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Messages - BlitzNCS

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1
Having real trouble compiling the source - it's asking for a type library (OGL.tlb) that I can't find included or online.

The closest I've found is this, but replacing the missing one with that just throws some undefined variables when I try to compile (although it's much better than without it completely).

Any ideas?

2
Does anyone have a mirror of the source code handy?

3
Releases / Re: The Reunion [IN PROGRESS]
« on: 2013-10-11 08:58:50 »
Just out of curiosity (it's probably been mentioned before and has an obvious reason) - why have you not left spaces after commas in the retranslation? Seems like an odd grammar error to make especially after putting so much effort in everywhere else!

4
Why the pessimism for pessimism's sake? The remaster is obviously a world apart from the original visually.



Not only are there clearly new textures in there, looks like they've upped some poly counts too.
Seems like they've changed things like lighting and shading as well. Not as half assed as some might say then, as it turns out.

5
Completely Unrelated / Re: External HDD problem
« on: 2012-11-01 12:59:12 »
http://www.piriform.com/recuva

This has saved my skin many times. As long as the data hasn't been erased or written over, or unless there's been an actual hardware malfunction, programs like this will always find your files.

Doing a 'quick' disk format won't actually erase data, it'll just delete the table of contents. So if all else fails, do a quick format and then immediately scan the drive using that. I'd try it first without formatting though.

Good luck!

6
Team Avalanche / Re: enemy models
« on: 2012-10-25 18:39:07 »
i understand what you mean. ill minimize the polys where i can. timu commented on a thread before. 12 sides around is what he said then. for caits weapons. ill optimize where i can but that may just be the feet and the limbs.

Just remember, 12 sides is not likely to look any different from 6 sides at the resolution the frogs limbs will be displayed at. Especially since the only shading of the model will be done via your texture.

This is an image of two cylinders displayed with the battle engine's shading. Can you tell the difference? One has 8 sides and the other has 36. And this is displayed at a much higher resolution than those legs will be seen at. The majority of your detail should come from your texture, as that's what the battle engine is designed to display the most detail with.

The feet are looking fine if I'm honest, I wouldn't really change those too much.

- Wouldn't it be good practice to make a very high-poly model, and then make downgrades from it which would in turn be incorporated in the game?

Not unless you're going to be using it in another situation where you'll be zooming in very close and rotating around an individual limb. 'Downgrading' isn't as simple as you may think.
It's like building a huge rocket for the sole purpose of heating some milk in your kitchen occasionally. Or something.

- I also wonder if the aforementioned suggestion would be best in our situation, given that our project has no "release date".

Considering the production of FF7 was completed in 1996, the battle engine isn't likely to suddenly spontaneously change. The only other factor to really consider is typical screen resolution, which I don't think is likely to completely skyrocket anytime soon. Besides, 1080p HD is by far enough for this kind of project. Hell, updating the graphics to look nice at 640*480 would be a vast improvement.

Regarding the mouth thing, the point of this project is to build something around the original source using artistic license and original artwork to fill in details that aren't clear. As long as you're keeping roughly true to the original model, it's basically up to the artist.

7
Team Avalanche / Re: enemy models
« on: 2012-10-25 14:55:58 »
I can't speak for Timu, but I'd say you'd need to make some changes if you want this to be usable.

Looking at your wireframe, I'd say you really just need to look at optimising your model.

As great as it is to have mega high-res graphics crammed into as many parts of the game as you can, realistically, it's not necessary to have what looks like a 36 sided cylinder for each lower leg. This applies to the texture as well - you should only really be at a max of 5122 in this situation. It'll be a lot easier to work with at a smaller size, too.

Basically, just reduce the amount of polygons as far as possible until you actually start losing detail at the maximum zoom level used by the game itself - you don't need any more detail than that because nobody will ever see it, and also because you're making the graphics renderer do more work even though you're not seeing any noticeable difference.

I'm not saying you're going to slow down people's systems, and theoretically you can have as many polygons as you'd like, but a few of those on screen at the same time as well as all the other high resolution battle models and textures and you might start pushing some slightly older machines.

Optimisation is just a good habit to get into when working with models, especially when you're doing stuff for video games.
If it were me, I'd probably use max 6 sides for the limbs (not counting the thighs), and I'd probably try and at least half the polygons for the body and head. Remember, it's such a small model, and you rarely get to see it very close up.

Good Luck!

8
Releases / Re: Retro Field Model Update
« on: 2012-09-11 18:01:10 »
I'm a 3DSMax veteran1 of a few years who's just found out that as a student I can own a full copy of it for absolutely (legally) free ;D . Bit of pointless info, but yeah, I tend to use Max for things like this. In fact, if you look at the files, you'll see that it's all properly2 UV mapped and has two completely unnecessary 512*512 texture files (and one 256*256 texture) as I went a bit overkill, and in the future the model can be textured to however I (or anybody else who can be bothered to texture it properly, you have my permission) wants.

I've been working full time up until I go off to university next month, So I've made little to no progress and I have no updates for you (Unless you want to see Barret's upper arms. Which is fine really, I won't judge.) hence why I released just the one model on its own.

But yeah, hope to have more time to work on this soon. As you may be able to tell, it's a little harder to pull off properly3 than it looks!

1I have no actual sense of what I'm doing.
2I have no actual sense of what I'm doing.
3I have no actual sense of what I'm doing.

9
Releases / Re: Retro Field Model Update
« on: 2012-09-04 17:51:03 »
Nice Work. Are you going to do a Battle.LGP Cloud Model, @Wolke?

There'd be no point in it really. There's already an original-style Battle model at a higher polygon count in the battle LGP that's used for the final battle. I'm sure there's a mod that replaces the normal cloud with it too. If not, I think the files begin at STAA (unless that's Barret?). Just rename the all to RT** and stick them in /direct/battle/.

10
Releases / Re: Retro Field Model Update
« on: 2012-09-02 11:47:35 »
Wow, some genuine interest, and a first from the model's inspirator, no less!

When I did it, I applied alpha/color key/transparency(Whichever terminology you perfer) to the eye polygon around the eye texture. I'm not entirely sure if that's what you did or not... But that's the way it is on the original.

Yeah, the eyes were what I spent the least amount of time on. I'd planned to do it that way but because PSD alpha doesn't work in 3DSmax I ended up just using skin tone around the eyes as that looked the best at the time without exporting every time I wanted to preview :P However, this affects shading as the eyes and face are on two separate groups. Shouldn't be a hard fix though.

And I appreciate duplicating the lighter grey accents to the shoulder armor and right braclet  ;D But it honestly isn't necessary, it was just the way my texture map was laid out and I'd have had to redo the UV coordinates to fix it, but it was just for a laugh anyways so I didn't bother. But if you like it better that way then run with it!  ;)

Well, since I was using the original material colours I was limited to only two greys anyway. Besides, I like the way yours turned out, so why not!

I guess I'll give some of the others a go then, thanks.

11

This basically began as a spontaneous decision to try to remodel every main character's field model based on something Apz Freak demonstrated quite a while ago (The higher poly model with the retro shading) as I liked the look of it and I figured texturing is half the battle when modelling anyway. As it turned out, it was slightly more work than I anticipated, and so unless there's a major outcry I probably won't go any further than this.

But yeah, he works in-game (even blinks and everything!) so you can go download it if you're into things like this. Or not  8).

http://www.mediafire.com/?thfoij359ban3bi

Instructions:
1. Drag Contents of Zip file into /~FF7 Directory~/Direct/Char/
2. Yeah, it's that easy.

12
Releases / Re: [Project] FF7 Re-animated
« on: 2012-08-01 12:14:00 »
I can see now why I've always disliked the normally-proportioned models being in place of the Chibi's in the field. This definitely goes a long way to making them look much more natural on the field. While I probably still personally wouldn't use PRP style characters, I think this goes hand in hand perfectly with them - nice work.
The idle animation still looks a little robotic though from what I can see - especially at 1:33 - He just looks a bit constricted. Maybe tweaking the forearms a little would help.

Slightly off-topic but still very important - The Cloud model you've got running at the end of the video, is that the stock TA Cloud? Seems like the face looks a little better than usual.

13
"On the other side of the Mountain"  is a nice chill song to do - also surprisingly easy to learn. Sounds good with either steel or nylon.
Bit of useless information nobody's really interested in, nobuo seem's to have stolen a lot of that composition from another piece.

And actually, Aeris' theme as it appears in Crisis Core is actually recorded with steel strings. Come to think of it, a lot of the songs in that game were.

14
I'd always assumed the point of TA was to recreate every graphical aspect of the game as close to the original as possible while obviously giving them a tasty overhaul, recreating backgrounds and FMVs to match too. At least that's the impression I've been working under so far,

The reason None of the FMVs have been remade yet is because the field scenes needed to do them haven't been fully built yet.
Actually, I'm sure Spoox already gave a demo of one of the shorter ones. I'll try and find it.

EDIT: Here we are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39897743@N05/5671503965/

15
FF9 did NOT mix ANY grapic models into FMVs (straight video and audio sequences)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47BCkNWg5bQ

Near the end, with all the vines etc.

Just Sayin' :P

16
So basically, you're saying FMVs such as this one here were painted in by hand, frame by frame?

Not sure why you'd think that - to me, it's clearly a 3D rendering. Maybe the flames were added in as a video effect, but I think it's pretty obvious that's been done in 3D, no? Compare it to other FMVs sephiroth is in. Same exact model being used. And iI'm sure if they were painting it all in by hand, they would have made movement a little less rigid somehow.

I was under the impression that the vast majority of the game's backgrounds and movies were all done in 3D, perhaps with the odd one or two being drawn in by hand where it made sense to.

17
http://www.mediafire.com/?dunq5wfd3c9rc17

Try importing that in place of Cloud's head and see if it blinks. Hopefully that should import fine w/ textures and everything, haven't done it in a while.

Basically I used PCreator to stick two very small Polies in with a 'null' texture before adding 'Cloud's head' into the third group with it's own texture.

18
Haha, have you gotten it to work? It'd be interesting to know, I never did fully understand this problem.

19
Well I'm assuming the heads in the original models are mesh group three - Try sticking two null models in the first two model groups when creating the .p model and see what happens?

20
If I remember correctly, the eyes in the original models are just a polygon placed over the head model that dissapeared for a split second every now and again. Because of mesh groups etc, the game thinks the head you've imported is an eye and will 'blink' it every now and again. You have to either set the mesh groups so that the game doesn't assume the head is an eye, or if you want to be clever, just duplicate the head so you've got two heads in exactly the same position, where one 'blinks' to reveal the other head - which you can stick an altered "blinked" texture onto.

...if that made any sense whatsoever.  :-P

21
This pleases me greatly. In many ways.

Spot on man  ;)

22
Team Avalanche / Re: New Project: Bombing Mission!
« on: 2012-03-21 17:32:34 »
Instant Mono Drive - Just add textures!
http://www.mediafire.com/?wyiu7uflffysviv

Actually I'm not sure I ever finished the UVing on it, it's pretty much done though - think I had a go at texturing once too, but I don't have it anymore.
Not the greatest model ever made, now I recall. But at least it's something.

EDIT: I seem to have lied. Lay your eyes on this unfinished texture at your own risk!
http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/2146/test3lp.jpg

and just in case anyone plans to finish it before I get the chance (will be a good while) this is what I planned for the "head". (Basically bigger sphere is slightly transparent)

23
General Discussion / Re: Novice at work
« on: 2012-03-01 16:59:36 »
Since you don't see the top of the head under the hair, you can build hair right into the top of the head, starting from the forehead and working up and round!

Since this is your first model, I have to say, UVing Cloud's hair is going to be a nightmare. Perhaps you're better leaving him bald :P

24
General Discussion / Re: Novice at work
« on: 2012-03-01 16:33:47 »
BTW NCS, my cloud mesh looks sick all cell shaded :P I should rez up the face and animate that bad boy
Oh haha, that's where that came from, I'd completely forgotten. I wondered how It had wound up on my PC, thought it was a little too good to have been made by me :P Would look awesome animated.

Phoenix, looking great - I suggest now you do a bit of cleaning up. More specifically, try to get everything that looks like a triangle but actually has 4 or more verts around it to actually be a real triangle - another thing that will help solve a lot of problems you might encounter later on. (Involves Target welding, easy!)

On top of this - quads are never actually quads. They will always be two Tris. The difference being that the model automatically decides which corners the split goes from. This could end up being problematic, especially when you're bending the quad slightly. (Example, you'd be much better off if the quad was split the second way, so might as well do it yourself rather than take the chance.)

To split a quad in Max, just select vertex editing in the edit poly modifier, and hit "cut", then make the cut between the two verts you want.

25
General Discussion / Re: Novice at work
« on: 2012-02-29 22:10:43 »
Rendering is a kettle of fish you only need to worry about if you like to show off your work (like me :P)

Welding, however, should be a practice you get into without thinking about while you're making models. While not absolutely necessary, having a clean model that's not broken up without you knowing about is so helpful, especially when unwrapping UVs and making changes. Try clicking on single verticies and moving them once in a while to make sure everything's all connected - in time you'll make sure nothing you do introduces unwelded verts without you knowing.
Of course, every single hole and opening doesn't need to be closed up if you don't think it's necessary (i.e the bottom of a neck, if something else is covering it)

To fill in a hole with any amount of sides, select the polygon button in the edit poly modifier, and go down to create. As long as there are no flipped polygons surrounding the new one you want to create, you can select all the surrounding verts you want and then right click to get your new one.

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