3d models development

[Luther Blissett]

The snapshot links from the tutorials I posted should all work - http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=18777.0

Beyond that, I'm unsure about the X export from blender - but if you've got a couple of files to test, I'd like to have a look at them and give it a try. You seem to be making some very good progress with these, so I'm hoping the animations are compatible with the existing models and rigging - if not, then I suppose trying to edit / adjust until they are should be a bit of a priority. If we can start getting your stuff into the game, that could really bring us forward with getting this into a fully workable state.

I did toy with trying to get the existing skeleton into blender. The unrigged skeleton will import (I remember testing this ages ago) - the problem is it's unrigged - and needs re-rigging accurately. This could be done by manually linking each vertex to each bone when compared to a reference model in Fragmotion (which will import fully rigged models and animations), but it's not going to be a quick or fun task

[Jotisz]

About X exporter in blender it should work if not you can still try to export first to FBX then have someone export it to x format from 3ds Max. The animations look real good btw I especially like the crippled legs.

Edit almost forgot about this a little peek at the armature of the mutie

[Lizard]

The mutant looks pretty good, Jotisz! Also, much thanks for the appreciation, it motivates me a lot.

What about the .BVH files for bipeds, btw, could you find a use for them? The FBX export screwed the deformation and .X, Collada and 3ds ignored the animations., as well as the materials.

fatmanwalk.bvh
53.5 KB
www.megaupload.com/?d=SW4QQSYK

[Luther Blissett]

Should be able to use the BVH file for animation (i.e. import / re-export it) - though it would need to match a rigged model.

[Lizard]

Yeah, and it's only for bipeds...
Argh. I spent the whole day on trying to convert lossless .blend to .x, since the Blender doesn't convert animations in 2.6. And the working exporter in 2.4 won't open the newer .blend with "key informations", like animations.

This here is a best result i could get today. A disfigured .fbx, which can be probably edited in fragMOTION and other abominations. Could you do something with it?

I call it a day.

exports.rar
280.5 KB
www.megaupload.com/?d=EJBN0NSG

[Luther Blissett]

I will have a quick look now

The bvh you gave earlier imported okay, except for being rotated to lay face down (easy to fix, I think). Some of the bones might need renaming for it to work correctly, but I think it's convertible.

I should find out tomorrow morning if I've got a) A horribly busy week full of work, or b) A nice, easy week. If the latter, I will see about trying to catch up with a lot of the work on this. I've got a lot of half-finished things which I could easily get to a finished state if I have a bit of free time.

[edit] The import seemed very messed up when I checked. I'll try to have a more thorough investigation of the files (time permitting), and see if I can get something working though. I'm very keen to try and find a way to get these working in game as soon as possible, because you're doing some very good and important work here, and the sooner we can sort some kind of workflow from Blender to the game, the better.

[Lizard]

So... Blender pretty much failed me at exporting it to various formats. Both versions screwed up all converts, well, except for .bvh, which, Luther, as you said, needs to be flipped and renamed, what can be done.

As possible, not-so-elegant solution, i suggest to import first the start-up pose as .OBJ, (deformed mesh), then import the .BVH skeleton and implant it manually in different 3d package. (parent the posed mesh to the skeleton pose). Then, hoping, that it would convert it to .X correctly.

That gets even more complicated...

Luther, Karpov, could you try this "import" here in Max or in Wings?

I have renamed the bones accordingly to Karpov's animations and flipped them in 3 different directions.
Mind that, there are a few bones more, like one additional finger joint and thumbs as well as the handles. I guess they will be ignored by the import.

The:
1. "beertime1.bvh" is a position of bones as they are in Blender.
2. "beertime2.bvh" is a position of bones as they get opened correctly by default in fragMOTION. (90 degrees backwards, i think this one should be positioned correctly, Luther)
3. "beertime3.bvh" is a position of bones as i found them in Karpov's BVH's
4. "beertime.obj" is a starting point for the animation and is the object that will be welded to the starting frame. (i hope this works)

beertime.rar
84.4 KB
www.megaupload.com/?d=ZONPMAHE
 

[Luther Blissett]

Excellent - I'll try and have a look at this tomorrow. I managed an unrelated transfer of both rigged model and independent animations from Wings>Fragmotion>Fonline the other day whilst testing stuff, so I'm fairly confident I can get something from Fragmotion into the game - not the most elegant solution, but it seems to have worked in my testing.

As far as I know, any "extra" bones would be ignored if the skeleton was merged with an existing skeleton, so I'm fairly hopeful that this might work.

I'll try and grab a bit of time tomorrow and let you know my results

[IvanSyomin]

hi, guys!

haven't been here a looot of time, how is it going??
if it's not the end yet, i'd like to model somewhat items for project

and to start (again ) it will be the Howitzer Shell (68 tris)


model is sent to Graf

Cheers!

[Zogra]

Everything seems to work as excpected (I used some random filter to create specular map, so that's why it looks like crap), however it seems that it'll be required to have custom fo3d file for specular mapped skins, as it seems there's no way to apply effect only to layer.

I'll do normal mapped version and stealthboy effect the next and meanwhile create some thread with downloads and directions.

very nice 

[IvanSyomin]

Hi, all!

Some long time ago I've made Gauss Pistol, and here is the ammo for it:
2mmEC (38 tris, 128px texture)

[EnclaveSniper]

Beautiful, I'm pretty sure we have Gauss pistol ammo already, but it looks nowhere near as good as this does.
Kudos.

[Haraldx]

It is surprisingly high-poly. :/

[Graf]

I don't know, if anybody else thought on that matter, but I guess I've just discovered a way to increase the performance significantly by decreasing the polycount without of quality loss at all. Well, in fact its not me, who discovered it, but I haven't seen anyone here mentioning that method.

What I mean, is why do we need to have a base model under the armor? It surely doesn't serve any real purpose, except that it loads the client's memory some more. We could simply use the method, that is used to hide the hair, while the character wears a hat. Basically this means, that the character in the armor won't have anything under the part of his body, that is covered by the armor (this could be easily achieved by the use of subsets). This will decrease the polycount by 50-90% and what's even more important - you'll never see the imperfections in the models caused by its resizing, which makes it easier to resize all existing models for various body types.

Well, I hope this idea is clear enough. And yeah, guys, it seems like the time to finish up the project has come. So let's give the Fonline 3D another chance to release!

[JovankaB]

I don't know, if anybody else thought on that matter, but I guess I've just discovered a way to increase the performance significantly by decreasing the polycount without of quality loss at all. Well, in fact its not me, who discovered it, but I haven't seen anyone here mentioning that method.

What I mean, is why do we need to have a base model under the armor? It surely doesn't serve any real purpose, except that it loads the client's memory some more. We could simply use the method, that is used to hide the hair, while the character wears a hat. Basically this means, that the character in the armor won't have anything under the part of his body, that is covered by the armor (this could be easily achieved by the use of subsets). This will decrease the polycount by 50-90% and what's even more important - you'll never see the imperfections in the models caused by its resizing, which makes it easier to resize all existing models for various body types.

Well, I hope this idea is clear enough. And yeah, guys, it seems like the time to finish up the project has come. So let's give the Fonline 3D another chance to release!

Great idea, I'm a bit afraid of the 3D performance.
Will events with like 100 critters be possible without a very good graphics card? :/