ART - Environmental Models

[Vaaish]

Can't the water be mapped as a texture? I think it could still look nice, or is that for animation purposes?

 

Anyway, here's a chair a made just now, one straight version (12 polies) and one a bit rounded (36 polies) It's just an extruded line, so it can be given any wanted length without using additional polies. I don't know if it's still possible to alter those dimensions once it's converted to .3ds, so maybe I should create a few different lengths?

Meshes are updated.

I think it needs a little more substantial. Looks a little like paper right now.

 

and yes the water can be a shader or texture map.

Edited July 20, 2003 by Vaaish

[j'ordos]

It's an alien alloy chair: strong without the need for cm-thick plate But I can thicken it a bit, I was just trying to make something with as few poly's as possible :wink:

[Breunor]

These are looking good. The thin chair can be thickened a little if we need to. Once converted to 3ds, you can still scale an object fine, so different sizes can still be made.

 

Jim69, make sure to post the models in 3ds format rather than max (could you update the links please?), and Cubik could you link the model files for what you made too? Thanks for all the work guys, this will really help us get some battlescapes going when we get to that bridge.

[Guest Jim69]

K, updated all the files. I'll probably work here 4 a while since my modelling aint very good, a little like my programming Since I gotta learn both 4 work I'll be keeping a eye on whats going on in both, and doing my best 2 help where I can.

[j'ordos]

I've tried Drewid's suggestion of deleting unvisible poly's and it works GREAT!

I'll update the meshes (again, sorry Breunor :wink: )

Oil tank is now 89 poly's (I've added 2 flat faces for the ladder, but texturing does not seem like my cup of tea )

Bench is now 38 poly's

Book case is 47 (removed doorknobs as well, might as well be textured I think)

Table is 60

and Chair is 19, I've included a new pic here of different lengths, chair in .3ds file is 100cm wide.

Edited July 24, 2003 by j'ordos

[Guest Jim69]

Hey, I think this is the right place 4 this. I was messin around tryin to learn all the functions, I'm still not very good at skinning so I'll leave that 2 someone else if they wanna take it up.

 

It's a 5 a side pitch, theres plenty where I live and most places I see in England, and I recon it could be changed very easily into a basketball court for american cities.

[Guest Jim69]

The poly count is 1332, but I imagine this being quite big in battle scape so i dunno if this is an issue. I was thinking the walls shown would be brick, with the other 2 being chain link fence. Heres the file:

pitch.3DS

[Guest Jim69]

And the Basketball court version. Same thing, just with 2 hoops instead of 2 goals.

[Guest Jim69]

And here's the file, all my MAX files screwed up 4 some reason and when I import from the 3DS file it says there are 0 polys ?!

bb_court.3ds

Edited July 20, 2003 by Jim69

[j'ordos]

Well, here's a simple trashcan, polycount 36

[j'ordos]

And I've put some things together to create a bus shelter, totals at 148

Edited July 20, 2003 by j'ordos

[Vaaish]

looking nice.

 

Jim, try using blocks for the goal posts or 5 sided cylinders. 1300 is a bit heafty for a few simple blocks and posts.

[Kenshiro]

Here's a StreetCar, 98 polys for each car. The 3DS model includes only one car since they're basically identical and we might not want to place two if they're near the edge of the map.

[Kenshiro]

Here's the 3DS:

Streetcar.3ds

[Vaaish]

kenshiro: can you post them on a 50% gray background from now on?

[Kenshiro]

But I -like- the black!

 

*kicks a little pebble*

 

Allllriiiight.

Edited July 20, 2003 by Kenshiro

[Guest Jim69]

looking nice.

 

Jim, try using blocks for the goal posts or 5 sided cylinders. 1300 is a bit heafty for a few simple blocks and posts.

Hmm, yeah OK, guess I'm kinda new to the whole poly reduction thing, I might even try it with triangles since noone else will see it from the kinda distance I imagine.

[Guest Jim69]

Yep, u were right

 

Got the footie court down 2 300, here's the pic...

Edited July 20, 2003 by Jim69

[Guest Jim69]

And the file...

5_a_side.3DS

Edited July 20, 2003 by Jim69

[Guest Jim69]

And the updated basketball court, 232 polys:

[Guest Jim69]

And the file. I'm gonna have a crack at skinning, do I have 2 include ne txture files I use with the 3ds file?

bb_court.3ds

[Kenshiro]

Here's a soda machine, 18 polys. Here's the model file.

 

EDIT: Smaller pic.

Edited July 20, 2003 by Kenshiro

[Kenshiro]

A vending machine done with the same model and different textures. VendingMachine.3ds

[Vaaish]

And the updated basketball court, 232 polys:

getting better. now go through and delete the faces that noone will see. like the underside of the court or the bottom end of the posts.

[Kenshiro]

International Crosswalk. This brings up a point - there definately should be differences in the models we use for different regions of the world.

 

IntlCrossing.3ds

[Guest Jim69]

And the updated basketball court, 232 polys:

getting better. now go through and delete the faces that noone will see. like the underside of the court or the bottom end of the posts.

Did that, now 168 poly's :happybanana:

 

I recon I get it now, if I just goto the view point every so often I can make sure I'm not deleting polys that u can c most things are fair game. I think I could prob get that figure down a little more if I look around, I will do tomorrow. Will also do 4 the Comp and desk I did, recon I can get that quite low.

 

Edit: Also got the footie court from 300 to 164 .

Edited July 20, 2003 by Jim69

[j'ordos]

I've been working on a texture map for that Oil Tank. May need some improvement, but well, at least the ladder worked with an opacity map

[Breunor]

All these models are looking great! Don't worry about updates and my posting them, I just update the file and the rest can stay. I'm starting to break out the categories a bit as we go, and eventually each model will have this format: model,picture:artist;

 

For the texture used on the ladder, that's something I'm not familiar with. But I thought it might be useful for the basketball court, to make a chain link fence texture that could be used around the court. Most inner-city ball courts have a 10-12 foot fence around them to keep the balls in there and off the streets.

 

I'll get all the new entries in place tomorrow.

[Kenshiro]

Hey J'Ordos, your oil tank looks cool, thought you might be able to use these. I was actually planning on modeling a fuel tank myself, and came up with these. Feel free to use all some or none.

[Kenshiro]

Here's a power pole. It's a little on the high side for poly count (218) but it looks the part and is trimmed down as much as possible. PowerPole.3ds

[red knight]

People spice up for some more detailed models, I had read the specs of the GeForce 2 (our lower level) and it can theoretically handle 56000 polygons per scene (on screen), :cough: make that 46000 to be sure. Better to do them higher than redo them later on higher detail...

By the way with the latest hardware the polygons are not the principal issue.... the shaders are...

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Cubik]

Do you just take photos with a digital camera, and use them directly as textures?

That dumpster looks really lifelike, by the way.

[Kenshiro]

I use a combination of digital reference photos and illustrator artwork composited and shaded with photoshop. The airbrush and pencil tools are particularly effective in producing the fine details such as scratches and dirty areas that make it look really lifelike. Also, its important to make sure the texture has all the labels and markings the real item would have, which is where illustrator comes in handy. It's usually better to use snippets of the digital photo rather than the whole thing, because that way you have complete control of the aspect ratio.

 

Doing your own labels gives you the opportunity for fun. I like to throw in little details just below the resolution level that a player is going to see most of the time. For instance, the front of the newsstand above reads "Unfortunate News" with the tagline "It sucks to be you!" The post no bills side of the mailbox uses photos from a website I found about London's telephone booth girls, who use little cards to advertise their special services. If you find the site, it's pretty amusing what those little decals on the newsstand actually say.

 

Most of the time, the digital photo will have problems with perspective or lens distortion, so the digital photo is often more useful as a source for your color pallette via the eyedropper tool. What works really well is to put together a gradient for each "solid" color on the object your modelling using the eyedropper to get the ranges of the colors, then hit it with airbrush in one of the intermediate colors to disrupt the pattern. A rule of thumb to use in detailing is that black is almost never actually completely black and white is never completely white.

 

For "focus point" details such as ornaments or objects like the newspaper in the photo, it's easiest to snag the whole area with the lasso tool and place it into your artwork, adjusting levels and hue/saturation to match. Graffitti works as an overlay or darken layer, depending on how light the background shades you're working with are.

 

I'd recommend picking up a copy of Digital Texturing and Painting by Owen Demers. It's really a good source book on making things look good. I'm still learning things from it and it covers the subject really thoroughly.

 

EDIT: Corrections and minor additions.

Edited July 21, 2003 by Kenshiro

[Kenshiro]

It's good to know what the target figures are, however look at this math:

 

A plain wall segment is a mininum of 18 polys but doorways and windows reach 100 or more. Most of our other models are around 100-200 polys.

 

If there are quite a few of these objects in the scene (for instance a couple medium sized houses of one to x stories, a dozen or so pieces of furniture on each floor, plus an outside street with trimmings) we could reach 20000-30000 polys in the scene in short order. Also consider how much terrain an isometric perspective can cover, especially if zoomed out. Then if we have a couple dozen 1000 poly troops carrying 400 poly weapons and 100 poly equipment, plus aliens, plus civilians in the scene, we approach the upper capabilities of the GeForce 2 rapidly.

 

Now, a current Radeon would eat such scenes for breakfast, but I recommend we stay conservative for now. Since everything is intended to be destructible, we're going to have to anticipate some relatively high poly counts. And we can't completely max out the video card with the scene alone if we want to keep the animations nice.

 

We can accomplish good detail with sound texture work without having to blow the poly budget. We can have a few set pieces with high counts, but most stuff should stay below 250. If you recall, most games designed for the Geforce 2 generation of cards had relatively low detail in their models, but I don't remember too many games that looked crapalicious because by that point texturing had progressed enough to compensate. We can do the same thing.

 

Of course, this is all my $.02, not binding in any way.

[Breunor]

I totally agree Kenshiro. Walking 24 soldiers out of a 1500 poly Avenger, and 75% of the poly count is gone right there. Thta's probably worst case scenario for a single screen, but it's still good to leave our options open. For example, lots of models look very detailed because of their textures.

 

I'm going to play with making a sidewalk/curb/street cross-section, as the street would actually be a little below grade to get the little drop along the curb. I'm terrible with textures, but once it's done I'll try putting some sections together and we can make some simple street shots. Wohoo!

[j'ordos]

Kenshiro, I've used one or two of your pics here, on my second go on a textured oil tank. Considering my previous experience with textures I don't consider it that bad, but for some reason the caps of the tank look different, however it's the same texture

[Kenshiro]

Looking good! Not sure why you're getting the difference in texture but it looks fine this way also. If you want to give it a weathered look, try adding concentrated rust around weld seams and rust pitting across areas where water would drip.

[Breunor]

Can I guess you applied that texture to the entire model from the same side? What happens is you get faces that are perpendicular to your viewing angle having the texture stretched out. What I suggest you do is only texture the sides first, then texture the ends after changing the perspective/viewing angle. That should get the texture to apply correctly.

[j'ordos]

Seems I found what's wrong... I made a texture map with illustrator and then applied it as a material to the model, and used unwrap UVW to place it right. But I made the map too small, so there wasn't enough clean white space for the caps, so I scaled them down. I then applied a composite map for the weathering, which is why the textures looked bigger as it got scaled too :Blush:

I've redone it, but I'll probably have to start over with a new map, 'cause now it's a bit too much :crying:

 

Oh well, it needed some more weathering, as Kenshiro said

Edited July 21, 2003 by j'ordos

[Breunor]

Attached is the street and intersection tiles. Kenshiro is going to work up a texture for these (thanks!), but people can scale their stuff based of this if you want. It's all based on the block.3ds file in the assetlist.

 

IMO the city area can be based on 50'/15m grids. The street is 15 meters wide and includes a 3m sidewalk on either side, leaving 9 meters for the 2 lanes. That's pretty close so I figured we could start with that.

 

The intersection includes the corners where the sidewalks meet up as well, so we should be able to tile these pieces together for sample blocks. It leaves a 30m square, which should be plenty for a couple small buildings or 1 or 2 larger ones.

 

If it ends up we need to make things wider (like 20 squares), we can do that easily enough. I thought this would create a good balance between packed in buildings and open spaces.

street.zip

[Guest Jim69]

All these models are looking great! Don't worry about updates and my posting them, I just update the file and the rest can stay. I'm starting to break out the categories a bit as we go, and eventually each model will have this format: model,picture:artist;

 

For the texture used on the ladder, that's something I'm not familiar with. But I thought it might be useful for the basketball court, to make a chain link fence texture that could be used around the court. Most inner-city ball courts have a 10-12 foot fence around them to keep the balls in there and off the streets.

 

I'll get all the new entries in place tomorrow.

Thats exactly what I was thinking, I even got the texture from a free website I am crap at skinning tho, is it just me or is skinning in 3DS MAX very hard? I also don't know how 2 do alpha textures, well I can do them in PSP which I was planning 2 do when I get the court down 2 a respectable poly count.

 

If someone could point me 2 a tutorial on skinning in 3DS Max 4.2 then I would be eternally greatfull ( as the one in prog skimps on a LOT of important details )

[j'ordos]

I've been busy today Here's another tank, I still haven't found out how to put extra rust near joints, so I'll wait with posting these skinned models as .3ds, if you guys think they're good enough of course Also, if anyone can give me some hints about texture maps, please do! I've made one here, but the letters are barely readable (if not un-), and the flammable icon is nearly useless (I had made the map with illustrator, 256*256 px)

EDIT: now I think of it, the previous maps were a LOT bigger, that should be it. What size should those texture maps be?

 

Jim, I don't really know any tutorials, sorry. Everything I know is by using the tutorials given with max and own experimentation. You can make an alpha map, you need two pictures for that: one with the part of the image you want to remain visible, and another where the visible part is white, the transparant part is black. You then open material editor, and click the button next to "diffuse color", select to use a bitmap and load the first image. Next you scroll down to "maps" section, still in material editor, and next to "opacity" click the button that says "none". There you load the black & white image. That should do it.

If you have any futher questions I'll be glad to help, but I'm new to this too... so don't expect too much from me :whatwhat:

Edited July 21, 2003 by j'ordos

[Cubik]

Jim69, you might want to check this out:

Low poly texturing

[Guest Jim69]

Thanx a lot, I'll check them out and c if I can't make a decent lookin B ball court from the 268 polys I got right now

[Cubik]

The postbox again, this time with some textures, 162 polygons:

[Breunor]

I tossed several of the items together into a scene with the streets. Not much to look at without the textures, but it was more to check out proportions. A few items were scaled a bit, if anyone is using Milkshape I can attach the ms3d file so you can check it out. This scene is at around 4600 polys, but I'll reach a different limit much sooner, being the groupings. I can only have 128 I think, and then the app starts to get unstable. I notice some of the models had several groupings, just make sure that it's split up for something like animation, damage removal, etc. If it's supposed to be a single object, just regroup everything before exporting. Eventually someone with a different app will need to make these scenes, or I need to find another app for laying it out...

[j'ordos]

I don't think there need to be power lines on both sides of the road, IRL there's only a line on one side of the road, and it branches off to houses on the other side. (at least, that's how it's done here, maybe it's different )

[Kenshiro]

Here's a coffee maker, 98 polys.

[miceless]

Bah, its all underground for us. But thats boring.

[Aosar]

Bah, its all underground for us. But thats boring.

 

But it saves polys

 

Damn, patience seems to be a virtue that I don't have :crying:

I want to play Xenoside already...

 

Well, as I seem to have nothing constructive to say, I shall therefore go to sleep, it IS late where I live so... good night and so on... (simply had to use that smiley...)