20 replies to this topic

[fidel_]

I have been trying to work with this house model for a day or two, but recently I ran into troubles because of too high poly counts. This is because every part of the building is a small block, and even small details in the model will lead to atrociously high poly count due to the large number of blocks. I made a mistake of making the outer walls too detailed at first, and even now as I have optimized most of the model, it's still about 3500 polys with over 7000 vertices (if I recall correctly). Now I think that simple models and good texturing might have been a better way to do this. The model still has some things to do but I'm not sure if I should just scrap it and star a new. Textures are for most part from this site.

House Model: http://koti.phnet.fi...ages/house1.rar (when I tried importing the model I exported back 3dsmax, it was without textures. only way I could put them back was to assign all the materials again to all the objects, I'm not sure how to fix this)
House Images: http://koti.phnet.fi...images/x/house/

Here's couple of other things I've made but I'm not sure if they fit. A high explosive and a stun grenade (which is in fact a flashbang of familiar design, do they still use flashbangs in the distant future, or would it more likely be some nerve gas grenade etc.). The high explosive is rather heavy though, and I can't imagine soldiers trying to toss it more than few meters away. Maybe they can roll it down the stairs. Texturing by me.

EDIT: Forgot to say that both of these are x-net models, nade is 700 poly and high exp 2100 (I used some mesh smoothing on the handles so it upped the polycount quite a bit).

High explosive model: http://koti.phnet.fi...mages/hiexp.rar
High explosive images: http://koti.phnet.fi...tt/images/x/he/

Nade model: http://koti.phnet.fi...es/stunnade.rar
Nade images: http://koti.phnet.fi.../images/x/nade/

Comments welcome.

Oh and what should I do with the models? I know that we have a place for them where they are uploaded but as I couldn't figure out how to do it I just used my webspace for now.

Edited by fidel_, 08 January 2004 - 08:51 PM.

[Vaaish]

I have been trying to work with this house model for a day or two, but recently I ran into troubles because of too high poly counts. This is because every part of the building is a small block, and even small details in the model will lead to atrociously high poly count due to the large number of blocks. I made a mistake of making the outer walls too detailed at first, and even now as I have optimized most of the model, it's still about 3500 polys with over 7000 vertices (if I recall correctly).  Now I think that simple models and good texturing might have been a better way to do this. The model still has some things to do but I'm not sure if I should just scrap it and star a new. Textures are for most part from this site.

House Model: http://koti.phnet.fi...ages/house1.rar (when I tried importing the model I exported back 3dsmax, it was without textures. only way I could put them back was to assign all the materials again to all the objects, I'm not sure how to fix this)
House Images: http://koti.phnet.fi...images/x/house/

Here's couple of other things I've made but I'm not sure if they fit. A high explosive and a stun grenade (which is in fact a flashbang of familiar design, do they still use flashbangs in the distant future, or would it more likely be some nerve gas grenade etc.). The high explosive is rather heavy though, and I can't imagine soldiers trying to toss it more than few meters away. Maybe they can roll it down the stairs.  Texturing by me.

EDIT: Forgot to say that both of these are x-net models, nade is 700 poly and high exp 2100 (I used some mesh smoothing on the handles so it upped the polycount quite a bit).

High explosive model: http://koti.phnet.fi...mages/hiexp.rar
High explosive images: http://koti.phnet.fi...tt/images/x/he/

Nade model: http://koti.phnet.fi...es/stunnade.rar
Nade images: http://koti.phnet.fi.../images/x/nade/

Comments welcome.

Oh and what should I do with the models? I know that we have a place for them where they are uploaded but as I couldn't figure out how to do it I just used my webspace for now.

Your house looks nice but the siding only needs to be a texture not acutally modeled. that will save you a ton of polys. also the windo can just be a single ploly since we can get the same effect just using an alpha map with a specualr on the windows to look like there are bars in them. and the roof to can be a single poly with that detail added with a texture. so try slicing off all that detail and using textures (if you need some there are pleanty on the art assests list) and see what your poly count is.

EDIT: Note to others doing wall sections, please look at how he put a DIFFERENT texture on the inside wall. This looks alot nicer than having a brick texture on both sides. something like it is easy enough to do with a single 256 texture, just split the thing in half and to the outside texture on one half and the inside texture on the other half (walls aren't that complex of textures)

HE: Looks nice but it doesn't look... explosive, looks more like a safe. maybe more like paper coated bricks of C4 with that nice display pannel put on it would work better, just a thought though.

nade: Looks like a nade, though maybe change the texture to say smoke grenade since we aren't going to have a flashbang.

Edited by Vaaish, 09 January 2004 - 12:33 AM.

[Breunor]

Vaaish is correct on the walls and textures, linked in the asset list are some sample wall chunks, each 1m section costs 10 polys. They are not finished 100%, like he said having the interior and exterior mapped with different textures. Also the window frame and glass are grouped seperately, but they could/should be all 1 group, and an alpha map over the glass section for transparency. I originally made the glass as a seperate material and group in case we wanted to be able to destroy the glass with any amount of damage, and then take out the whole wall with a higher level of damage. I've noticed that when you import a 3ds file it doesn't always load the texture, although it has the information there. I imported your house into Milkshape and the textures were all there. I did notice that parts of the roof are missing, mostly at the corners of the building, and there are some stray faces sticking out as well. Your scale was right on, but the model should be sitting on the X-Y plane. This one is around 7 inches underground. I liked your ground edging details around the base of the house, but make sure that the final outer edge of the yard plane is snapped at 0 height so that it will line up with other models. The last thing which most non-milkshape users forget about, is that the Y and Z axes are swapped for 3DMax and Milkshape, so the model imports with a 90 degree rotation along the X axis. That's not a big deal, so long as it's otherwise aligned properly.

The siding and roofing can look more detailed using bump maps rather than putting in more polys, but 7000 is reasonable for larger buildings including the interior walls and furniture. Meaning that while this house will drop in polycount when you use totally flat walls, you'll find larger buildings still have this high count. But that will be ok.

As to posting the models, what you did is fine, you can either link to the file (ok), attach it to your post (better), or upload it to the site's ftp server and link to them there(best). Once you're a full member you'll have ftp access, so for now I'll ftp the files for you. Once you made the changes mentioned just repost so we can get the update and I'll send them up. As for the 2 weapons, there are seperate threads for each weapon/category within this forum, I would post your models in there so we can keep it all in 1 place. They are nice concepts, and will get responses as they're seen I'm sure. Keep up all the good work, your models are looking good!

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Those are some really good looking models!

[fidel_]

Thanks for the feedback. Sorry for the building being tipped over, I forgot to rotate it properly. I'm not sure what was wrong with the model you imported Breunor (missing tiles and stray faces), but I've now redone most of it. Now I face a different issue, which is clipping and small gaps between the blocks. I could fix this by tweaking the vertices, but it's so much pain that I would rather do the whole model from scratch properly. Anyways, when I removed all those details the polycount dropped down over 50%. I builded a much more complex building than the previous one from the blocks for testing, and it was 1550 polys. (see pic below)

Also, I started working on a another building, it's 10x10 squares in size, and 1470 polys atm. I'll be planning on adding some stone walls on front of the house at least, and do some furniture. I left the ground untextured for now. I'll probably have it ready for export tomorrow or early next week.

Attached Files

•  testdrive1.jpg   38.44K   12 downloads

[fidel_]

Here's the redone model.

Attached Files

•  house_dev5.jpg   31.13K   10 downloads

[revenant4]

Looks great...the layout feels just like the ones in the original...great job...one suggestion though...is there a backdoor...if there is ignore this but if not it would be great to add one...for both an escape route if needed and every house in the original had one...

Edited by revenant4, 10 January 2004 - 10:16 PM.

[Vaaish]

Fidel: looks good, but what happened to the roof? also on the inside you have the tile floor and then it stops as it nears the wall, it this due to the wall having a base plate section that extends into the room or simply a texturing choice? if it is the former you might be able to save more polys by cutting out that base and just making the floor extend up to there.

also, if there is a choice between saving time and going back to redo a job properly, just redo it properly, we are in no rush right now for most of these models.

Edited by Vaaish, 10 January 2004 - 10:55 PM.

[Breunor]

Those are nice looking houses! I think the flooring pattern was intentional, I've seen several tile floor patterns where the border along the wall is different than the main time. The roof looks like it has an indentation along it, an intentional design choice. It looks good to me, and I agree with adding a back door where possible, although not all buildings have to have one.

The wall sections should be OK if the verts are snapped to the grid, on mine the finest grid is 1 inch so the snap puts them all in place nicely. I'm putting together 1 or two, but I'm going to get a single texture compiled from the various ones I'm currently using so I can map it all together.

[fidel_]

I'm not finished with the second building yet, it's taking a bit longer than I thought. I've now done some furniture and added bump mapping to the walls. I'll just have to do few more decoration objects and it will be pretty close to being finished. Only thing I need to figure out is the ground texture.

Current polycount with all the furniture is 1300.

Attached Files

•  talo11.jpg   30.78K   11 downloads

[fidel_]

Another view.

Now that I look at it, I think I should add that trellis type roof in to the windows too.

Attached Files

•  talo231231.jpg   28.39K   10 downloads

Edited by fidel_, 14 January 2004 - 09:34 PM.

[fux0r666]

You rock, fidel.

[red knight]

Very good work... Keep going...

Greetings
Red Knight

[Breunor]

That is looking great! I see that model going very well in an arid environment, with a sandy/dirt ground texture. You could also use a very light colored grass texture, something that looks like it's been worn down by lots of foot traffic. Awesome job!

[Puasonen]

The furniture brings me a question. Will buildings be like in enemy unknown and tftd? I mean is the furniture always the same and in same places?

[fidel_]

The furniture brings me a question. Will buildings be like in enemy unknown and tftd? I mean is the furniture always the same and in same places?

I've been thinking about that too. Currently I believe the plan is to do all terror site maps by random generating them using already built houses (such as this one) to populate them. This would probably mean that every house of the same type would look the same inside.

I would really like to have some kind of a map editor for terror sites (I'm just daydreaming now). Because all the buildings are built from blocks, it would allow to build quite a variety of buildings, and have different decorations for each one. This can be doable in the modeling program too, but it's much less hassle to do this through a game editor. (Programmers might not agree though )

Back to reality now, so, can anyone update me how the battlescape maps really are built? Or has there not been any definite solution to that yet?

[Breunor]

AFAIK, for v1 simplicity, we're looking at a template layout for structures, then a terrain generator will work around that. So for a crash site, if there's a building it will be randomly placed and then terrain would be generated around it. For a terror site, the buildings would have a template, and then the building models would be randomly picked from all those available. The more complex this is made, the more models we need and the larger the download becomes...

So the original terror site layout that we had discussed consisted of 4 city blocks with streets. Imagine a square with a plus sign connecting the sides, those are the streets. Each of the 4 blocks that you'd have would be 30m per side. So the plan was to make each building model 15m square, which would let you have a total of 16 different models in that layout. I drew up an sketch in one of the forums that I can't find showing the layout, but it's just 2x2 city blocks, with streets around each block. Each building's ground level would need to line up of course, and having the same grass texture used would be a wise choice. We had also talked about a front property line, meaning the side that faces the street. A business would typically be shifted forward, while a residence would be shifted back from the street. These were the ideas...

As for rendering, Ogre needs each model converted to .mesh format, but I'm not sure about anything else regarding it yet, like how it assigns locations and connects meshes together. ogre.sourceforge.net has more info.

[revenant4]

Another question to throw in is the look of the houses...all the houses felt like I was in a farming community in North America...Africa, China, Russia...all houses can't look the same...right?...are we going to add differences to the Decor of the buildings depending on the location?

[MagicAndy]

All hail...

Fidel

very nice work!!

[Puasonen]

Another question to throw in is the look of the houses...all the houses felt like I was in a farming community in North America...Africa, China, Russia...all houses can't look the same...right?...are we going to add differences to the Decor of the buildings depending on the location?

Only in terrorsites in V1, and terror sites aren't completely different either. They just has something to remind you where you are.
For example eiffel tower in Paris or pyramids in egypt

[Breunor]

The plan was to make all the models vary based on the continent the battlescape was generated in. Not only terror sites but also crash sites, etc. Check out my first post in the environmental model thread regarding that, I was asking people to submit pictures for distinct cultural architecture that we could add to generic buildings to spice them up and make variations. Typically different rooflines and texturing would provide what we need. We also discussed a model name system partly based on location to help the code sort which models to pick from. None of that has really happened so far due to lack of modelers/interest.

So until people start working on more designs, we'll be using what building models we have for everything. It will eventually boil down to how much time people have for variations. My suggestion would be to work on a complete set of buildings that look good next to each other, so that we can make a terror site with some variety. Whether it looks like north america/europe/whatever doesn't matter IMO. After that's done, then we can look at making distinct variations to all the models, so make for example an asia set or africa set if that's what we need.