120 réponses à ce sujet

[PJ156]

IAmDeathComeForThee wrote...

Final game mesh should be around 2000 polygons. 

Out of interest, how does that compare with one of the stock giant models?

[-Semper-]

IAmDeathComeForThee wrote...

Yea it's close to 6 million polygons heh. When you paint with the program it paints each vertex which takes on the color. No detail can be added between vertices. So if you have a lower polygon count with fewer vertices to color, you lose a lot of detail.

as a guidline you can say that 1mio polys is similar to a 1k texture. personally i found that polypainting is zbrush's weakest point. as you said it's useless for lowpoly meshes and they really should integrate ptex in zbrush5. it doesn't use uv maps too but you're painting on a virtual texture without the need for millions of polys.

Modifié par -Semper-, 15 décembre 2013 - 08:45 .

[rjshae]

It's not at the same level of quality, but there is a NWN Cyclops Tribe hakpack. For what it's worth.

Modifié par rjshae, 19 décembre 2013 - 06:28 .

[MokahTGS]

rjshae wrote...

It's not at the same level of quality, but there is a NWN Cyclops Tribe hakpack. For what it's worth.

Yikes...NWN is so ugly after working with NWN2 for so many years.

[Dann-J]

I've never understood why NWN models are frequently so ugly. It can't be the low polygon counts, as I've played much older games with lower polygon limits where the models didn't look too bad.

I used to create player models for Heretic II using basic Quake modelling software. Making the most of a limited number of polygons is almost an artform in itself (not unlike ASCII art).

[rjshae]

I think it's partly because the NWN models are lacking the normal map and the shadowing can be rather poor, so they look very flat and angular. If you look at the NWN2 models that have been back-ported to NWN, they look equally crappy. (Example.) However, thus far I've had pretty good success with porting decent quality MDL files over to MDB. The models sometimes need a little refining and retexturing, but once that's done they usually fit right in.

Modifié par rjshae, 20 décembre 2013 - 08:50 .

[-Semper-]

it's all about texture skills. the lower your polycount the more time you have to invest into your texture to get the illusion of detail. normal maps aren't that important because you can bake all the stuff like ambient occlusion and lighting into the diffuse map to buff them up. to get the effect you need a high poly model, but the majority lack the skills or the time to produce such assets. painting all the detail by hand needs even more practice. actually that's a rare skill amongst professionals too.

for example projectq did a marvelous job with their custom models for nwn. something that's instantly noticeable. you don't need thousands of polys if your art style is decent. ported nwn2 models are looking that bad because obsidian did a poor job with the diffuse maps. mostly they just used nothing more than basic colors and let the normal map do the job.

Modifié par -Semper-, 20 décembre 2013 - 09:49 .

[Rolo Kipp]

<thinking...>

*nods* Not just the lack of normal maps, either. When NwN1 started, 256x256 was a *big* texture and we only dreamed of 1024x. Most of those models also only used *one* 128x map atlas for all it's various parts.

The dragon, the heaviest beast in the game (according to early interviews), had an extragavant *three* texture atlases... each 128x128

(shown lifesize edit:My BSN avatar is bigger than that!)

Personally, I am amazed at how *good* some of those models look.

OTOH, I'm quite embarrassed how poor some of *my* textures make otherwise decent models look :-p

<...big>

Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 20 décembre 2013 - 09:52 .

[Tchos]

-Semper- wrote...
ported nwn2 models are looking that bad because obsidian did a poor job with the diffuse maps. mostly they just used nothing more than basic colors and let the normal map do the job.

I blame tinting for the poor diffuse maps.  Not only were many textures bland and washed out (presumably for the purpose of taking tints more easily), but most of the included tint maps slap a single solid colour in each area, with none of the character and subtle variation in colour you can get in a good diffuse map.  It's possible to do a lot better than they did with the tint maps, but with only three tinting channels per object, you can only do so much to achieve that kind of variation, unless the object is primarily of a single material.  (Those "paint chip" tint areas in the estate tileset look like an attempt in that direction, but I'm talking about a smooth variation over a larger area.)

The normal maps were pretty inexpertly done, too, and overly harsh in some places, but that was true for a lot of games of that time, possibly due to someone higher up complaining that they couldn't see the bumps any better than on a good painted texture, and what are they paying for this new fancy tech for if they can't see the bumps?

[rjshae]

Yes, it's definitely possible to overdo the normal maps and end up with a gratingly harsh surface. I've quickly learned to tone down the bumpiness.

Rolo Kipp wrote...

*nods* Not
just the lack of normal maps, either. When NwN1 started, 256x256 was a
*big* texture and we only dreamed of 1024x. Most of those models also
only used *one* 128x map atlas for all it's various parts.

Many of the NWN2 textures don't seem much better. The building textures are larger, but are broken up into a series of 256x256 blocks that are nuisance to tile across a large model. (At least inBlender.) Still learning this stuff...

Modifié par rjshae, 20 décembre 2013 - 10:25 .

[-Semper-]

Tchos wrote...

I blame tinting for the poor diffuse maps.  Not only were many textures bland and washed out (presumably for the purpose of taking tints more easily)

but that's only part of the problem. the biggest issue is that the diffuse map lacks a strong grayscale base. you can get all sorts of tinting and details if your grayscale map is decent, either painted by hand or baked from a high poly source with manual touch up. imo years ago there simply was no real baking pipeline, at least not that much options and enhanced automated processes like today with all sorts of render outputs. the timeframe and budget was too small for such a load of textures.

Modifié par -Semper-, 20 décembre 2013 - 10:35 .

[Tchos]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that what I mentioned was the entirety of the problem.

Also, I'm just complaining about the NWN2 textures here, and I don't have anything to say about how NWN1 renders NWN2 models.

Modifié par Tchos, 21 décembre 2013 - 01:39 .

[rjshae]

In the building example linked I above, it's the same model with presumably the same texture. Given that, there's still a marked difference between how the buildings appear between NWN and in NWN2. I guess I'm still puzzled about how all this talk about the diffuse map explains the difference.

[-Semper-]

you're right that the main difference is the lack of the normal map which is used to pop the details in nwn2. the source of the problem ain't a normal map, because you could bake details through baked lighting into the diffuse, but mostly blurred diffuse maps with just basic coloring and no small details at all.

[rjshae]

Now that I think about it, the NWN2 game engine is probably also applying a smoothing algorithm to the meshes. It certainly looks better in blender when smooth shading is applied. Probably a good reason to pay close attention to where the texture seams are placed...

Modifié par rjshae, 21 décembre 2013 - 06:17 .

[IAmDeathComeForThee]

Good to know about baking in ambient occlusion and lighting into the diffuse Semper, I didnt know about that as Ive never baked out a texture before. But, when it comes time to it for this model I'll definitely look into it much further. I would think that sort of thing is built into the zbrush baking process, but we'll find out.

Here's some shots just fiddling with the built in zbrush renderer. Haven't done anything else to this or the toolset for december(I also dev/mod for the Baldur's Gate:tscc PW). Been a very busy month, but hopefully it'll calm down after Christmas. I plan to completely rework the face/head a bit and get rid of that neck fat entirely. Never looked right from the start. And do up some clothes as well.

Threw in a closeup of the hand detail also, which, of course, you'll never be seeing such detail IG. Might release the 2048x2048 textures as well for those like me who like to mod their games to the max, just incase you want to see some nice closeups while being clobbered by this guy

(again right click and "view image" to see the proper size image if that works for your browser)

Modifié par IAmDeathComeForThee, 22 décembre 2013 - 01:37 .

[-Semper-]

IAmDeathComeForThee wrote...

Good to know about baking in ambient occlusion and lighting into the diffuse Semper, I didnt know about that as Ive never baked out a texture before. But, when it comes time to it for this model I'll definitely look into it much further. I would think that sort of thing is built into the zbrush baking process, but we'll find out.

while zbrush's built in process supports all the needed maps it lacks a baking cage. that's simply a proxy mesh that helps to define the casting ray lenght to calculate the textures. in zbrush you're only able to enter a global ray lenght which leads to problems where parts of your mesh are close together, like the armpits or the fingers. it's better to either use 3dsmax where you can blend in and manipulate the cage mesh or xnormal (free to use) where you can import a cage mesh, which could be a bloated up copy of your low poly mesh with manual touch up of the problematic areas. xnormal also imports your vertex color information and bakes it as a diffuse texture. personally i found that it also produces the best baked maps, along with modo.

Modifié par -Semper-, 22 décembre 2013 - 10:12 .

[IAmDeathComeForThee]

Small little update.  Finally home from all the Christmas hustle and bustle.  Managed to retopologise and build the game mesh today tho.  Ignore the big red ball in the middle.  I'll get a face count of the polygons so far right away here.

[MokahTGS]

So, I'm writing the dialogue for this creature now in Jabberwocky....can't wait to set it up with the model.

[rjshae]

NWN2 uses a triangular mesh, so it looks like the poly count will be nearly double the quads. It looks reasonably sparse though.

[IAmDeathComeForThee]

Came out to 2200 tris in 3ds, and managed to bump it down to 1800 with polygon cruncher without messing up the geometry too much. Might just clean it up manually with the retop in zbrush instead of using Polygon Cruncher. 1800 leaves me some room for cloths as well, which will be minimal.

[IAmDeathComeForThee]

MokahTGS wrote...

So, I'm writing the dialogue for this creature now in Jabberwocky....can't wait to set it up with the model.

Easy now, not sure how much time this will take all said and done depending on whether I want to animate or not, which I kinda do. 

I've got some experience with IK keyframe animation, so it shouldn't be too terrible a process.  I'll probably do a set of 1H or 2H basic animations to start and then release.   Probablu 2H with a massive club/tree trunk.

Modifié par IAmDeathComeForThee, 04 janvier 2014 - 06:33 .

[-Semper-]

IAmDeathComeForThee wrote...

with the retop in zbrush instead of using Polygon Cruncher

you are one of the few people who use zbrush's retopo feature without getting nuts
dunno which version of max you have access to besides max7/8, but you there's a nice plugin for max9-12 called wrapit. it makes retopo easy and fast. since the introduction of max' graphite moddeling tools you can also retopo without the help of any plugin. it's not that comfortable but leagues better than zbrush. last but not least there's also topogun which ain't that expensive and among the best apps for the job.

Modifié par -Semper-, 05 janvier 2014 - 10:22 .

[rjshae]

I hope we're going to see this fine model some day...

[IAmDeathComeForThee]

Sorry guys this has been put on the backburner for a little bit.  I have every intention to come back to it, but it may not be until summer that I have it fully released.  I'll be starting some classes and the reading already is super intense and takes up most of my evenings.  But here's another image just for fun.