Author Topic: [REL] New Red XIII  (Read 26490 times)

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #25 on: 2013-10-04 04:21:54 »
That looks pretty good, but how dark does that get in the game? Mine comes out kind of ok but with a few issues. I'm not sure why it turned purple last time, that was weird. The left side comes out pretty well, but the right is really dark, the paws too. This was with the settings you recommend, can I adjust the intensity of the effect so it doesn't darken it as much, or would another combination work better? Thanks Kaldarasha.




~If I slide the X almost to the center, about 65% from the left, it clears up the right side so they're balanced but the only way to lighten the feet is to adjust the Z, which lightens the feet and darkens the whole top half of the model.
« Last Edit: 2013-10-04 04:30:47 by cmh175 »

Kaldarasha

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #26 on: 2013-10-04 04:30:59 »
Are the faces of the feet meshes flipped? They are reacting wrong to the light.

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #27 on: 2013-10-04 04:36:07 »
Huh, could be maybe. The feet act funny in Blender but I didn't think much of it since they imported ok. They seem to turn and sort of detach depending on how I change the view. And the bottom of the feet show through the top, even though it imports correctly.



When I check the under side of the model in Kimera with the lighting effects the parts of the legs that are too dark are fine underneath, like the lighting is reversed. Other than the oddity in the screen shot though the uvlayout and mesh seems fine. 
« Last Edit: 2013-10-04 04:42:39 by cmh175 »

Kaldarasha

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #28 on: 2013-10-04 05:01:15 »
It may look fine as battle model, but it will be noticeable on the field model.
You can change it, but I don't know how it was.
All I knew, is how to show me the normals of the faces in Blender:


Kaldarasha

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #29 on: 2013-10-04 05:03:30 »
Quote
Select object : Right click it
Go into edit mode : Tab
Select all : A
Re-calc normals outside :ctrl n

Rob
On the left side you need to check a box under 'Make Normals consis'.
« Last Edit: 2013-10-04 05:07:00 by Kaldarasha »

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #30 on: 2013-10-04 05:09:40 »
Wow ok, thanks a lot Kaldarasha. I'll check that out and get it fixed. I'd have no idea what was up with the field model, that would have sucked.

~That's awesome! Yeah it worked and the feet look great. The rest of the model was fine, but the feet are fixed now. I'll experiment with the lighting and see what I can get, I'm a little worried how dark it'll look in the game though with the games lighting as well, so we'll see what happens. This was a good catch though because the feet would have looked similar with the games lighting.
« Last Edit: 2013-10-04 13:08:11 by cmh175 »

Mayo Master

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #31 on: 2013-10-05 02:13:54 »
Yup, fixing face normals is a basic common issue when a 3d model looks "broken". Actually that's among the things where Google Sketchup fails pretty badly. Having to fix normals happens commonly when you create faces one by one, which is probably what you did when making the "joint pieces". You can also fix the normals as you go in Edit mode, in the Mesh Tools menu (on the left), you have a section with "Normals", allowing you to "Recalculate" them or to "Flip direction". Usually you need the z-normals to point outward. 

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #32 on: 2013-10-05 15:59:16 »
Thanks guys, luckily that was pretty easy to fix. I could use some help though with an odd issue with the tail. It's the tip of the tail and of course is the last piece to the model. When I export the piece it strips the uv layout and I cant seem to fix it. Blender always does this when I export to 3ds so I use obj and convert to 3ds in Meshlab. The obj is fine, but the 3ds file never works. I've occasionally had parts do this, but it usually worked fine if I just recut it and tried again. After trying other formats I still cant get the piece into pcreator with an intact uv layout. The other parts of the tail imported fine, it's just the flame at the end. Any ideas or suggestions are welcome. I also tried Wings and Biturn to convert to 3ds and got the same result.


~ Otherwise I'm pretty happy with it. I am going to reshape the pieces at the top of the legs so they look cleaner but otherwise it's ready for testing and a field model. Just need the last bit of the tail.

« Last Edit: 2013-10-05 20:30:57 by cmh175 »

Mayo Master

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #33 on: 2013-10-05 16:46:37 »
Regarding the issue you have with the tail of Red XIII model, I'm not really sure if the problem comes from Blender. Anyway, a couple of things we could verify, even though it's a bit of "blind guessing":
- Blender can handle n-gon faces, it's something that could screw up during the export. See if the tip of the tail is made only with tris and quads before exporting, that may help.
- Sometimes you may accidentally create two vertices at the same location, and Blender assume these vertices are not shared among the contiguous faces (I hope what I'm saying makes sense). You can verify this if you get into edit mode, try to select the same vertices twice in a row, and if different edges are highlighted on your first and second selection, you have that sort of problems. Two ways of solving it: in Edit mode, vertex selection, press A to select all the vertices, then W ("Special") and in the menu that appears, select "Remove doubles". After this operation you'll have a number of "double vertices" suppressed in this process, in the top bar. Selecting all the vertices and performing the "Remove doubles" operation is something you can do without close examination of your model. However, sometimes making the "Remove doubles" doesn't work (if Blender doesn't recognize the vertices are actually overlapping), so another workaround is to select both problematic vertices and merge them (Alt+A, "Merge at Centre").

That's all I can think about right now. Unfortunately my knowledge is limited to Blender itself, I don't know much about exporting issues except that it's a common source of trouble  :-[

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #34 on: 2013-10-05 17:02:03 »
That's a good idea. I checked quickly for doubles before starting, but I'll look closer into it if "remove doubles" did miss anything. I'll try the merge at center next to see if that corrects it. I'm not sure if that's the problem, but couldn't hurt. It may just be something about the piece and Blender, it does have a few limitations. May need to use 3ds Max for this one. I'll look into it more and try a few more things before coming to that, I don't have 3ds Max so I'd need a volunteer.

kela51

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #35 on: 2013-10-05 17:08:49 »
The model look good in kimera ;). Nice work cmh175.

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #36 on: 2013-10-05 17:42:00 »
Thanks Kela. Yeah I'm pretty happy with how it's come out. I cant wait to see it in the game, waiting till I finish the whole model first. Started on the field model yesterday too.

~Thanks Mayo Master, but it that doesn't seem to be the problem. The mesh looks fine. This is really odd. I wish I could just export the uv layout and add it in pcreator, but Blender exports them to a png which is pretty much useless. I'm going to keep looking into this, figure it out one way or another. Anyone with 3ds Max who wants to check it out though send me a pm. I have the piece in a working obj and just need it converted to a working 3ds file.
« Last Edit: 2013-10-05 18:35:39 by cmh175 »

Kaldarasha

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #37 on: 2013-10-05 18:35:12 »
Now we need to make some weapons for him.  :-D

cbudd

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #38 on: 2013-10-05 19:06:34 »
cmh175, your Red XIII model looks really nice!  I can't wait to install it. 

If you don't mind me asking, how many poly's do you think your model uses?  I am working on a high resolution Aeris model, but I haven't really be concerning myself with polys.  The head and hair portion of my model has 1342 faces alone, but I don't know if that is too many or if it matters.  Of course, after smoothing it is like 47,000.  Thanks for any help!

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #39 on: 2013-10-05 20:54:20 »
cmh175, your Red XIII model looks really nice!  I can't wait to install it. 

If you don't mind me asking, how many poly's do you think your model uses?  I am working on a high resolution Aeris model, but I haven't really be concerning myself with polys.  The head and hair portion of my model has 1342 faces alone, but I don't know if that is too many or if it matters.  Of course, after smoothing it is like 47,000.  Thanks for any help!

Thanks, it's 6301 faces, 3316 vertices. Sorry I'm not sure what the limit is for FF7. It's probably been mentioned some where on here though. 

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #40 on: 2013-10-06 00:49:57 »
Got some help and the models now complete. I'm going to clean up the top pieces to the legs, mostly so they'll fit the field model better, then get into testing to double check the animations for floating limbs and stuff like that. Hoping to wrap this up soon.

I experimented with the lighting, but it pretty much always comes out too dark for models that include shading in the texture. I quickly checked the model in the game and with bootleg shaders off it still has plenty of contrast and shading, and just looked awesome. 




SabreSoul

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #41 on: 2013-10-06 01:49:44 »
thank you ! It's an amazing looking model I'll be playing a lot more with Nanaki now  :wink: cant wait !

cbudd

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #42 on: 2013-10-06 02:59:45 »
I saw Mayo Master mention earlier that he used fluid dynamics to make moving water in his midgar sewers scene for the avalanche HD remake project.  I wonder if it would be possible to do something like that with Red's fire tail?  It would be pretty cool to see it actually burning while he is standing there :)

Mayo Master

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #43 on: 2013-10-06 04:15:21 »
Good job, cmh175, I'm glad you managed to solve the issues. Was the problem related to the way Blender was handling your model?
I saw Mayo Master mention earlier that he used fluid dynamics to make moving water in his midgar sewers scene for the avalanche HD remake project.  I wonder if it would be possible to do something like that with Red's fire tail?  It would be pretty cool to see it actually burning while he is standing there :)
I don't think that's feasible. Simply: sure, I could make something like fire in Blender, but it'd work as long as you keep things in Blender. As soon as you export the model, it's no longer applicable. You would need something to support fire within the game engine (or at the very least an additional mobile light point), and I don't think that's going to happen any time soon (basically, it requires a re-write of the game engine).
My sewer scene is a different story: it's all pre-rendered and nothing is real-time. I did my fluid sim in Blender, and then I exported different renders relevant to 8 different frames, which is how many frames where handled in the original scene. It's a bit similar to making an animated gif, actually. Besides, as it stands, I cannot make a smoother animation of the fluid flow by inserting extra frames. The way it is, there's 1 frame every 0.16s (i.e. 6.25 fps), which is not very good compared with usual standards (25 fps). You can test my 50% res. scene and see for yourself.

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #44 on: 2013-10-06 04:32:47 »
Ha that would be awesome. You're right though, that would require some real changing to the games engine.

Yeah it was Blender more or less. The texture is a single png and the uv mapping for the flame is pretty small so it seems that when exporting the piece it corrupts the uv mapping. Pretty weird, but the tail now has it's own cropped tex file and works fine.

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #45 on: 2013-10-10 20:24:47 »
Not to worry I haven't forgotten about this, had a project from work that needed my full attention so Red XIII had to be put on hold a few days. I had to recut new pieces for most of the field model but it's nearly done now. Just needs the tail which I'll add later this evening. I'm going to do some testing so there aren't any quirks when it's released, but I'm planning on a Friday evening release. Saturday if I find anything that really needs more attention.


Datapack

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #46 on: 2013-10-13 20:27:33 »
No DL link yet?

cmh175

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Re: New Red XIII
« Reply #47 on: 2013-10-13 21:15:09 »

apz freak

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Re: [REL] New Red XIII
« Reply #48 on: 2013-10-26 09:53:47 »
This is awesome, thank you! (Even though I have no way of playing FFVIIPC on my current system...)

Just the same, I appreciate your work. It makes me happy :)

cmh175

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Re: [REL] New Red XIII
« Reply #49 on: 2013-10-26 17:35:57 »
Thanks APZ, glad you guys like it.