3d models development

[Imrinfected]

Rope part.
11 polys.
20 tris.



http://www.mediafire.com/?r5eebvkp6sri83u

The edges, the "fringe" of the rope, is a texture with alpha. I got 3ds max to register that finally.

There's plenty for me to improve on with it, but I doubt that's really necessary - it looks like what it is, and any flaws (probably) won't be visible in-game.

[Senocular]

Imrinfected, I... love... your.... models...

[Josh]

And he keeps making 'em at that rapid pace too. 

[Reconite]

Well, getting the small stuff out of the way quickly would give others better focus on the bigger stuff.

[LagMaster]

i love players that do 3D
they do so good quality and so inspired art

but 1 problem with Alpha, the engine is not compatible to it(or it is?)

[Imrinfected]

i love players that do 3D
they do so good quality and so inspired art

but 1 problem with Alpha, the engine is not compatible to it(or it is?)

I was told that it was. It would make sense for it to be, seeing as the game uses sprites. Without transparency, that wouldn't exactly work. It's relatively standard anyway, so I'll just operate under the assumption that it will work.

Also:
Mouse hide.
20 polys.
36 tris.



http://www.mediafire.com/?7n5keqr07uc50pk

I'm alright with how this turned out, but I modeled it with ground models/pre-renders in mind, so there is no bottom. However, the UVW unwrap is done by top/bottom, so the model can just be mirrored and vertices welded and have it more-functional for holding in hands. The same is true for the Fire Gecko pelt that I made.

I made a model keeping in mind that they'll be held in the player's hands, but I'll texture it tomorrow.

Imrinfected, I... love... your.... models...

I'm glad that you like what I can do. Although I have a bit of experience with just about everything involving game design, I am -for the most part- quite the amateur at all of it, and that includes modeling and texturing. I do, however, happen to have just enough information to get (most of) everything done, even if it isn't particularly high-quality - and with low-poly models and relatively small textures, my skill (or lack there-of) doesn't show through quite so much.

I really just want to blaze through finishing all of the misc items and move onto more important matters, such as player models/textures/rigging, even if I don't know any of the details of that.

Speaking of details, and I'm not sure if I've asked this already, but is there any particular scale that I should be modeling these to? Dimensions in some measurement, perhaps - or some frame of reference?

Side note: I forgot to delete the alpha channel on some of the textures of some of the models that I've uploaded. I'll remedy that tomorrow. In case it might save someone some hassle, it seems photoshop creates an alpha channel automatically upon saving a tga with alpha channels enabled. It's really obvious that it would do that, but I didn't realize it initially and some of my renders have unintentional white edges(due to improper transparency, understandable since I didn't know it was there), because the transparency was being rendered as white. It certainly left me confused for a bit. I can also think of some other mistakes that I've made in a couple ways - minor things which you might never notice, but I'll fix that tomorrow as well.

[Luther Blissett]

As far as I can tell, alpha stuff works fine. I did a few fairly primitive tests here. However, I'm not sure how it affects things such as "outline highlights" or shadows. Someone else may have further info on that, but I think it should be fine for what we need here.

Regarding scale of models etc, there's not (to my knowledge) an existing standard size for anything - especially as people are using many different modelling programs. I'd imagine resizing objects can be done at the basic rigging stage, as we have done with armours etc.

A small note regarding textures - I've not inspected any of your new models yet, but the bit you're saying about white lines etc - this might not be the same thing, and might not be relevant, but I had this happen to me when the texture edges were too close to the model edges on the UV map, and when things were zoomed or resized, it ended up slightly past the edge. It happened far more often on diagonal lines in the texture. Running the textured bit an extra 4 pixels past the edge (or shrinking the UV map a little) seemed to work okay to sort this.

[firehand]

Gold tooth - 64tri. | 128x128px



Download

[Johnnybravo]

Default 3D shader multiply fragment color with texture map color, alpha included. So resulting fragment color will be transparent.
However I have no idea if engine is doing any depth sorting (ideally all the triangles in scene should be sorted by applied textures and depth, so you don't switch textures often - expensive, and have correct transparency), if not transparent surfaces will not display all the polygons behind them.

Not a big deal, because of how the game uses 3D, but still something to keep in mind.
Additionally it's possible to do more than just transparency - for example make parts of model glow (be always bright).

[Imrinfected]

Default 3D shader multiply fragment color with texture map color, alpha included. So resulting fragment color will be transparent.
However I have no idea if engine is doing any depth sorting (ideally all the triangles in scene should be sorted by applied textures and depth, so you don't switch textures often - expensive, and have correct transparency), if not transparent surfaces will not display all the polygons behind them.

Not a big deal, because of how the game uses 3D, but still something to keep in mind.
Additionally it's possible to do more than just transparency - for example make parts of model glow (be always bright).

Is the glowing done through a glow map, or something else?

I've modded games which use glow maps - namely ES3 and ES4. If it's the same thing, or the same idea behind it, that might be interesting to use for a few things.

As far as I can tell, alpha stuff works fine. I did a few fairly primitive tests here. However, I'm not sure how it affects things such as "outline highlights" or shadows. Someone else may have further info on that, but I think it should be fine for what we need here.

Regarding scale of models etc, there's not (to my knowledge) an existing standard size for anything - especially as people are using many different modelling programs. I'd imagine resizing objects can be done at the basic rigging stage, as we have done with armours etc.

A small note regarding textures - I've not inspected any of your new models yet, but the bit you're saying about white lines etc - this might not be the same thing, and might not be relevant, but I had this happen to me when the texture edges were too close to the model edges on the UV map, and when things were zoomed or resized, it ended up slightly past the edge. It happened far more often on diagonal lines in the texture. Running the textured bit an extra 4 pixels past the edge (or shrinking the UV map a little) seemed to work okay to sort this.

I'll investigate this.

EDIT: My problem does seem to have been the Alpha Channel that was created. Here's a render of the Rubber Boots with the alpha channel deleted:



Notice that there are no more white lines around the edges.

However, I am getting a different problem. It probably won't make any difference in-game, but that does depend on how alpha is handled within it. Exporting as obj loses some material data important for preserving alpha in textures within 3ds max, such as a texture being 2-sided, and mono-channel output being set to Alpha.

Here's Steel Component before exporting:



And after:



This can be remedied by exporting as 3ds instead, but that conflicts with my naming scheme, and what's more the model doesn't have the proper texture applied when I load the exported model(I have to re-apply it, strangely. Even though it's already applied it doesn't seem to register until I re-apply it, without even changing any of its properties.)

I'm not sure how to go about resolving this.

Does anyone know if it even matters? So long as the game loads the alpha channel from the texture properly, there's no need for me to even fiddle with this.

So, to clarify the question: If I only have the texture applied to the model as Diffuse, will the game still use the alpha channel within the texture to handle the transparency of the object?

[Luther Blissett]

I think I wouldn't worry too much about that. Models and textures can be re-attached with text in the fo3d. Also, if they're going to be rigged for hands, they can simply have the texture reattached at that stage instead. As long as it's got the UV map data, shouldn't be a problem (I think).

[Imrinfected]

I think I wouldn't worry too much about that. Models and textures can be re-attached with text in the fo3d. Also, if they're going to be rigged for hands, they can simply have the texture reattached at that stage instead. As long as it's got the UV map data, shouldn't be a problem (I think).

Excellent, then.

Hopefully these settings will save that entire step, but it's good to know that this is still covered in a worst-case scenario.

[Johnnybravo]

Is the glowing done through a glow map, or something else?

I've modded games which use glow maps - namely ES3 and ES4. If it's the same thing, or the same idea behind it, that might be interesting to use for a few things.
I'll investigate this.

It might be whatever, even just bright pixels on the diffuse maps (or masking the effect with alpha). But right, most generic way to achieve that kind of effect is to add colors from another map to the result.

[Imrinfected]

Robot Parts.
53 polys.
90 tris.



http://www.mediafire.com/?g0totaph05esa5d

I have four other versions of this, 3 of which ended up being more than 150 polys.

It's hard to model something low-poly using an inventory icon which is a pile of parts as a reference. I tried making what is essentially a lumpy mass with robot parts textured onto it, but that would not only look crappy but also be impossible to rig so I ended up not texturing it. This has a handle, at least.

Since it's pretty generic in that it's a box, I decided to put "Robot parts" on it, and in red no less. No way people will mistake this for something else entirely now - no sir. There's even a cord hanging out, so that's gotta be some indication. Even so, this came out with more polys that I would have liked.


Heart-shaped Locket.
38 polys.
76 tris.



http://www.mediafire.com/?aoago4hnwu25mbo

The texture is pretty lack-luster. I'm not sure what picture is supposed to be inside of it, so I decided not to put one in - so I tried to make it look like just a dingy piece of paper, that way at a distance it's difficult to tell if there's anything on it. I used transparency on a plane to get the chain, where the plane is an ngon with the vertices moved into different positions to make best use of the triangulation, which makes the chain bend. I think the chain came out quite nice.

Without Alpha channel:
90 polys.
174 tris.



http://www.mediafire.com/?d06ophupujghkp6


Locket.
17 polys.
34 tris.



http://www.mediafire.com/?qb1znkzum7dz61b

This also uses a plane with transparency for the chain. The alpha could have been done just a bit better to get rid of those parts where you can see white, but that's negligible really.

Without Alpha channel:
46 polys.
90 tris.



http://www.mediafire.com/?6fx9104v8k9etp3


I saw this on the Item Development Tracker:

- alpha-channel shouldn't be used in the texture;

I'll revise the models that I've used the alpha channel with to meet this apparent requirement.

[Karpov]

Hi, if you can export the files into .x format, then you can start adding them into the game easily. Inside _FOhuman.fo3d, under "Layer 1" you will find all the lines corresponding to the weapons, their values are the same as the Item Ids, so just copy a line, and change its value number to the item number you are adding, and then change the name of the model for yours.

Note: When you export the model please use the prefix "ITEM_" for both model and texture files.

I don't know about other software, but for 3dsMax there is a plugin called PandaExporter, which is very good for x files.