Qhimm.com Forums
Miscellaneous Forums => Archive => Topic started by: BloodShot on 2011-03-30 00:45:37
-
Hey guys, just thought I'd post this here - I've been working on this for 2 days now, and wanted to get your opinions of it.
It's the Highwind airship, my first model I ever made with blender (2nd model overall, 1st was/is an M4 with Maya). I kinda just screwed around with blender until i got how to make and edit shapes and this is what I came up with so far. I hope to eventually get this in game - so what do you guys think so far?
Reference Picture:
(http://www.creativeuncut.com/gallery-01/art/ff7-cg-highwind.jpg)
Model:
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HW.jpg)
-
looks good so far, hopefully we can finally get one ingame! Two questions, can you make good UV maps and how many faces is it?
-
1. I've never made a UV in my life (though I have messed around with existing UVs before
2. would you happen to know how you count the faces of a model in blender?
-
Update:
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWS.jpg)
This one would be how it will look in game:
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWB.jpg)
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWP.jpg)
-
looking really great, are you gonna do a rocket engine (end game) version as well ;D
-
This is the Highwind texture from the International Disc. It might help you in setting up the UVs
(http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd138/obesebear/highwind.jpg)
-
good shape - now you need to learn how to optimize! (before uving).
long and short of it-
1.select multiple vertices, click w, click merge
2. keep doing this
3. keep doing 1 and 2 so long as the shape stays the same
4. when you cant do it anymore - its optimal!
-
I shudder every time I see the international UV maps... What a waste of space!
-
Wow! Finaly a hi-poly highwind^^
-
wow man, that looks great! very smooth.
-
Wow I farted. It's nice to see those terrible quality world map models get some attention.
-
Yeah, finaly someone is makin the models^^ Keep up this great work!
-
One word : Cool ! Thanks again, to you and all modders ! Good luck !
-
Update:
Well, after a couple of hours of work (yes I'm slow lol) I have a much lower poly version, I reduced the amount of polys on pretty much everything that could be reduced - here is the result.
Before:
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWS.jpg)
After:
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWLP2.jpg)
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWLP1.jpg)
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWLP3.jpg)
What do you guys think? I think it survived the reduction with very little loss in quality :D
-
still looking good! a good UV and textures will mask any blockiness that the reduction introduced. As someone else asked, will you be doing the jet powered version as well?
-
You mean when they drop the turbines and extend the Jet engines, or after the game is over and it turns into the Super fast Jet? I was considering doing both, though the first would be much quicker to do. That is, of course, once i get it working in game.
-
the first one you said. The second one your talking about isn't even playable but I suppose you could always do it for fun :D
-
lol. Decided to do a quick test to see how it looked in game. Didn't quite work the way I expected:
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWm.jpg?t=1301540409)
I think it could have been since i used kimera 095 for this instead of 091. 095 has some weird ass problems with field models.
-
I recently discovered that part of .95s problem with field models is it neglects to put the @rsd091297 (or whatever that line is) on the rsd files. Apparently that actually affects them in game. If .95b isn't working for you, .93 is the way to go.
-
Have a link to 93? I always used 95 for battle and 91 for field, but 91 seems a lot less polished than 95, and has some odd problems with replacing pieces.
-
Kimera .93: http://www.sendspace.com/file/vtjd64
-
Do I need glasses or you submarine isn't the original one too ?! Seems better than mine (original) XD
Did I overlooked a mod ?! oO
-
If I'm not mistaken the sub is. From the WMRP (world map restoration project). I can't remember if the R actually means restore but you get the idea. Great little (BIG) project. It's a branch of team Avalanche at this point. I suggest checking that forum out if you haven't already.
-
good reduction, you could probably do even more. to judge the detail, zoom out in blender so that its a similar size onscreen to as it is ingame. If you cant see the jaggies, its good!
-
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWG.jpg)
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWA.jpg)
Got it working right ingame. Also, did more poly reduction though didn't port that into the game yet. Next task I assume will be texturing, and from what I hear, UV maps can be a pain in the ass.
-
I'd like to ask why the poly reduction? What is the benefit?
-
I'd like to ask why the poly reduction? What is the benefit?
Less strain on your graphics card.
-
are you missing some propellors?
-
Yeah, but don't worry about it - that's the Jet version later in the game, I replaced that because I didn't have a save to test the earlier propeller version. I have the new propellers on the other model.
-
Will be the propellers animated?
-
The top ones yes, but unfortunately the model contains no bones for the bottom ones so they will probably be either static or I will remove them. I kind of like them there so maybe I will keep them on though.
-
keep em. even if they dont animate right, i'd rather have em.
-
Sooo....any good info or tuts on how to UV map?
-
I'm pretty sure that Timu and/or Millenia have a few, dunno where though...
-
Less strain on your graphics card.
But does that really matter? I mean, since the game is so old, shouldn't 'modern' pcs easily handle the extra strain?
-
I don't have a UV tutorial, and i dont think i've ever seen a /good/ one, as its a very arbitrary topic. in blender, generate a testgrid, and mess with yer uvs until the grid looks fairly even and all the squares stay squares on the mesh.
-
But does that really matter? I mean, since the game is so old, shouldn't 'modern' pcs easily handle the extra strain?
yes it does, these models are not as old as the game, and furthermore the graphics driver is not perfect. If you have ever played an emulator then you know that sometimes a machine that is perfectly capable of running a certain game can sometimes be held back by the software running it, making it unplayable.
For an example I can't run PS2 games with PCSX2 on my PC because even though my cpu and graphics hardware are much faster than a PS2's by far, the software was not originally designed to run on them, thus there are so many bugs and slow downs, I can't really run any PS2 at an acceptable level. Through the further development of PCSX2 however this is subject to change.
Trying to get new tech to run with old games is a tedious process, and until Aali's driver is perfectly refined or until QGears project is complete, the game will not actually run "as well" as your computer could potentially handle it. So if this model were running in a game designed for PC in the last couple years, then your right it wouldn't really be necessary. But for this particular game and the software running it, it can cause some major slowdowns, unless you own a decently beastly (expensive) machine, which not everyone does.
Not to mention I am sure the model was designed at a much bigger scale than it appears in game. More so than just as a courtesy to those of us with less than the most modern machines, it is usually held as a professional standard to make things as performance friendly as possible. It doesn't really matter if he left the polys or not, you won't be able to tell at such a small size. What you will notice however are the slow downs.
-
long and short of it, its also a good 3d art practice. the world map high wind is very small (in terms of on screen pixels). You wont be able to see all the polygons, so you trim away all the unecessary ones while maintaining all the detail. it also makes it a lot easier to edit further down the road.
-
You guys are doing a very good job with the graphics :)
-
Ok question - should I mark seams and unwrap each piece and texture them individually, or should I combine the mesh into one thing and do the UVs that way?
-
After fiddling around with the UVs and marking seams, I think i kind of get it now:
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWUV.jpg)
I'm going to do it in pieces, what do you guys think, is that a good setup for the UV? I can rearrange it too to reduce the space between the parts.
-
unwrap the diff objects, but ultimately they should all be on the same texture block. you seem to have the basic idea down, just try to avoid the "pinchy" parts, where numerous vertices bunch up.
-
Got a bit of a problem here, everything I mirrored on the model renders inside out in game, or when viewing the model externally through biturn or Pcreator. Is there any way to fix this rather than unmirroring and modifying the piece to look right?
-
If the polies are backwards (polygons face one way, so if you look at them from behind, you see through them), you can switch that by selecting the affected polies and clicking ctrl+F, and select the first option (i forget what it says, something like flip faces). if you're not sure which ones are like that in blender, you can go into shaded mode (the little dropdown menu that you toggle through solid, wireframe, bounding box, textured or shaded). and you'll see through the backsides of polies. alternatively i think the hotkey for that is shift or ctrl Z
-
Would it be flip normals? It seems to fix it on textured models in blender but I've yet to test ingame or in kimera at least.
EDIT: Just did the UVs for the main body, hows this?
(http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/BloodShot_2142/HWUVs.jpg)
Also, how would I combine all the UV's onto one image once I finish unwrapping each object?
-
not a bad start, in the uv image editor subwindow, one of the menus (image i think) you select new - and pick uv test grid, make one, 1024x1024 is good, and show what it looks like with that. what you strive for is for all teh squares to still look like squares in the 3d view.