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[e107 thread] New weapon model

Posted: 2005-09-19, 20:42
by Carsten
Kai wrote:Today i started a new model , in order to replace the old shotgun.
Looking for some good design i decided to use a real weapon.
It a Benelli M4, not finished yet. It about 2000 polys so a nice detailed model (what i had in mind).

So far i like it, lets see how it will look with textures in Ca3D :)

Image

Image
Carsten wrote:Hi Kai! Excellent screenshots!
I'm really looking forward to learn how they look in the engine! :)
Stormtrooper wrote:Wow,looks fantastic & detailed and the texture rocks!
Kai wrote:Thanks, it is my first attempt to model a real weapon, but it was very easy after i found some reference images (more than just a simple sideview but some detailed shots)

As i said the polycount is not optimised, and this is only the firstperson-model version, i create a slightly more lower version for the world/player model.

Currently im finishing the hand model for the first person, that will also have a very nice nmap on it (my highres version is finished ;) )

Oh yeah i need help with the animation/scaling aspect !!
Could someone give me the correct scaled version of the skeleton that is used in Ca3D and is ready to import into max without any error ? I dont have milkshape anymore and i would prefer to leave this as it is (i really dislike Milkshape sorry XD)
The old HL1 mdk is outdated and not working properly for my current version of Max, so if someone could help me with that i would be very happy :P
Stormtrooper wrote: Nice nice nice! Here's a Zip-File including the James player model as 3ds, ase, obj and lwo!
Kai wrote:Thanks Stormtrooper, but this is not what im looking, they all contain only geometry, but not the skeleton hirachy im looking for.
Only the ase file is containing some inormation about the bones, but ase can not be imported into Max (only exported :frown: )

I know that HL1 MDK used the old biped coming with characterStudio, but i dont know the scale, and i also need the complete bone hirachy...
Stormtrooper wrote:Oh, I just saw this, I didnt know that these files do not contain bones (or if its just an exporter error. Can 3D max handle SMD (Half Life) or md3 (Quake 3) files?
Kai wrote:Well if so, only via plugins, and in most cases only as export ..
Somehow its very simple , i just need to know how high the biped in the firstperson mode is (i can scale it myself for the third person mode, cause i got the trinitymodel in geometry), could it be, that it is the same high at all like the thirdperson ?
Im currently reading out the old HL1 MDK doc "Modelling and Animating in HL1"..
Stormtrooper wrote: OK, here is a comparison screenshot!

http://home.arcor.de/stormtrooperger/ca ... sition.JPG

High is the same, but not the position, as you can see it for yourself - it's right in the middle ;)
Kai wrote:Position is relativ ^^ So thats all i wanted to know ;)
The last thing would be a hiraical structure of the skeleton, but i will already change some things there :)

thx anyway to solve my problem Storm
Shadow wrote:looks nice man. it would be cool if the engine could handle a tac lite on the bottom of it.
Kai wrote:Here is a small wip of the new player arm model, i started the highres mesh quite a while ago but didn't find the time to finished it.

Now im on it and since this will replace the current arm i was very eager to get the best possible result.

So here is the (partly) normalmapped arm, only with a single color and some minor specular effect
http://www.mdkai.de/anderes/Arm_1.png

The model is about 700 Poly and not shape optimised because it was reduced manually from the highres version to perfect match. I will optimise the shape later ^^
Carsten wrote:Well, I think that I've seen an earlier version of these before, but these ones look even better.
Really looking forward to see them finished - I'm sure they'll look awesome! :-)

Posted: 2005-11-29, 04:40
by Kai
Update:

Today i finished the first part of the new weapon(s) for the techdemo.
Its not complete yet, but looks quite nice so far :)

What you see, is the new shotgun with a normalmap, based on a 120K poly highres version.
Just the normalmap and a plain dark texture:
Image

I need to tweak some minor parts, and then do a small remap for the world model, but it will look quite similiar :wink:

Added a small movie to get a better effect of the speculars, notice that this is the first person version, so some parts are not textured because they don't need to ;)
When scrolling manually back and forward you may discover lots of nice details :roll:
Get the movie here(quicktime, only 1MB)

Posted: 2005-11-29, 05:31
by scott
Hey what other weapons do you need? I'd like to try making one

Posted: 2005-11-29, 10:27
by Carsten
Wow, Kai, the shotgun has just turned out to be excellent! :wohow:
Both the mesh as well as the normal-map are terrific! :up: Looking forward to see the model in action... :groupwave1:

[My reply to your emails follows later today.]

Posted: 2005-11-29, 15:13
by Thrawn
Yeah, as said before, simply amazing!

Posted: 2005-12-01, 06:12
by Kai
Okay today i finished the hands ,yes we have a new pair of hands ! ^^
Finished diffuse, normal and specular map, all 512*768 (first this may sound big, but Doom3 for example uses a size of 512*1024 for all 3 ! )

Im sure you want to see the result, so here it is ^^
Image

Last thing would be to fit the new skeleton, and scale all elements properly, then do first test-exports, send all to Carsten and thats it :)
Hope you will like it :roll:

Posted: 2005-12-01, 15:10
by Thrawn
Hi,

the hand itself looks very very good and detailed. Great work on that. But you can see the effect of the "small" texture size at the lower arm. The hair there looks low res. Maybe it would be better for such an important part to be more detailed (bigger texture size).

Nevertheless, great work.

But texture sizes are in general a bigger problem in Ca3DE. Most textures must be 512x512 instead of 1024x1024, because the engine just can't handle internal texture compression.
To my mind, a compressed 1024x1024 texture looks a lot better than an uncompressed 512x512 texture, especially when it comes to larger display resolutions like 1600x1200.

Posted: 2005-12-01, 15:41
by Carsten
First of all, Kai, the hands+arms are another piece of excellent work! They just look like my own. :flex:

Thrawn, Ca3DE can handle 1024*1024 textures - they are just not (yet) compressed. Also remember that compressing normal-maps is not as trivial as compressing diffuse- or specular-maps.
Another factor to keep in mind is that Ca3DE is per default set up to scale down textures ("medium" texture quality setting in the initial Options dialog), which means that it limits texture size to 256*256. Changing this to "high" allows for textures of unlimited size.

Personally, I think that 512*512 would be enough for the arms. Technically, one must be careful to not loose the fine hairs of a possible 1024*1024 map when it gets downsampled, e.g. by the mip-mapping process during rendering. That is, very fine details on very large textures easily get lost as a result of image filtering that occurs e.g. during rendering or due to reduced texture quality settings.

I like the arms. ;)

Posted: 2005-12-01, 16:19
by Kai
You're right about the hair. The problem is, that i want hair to give the arm more detail, but hair is a quite highfrequent part of the diffuse texture and therefore its extremly visible when the resolution drops.

The arm is the most closest part to the camera, but also very rare full visible, so i'm doubting if the few moments, when the arm would be visible are justifing a higher resolution.

On the other hand i think its not that much of a performance hit if i increase the resolution up to 1024*512. And i tested a jpeg version of the diffuse texture, instead of using png, which uses more compression and compensates the higher resolution. While the png version was 448kb, the jpg version was 233Kb at maximum quality.

And i agree with compressed textures, but currently we can only use jpg as a compressed format. But i would like to see other formats like dxtc, but nmaps are really complicated to compress. The most popular method, that was used by ID Software, was to use dtx compression with a trick:
The DXT5 alpha compression algorithm is used on one of the red and green channels, which store X and Y coordinate info, respectively. (Z values are discarded and computed later in the pixel shader.) This format is reasonably well suited for normal maps, and offers 4:1 compression ratios.

Posted: 2005-12-01, 18:37
by Thrawn
Thrawn, Ca3DE can handle 1024*1024 textures - they are just not (yet) compressed. Another factor to keep in mind is that Ca3DE is per default set up to scale down textures ("medium" texture quality setting in the initial Options dialog), which means that it limits texture size to 256*256. Changing this to "high" allows for textures of unlimited size.
The texture scale function gives us the opportunity to design content for newer graphic carts. We don't have to take care not to use 1024x1024 because very old graphic carts can't deal with them. Those who can't use them, just have to use medium settings.

1024x1024 are nowadays standard in ego shooters. In almost every new one, you can find them, even in such "performance-cheap" games like Call of Duty. You're right that the texture looses details when it's being scaled down. But better it only looses details then than it never HAS details. Especially in the techdemo, we should not try to make it too "mainstream", no engine does this. That's something for game designers.

Texture compression is really necessary. Most games use .dds !? for the 1024x1024 textures. This would mean for Ca3DE not to use png as standard format, but it's worth the change and it's also a very common format now.

I think that this is a very, very important topic that has to be cleared before starting techdemo design. Texture compression makes many things possible and like this it's important to know before planning detailed things.

Posted: 2005-12-01, 20:52
by Carsten
Thrawn, good news is that we can stay with png, jpeg, tga, ..., and still have texture compression. How an image is stored on disk is not related to how it is stored in GPU memory. Those who store dds files on disk are just taking the approach of least effort, which has drawbacks of its own.

I agree with what you say, we should not be afraid to use 1024*1024 textures in the TechDemo when it seems appropriate to do so. However, we should also keep in mind that 512*512 or even smaller textures still have their right and their place.

The next good news is that texture compression is an optional feature (or say I consider it as such). If it's not there, those who have too little GPU RAM will suffer drops in FPS, but everything continues to work and no other major bad side effects happen. And as an emergency solution, there is still the option to reduce the texture detail (scaling them down) even before the video board sees them.

In summary, that means that I'll keep the texture compression on my TODO list, and that for the TechDemo planning, the texture sizes may be chosen irrespectively of the presence of the compression feature. :idea:

Posted: 2006-02-27, 17:42
by Rouge
Usp very very low model
Image

Posted: 2006-02-28, 12:12
by Thrawn
Looks good though, model seems to be good. Only the texture is too low res (our your photo source wasnt good enough). With a higher resolution of the model texture, the model would even look twice as good :)

Posted: 2006-03-01, 21:48
by Rouge
thank for the tip,
i used milkshape 3D for this gun ( I have done it in 30 minutes ), i will try to draw better it with gmax 1.2 or blender and put it in Ca3d
that clip doesn't know like it has come to the contrary ( it so often happens me with milkshape 3D)
how can i attach the gun file in this post ? so someone good with textures can add some decent textures ?