RaSiN_HeCk Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 Samurai don't wear their swords on their backs. and isn't his face supposed to look likea demon? to scare his enemies and make them poop their pants? I could help skin ksk, although I've never tried to skin a model likethis, with the different combinations. my e-mails dragon1warrior@msn.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Sitherino Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 Originally posted by RaSiN_HeCk Samurai don't wear their swords on their backs. and isn't his face supposed to look likea demon? to scare his enemies and make them poop their pants? I could help skin ksk, although I've never tried to skin a model likethis, with the different combinations. my e-mails dragon1warrior@msn.com It's not finished yet, and the holster tags on the side send the sword through his legs so I was just showing off what looked best. I still have to think of a design to put on the mask. anyway, I did some work on the d1 torso. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ksk h2o Posted March 23, 2004 Author Share Posted March 23, 2004 Looking good IS. I'llbe sending you the link for the model tomorrow Rasin. I'm very eager to see your work. =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lei Hng Wei Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 Originally posted by InsaneSith It's not finished yet, and the holster tags on the side send the sword through his legs so I was just showing off what looked best. It doesn't look like any of these? 1 2 3 Originally posted by InsaneSith I still have to think of a design to put on the mask. Some variations of Oni (demon) to base the mask on. A B Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Sitherino Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 Originally posted by Lei Hng Wei It doesn't look like any of these? 1 2 3 like I said the side holster tags weren't set up to sit horizontally so I just used the staff holster tag, just to show it off. Ksk, do you plan on updating the holster tags so that if i put a sword there it doesn't go through the leg? also I went and put on some demon teeth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaSiN_HeCk Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 that's what I was talking about, nice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Sitherino Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 Originally posted by RaSiN_HeCk that's what I was talking about, nice Yeah, it's kind of hard with the restrictions of the mask's model. taking a lot of thought to try and pull things off, to get those teeth took me about an hour and a half to get it to look right and make it look as though they are actually popping out. I added some accent in the cheek if you hadn't notices. gave it that evil demon grin the masks have. I've been doing some more work on the d1 selection and i fixed up the monk head i'm still not done with it though, gonna try and add some more tone to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaSiN_HeCk Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 it's like a Cyber Monk O.o I'd think he'd wear a tunic thing... like a normal Monk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Sitherino Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 Originally posted by RaSiN_HeCk it's like a Cyber Monk O.o I'd think he'd wear a tunic thing... like a normal Monk. lol, I was just showing off the other work I've done. I was thinking ksk could do a shader for the d1 set maybe add a tron like glow to the neck guard and armor plates. just a thought Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ksk h2o Posted March 23, 2004 Author Share Posted March 23, 2004 Those are looking sweet IS. I'll take a look at the shaders. You want a tron-like pattern added tot he neck? I like the monk face. I think it will look good with the B torso and E legs. =) You could have told me you wanted to add teeth. I could have added those right to the mesh in a few minuts (it would have added more polys though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OB1 KNOB Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 I don't remember what thread it was in, but you mentioned something about not doing LODS. LODS would be beneficial on a model like this where the polycount is so high because of the following: NOTE: This is from a post by Hapslash(obviously) Originally posted by Hapslash Here's that long winded reply on polygon count that I was promising,.. For those who are disinterested in the technical aspects of polygon count and information an LODs than avoid this at all cost, cause that's all it is,... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you go only by the highest detailed LOD then the default models span anywhere from 2400 for the Jedi on up to 3400 for Jan. Generally my models span close to that amount. For instance the IG-88 I've been working on is only about 2600 while the Darth Vader I've been fiddling with is around 3600. So,... yes, my models do tend to be a little bit more poly intensive than most models. But to be honest, poly count is more complex than just that,... If you take into affect the 4 different LODs that the game supports, and utilize them, then you have the ability to get the most out of your model. Here's an example,... First I'll take a well known model, say Count Dooku. He's around 2800 polys, well under the widely accepted 3000 limit. Next I'll take the Darth Vader I'm working on. I'll just say 3600 for now. At first you could say that there's a huge difference in the poly count, and that Vader would be much harder on your machine. But,... Dooku only has one LOD while Vader will have four. If I were to make the different LODs, say 1-3600 2-2900 3-1900 4-1000 All totaled, they would equal out to be 9,400, while Dooku uses the same 2800 for every LOD level and ends up being 11,200. So when taking the LODs into consideration a lower poly model lacking LODs will be more poly intensive than a higher one that includes them. I've even been rather conservative when calculating the different LOD levels,... The average polygon count of the LODs for the default models is down around 800 for LOD3 and 400 for LOD4. But with the evident advantages of using LODs also comes the inherent burden of having to weight the 4 different LODs as if they were 4 separate models. I believe that this is the reason as to why most modelers don't even bother with them at all. Unfortunately they don't realize the benefits of using the LODs otherwise we might have even greater looking models out there then we already do. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is probably much more information than most people are interested in, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible. So, in summary the models that I'm working on, some of which can be higher in polygons, will probable be no more debilitating to your system, and in some cases even less, than most of the average models available for download. So, basically if you were to do LODS you could keep a higher than normal polycount. I know LODS would be a lot of extra work but this might be a way to work around that: PyskoSith's Website Click on tutorials on the Left and then LODS on the Right. I don't know if you've seen that already or not, but it would be useful for knocking the polycount down quickly on your large number of meshes. It does say thought that the weighting will only remain if you used envelopes to weight the model as opposed to manual weighting. (I don't know which method you've used for your models.) So, if you manually weighted the original mesh, each LOD would have to be reweighted, which would be the large amount of work that you want to avoid. Anyways, as noted in the post by HapSlash, you would be able to keep higher levels of detail on the mesh if LODS could be applied. It all depends on whether or not you can lower the polycount while keeping the detail you want (if you can do that, then this might not be practical for you), but if the detail on the textures isn't enough for you, this could be a manageable way of keeping the geometric details on the mesh. It would still be extra work, but worth it if it could improve the final product. Just trying to help. (Sorry this post ran a little long. ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ksk h2o Posted March 23, 2004 Author Share Posted March 23, 2004 Thats good info on LODs and polycounts. I know how useful LODs are for lower end systems. Grayfox had all the LODs since he was a standalone model. However, think of this, lets ignore the head meshes and focus on the body meshes: 6 body meshes x 4 LODS = 24 meshes to weigh. Since the weighing is manual, this would mean I would have to weigh 18 more meshes... Plus I also have to do some heavy editing on HOW polychop chops off faces as all the meshes need to line up perfectly at the neck and hips. Not to mention how unwieldy my 3ds max file is going to get once I multiply the total scenes polygon count by 4. If he were a stand alone model, no problem, I would LOD him. But LOD'ing all these meshes is just way more work than I'm willing to put into this. LOD's are also VERY important when you are replacing abundant models like the storm trooper, the other troopers, frequently appearing enemies etc. For the LODs to play a really significant role on a mid-end system, one would need to have quite a bit of these custom models running around at once. If someone wants to use the samurai mesh in some sort of medieval japan mod where it is the standard enemy then yes, this would cause some pretty big problems. But seen the filesize this pack is going to be, and the fact that it is not a Star Wars based model pack, I think there won't be THAT many people running around public servers with this samurai mesh (out of the other mosehes int he pack too). I would have liked to have LODs but 18 more meshes to adjust and wiegh is just way too much work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OB1 KNOB Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 Yah, I know what you're saying. Manual weighting that many meshes would be a lot of work. (It would probably get boring too.) Do you know if it's possible to make an LOD in a pack like this for some of the meshes but not all of them? Say for example you had the samurai set of meshes that you wanted to do LODS for since it would really benefit it in game. Could you make LODS just for those meshes, but not for any of the others and still have the LODS for the samurai function correctly? I'm just curious because I'm still fairly new at modeling at haven't had a chance to try anything with LODS yet since I'm not that far. Just to be clear, I'm not trying to press the LOD issue or anything because I understand your point completely. I'm just curious on whether or not it works like that. Hope you didn't take it the wrong way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ksk h2o Posted March 24, 2004 Author Share Posted March 24, 2004 I don't know if I were to make only the LODS for the samurai mesh weather that would effectively act as seperate LOD's just for the Samurai. I don't know if ALL the other meshes would start using those LODS when far away, making them all look like the samurai from far away. It might work, it might not. It could work, depending on how the code for LOD switching was written. In that case that one particlar mesh could have LODs and the rest could be done away with... I don't know if the game woudl accept incomplete LODs for the mesh sets though. Something pretty neat that you could do with LOD's though, is actually change their appearance. This way the model will look different from afar. Kind of like a hallucination or a mirage that changes appearance when you get closer. The shape change would probably be very brutal and not look very well though. =( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keshire Posted March 24, 2004 Share Posted March 24, 2004 The game should accept incomplete model LODS. I don't believe it differentiates between models and meshes. But don't quote me on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OB1 KNOB Posted March 24, 2004 Share Posted March 24, 2004 With your model pack how do you name the different legs, torsos, and heads? With the regular models the segments would be, for example, hips, head. head_face, etc... With your model do you just give any new meshes a name like hips_a, head_c,etc...? Do you also have a base mesh that uses the regular names then and the new meshes are just treated as selectable surfaces? I've looked at the skin files by Raven before but can't remember off the top of my head and you have first hand experience. If I'm thinking this through correctly, if each mesh is distinctly named shouldn't the game see the properly named LODS for only that mesh and then default to the regular mesh for anything that doesn't show an LOD. I believe somewhere in SpaceMonkey's tutorial there was a statement from Raven saying that only 2 LODS were really needed (like LOD_1 and LOD_3). In a situation like that the game would recognize that there are some LODS but not all three additional sets. So, it would probably show LOD_1 in place of LOD_2 since it can't find it and then go to LOD_3 when it gets to whatever conditions determine the LOD switching. If that were applied to a situation with a model pack like this, it would seem that the game would show LODS for the meshes that have them and use the highest detail meshes (like it normally does) for everything else. Interesting stuff. Something pretty neat that you could do with LOD's though, is actually change their appearance. This way the model will look different from afar. Kind of like a hallucination or a mirage that changes appearance when you get closer. That would be funny. It would definately confuse people who didn't know that it was switching LODS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keshire Posted March 24, 2004 Share Posted March 24, 2004 Most people don't even know what LOD means. Nor that the game uses it. Their just all like "oooh look at all the pretty graphics with no slow down" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OB1 KNOB Posted March 24, 2004 Share Posted March 24, 2004 Most people don't even know what LOD means. Nor that the game uses it. Their just all like "oooh look at all the pretty graphics with no slow down" Does anyone know if Softimage handles the creation of LODS differently than 3ds Max? I know that's the program that Raven used for their character models so I was just wondering if they have an easier set-up for creating their additional LODS. On a slightly related note, if I'm reading it right, it appears that there will be a free version of Softimage that will be released to enable creation of characters and other models for the upcoming Half-Life 2 game. Press Release here: http://www.softimage.com/home/press/pressreleases/040322_xsi_exp_hl2.htm I wonder if that will be usable for JA models as well. It looks like it's actually avaliable for download now so we won't have to wait long to find out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Sitherino Posted March 24, 2004 Share Posted March 24, 2004 the model is set up as such "model jedi_gfx torso_a1(2)(3)/b1/c1/d1/e1/f1/g1/h1/i1/j1/k1 head_a1(2)(3)/b1/c1/d1/e1/f1/g1/h1/i1/j1/k1/l1 lower_a1(2)(3)/b1/c1/d1/e1/f1/g1/h1/i1/j1/k1" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ksk h2o Posted March 24, 2004 Author Share Posted March 24, 2004 yea the mesh naming is a little confusing. differet types of meshes use letters to differentiate. heada headb headc ... headl are the head meshes. torosoa torsob ... torsok torso meshes, etc. then I seprated dfferent skins for the same mesh wth numbers head_a1 head_a2 etc. I basicaly copied the raven naming convention. Once you get used to it, it makes sense. The thing I'm not sur of is if the game will use torsok_01 as the LOD for torsoa as well, or if it will use torsoa as the next level LOD. Once everythig else is done, I'll add a blatantly different LOD level to see how that works. Since one will be able to use torsob with legsd, or something like that, I don't know it will look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaSiN_HeCk Posted March 25, 2004 Share Posted March 25, 2004 Hey, I wasn't all too sure if I was supposed to skin anything for sure, so I just started messing around and came up with like a Special Forces type..guy..e.h... >.> but his face plate won't show up, and when I look at it in game ALL the heads in the pack ar stacked on and untextured except i1, which is the one I'm using. No idea whats going on there. and if there's anything you need to be skinned just e-mail me or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Sitherino Posted March 25, 2004 Share Posted March 25, 2004 Originally posted by RaSiN_HeCk Hey, I wasn't all too sure if I was supposed to skin anything for sure, so I just started messing around and came up with like a Special Forces type..guy..e.h... >.> but his face plate won't show up, and when I look at it in game ALL the heads in the pack ar stacked on and untextured except i1, which is the one I'm using. No idea whats going on there. and if there's anything you need to be skinned just e-mail me or something. omg i am inlove with you! ;_; that's brilliant, makes me think of robobcop XD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaSiN_HeCk Posted March 25, 2004 Share Posted March 25, 2004 aww shucks, it isn't that good ; P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Sitherino Posted March 25, 2004 Share Posted March 25, 2004 Originally posted by RaSiN_HeCk aww shucks, it isn't that good ; P better than mine so far, I need to add some detail to the armor on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Methos007 Posted March 26, 2004 Share Posted March 26, 2004 If his helmet were a little bigger, and he was skinned white, you could make him a Spaceball trooper! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.