Messages

1

Graphical / Re: WIP Tifa

« on: 2012-12-11 12:49:27 »

Almighty_gir no offense to and ur aloud ur opinion but questioning work ethics of other people is unprofessional and imatuer. Just because i dont know how rip models out of another game has nothing to do with modelling itself and i dont want to in the first place. The reason i started a new Tifa model from scratch was because i wanted to learn as much as i can about modelling a character as all i've done is still objects such as guns, building etc... The reason the Tifa model is was doin is on hold as well as the guns i was doin for Vincient is because of Birthday's, Weddings, Christmas and the fact that my sister was beaten by her ex and her kids are too scared to even stay in there own house, so iv'e been staying with them for the last month.

So dont try and attack people on the forums when you know nothing about them and whats happening around them

wow, way to try and twist what i said and then not even give a proper answer.

i hope your sister and her children are better.

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Graphical / Re: Magochocobo Final Fantasy VIII characters textures

« on: 2012-12-06 08:55:31 »

yeah man, you're doing a really good job, and hopefully i didn't upset you, i wasn't trying to say what you've done is bad, just trying to help you reach a new level of awesome =]

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Graphical / Re: Magochocobo Final Fantasy VIII characters textures

« on: 2012-11-24 01:11:59 »

hey man, all of these are looking really good, it's obvious you've put a lot of effort in!

but there are a couple of niggling things i've picked up on that seem like the root of a bad habit, and if we can get you out of them now... then great!

it mostly falls in the lips and the way you've textured them. almost everyone has this joker-like grimace going on. it's caused by two things.
1. dark outlines around the entire lip.
2. an upward curve and hyper extension of the corner of the lips.

i've done a small paintover to illustrate what i mean:


so a couple of things to bear in mind... the lower lip, unless there's lipstick involved, almost always blends into a natural skintone towards the corners, rather than having a harsh outline (note squall and zell vs rinoa).
for female characters particularly, but also heroic characters (in japanese illustration anyway) really push the filtrum shape to give the top lip that classical m shape. with lipstick, play around with colours a little more. using different shades of the same colour hue doesn't look quite right, so as an example i've used a brown shade, a red mid-tone, and a blue highlight in my example.

other than that it's all kickass man!

4

Graphical / Re: how much work would it take to get this in-game?

« on: 2012-11-22 21:09:46 »

actually one of the reasons i had to make my own face, so to speak. was because there is no hard and fast reference for him.

in the original advent children movie, they went for a very square jawed, almost western appearance (well, as western as you can get for an anime). it's like they took all of the cliché things about villains in manga/anime... square jaw, high cheek bones, low brow etc. and then feminized them.

anyway, they updated the model for the crisis core game FMV's they softened him up a whole lot, even the proportions of his face are different, the distance from chin to hairline particularly is shorter.

in Dissidia they used the same model (i think) as crisis core

in Dissidia 2 they completely changed his face, it's longer than crisis core, and more slender. it's also softer and has some really strikingly anime features, the nose in particular is far slimmer than it was before.

and finally, in the blu-ray release of Advent Children, you can actually see they used TWO different models. in any scene that was present in the original DVD release, it's the original model, any of the additional Blu-Ray scenes are completely different, he has a hyper stylised face that's extremely round, femenine, and almost faerie like.

that's my observation anyway.
like i said, i appreciate the feedback, it's just not something i can act on right now.

5

Graphical / Re: how much work would it take to get this in-game?

« on: 2012-11-21 08:42:20 »

yeah i hear you.

thing is, it was taking too long to get him finished, and i ended up just tweaking and tweaking and tweaking... there has to be a cut-off point where you just say "i'm done!", and move on to the next project.

so, sorry man but there won't be alterations to the texture outside of making it diffuse only (although i've read somewhere that somebody has made a custom driver for the game that supports normals and specular... that's pretty badass!)

6

Graphical / Re: WIP Tifa

« on: 2012-11-21 08:34:54 »

Hey guys, just wanted to weigh in on this thread a little..

i've known GodGundam for... jeeze must be going on 10 years or so now! he's been a long term member of the Earths Special Forces mod team (the same place i started my career), and we worked together briefly on MechMod many moons ago.

if he's anything like me now, then he's likely just insanely busy and hasn't been able to return to working on Tifa. i'm not trying to make excuses, ultimately it's up to him to touch base. but speaking as a freelance artist, there have been times i've been so busy i haven't even been able to eat or sleep regularly, let alone be sociable or work on personal stuff. it's only recently i started saying NO to jobs, and YES to my own work.

I'll try to reach out to him and see if he can at least close the issue of whether or not he's going to continue working on her or not. but i wouldn't hold your breath... if you want my honest opinion? when people started posting ripped/illegal shit in this thread, he probably held his hands up and said "fuck this!" and i can't really blame him for that.

and then as i read through the thread, i saw this...

yea it was referenced off that first pic i had shown. Like i said i don't own that game and i don't actually know how to rip models either,
This is my actual job in real life to model from photographs as well as doing animation and texturing is piss easy as iv'e been doing art since i was 6 years old.

man, i'd love to know where you work, if everything you've posted on this forum so far is an example of the standard you work at, and your attitude towards it, then i have some serious doubts as to your credentials.

anywho, i read

7

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums

« on: 2012-11-16 12:26:19 »

it's looking really good man, but i'm curious as to why you're going with tesselation + displacement, over low poly + bump map? you could recieve much the same result as you have now.

to be clear, not questioning your results, just your method =]

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Graphical / Re: how much work would it take to get this in-game?

« on: 2012-11-16 08:02:32 »

Hey guys, thanks for your replys!

               I don't mind at all altering the existing diffuse map (it contains almost no shading information, as that's what the normal map is for) so that it would look decent as diffuse only. i'm confused about "what is the current format of this model"? do you mean what program it was made in? if so, 3ds max 2011... well, the final low-poly model anyway hah. other than that, it can be exported to any format you need, i would imagine.

As for cutting the mesh up to match the vanilla sephiroth, i think that's where i would probably need help. i've seen new models for cloud, tifa etc. in game, and they all appear to be fairly "seamless", as in there are no visible cuts. from what i remember the vanilla poses for most of the characters is close to their idle stances in battle mode right? so would i need to pose this model to match the vanilla one, and then make cuts in the mesh so it's segmented like the original?

cheers.

9

Graphical / how much work would it take to get this in-game?

« on: 2012-11-15 21:01:45 »

Hi guys.

            Please excuse my ignorance, i haven't visited these forums in such a long time and it seems you've all progressed amazingly in my absence! i recently made some sephiroth fan-art... i made him loosely based on various references, the head is referenced from a mix of the dissidia styles, as well as advent children and of course the original (hyper anime influence). the clothing is by and large referenced from Advent Children.

there are two versions of the model, i've made him both topless and jacketed, so if it's even possible to get him in-game, he would be suitable for the endgame encounter, as well as the earlier appearances.

so now to the questions! i don't know what tech has been implemented and by whom. would i need to make a pure, diffuse only version of the textures, or can we now use specular and/or normal map tech? what about alpha? is it test only (1-bit alpha, or "hard edged") or fully blended (8-bit, soft edged)? would i need to reduce the triangle count? as it stands at the moment the topless version is somewhere around 15k triangles, and the jacket version is around 20k.

thanks for your time. and here are the images from my portfolio site, as well as a topless shot that's not up there.

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Team Avalanche / Re: enemy models

« on: 2012-11-06 19:29:23 »

not really, all downscaling really does is blur your image... here's a quick example:

you have a 3*3 image (9 pixels), going clockwise from the top left pixel you have the following values:
255, 0, 0
0, 255, 0
0, 0, 255
255, 255, 0
255, 0, 255
0, 255, 255
0, 0, 0
126, 126, 126

and in the centre: 255, 255, 255.

this should show that you have; red, green, blue, magenta, cyan, yellow, black, gray, white.  essentially all of the "extremes" of the colour spectrum.

now resize that down to a 1 pixel image, and you will get a single gray pixel. in fact you can order the colours in any way you like, and you will always get gray when you resize. what this should tell you, is that when you resize your image down, you lose information. it should be self explanatory... you can't shrink an image (therefor making the pixel density smaller) and expect to keep all the detail (which would require all of those pixels to remain in the image). but many people stallwartly believe that they "do better" by resizing... it's just an illusion really, and as the article i linked above tells you, it just hides your mistakes.

so, if you think resizing helps you make better art, i would argue that you should practice at true res, because it will make you a better artist, and therefor you will make better art.

11

Team Avalanche / Re: enemy models

« on: 2012-11-05 13:12:18 »

what he means, is that if you have a 1 pixel line which defines an edge at 256*256, when you resize down to 128*128 (which is 1/4 of the size), what are you going to see happen to that 1 pixel line? it can't magically turn into 1/4 of a pixel thick. instead it gets interpolated with the pixels surrounding it, which makes it less apparent.

12

Graphical / Re: Extracting summon monster models

« on: 2012-11-04 23:52:45 »

what you could look at doing, if you simply wanted to texture the models that exist in FF7, is use the vertex colours as a base for the diffuse map. xNormal (program) has a vcolor > diffuse function.

13

Team Avalanche / Re: enemy models

« on: 2012-11-01 12:25:14 »

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/tutorial.htm

in particular: http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/resize.htm

True resolution vs. Double Size

When painting a texture, many times people will paint at two times the resolution, then size it down. Meaning if the final map is a 512x512, they will paint at 1024x1024. I recomend staying at true resolution whenever possible.

If you are just starting out at texturing, painting at the actual resolution is a good habbit to get into. There are many reasons for this. First and formost, is the time factor. You do not have to worry about any details that cannot fit into the end result map, because it IS the end result map. If the pixels hold it, it will show up in game (if the camera/player gets close enough) Secondly is how crisp your end result will be. I have said before, and Ill say again, you as the artist, want the control. any uniform application by a computer will end up looking piss poor compared to the same sort of effect applied by a skilled artist. Each pixel in the resized map is the result of the average of four pixels at the larger size. You can place single pixel highlights, as well as razor sharp single pixel seams and shadows. They will not be blurred to obscurance by photoshops algorithms.

Common reasons people argue for painting at double res:

But I can be messier/faster/scribblier and then size it down and it looks "right". This is not true, it only makes your mistakes less apparent. Their is a reason that art teachers tell you to "draw big" It is because it makes your mistakes apparent. If you cannot make it look right at the small res, you are not making it look right when you resize either. It is just that your mistakes become less apparent.

But I can get subpixel detail! Again, not true, there is no such thing. A pixel is a pixel is a pixel. You can have detail that is implied as smaller than a pixel, but it is just as reproducable at res, as it is double size, you just have to know how to do it. and it will read better because you did it at true res, than if you resized down. One particular thing that people like resizing for is hair. A good way to learn how to do implied sub pixel detail, is to actually resize something, and look to see what the pixels are doing that implies that thinner than a pixel detail. Once you learn these "rules" you can use them or adapt them for your needs, and be faster because you are painting them at res.

Again, if you are already fantastic at texturing, and you resize. By all means, continue doing it. It is, and always will be, the ingame results that count.

14

Team Avalanche / Re: enemy models

« on: 2012-11-01 11:01:22 »

basic rule of thumb here, is think about how many pixels something is going to take up on-screen, and for how often.

from my memory, those frogs are tiny, they take up maybe 100 pixels (at the very very most). so you should probably try to put their entire texture onto a 256*256 texture map (personally i'd go 128...) and a poly limit of 150-200.

15

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums

« on: 2012-10-29 11:27:46 »

if entering the house simply loads a new area (the inside of the house), then the outside and inside models don't in any way need to be the same mesh.

so it makes sense to have one for the inside, and another for the outside, making sure they all look like the originals.

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Team Avalanche / Re: question RE - this mod, tech used/implimented

« on: 2012-10-29 11:22:42 »

Animations are kinda doable Bordes program can edit them but its all extremely limited..

Been waiting for years for a any kind of plugin for max or blender or anything. Tho the good news on that front is that the animation format has been mostly decoded and its up on the wiki.

Also check out the wiki its full of usefull info that can get you up to speed into game editing.

Welcome aboard gir Long time Green tooth lurker myself

ooooo who are you on PC?

17

Team Avalanche / question RE - this mod, tech used/implimented

« on: 2012-10-28 21:51:25 »

hey guys.

it's been many, MANY years since i logged into this forum (i've lurked from time to time). and i wanted to do two things...

the first, is i'd like to know how you guys are getting along with all of this. it looks like you've done some really cool stuff! but it makes me ask the following:
what can you actually do? is everything in the game diffuse texture only? or have you managed to get specular/bump/normal info in there as well? how do characters work now? from what i remember it used to all be vertex animation based, so skeletal animations were out of the question which meant that custom models were also out of the question (for characters/monsters anyway). it looks like you can definitely get custom meshes with textures in for environment stuff for definite, which is really cool!

the second, i'm a full time artist in the games industry. i'll link my portfolio at the bottom of the page for you. and if i get any spare time i'd like to offer consultation services (for free) if they're needed or wanted.

cheers
Lee

portfolio: http://crazyferretstudios.com

18

Archive / Re: messing around with normalmaps

« on: 2007-12-14 20:52:21 »

speaking of skeletons, here's an animation i've been working on, just the idle animation:
http://www.youtube.com/v/E_Qh_JeNSs8
http://www.youtube.com/v/yc-iin0H3R0

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Archive / Re: messing around with normalmaps

« on: 2007-12-11 22:56:17 »

modeling never takes long, it was texturing and building the skeleton =/

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Archive / Re: messing around with normalmaps

« on: 2007-12-11 22:07:26 »

so anyway i made a pose based on my action figure... beware of massive pix

http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/3024/p2060291id1.jpg

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Archive / Re: messing around with normalmaps

« on: 2007-11-15 18:05:04 »

lol, yeah i just don't get any time to work on what IIIIII wanna work on anymore

here's the low poly btw:

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Archive / messing around with normalmaps

« on: 2007-11-14 23:00:28 »

very very early wip, just getting a feel for proportions befor i go into major details:

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General Discussion / Re: FF 7 Rude's Race

« on: 2007-08-09 16:26:35 »

Are you freaking kidding me?

South americans usually = Hispanic/Latino or, in other words, IC4 (olive skinned).

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General Discussion / Re: FF 7 Rude's Race

« on: 2007-08-05 14:10:49 »

the only reason i pointed out his similarity to the rock, is that when deviding racial classes, he isn't white.

IC1 = White
IC2 = Black
IC3 = Asian (like, indian)
IC4 = Meditteranian (or anyone with an olive skin) - this would be rudes catigory
IC5 = Oriental
IC6 = Mixed race
IC7 = Other (i've never come across an "other" before...)

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Completely Unrelated / Re: Did Halkun die again? (A Little off-topic)

« on: 2007-08-04 13:04:24 »

lol, i tell you what then.

if you want me to help you with assets, the only thing i want written into any form of contract would be:

i reserve the right to show any work i create in the form of a portfolio piece, or as work to further my career.

i've helped out indy companies in this way before, it's mutually beneficial, and it's always fun for me =] i didn't get your email, unless it's in my junk box, i'll check that out... like i said, i can help you learn anything you need to.