334 réponses à ce sujet

[-Semper-]

What do you think of this comment I found on a tutorial for making better normal maps?

 

that comment is useless. smoothing groups are still important. just read the thread i linked at the cyclops thread of iamdeathcomeforthee.

 

@animation: you're not doing animation till the baking process is done because to solve some issues it could be the case that you have to edit geometry. this will mostly destroy your weighting and animations. what you can do is creating the complete rig - the skeleton with all the needed fk/ik and handles.
 

[Eguintir Eligard]

Ok fair enough.

 

I have spent the time anyway both taking a break, but also reworking the editable polygon from lego level so that there are nothing but quads. Apparently this is important for some reason. Not entirely sure why since it gets converted to a triangle based mesh, but whatever it is, it's clean now.

 

I got him looking much closer to the nurms version with out using any modifiers yet. I think a little more manual placement, then a mild use of a relax modifier and he will be looking almost indistinguishable from nurms (smoothed) version. I think I have devised that as well as second way to get him looking smooth, round, rotund, and I will get his polys into the under 3k range. I think that will be insanely good for me since I had him at 8-9k all this time. Apparently a run of the mill monster is about 1800... this is a true npc (though ambient) with a very soft belly and man boobies so I think putting him into the 2s is very fair... he's got curves in all the wrong places, and that takes vertexes.

 

 

What do you think folks? Which fatty version do you prefer? Can you tell which one is 2k and which is 5k?

Free jelly beans if you guess right.

 

[Tchos]

I can't tell.

[-Semper-]

I have spent the time anyway both taking a break, but also reworking the editable polygon from lego level so that there are nothing but quads. Apparently this is important for some reason. Not entirely sure why since it gets converted to a triangle based mesh, but whatever it is, it's clean now.

 

to understand this you have to know the difference between a base mesh, the final in-game mesh and the high poly to get your details from. a base mesh is the starting point for your high poly model, which in majority is created through subdividing the geometry. the subdivision splits a quad into 4 other quads. if your base mesh has triangles the subdivision can't handle them well, and will create little pinches. those surfaces are subpar for scultping.

 

the later in-game mesh has to have triangles. actually it's best practice to triangulate the mesh before exporting so that the game engine won't do that automatically. this way you're able to see bad triangulation (light surface shading), which is easily fixable through manual edge spinning.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Cool. I'll convert to mesh after the UVW stages since it will gum up the template.

Question: I detached the boots from the body because they didn't need near as many loops as the body. but since the body loops ran the length of the feet too, detaching and simplifying the boots saved poly and mess. Everything is Still quads, but the boot vertex are not physically attached to the body anymore. Is this a problem for any reason? It's still one mesh total.

[-Semper-]

nope, it ain't a problem. but if you would differentiate between a base mesh and a game mesh you could simply terminate every edge loop in a triangle. there's no need to run them down all the way trough the whole model. there are also ways to terminate edges and keep all quads.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Ya i dont want to convert to a mesh yet. How on earth could I terminated a loop without breaking my quads? With a 5 vertex square?

[Eguintir Eligard]

Oh I see, a diamond quad. Clever, I'll do that and Re add the booties. It will also remove some useless under arm geometry. Nice and nicer.

[Eguintir Eligard]

So here's an update for Semper and anyone else who might view.

 

I redid my whole mesh painstakingly today, and it is quads only.

 

I also made some changes in how I approached the normal map build. 

 

Things I changed:

-Deleted the UV seams on the high poly model (they were inherited from the low poly model that I beefed up for high poly).

-Made sure my texture size was a multiple of 16.

 

So what happened then, the normal map looked much smoother in most spots... but it was horridly off center in many areas. I back tracked on this new problem.Turns out saving a BMP in gimp screws up your texture coordinates in 3ds max. Same goes for TGA if you choose bottom left compression as the file type, instead of top left.

 

So I stuck with the TGAs. There was still some serious harshness in the hands that I simply painted neutral blue on the normal map, but other than that it was pretty decent. I think started colouring it with very basic single colours and found that colour brought out a lot more of the bumps in the normal map if done as an overlay (which is a texturing technique I have a tutorial on and plan to use).

 

I'd still like the normal map to be reviewed by Semper next week to see if it is proper or could be improved.

 

I think before then I might need to alter the mesh slightly. Correct me if I am wrong but do the moving joints on the models need multiple edge loops to avoid stretching during movement? Or is it moderate edge loops, but multiple bones? Excuse the toddler-esque texture job for now. You can see what I mean in the shoulder that's bent. It's stretched. Beyond that I also think his arms are too flat on the z axis (when they are raised outwards that is). They used to be much fatter but I flattened them out. It needed it, but it was too much so they just look skinny now.

 

Also I based the level of detail on the fingers on the clay golem model... I noticed the female npc has an extra edge loop to round her fingers and I will do the same.

 

 

 

 

Oh PS. I did restore him to the wearing shorts concept of infinity games. I also decided to back off on adding a lot of visual noise to his shorts. They are heavy burlap cargo shorts now, not polyester pants. His shirt retains it's nice (and now much cleaner) bunching/creasing effect, though less apparent with this silly shirt pattern on now.

[Dann-J]

He's looking even more like Daffyd Thomas now. Hot pink shorts would do the trick.

[-Semper-]

I think before then I might need to alter the mesh slightly. Correct me if I am wrong but do the moving joints on the models need multiple edge loops to avoid stretching during movement? Or is it moderate edge loops, but multiple bones? Excuse the toddler-esque texture job for now. You can see what I mean in the shoulder that's bent. It's stretched.

 

this depends on your model. if there is not enough geometry (loops) around the joint then you'll need a supporting edge to maintain the volume of the bending limb. imo nwn2's models were of high enough resolution so that there's no extra loop needed. afaik the official models had have none. in your case it looks more like bad weighting. seems like you either missed those shoulder vertices, or gave them a too low influence.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Yes I came to the same Conclusion after a few video tutorials. I need to keep full influence on the arm but reduce influence on the shoulder as it has plenty loops vs the stock models. It was just a quick test to make sure the model I'm normal mapping and texturing won't need to be redone

[Eguintir Eligard]

Well Semper as I prepared to send you my latest rendition, I realized there was no longer any need. I've never seen one of my UV maps so clean.

 

Creases, laces and bevels where I want them and the rest is solid blue. I think deleting the seams on the high poly version was a factor.

 

So what I would ask now is what is the name of the technique where I basically overlay colour onto the normal map to get my diffuse map? I'd like to google tutorials but I don't seem to be wording it in a way that generates results. Gimp specifically.

[-Semper-]

what you mean is an ambient occlusion map. that's basically a gray shaded surface map of your model with all the details visible. there you can overlay colors to get a simple diffuse map. this texture is still very basic and needs more or less manual touch-up.

[Lance Botelle]

Hi E.E.

This is looking really great!

I could not tell anything between the two versions either.

Cheers,
Lance.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Doesn't the detail in the high poly take care of the details (laces, ripples etc) ? What does the occlusion leave out that I should do after?

[-Semper-]

the better your scultped fine detail is the less you have to touch up afterwards. there's still a lot of stuff that separates a good diffuse texture from a colored occlusion map. most of it includes blending in various layers of photos to get the desired look. you simply can't sculpt color variation or all the little microdetail which brings a good texture to life.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Ók. Well let's do one thing at a time.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Is this really what I am going to be doing?

https://www.youtube....h?v=L-0oMaSNi0Q

 

It looks like ambient occlusion is strictly to make the thing grey scale... they didnt even have a normal map when they did it so I don't see

how it would have any detail at all. As you know the tutorial I looked at from Elysius was to simply convert the normal map to greyscale and then go to town colour overlaying it. Seems like two completely different things here, as the former method doesn't even use a normal map so it wouldn't help give shape to the normal map creases and folds.

[-Semper-]

it's basically the same process like baking a normal map. the process calculates an imaginary light and bakes the shadows of the details of your high poly model to the low poly one. there are also programs which take your normal map and transforms it into an ambient occlusion map - with the same drawbacks as creating a normal map just from a photo. you could also play around with the separate channels of your normal map to create something similar to an occlusion map.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Why do I even need that? I have normal map that is legitimate. I'd like to colour the diffuse map is all.

[Tchos]

Ambient occlusion helps make up for the shortcomings of game lighting systems.

[IAmDeathComeForThee]

Tchos summed it up perfectly.

[-Semper-]

yeah, but it's not only about artificial lighting. an occlusion map tremendously helps to pop the details of your diffuse map.

 

Why do I even need that? I have normal map that is legitimate. I'd like to colour the diffuse map is all.

 

you don't need nothing. it was just a comment about how the professional industry works.
 

[Eguintir Eligard]

So what slot would this ambient occlusion map even go in? My concern right now is doing the diffuse. I was under the impression this ambient occlusion map is like "layer one" that you paint over to get the diffuse, but isn't the normal map in greyscale an equal substitute?