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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

ART - Environmental Models


Breunor

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Cool lamps... eager to see them in a lightened environment :)

Oh btw... your host tried to trick me into installing GATOR... if you can bomb them, I'd be glad :)

(now this topic is gonna be monitored by the CIA because it has the word 'bomb' and 'glad' in it :P )
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[quote name='Fatal_Error' date='Feb 12 2003, 02:40 PM']as far as i know the lights shouldnt be rendered nor modelled into the models coz they need to be dynamic thus if RK confirmas this then i think you shouldnt really worry about the light source :D[/quote]
Light sources will be dynamic, but we have to hack in someplace in our or used format a place to put lights position and orientation. For example in street lights.... But in render use an advance lighting method like raytracing to really see how the model looks with real lighting...

Greetings
Red Knight Edited by red knight
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Newest model is up. It's a park bench. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see it. The bottom picture is the distance I think the camera will take from the bench -- about how it will look in the game.

[url="http://th391228.bravepages.com/pics.html"]http://th391228.bravepages.com/pics.html[/url]
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nice stuff. :) like the idea of having xenocide on the parkbench. Perhaps we can make it so that the server can place ads on the benches and on posters pasted to some walls. not excesive but sorta like GTA 3. Could help a server pay for the bandwidth renting out ad space :)
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I just make the models -- it comes in two varieties: with the poster already on it, or you can put one there yourself ("yourself" is a term used to describe anyone playing/hosting a game, it further assumes you are a l337 programmer type like Gangsta)
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Visit again -- there is a stop sign up. However, many of these models may be reworked...I don't know our total screen poly budget, but it just seems obsurd to me to use over 100 polys on a stop sign...(especially when the trees in Genesis were under 40 poly's each.......) And using as many as I did on a light just seems unacceptable. Not to mention I've learned new ways to texture and IMO it looks much better than the screen textures I was using. We'll see how much time I have to kill.

[url="http://th391228.bravepages.com/pics.html"]http://th391228.bravepages.com/pics.html[/url]
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Dont worry about models destruction, we will try to find a way to destroy them on the fly (there are very well known algorithms to do that, but some of them are computationally expensive)....
About the stop sign, it has too many polygons... you can fool the eye using a square instead of a circle to model the "stick" (????) with a wood painted texture.

The Lights are very good, maybe the bench has too much detail, if you look it in the small one (the near real size) you cant see that much detail... do the same trick with the lights to find out if the detail is enough or too much...

BTW Those models are awesome...

Greetings
Red Knight
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Well RK, hows 37 polygons for the stop sign -- if you want to see it, its the same one you saw before. I just optimized a couple features that were only visible from behind the stop sign...got rid of like 80 polygons like that. Later today I'll post proper size pictures of everything. Do you have any idea how far away the camera is going to be? (if you give me a number it makes my life a whole lot easier.)
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[quote name='Maverick' date='Feb 25 2003, 04:03 PM']Well RK, hows 37 polygons for the stop sign -- if you want to see it, its the same one you saw before.  I just optimized a couple features that were only visible from behind the stop sign...got rid of like 80 polygons like that.  Later today I'll post proper size pictures of everything.  Do you have any idea how far away the camera is going to be?  (if you give me a number it makes my life a whole lot easier.)[/quote]
Dont know, thats a beta testing thing... Do this, do not optimize we have time for that later (in other words: dont waste time on optimization, someone - i think it was Dijkstra said - Premature optimization is the root of all evil). But keep the current quality of the models they look great, we will see in the future (in 2 years who knows how many polygons a video card will support)...

Greetings
Red Knight
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Saddam on billboards? Well, I won't start any type of discussion on that type of subject, except to say it's 'unlikely' he will be in power during the time frame of this game based on current events. But it would be cool if people made some pictures with their native languages that could be used as textures on the billboard models. Those models look very nice BTW.

Now that I'm done remodeling my kitchen, I'm playing with this again, here's some samples from the last day or two:

(Had to remove pics due to lack of space on my site)

The interior wall faces need to be regrouped yet to fix the weird wallpaper effect, and the porch was made as a single piece, so the texture doesn't tile right. It will be remade anyways, so parts of it can be destroyed properly by weapon fire. I'll start working on a fireplace as well, I'd like to make it much more durable than walls so that the entire thing could be burned down and you'd only see the foundation and fireplace left standing. Maybe that's a sick thing, to want to see something like that :unsure: ?
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Pictures you say? What would you like to have on bilboard and how is it suposed to look like?

During making building walls are you gonna place on it some graffiti like stuff? ;)
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Great models. good work.

Do you know anything about wall clipping? if not, I would suggest that you do some research on wall clipping. We really don't want to have clipping in any of the models, and I don't even know how to prevent it in buildings like that (in most models it just means that the connecting point cannot overlap any polygons) Those look good, and you may not need more texture on the porch; just out of curiosity, how many poly's are you at right now? (don't worry, there isn't a limit right now.) Oh, btw, there is no clipping in your scene, i just consider that something we oughta know about (because it happens even in really well developed games like CS)
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As to pictures on billboards, it could be anything you may already see driving down the street. Maybe "Bovine Burgers- The aliens fly by, all the cows die, what's left we fry!":alienlol: I guess if there was some standard size ratios to hight and width of the billboard's display area, people could submit art pieces that could be textures for the signs. Then a couple dozen billboards could be made with the same model, but you'd still get some variety that way. I'll probably make several stores with the same general layout, and just change the signs and other textures to make them look different too.

I haven't heard about clipping Maverick, I'll look into it. I've noticed on some models that you can see seams between parts, I don't know if that's related to clipping or not. Any basic info you could share to put in the right path about is happily accepted of course!

I expect the poly count on the buildings to be relatively low since it's mostly flat walls and floors. The porch and stairs provide a lot more, 470 for the porch and 240 polys for the stairs shown. Both are pretty basic, I have a fancier porch I left at work :( that is a bit more detailed but is under 1000 polys. I went to the IKEA web site mentioned earlier in this thread to get some ideas for furniture, and it looks like IKEA made their furniture with the 3D gamer in mind! With some simple textures furniture can look good for about like 30-50 polys!

Those stairs are made from 2 models for upper and lower stairs, so you can blast half of them away. Should I make them with more sections, say 4? Will it matter anyway, as in will a soldier be able to traverse damaged stairs of any sort? Also, what's everybody's opinion as to thickness in the flooring? I thought it dumb that the floor between levels was paper thin in the original game, so I'm making my basic section 4 in/10cm thick. This isn't very visible at game perspective though, and it adds 8 tri per section of floor. I'm leaning towards the original paper thin version because of this.
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clipping, as far as I know, means that the texture/polygon disappears when they overlap (i currently have this problem with the inside of the light fixture for the large lamp -- expect it fixed soon) In games like HL it means that the walls are paper thin and do not have 2 sided textures on them, so when you stand next to a wall you can't see any of the other models, it is only a problem when the camera angle is outside the visible polygons. Since our maps do not have polygonal walls around the boarder this is a minimal problem there, but could be a problem if the camera angle ever changes; the fix is to 1) make sure no polygons directly overlap, 2) use 2 sided textures, and 3) never use planar polygons, if they have all 3 dimensions and meet the other two requirements clipping is all but eliminated (at least for me in 3d max) The stairs (according to RK's post) can be 2 pieces, 10 pieces, or 1 piece; he said earlier that there are physics engines that can do damage to models that are only one piece, etc. As for your floor problem -- I don't remember which program you are using, but see if it has a "convert to editable polygon" option for the models, in 3d studio this action results in the LOWEST possible polygon count (a cube has 6 faces instead of two triangles per face -- saves LOTS of poly's and still looks good) If you can't do it in your program I'll try and find specific steps to reduce poly count in there for you. For now, don't worry about poly count other than telling us artists what you're working with and so that you know how many you are at; I've imported characters that are over 10,000 polys (obviously we aren't using those.....) but the optimization can generally come later. One more tip is to make sure that the structures you create have mapping coordinates, in 3d studio you have to do this BEFORE adding modifiers (convert to mesh, mesh-smooth, convert to poly, and about 200 others). If you don't, you can't add certain textures to it the proper way (you have to screen map everything, which means no reflections, no custom pictures, etc) Concerning anything that has pictures on it (the billboard and bus bench as of now) I can quickly and easily modify them so that there are MANY potential pictures and, in the interest of saving space, make the screen itself a separate planar model (this is the exception to the rule of no planar models) to be mapped into the game by the programmers, or they can just map new textures to a blank screen in the game, whichever would be easier for them to do and for people to mod (I think it would be easier to add them in game, then people just have to edit a config file to change those skins; I could make my billboards say stuff like "mav rulez" etc) good luck, happy modeling.
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Hi

Clipping wont occur if you make walls from boxes instead of using single planar polygons, and i dont know if clipping is the right name for that graphic artifact... Clipping in Computer Graphics is mostly used in another way.

A little correction about demolitions, physics engines do not calculate the damage, they only gives you the tools to program mesh destruction algorithms... but some of them are quite difficult on their own... The only requirement of those algorithms is that you use a polygonal (mesh) representation. It can have multiple object or a single object, but the result of the calculation will be very different... As far as i see multiple simple objects is a better approach (but i could be VERY WRONG)...

About the polycount... i had found an application that converts high poly models into low poly models + a bump mapping texture... the only problem is that the application is royalty based... we can ask anyway, maybe the owner doesnt mind, who knows.... (it could turn out to be a fan anyway)... But until then we should try to keep our polycount relativly low (at least to use it in the alpha state)...

Greetings
Red Knight
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I expect clipping won't be a problem for most of my models then, as they're all box-based. Now that I know how to use the texture mapping tool in Milkshape :D I was able to reduce the poly count on my wall pieces by 60%. Took some playing with, but the sections fit together nicely now with their textures. I'll put together some to make a building with after I get some other fun stuff made. Are we going to deposit our models somewhere like Sourceforge when we're happy with them, so others can download them to integrate into their models? This also helps if someone stops working on the project, their contributions aren't lost as well. And if this is already being done over there, I'll start adding my pieces as I finish them.

As to demolition, would it be correct to assume these engines can destroy the model a polygon at a time? It would have quite a time rebuilding the model otherwise I guess. That would make it a pain to blow a hole into something to get through as well. I would suggest keeping the old method of destroying an entire section of wall or floor at a time, but that's someone else's decision to make.
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There will be plenty of space available in two weeks where we can have our own sorta sourceforge just for art. The people on the mailing list will get an FTP address where we can store art and other resources with much more space than sourceforge could allow (currently I know there will be at least 7 gigs of space) on a relatively fast line. The upload rate may be kind of slow (around 30-50 kb/sec) but the download rate at the machine is almost unlimited. So that my ISP doesn't get mad at me, we'll develop an update schedule; downloads will be open hopefully all the time (that's why they capped my upload -- to control bandwidth). Anyway, more on this later, just know that since I can't get into CVS I have to come up with another place to store/exchange art, so I'm making my own place. It will be open for all departments to use, should they need to.
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[quote name='Breunor' date='Mar 2 2003, 09:17 PM']As to demolition, would it be correct to assume these engines can destroy the model a polygon at a time? It would have quite a time rebuilding the model otherwise I guess. That would make it a pain to blow a hole into something to get through as well. I would suggest keeping the old method of destroying an entire section of wall or floor at a time, but that's someone else's decision to make.[/quote]
Those demolition algorithms destroy a polygonal mesh structure, not single polygons... it treat objects as solids... but there are some changes that can be made to the algorithm to handle a polygon only destruction...

Greetings
Red Knight
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Then I'll continue the way I'm going, which is to make seperate objects for each section of wall, floor, etc. That way each piece can be destroyed seperately, the same as it was in the original game. I don't think it would look right to destroy one polygon at a time, for example a door. If it has 2 triangles per side, when your laser pistol hits it you have to take a big diagonal chunk out of it-that would look odd. Having individual pieces adds some polys to the model, but not a lot unless we're talking about a skyscraper ;)
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this is a barrel. the sign on the front can be changed, i have several textures for it (poisonous substance, highly reactive explosive, highly flammable [this one], spontaneously combustible flammable agent, etc) 118 polys (you can kinda tell its low poly, but to make it look perfect it takes like 1000 polys -- so this is better IMO, if I hadn't mentioned it, you might not have even noticed. . . . )
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[quote name='Maverick' date='Mar 5 2003, 03:54 PM']this is a barrel.  the sign on the front can be changed, i have several textures for it (poisonous substance, highly reactive explosive, highly flammable [this one], spontaneously combustible flammable agent, etc)  118 polys (you can kinda tell its low poly, but to make it look perfect it takes like 1000 polys -- so this is better IMO, if I hadn't mentioned it, you might not have even noticed. . . . )[/quote]
For 118 polygons it looks pretty good...

Where are you storing all those files? Have you started to work with CVS?

Greetings
Red Knight
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my firewall or computer settings (haven't figured out which yet) won't let me access CVS (i've set it up right I'm sure) so they are all stored here on my 2 HD's (both would have to crash to lose them) and they will be set up on an external FTP server in a few weeks for "general" access (you'll have to set up a little account thing to have access, but that's no big deal, all it will take is a PM) Anyway, that's 118 with quads -- turn them into triangles and its gonna be a bit more.
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[quote name='Maverick' date='Mar 5 2003, 09:09 PM']my firewall or computer settings (haven't figured out which yet) won't let me access CVS (i've set it up right I'm sure) so they are all stored here on my 2 HD's (both would have to crash to lose them) and they will be set up on an external FTP server in a few weeks for "general" access (you'll have to set up a little account thing to have access, but that's no big deal, all it will take is a PM)  Anyway, that's 118 with quads -- turn them into triangles and its gonna be a bit more.[/quote]
236 Triangles to be exact, unless you use a non naive technique like Delaunay triangulation (in that case it can be a little less, but not too much)...

You cant even download from the CVS in anonymous mode????

Greetings
Red Knight
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that's correct. After properly installing all the files my dos prompt tells me that it can't run that command (im an XP user) and when it gets a command it does run it quits to windows. Which is why I'm not leaning towards firewall on this one but just that my computer hates me.
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[quote name='Maverick' date='Mar 6 2003, 02:24 PM']that's correct.  After properly installing all the files my dos prompt tells me that it can't run that command (im an XP user) and when it gets a command it does run it quits to windows.  Which is why I'm not leaning towards firewall on this one but just that my computer hates me.[/quote]
Did you remember to set the CVS directory in the Path?

Greetings
Red Knight
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I was working on some doors and ran into an issue I can't figure out. The first picture here shows my problem with this shading. I don't want it, but it doesn't go away using smooth all or unify. I'm using Milkshape 3D for this model. I think the problem is related to the fact that the front and back sides are merged together around the glass edge, so the door tapers in towards the center if that makes sense. I was trying to save some triangles this way.

This door is 136 triangles, 64 of which are the doorknob. I also made a panel door, with recessed sections in the second picture below. This door is 266 triangles, most of which are from the recessed sections. I expect a texture could be made which would get close to this look, and the door could be a plain box of 10 triangles plus the door knob. I could also reduce the faces on the doorknob since it's so small, the detail isn't really noticed.

Does anybody have a suggestion to deal with that shading issue, and what's the opinions on the panel door? Keep the extra faces, or use a texture? I was going to make some other designs as well, so I'd rather work on the textures if that's what the consensus is. It may come out to 2000 triangles saved total in the battlescape, depending on how many doors are used.
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The front and back of the door were identical, with the cutout in the middle. I made the outer edges of the door (left, right, top sides), but instead of making an inside edge around the glass, I welded the vertices from the front and back together along that edge, so the door tapers to a point if you were to cut it in half and look at the cross-section. Sort of like a < where the fat side is the outer edge and the point is where the glass begins on the inside. I thought I read somewhere about changing the angle of the vertices, but I don't remember where that was or if it's related. It may even be in the program's tutorial, I'll have to check that when I can!
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Fire hydrants are harder to make than you'd think. My goal was low poly modeling -- and I did that really well. Its under 200 polys (using triangles.....) and it looks right from far away, just hope no one looks too close, its a texture/bump map to get the color and the textured look on it. As long as you only see it from at least this far away it looks fine.
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What's wrong with the hydrant? As far as I know hydrants are about what 2ft tall? Sorry we don't have them in the Uk we have underground stopvalves :) If it's small I don't think anyone will notice that much detail anyway. With a skin on it nobody will be able to tell how many polys it hasn't got :)
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[quote name='Breunor' date='Mar 10 2003, 10:34 PM']The front and back of the door were identical, with the cutout in the middle. I made the outer edges of the door (left, right, top sides), but instead of making an inside edge around the glass, I welded the vertices from the front and back together along that edge, so the door tapers to a point if you were to cut it in half and look at the cross-section. Sort of like a < where the fat side is the outer edge and the point is where the glass begins on the inside. I thought I read somewhere about changing the angle of the vertices, but I don't remember where that was or if it's related. It may even be in the program's tutorial, I'll have to check that when I can![/quote]
Your left door looks like it has a taper towards the middle. I'm not sure but I think a skin wouldn't hide it. Maybe try both ways with the extra polys and as it is with a skin, see whaich looks better :)
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I did have a texture applied, and the shading was the same. I guess I'll stick with the extra polys for now.
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Hi,
If somebody has been working with milkshape, can you send me a model with its respective texture, to my private email or to [email protected] and Micah will forward it to me. I will start to work on model loading and posible character animation if i have some free time...

Greetings
Red Knight
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I can send you a few when I get home RK. Just a wall, a door, and a window, I'm assuming I should position the door so its pivot point is on the Y axis, right? The one thing I've noticed is when I set the transparency of a material (ie glass) it doesn't seem to keep that setting when I import it later. I may be doing something wrong, but just in case it's like that when you get it let me know.

I'm currently putting walls, doors, and windows together for my first complete building. I also put a porch on it, which is about 700 polys by itself. No estimate yet on the total with only 1 wall up, I can't even guess right now. However the porch is relatively high compared to the rest, as there's lots of small pieces of fencing. So the total's not going to be too bad I hope. I still have to make the roof of the building, but that shouldn't take too long to do.
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Well, I'm getting close on completing the exterior of my first building, and the triangles are adding up! I had to split it into several pieces, as Milkshape doesn't like more than about 125 groups, and this already has over 300. I had to do this to apply different textures to each wall section, so 3 are needed for a window (wall, frame, glass). Total polys for lower level is 2484, upper level 1718, floor and roof (not yet finished) about 400 for a total of 4600. Then I add in the interior walls, but those should not be too much as there's no windows, so each section is only 10 polys each. So another 500 total for a grand total of 5100! Oh, did I mention that doesn't include stairs or other interior items? I guess this won't be too bad, since there won't be as many buildings in the battlescape (and they aren't moving anywhere) as there are units. I don't see any way to reduce the polys here, all the ones facing down are gone already. Actually I can reduce the polys on the wall chunks with windows, takes 8 triangles out, which gets about 250 for this building. After making the first shots, I went back and changed the textures, to see the differences. After making several generic buildings, this can be done to make some quick variations.
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Here's the third, I just noticed the texture for the roofing is sideways, oops...
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Also noticed the gaps between sections after using a more uniform texture. I'll be going back over it, but those sections are snapped to the grid already, so I don't know if I can do anything else at this point.
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5000 Polygons is not too big for a building.... remember that if a character have 1200 and its pretty small, theres no problem you have a 100x bigger building to have 5000, if you add internals it could jump to 20000 without problems.... But remember that all internals must be modeled as a standalone object...

It is a good idea to define a building like a combination of special objects like wall without window, another wall with window space, a window for that wall, ..., and so on... and then contruct those models on the fly. But we can start with complete buildings and implement that later...

Greetings
Red Knight
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Actually I did just what you suggested RK. I have a window model, blank wall, wall with window opening, wall with doorway, door, railing (like around the porch) in 40"/1meter sections, porch posts, foundation, 40" flooring squares, etc. I based everything on 1 meter squares with walls being 2.5 meters high. Roughly translates to 40 inches and 100 inches, which is what I actually used in Milkshape. After making each piece I applied a texture map to it, then imported it as many times as needed to build the model. Very time consuming, but it's like using Legos and keeps me entertained. It's also useful as I can mix and match at any point for unlimited variations. I'd like to upload these pieces someplace so that the other modellers can get them to make their own buildings. I'll be making some other window variations and various types of roofing, and also have quite a few textures available for use.

To keep things straight and hopefully make a uniform coding for the programmers, each group/section of wall was given a unique name that describes where it's at, so you can look at the model and know what it's general name should be. I'll use an example from the previous picture of the lower floor. The section in question is the window to the right of the door. I've named that piece/group win1S3. I'll describe each part and why I chose it:

win:
This is a window section, others include roof, wall, door, inwall(interior), frame(window frame), glass(window glass).
1:
This tells what story the piece is on, in this case the first story.
S:
This tells what side of the building it's on. I assumed that the Z axis is north/south, X axis is east/west, Y axis is up/down. This will be more difficult on interior walls where there's multiple walls, so this needs some work.
3:
This is the third instance of this piece going from left to right(west to east). On north/south walls I start at the south and go north, away from me in the default view. The blank wall sections are different pieces, so they don't count in determining this number.

Another example would be from the second picture, the blank wall between the third and fourth windows right above the porch's roof. It is wall2S4-wall piece, 2nd story, south side, 4th occurance of that piece on that wall going left to right.

This only works well on rectangles, I'll be thinking about the interior walls and more complex-shaped buildings, any suggestions are welcome. There needs to be a consistent, logical labeling of these pieces so the programmers can code them for destruction by weapon fire. If we use random, non-sensical names for the groups it will make life pretty nasty. If everybody likes this system and we can work out the issues with internal stuff, we should put this into the design document for everybody to reference.
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Actually, in Milkshape the Y axis is used for up/down instead of Z, but I realise that normally the coordiante system uses the X-Y plane with Z as height. But that shouldn't cause any problem here I hope, I wonder why Milkshape swapped those axes? :huh?:

Hopefully this week I'll have interior walls done with some stairs in there, along with flooring and roofing. Unfortunately I can't put them all together even for just a shapshot, I tried with what I have and the program immediately crashed. :crying: Sort of a bummer to not be able to see my own completed model. Maybe I can find a free import tool that I could put them together with at one time...
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