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Deimos

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Update for the Plasma Rifle. Any suggestions, comments, or whatever before I add final touches?

 

There will be a scope like thing that will appear more high tech, but right now I am going for the body of the gun.

post-29-1053098667_thumb.jpg

Edited by Anglachel
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Great looking model! As a rifle, should there be some type of stock for holding it against your shoulder as you fire? Or is it more along the lines os a SMG, hold it in front of you and let 'em rip?

 

btw, I had this down as a heavy plasma in the assetlist. If that's correct, then the current design makes sense for a heavy weapon, no shoulder stock.

Edited by Breunor
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i like that plasma riffle...

 

 

I think i will drop the waldo thinggy...unless someone else wants to model it for me, that is. I don't fully understand the concept...

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Here is another update. The scope is a pair of screens. My idea on them is that they use an on-board micro computer that compensates for gravity of the planet it is on and utilizes holographic technology that allows zooming and some lead targeting. This is how I would explain the greater accuracy of the weapon. And I added a stock. Any other changes, suggestions, final touches, etc. Any appreciated. If not I will mesh it and start reducing poly count.

 

By the way, what file format will it need to be in for being integrated in the game?

post-29-1053144664_thumb.jpg

Edited by Anglachel
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Guest drewid

Everything is in being stored in .3ds format.

 

This'll look nice textured up

that reminds me I was going to do a texture for some on Cubiks weapons (sorry Cubik, shuttle taking more time than I thought, plus alpha getting in the way, we passed it though, wahoo)

 

The only thing I'm wondering is about the hand grip which looks pretty chunky and maybe hard to get a human hand round. Similar with the bit under the barrel, that might need to be a bit thinner to be able to grab it perhaps?

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Plasma rifle looks good with the stock on it. I agree a little with the grip and stock comments, the 90 degree edges stand out more because of the curves everywhere else. Perhaps if the edges are beveled, and I suggest cutting the rear tip off the trigger grip, looks a little sharp there. The front grip area could possibly be a little thinner for easier grip, but not by much. Maybe 20% thinner. It should still have a thick look to it IMO. Very nice model, can't wait to see it textured!
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btw, I like the concept for the plasma rifle scope. More advanced technology all around that way.
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Update.

The grip is now narrower and the sides were rounded.

The piece under the barrel was narrowed.

The pieces holding the scope lens were rounded.

The trigger guard was rounded.

 

I can not seem to round the stock sides. Apparently it does not like the way I built it and the fact that it will not recognize a side to round as well. :cussing:

I might be able to round the center pieces on the bottom under the barrel, but it will depend on the mood of my CPU. I tell you they have a mind of their own. :wacko:

 

 

Oh, I forgot. I made a render of it for fun, but I don't if I will post it because I can't get it to look the way I want it too. There are too many reflections that kind of distort what it looks like. I will see what I can do on that. I am now using Blue Moon Rendering Tools and assigning materials to the object. This would work great for the xnet photos, but probably won't work for the game.

I am assuming that the textures applied to objects are bump maps, jpeg, and other pictures. I am not to good at making textures of that kind. Anyone what to texture this weapon when I am done with it?

post-29-1053234435_thumb.jpg

Edited by Anglachel
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It's looking great! The sharp things in front are intentionally sharp I think, for focusing the plasma, etc. The only requirements I'm aware of for textures is that the file should be png format, and be sized by a power of 2. So 64, 128, etc, pixels to a side. I think 32 bit or 16 bit depth.

 

Very nice weapon!

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I think he ment rounding the edges not the points but he needs to be clear on what he is talking about. I do not think I am able to do that bacause the object is tapered and comes to a point. If I round the corneres, it will over lap at the ends. I think there are enough curves to keep me busy with poly reductions anyways.

 

I go make rendering now. Be back in about an hour.

Edited by Anglachel
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This is pretty close to how I first envisioned the rifle to look like (not entirely shape but color). This is unrealistic because I do not think the programmers can incorperate the materials aspect of the renderer I use.

 

But the offer is still up. If anyone who even thinks they have a clue when it comes to texturing would better off than I am. So if anyone wants to give it a shot.

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Darn it, I thought I clicked browse not add reply. Oh well, here it is. Isn't it pretty and shiny :wub:

Shall I mesh it and start hunting polys or is there more to do?

post-29-1053360621_thumb.jpg

Edited by Anglachel
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Looking very nice.

 

Is it possible to drop the reflectivity of the yellow and blue hoses? Maybe put a carbon fibre weave texture on them and the pistol grip? Can you try losing the chrome effect on the stock and sights as it makes it look like it was made in Taiwan ;)

 

Maybe another flat texture on those would be good. Also could you make the main body of the gun in Rhodium or irridium as that's our spec for alien weapons.

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Mmmm, shiny looks nice! I agree with limiting the amount of chrome material to the main body only. Perhaps if the material used for the tubes is a little transparent, and illuminated from within? That might give it a nice power-source glow. :rock:
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Drop the reflective on the hoses, no prob.

I don't think I have a carbon fibre weave texture, know where I can get one?

It is not chrome, it is textured metal, a material that gives an affect, not an actual texture. The chrome texture I have does not reflect anything.

 

Even the aliens know everything is made in Taiwan :rolleyes:

 

What is rhodium and irridium? I am guessing a texture. Is there any other specs of the alien weapons I should be aware, or is there posts somewhere I have not found?

 

The tubes are 50-50 transparent. The reflective surface probably reduced that by quite a bit. The panals of the scope are a glass material, not metal. I will see what I can do about an internal glow.

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Drop the reflective on the hoses, no prob.

I don't think I have a carbon fibre weave texture, know where I can get one?

It is not chrome, it is textured metal, a material that gives an affect, not an actual texture.  The chrome texture I have does not reflect anything.

 

Even the aliens know everything is made in Taiwan :rolleyes:

 

What is rhodium and irridium?  I am guessing a texture.  Is there any other specs of the alien weapons I should be aware, or is there posts somewhere I have not found?

 

The tubes are 50-50 transparent.  The reflective surface probably reduced that by quite a bit.  The panals of the scope are a glass material, not metal.  I will see what I can do about an internal glow.

Nvidia have a very nice texture pack available on their developer section. However it's quite large. If you don't want to get those, this thread has a load of links to textures and modelling stuff http://www.xcomufo.com/forums//index.php?a...t=ST&f=29&t=920

 

Rhodium and Irridium are metals that have a unique look to them. Check out the UFO design thread in here. There are pictures and links to see what it looks like. The irridium sheen is what has been generally decided upon as what the alien alloy tech will look like so all alien hardware is going to use it.

 

I figured the tubes might be semi transparent. To get an internal glow, try reversing the normals (in 3dsmax, not sure in other packages) which will put the texture on the inside, set the transparency to whatever works and it'll look like it's glowing from the inside.

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That file sure was large, but I don't know yet if I can use the .dds files it has. Time will tell. I could not find any textures that where niobium, rhodium, or iridium, this was as close I could come to it. There is another that might be close I will post in a few minutes. I am still not sure if I can get something to glow on rhino, I can't find any info online about it.

post-29-1053539754_thumb.jpg

Edited by Anglachel
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Nice texture effect! May I suggest that the purple areas be done in black instead? Too many major color groups makes the model look pieced together IMO. Edited by Breunor
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On which pic and what purple? If you are talking about the grip color, the texture is a dark grey brushed steel just over stretched and I recently expanded the texture so it has finer lines (not those large bands you see not) and looks more like the color it should. Edited by Anglachel
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OK, in the last pic the grips look like a light purple on my screen. Edited by Breunor
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The texture was over stretched. I could not get that purple look out since you mentioned it so I replaced it with a different one to get a darker look. Edited by Anglachel
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Guest drewid

There ya go Cubik One textured SOCOM, now 450 polys.

probably about right for the arming screen. might be too high for in-game - lets wait and see.

 

Could double that for the pedia version.

(real ridges and switches).

 

Its a 256 square texture. OK for the pedia probably, too high for in-game, but we can scale that when we see how it looks.

post-29-1053704433_thumb.jpg

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While everyone else is messing with the color problem, I want to get back to finishing some models. Will you go to page 2 of this thread to look at the grenade I posted and give ideas as to what to do with it (not texture ideas, model ideas) and page 3 for the smoke grenade or should I scrap those.
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First off, that pistol model is awesome! Great work guys!

 

As to the grenade and smoke grenade, they both look fine to me. Once some textures are on them, consider them done IMO. Since they're so small, there's not a lot of detail that I can think of that would add anything to the look. We can use the really smooth/high poly versions with textures for X-Net, and a lower poly version in battle, since you're not going to see much there.

 

For the electro flare, what would people think of some type of caltrop/jack shape with the glow in the center? The little legs hold it up off the ground some, doesn't matter which way's up and sheds more light. I could see using one of Anglachel's tubes from the high explosive as a light stick too. Probably better to stick to that type rather than a glowing caltrop ^_^

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Goddamn great work, drewid! Continiue making textures for the rest of the guns if you want, I can't send you any more models until Sunday night though, being that I'm at home with my family and my usual computer is 500 miles from here. If you could give me some tips on how to texture the guns, I could do it by myself. I see that you use the same picture that I used for reference as texture, but you have used it to paint side/top and bottom pics too. Need some hints on that.
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Caltrop was used as anti calvalry and anti personnel weapon. You tossed it, and a point was always up to harm the unit. My thought was to use like a clear plastic version where the tips would be flexible/spring loaded so they could be folded up. Where the 4 points come together, you'd have the light emitter. A bit more complicated than it needs to be I suppose... Pic of normal caltrops:

caltrop.jpg

Edited by Breunor
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Guest drewid
Goddamn great work, drewid! Continiue making textures for the rest of the guns if you want, I can't send you any more models until Sunday night though, being that I'm at home with my family and my usual computer is 500 miles from here. If you could give me some tips on how to texture the guns, I could do it by myself. I see that you use the same picture that I used for reference as texture, but you have used it to paint side/top and bottom pics too. Need some hints on that.

Thanks. But I'm now desperate to get back to the shuttle for a while so I'll do that first.

 

hints.mmmmmmmm The dark art of low poly texturing.

strewth. where do I start??

 

First off I flipped some edges to isolate the bits where the detail was higher (like the ridges on the back of the barrel), so I could put them on a chunk of texture all it's own. Same with the switchgear, which is different on each side, so those big detailed bits went in the texture first. The bottom of the grip is the same on both sides so I didn't duplicate that.

 

Polys are cheaper than texture at the moment, so It's worth arranging polys to make it easier to map detail where you want it, and lose it where you don't

 

The upper front half of the barrel is fairly plain, so it needed less texture space. Its about half the length that it was, so still big enough to catch a hint of the writing.

 

The ridges under the barrel I left pretty much full size but if I was short of texture space I could have stuck in a poly to do the curved end of the groove, the done the rest of the groove in a few pixels and crunche the uvs to stretch the texture right out.

 

I drew the nobbles from the front of the grip, and blended that with a chunk of the texture from the side of the grip so it fitted in. I grabbed a chunk from the side and drew the lines to do the bit round the hammer.

then drew small rectangle of a dark to light gradient, and put ridges in the for the hammer. gradients are a useful thing to have on a texture so I only put the ridges on a bit of it to keep the rest clear.

 

Most of the rest of it is coloured using bits from the sides.

 

The barrel I spread out so the texture starts from the point inside(black), to the front of the barrel (lighter with a highlight for the wear line round the edge) then goes back down the outside which I grabbed from the photo.

 

The top and bottom are pretty much blank so mostly those are either coloured using the side in front of the ridges, or from the dark to light gradient. same for the trigger and the guard. thoug I made sure the top of the trigger went into a darker bit of texture to give it a shadow

 

I hope I've explained that ok. I've probably missed some bits out. I'll stick on a pic of the texture with the polys overlaid on it to make it clearer. I'll send them back if ya want so you can pull it apart at your leisure.

post-29-1053714038_thumb.jpg

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Since nobody has mentioned it, I thought I'd try a motion scanner. What the picture tries to show is two dishes sitting back to back, with tuning fork antennae sticking out. Then there's some type of motion radar emitter sitting above and between them. The viewscreen includes some buttons, etc. Any comments about this layout before I start modelling it? And if someone is working on it, let me know and send a screenshot so I can add it to the assetlist.

1.jpg

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The one on the right is the original, xnet version.

The one on the left is the game model, 487 polygons.

Any comments on it? Do I ship the model to someone when I am finished?

post-29-1053722537_thumb.jpg

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Guest drewid

Like the grenades.

 

Breunor seems to be collecting stuff so throw them his way (leave the pin in though :D )

 

Comments hmmmm.

 

We might get z problems where the handle goes through the two plates on the top of the grenade.

Where you have two polys close to each other like that the hardware can sometimes get confused about which one is in front. I think the thing to do would be to have a single cuboid on top with the side-plates on the texture.

 

I'm thinking we'll need an even lower version for the actual battlescape, not much point in having 2 or 3 polys per pixel. but don't do it just yet 'cos it still needs trying out and thinking about.

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Hey -

 

On the topic of hand grenades. I assume the main frag grenade we'll be implementing is the M61 Fragmentation Hand Grenade. Here is a image which can be used for textures. I am also assuming that we will be using the the XM84 Stun Grenade for any form of Flash Bang. And for the smoke grenade we will be using the AN-M8 HC White Smoke grenade. There are also colored smoke ones that fall under the the designation M18 Colored Smoke Grenade, but that seems a tad bit overkill as of now.

 

I heard some talk of people wanting to have white phospherous and incendiary grenades as well, which of course do exist in real-life and have textures which are easily found. All this is if we use standard American equipment, which seems to be what is happening (based on the model Anglechel has posted), but if people want to use other nationalities weapons I suppose that is possible as well? I'l post some of the other grenades images, so you can all see wha they look like in real like.

 

The one is this post is the M61 Frag.

 

Hope this is helpful,

Gold

m61.jpg

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Here is your basic smoke grenade. Believe it or not, this is how they are marked, even when used by the military ( or so the information available suggest).

 

AN-M8 HC White Smoke Grenade

 

EDIT: Just thought I'd add this bit of info:

 

Color and Markings:

The grenade has a light green body with black markings and a white top.

 

WARNING

THE AN-M8 HAND GRENADE PRODUCES HARMFUL HYDROCHLORIC FUMES THAT IRRITATE THE EYES, THROAT, AND LUNGS. IT SHOULD NOT BE USED IN CLOSED-IN AREAS UNLESS SOLDIERS ARE WEARING PROTECTIVE MASKS.

WARNING

ANY DAMAGED AN-M8 HC GRENADES THAT EXPOSE THE FILLER ARE HAZARDOUS. EXPOSURE OF THE FILLER TO MOISTURE AND AIR COULD RESULT IN A CHEMICAL REACTION THAT WILL IGNITE THE GRENADE.

 

So I guess smoke grenades should also have a small "stun/damage" value in-game?

an_m8smoke.jpg

Edited by GreatGold
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Should we decide to add another grenade, I think it should be of this type, the typical Flash Bang. Perhaps v1+, perhaps not. Heres a pic at anyrate:

 

XM84 Stun Grenade

(in general, it usually has a typical military green finish, with metallic ends, sorry for the lack of color, but this is the largest pic I could find)

xm84_newstun.gif

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So I guess smoke grenades should also have a small "stun/damage" value in-game?

Why not? They did in the original x-com. Captured a sectoid leader in the top room of a supply ship with smoke grenades. (he paniked so I stole his weapon :devillaugh: )

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Guest drewid
an in-game granade can be only a box combined with flatten sphere. Everything depends on textures.

 

Yes you're right really, but I'm thinking we might need more than that for the arming display.

Remembering the little details on the originals. These sort of details will need to be there especially on a higher res, but without actually seeing it it's hard to tell. It depends on background colour and lighting and the renderer.

Polys are cheaper than texture space these days, which I'm only just getting used to myself.

 

I'm starting to think that we will need three LODs for the weapons.

 

Like the pistol is currently 450ish, which would be ok for the arming screen,

But the in game version could be <50,

The pedia would have to be 800 ish at a guess. (real ridges on the back, more curve on the trigger guard etc.

Edited by drewid
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I think we might be able to get away with two. the really low poly version for in game and the super high res one for X-net. We could use a .png in the arming screen of the high res versions. Unless we're thinking of having rotatable versions in the arming screen. Then three would be right.

 

About grenades. We need to remember that on most of the grenades there is a variable timer on them so we're going to need a digital display and some way of changing the timer on the grenades. Maybe a little dual digit LED display showing how many seconds before detonation. Two buttons, one for time up and the other.. well you get the idea :) Could still keep the old pin cause there is a psychological thrill of the physical act of pulling the pin.

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I agree with the high poly render for the arming window. I don't see any reason to have animated weapons in the arming screen, too much fluff IMO. I also agree with having the battlefield grenade be really low polys, you're only going to see a little ball when it's tossed. Even textures are barely noticable at that size. Maybe an 8-sided cylinder, with 3 slices along the length. The end slices are tapered in some, gives it a generic rounded shape. Then the small cube on the end as mentioned. The pin and clip will be gone when it's thrown, so you don't need them. Total poly count for that design is 70.
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