tga format or do you have the original textures only in the JPG format?

[Olrox]

PNG has less than half the size of a tga, and doesn't loose quality. Tga doesn't support layers as well. Both support transparency. There is animated PNG, I don't know any animated tga (it would be a large file even for small animations).
Also, mspaint supports PNG and can save in the same format without loosing definition, but it doesn't even open tga xD
PNGs have a lot of qualities, and saving hosting space by uploading smaller files is a noble act

[Zarel]

because..... even WarCraft III uses tga textures.... png is cool but worse than tga.
PNG is portable network graphics and was created to replace the GIF format. It doesn't have layers, for example. I understand why love the png format - it's free.

No, PNG is better than TGA. TGA is an old and outdated file format designed for ease of implementation rather than file size - it uses RLE compression - it's basically BMP plus a few features like alpha transparency. WarCraft uses TGA because it's simpler, not because it's better. An analogy would be that PNG is a car, and TGA is a tricycle - WarCraft III only uses TGA because it doesn't know how to drive a car.

Plus, because PNG is a web standard, it is far better supported than TGA.

PNG supports layers, though they normally aren't used. In general, if you're looking for source files, PSDs are the way to go.

[Olrox]

PNG supports layers, though they normally aren't used. In general, if you're looking for source files, PSDs are the way to go.

Hmm, photoshop always automatically flattens all my imgaes when saving to PNG.
About the PSDs, I wasn't able to attach one here the last time I tried, so maybe TIF is a good option, for layered files.