Messages

1

Team Avalanche / Re: Sharing / Donating Resources - models, textures, audio

« on: 2013-08-19 11:01:51 »

The screen shots from are taken in-game from Fallout 3.

I had heard at some point you guys were going to make your own version as I assume copy written material shinagins. That and making as much as possible by the community.

Anywho my main interest was to work with whoever was interested in animating the train part. Although it was my baby and modellers envy probably has its part to play, I know the community will do it justice and that was one of my main reasons for releasing it. My main reason was to have some motivation to get into animation again and help give more to this project.

2

Team Avalanche / Re: Sharing / Donating Resources - models, textures, audio

« on: 2013-08-12 17:27:35 »

This has been long overdue, checking from the post , almost a year.......but anywho, the complete asset download for MakoDawn is now available on moddb.com. Kinda surprised that Tempus didn't post here but I guess that is just because he is so busy lately with the other projects he has moved onto. -
http://www.moddb.com/mods/mako-dawn

I know someone was thinking about the train animation for an updated intro scene. My train has been included in the mod but it was still a wip at the time so not sure if Tempus retopo'd it before UV'ing and texturing. If anyone is interested in some collab on that animation I would be willing to give a hand as I need to learn the in's and outs of the new animation system for the work I am doing now on a blender import/export plugin.

3

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-09-24 15:48:13 »

@Tempus - thanks for finding that for me. I could not find it anywhere.

Well there are two trains of thought, one that you procedurally generate the city, which is fine if you weren't planning on making the city explorable, *is that even a word...*, in which case you would just model it out in low res, copy paste.

In the second case, which is something that Mayo Master is getting at is that you need to have a small enough scale. There are various renditions of midgar, scale wise, and I am not here to debate which source material is more correct nor argue with the purists when it comes to FF7. I am saying that in any game design needs to clearly set the boundaries.

@Cyberman - Most oblivion stuff is rarely done procedurally, at least not that I know of. If you are on about terrain placement via a heightmap, yes. But alot of the objects like trees, boulder etc are statically placed. There is runtime foliage alright, but that is just generated on top of the terrain.

For the Mako Dawn project we used the Fo3 engine, because we were fimiliar with the toolset and it had already transitioned a few times previous. Tempus'  revival of the project was unexpected;I thought it was going to remain in hibernation for longer. I am currently work on updating the format exporter for newer Blender versions, just in case I decide to restart the project myself, but I will probably move it to the Creation Engine.

4

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-09-22 13:11:11 »

@Mayo Master - About developing a "sandbox" midgar, this would be a massive undertaking and believe me this is purely from speaking from experience. I have been with the "Mako Dawn" project for some time, having seen it gone through a few iterations trying to undertake exactly what you are suggesting.

The main issue you will encounter is scope. We have thought about most of the issues you have mentioned, such as sector purpose zoning, *had a nice graphic we made, can't find it atm*. When you start going into the macro-scale things like the (water treatment, garbage incinerators, steelworks, concrete factory), all of which are very important considerations but if the aim was to actually develop a project then, do that in the design stage, then limit that to a fraction of the area. Trying to remake a sector in my opinion is far too large a scope for any one project without considerable boundaries in place. The most recent iteration of the project for example was moved to doing the interior of the Shinra tower, which was then scoped to several floors of the known ones.

Even at that we were limited in what was achieved, which was in part due to actually getting work done, due to limited numbers of actual developers. This would be a major hurdle for any project to overcome, and our Lead Dev Tempus was basically a one man army. Getting all the ideas concreted is one thing, but realising them is a whole other ball game. Just because there are ideas, expect yourself to get your hands dirty.

I am not trying to dissuade you from doing it, just some friendly thoughts on the matter. I plan on reviving the project at a later date once I am ready again to start in the next round. One positive of this iterative process it that we are steadily accumulating assets, which we will freely make available, hopefully in the not to distant future. The other thing to consider is even though you might find a dev or two willing to help out, these things take time. Take a look at how long it has taken for the midgar models to be made, which are not targeted towards a game scenario and they don't have to concern themselves with the minor details of what is actually goes into the plates.

Anyways I would still be interested in hearing out your ideas and you are probably better to make a separate thread. Although I am not planning on reviving the project at any time soon, feel free to pm if there is anything that would interest. For anyone interested in the content pack that will be the final release for the current iteration of the Mako Dawn project here is some eye candy.

5

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-08-31 08:48:44 »

Ooooooohhhhhh purdy. That is all

6

Team Avalanche / Re: Sharing / Donating Resources - models, textures, audio

« on: 2012-08-15 23:10:35 »

The Shinra models are a combination of npc skins and separate clothing. The clothes, it uniforms, helmets, etc will be available but the characters are vanilla content which we can't provide.

I have also decided to throw in my train engine too. Tempus is doing a retopo on it as I lost the original sources due to a hard drive failure. I hope to get back into modelling myself soon and might get around to doing some animation with it in my spare time.

7

FF7 Tools / Re: [WIP] Final Fantasy VII importer script for Blender 2.6x

« on: 2012-08-07 13:22:43 »

To be honest, I have not investigated the BMesh system thoroughly, happily existing in 2.62 land until things are working enough to make the move. Currently marching forward to the next milestone seems better than going backwards and redoing.

From what I have looked at BMesh is something that you will only need to use if you need to. For import/export scripters, we can just use bpy mesh/polygons stuff as we dont need to deal with those things as we work in tri-land.

That said there maybe advantages that I have yet to comprehend like vertex color access might be easier through BMesh.

8

Completely Unrelated / Re: Black Mesa 2012 media - prepping for release

« on: 2012-08-07 00:40:15 »

@Bloodshot - the link to the video needs fixing.

Can't wait for this to come out, hopefully I will have built my new machine by then. They also run on value time so it should be fine.

The only thing I don't like from watching the video is the voice acting. It lacks the certain level of polish that I have come to associate with this mod. All in all, just want to sink my teeth in for some nostalgic Freeman shinagin's

9

Troubleshooting / Re: Spoox´s 3DSMAX Walkmesh and camera importer ?

« on: 2012-08-05 22:48:21 »

If it is of any interest to peeps in general, I have requested the Blender scripter Amanitas *on qhimm, goes by various names* to create a public repo. It was mainly just out of interest to see how it was scripted but I may take a poke at it.

@SpooX - Don't suppose there is a unified format description hanging about?

10

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy VII Rerelease thread

« on: 2012-08-04 16:36:45 »

Just a point about classic desktop, apparently it be run as a separate app with metro still running in the background as metro is so ingrained in the system, pretty unfortunate really wasting cpu. Then again doesn't really bother me as I expected such things, they like to keep the theme going, avoid the in-between versions XP -> Vista -> 7 -> 8

11

FF7 Tools / Re: [WIP] Final Fantasy VII importer script for Blender 2.6x

« on: 2012-08-04 11:59:55 »

Don't know what the current state of the project is but it will probably need a fair bit of additional work as Blender 2.63 re-vamped the mesh system *BMesh*, which breaks any pre-2.63 scripts.

That said, they seem to be pretty far along, though the video doesn't give you much detail.

Edit: Amanitas has graciously agreed to create a public repo for this script over the next few days or so.

12

General Discussion / Re: Final Fantasy Versus 13 Cancelled

« on: 2012-07-20 18:56:24 »

That or its the best trolling ever. 

13

Team Avalanche / Re: Field Scene Screens (non bombing mission) Gallery

« on: 2012-06-28 16:02:57 »

If you google FAAST you will find that alot of games already have implemented kinect stuff. The way it works if I can remember by intercepting controller inputs. So you just define rules and conditions for whatever you want it to do. You can define gestures and voice commands to map to what would be a set of controller input. That probably dumbs it down too much so here is a nice video making it look impressive. Skynect

14

Team Avalanche / Re: Field Scene Screens (non bombing mission) Gallery

« on: 2012-06-27 16:29:41 »

SpooX i might be wrong but i think the geometry you recreated on the top (left and right) near the doors/stairs, isn't correct.
Under the columns you have steps and doesn't look like it.

The geometry is correct, it is just the width of the steps that needs adjusting so that the blocks are inline with the columns.

Edit: You are correct, the persective is a hard to see. They drop to the floor level so each section of stairs is separate from its neighbour.

15

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-06-23 21:41:57 »

If you want to really confuzzle yourself you can go an compare everything together to figure out relative scaling. 

16

Team Avalanche / Re: Field Scene Screens (non bombing mission) Gallery

« on: 2012-06-23 17:08:12 »

In a lot of cases each field scene is unique because the scene was going to be rendered out, they didn't need to worry about reusable assets or modular design. The main reason that games want to try and reuse as many assets as possible is to reduce the memory footprint, both long term and while the game is running, less stuff that can break and less people you have to pay.

You would probably spend more time figuring out what assets can be reused, than you would gain in time. I don't know what the situation is with resource sharing among artists is but I am sure that there might be some cross over and reuse of assets, reactor sections. When working on some of the Shinra tower stuff we had a common wall which was used for both scaling and also as a base starting poing for any custom stuff. The internal stub sections were also reused where possible, but the majority of the stuff I suspect will probably have to be custom.

17

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-06-17 14:10:52 »

That was one of the reason the latest iteration of the mod had timed releases, so even if the mod stopped, there would be some content out there. I was talking to Tempus and he is pretty far along with getting the source release done, just needs to redo some uv's on some models. I will continue to pester him until he does

Yep, Neon was referring to Neon-Garuth, think he goes by another name now.*swears I am not a stalker* I have his photobucket bookmarked just for those occasions where I need to look at the pretty eye candy, though versions by killerx20 and Saphire are equally in their own right. I just think I prefer the scale/scope he used as it included the high-ways but was still of a reasonable scale between ff7 and comp.

Yeah for you guys tri count is something you shouldn't be bothered with as you will be rendering them out anyways, though keeping it clean also reduces render time.

I have been pottering about the forums for a while stuff about the Q-gears wasn't visible until registration. Seems like an interesting project. Pretty cool if you do port some of the models into the scene. I am equally impressed by he level of detail that you guys take with being faithful to the original  data. Cookies for everyone

18

Team Avalanche / Re: Field Scene Screens (non bombing mission) Gallery

« on: 2012-06-17 13:52:23 »

Knowing that you can come back to a project is better than burning out and dropping the project all together.

Out of curiousity, what modelling program do you use as I am sure you could find some an OS add-on for some of the open render farms. There are some good free ones out there that you can use, just give back some gpu/cpu time when your not using your pc. That or when you need to take a break, hit render and when you come back in 2 months it will be done 

19

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-06-16 19:26:14 »

Absolutely, glad to hear that you plan on releasing it at some point. I would love to have a walk about in your one too. That said I am still guilty of holding onto my train model, though I think the original file was on my laptop which I think now has borked the harddrive too. A bit unfortunate but I have a nif version and so will complete that at some stage.

The most important one thing is that being ok with the fact that some projects are just going to be worked on when I will get around to them rather than trying to do everything at once.

20

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-06-16 16:16:39 »

All of the currently released stuff is over on moddb.com page but is released in nif form for Fallout.

The last release Tempus intends to release as part of the MakoDawn project will be a public release of all the resource files in an organised package. The reason for delay is probably because he has alot of stuff that needs to be sifted through and organised.

I know modellers/artists can have attachment to their stuff, I have been there and I am sure Neon has his own reason for not wanting to release it but its just really sad that we nobody gets to explore such a wonderful model. When I look at some of those screens from his port to the cry engine, defo sad panda. I had planned on contacting him but with my ties to the MakoDawn mod, I thought it might give the wrong impression.

21

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-06-16 02:01:56 »

Yeah I know Noen, we talked about midgar and stuff a lot in the past. I talked to him recently and he said hes not working on his model because he doesn't have the motivation to do it, I can understand why though. It sucks that its almost been forgotten about, it would have been cool to explore it.

Oh and I managed to get the polys down even further to 7000

Awe that is a bit sad, his model was amazing. I certainly have not forgotten Although I never had contact with him, I heard that he didn't want to share his model. I agree I would have loved to explore it too.

Just for reference, Tempus' model as a whole is about 8-9k tris IIRC but that is with alot of optimisations. I hope that my inquires haven't started a cascading effect of people worry about tri counts. 

22

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-06-15 12:26:28 »

The whole scale thing was more a general question as was hard to guage without a reference point, even with the layout. Alot of the time it does depend on the source material, I have always been using the psx version, whereas I assume you guys have been using the PC version. Anyways, I have done lots of discussion about scale and relative scale, so I don't want to clutter the thread.

@Timu, the retopo too is not an automagic feature, you need to build the mesh up, the main advantage is how it works. You apply the verts directly to the surface of the underlying mesh. If you add lots of faces or bad topology then you will still have a s*&t mesh.

As for what Timu said, I would not worry about low-res or anything to do with retopo.

23

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-06-15 03:02:46 »

Well all my work is really working with Blender so I don't know anything about Max. Blender offers alot of tools and specifically for doing retopo it allows you to make a mesh over the exisiting mesh so it is pretty simple and fast once you get into it.

Was just looking at some images from neon-garuth's model. Are you planning on including highways/overpass too? Think his version is about halfway between FF7 and the RL model, perhaps something to consider.

24

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-06-15 02:33:21 »

Normal map baking is basically you make a really high detailed model, couple of billion polys; retopo a version of the model to be more optimised/low poly then you bake the details from the high res version as a normal map applied to the lower res version.

Never realised you were a linux head

25

Team Avalanche / Re: Midgar Remake

« on: 2012-06-15 02:23:28 »

You should do it Very few modders out there who know how to model know how to do low-res model normal map baking, let alone how to do it properly and those that do rarely have an interest in doing such a large scale model.