Topic: 3D Modeling WIP Topic

[ratty redemption]

nice work, although when i first tried to look at the screencap a few days ago, my laptop was displaying the carriages as almost black due to so much sun light in my room. now i'm viewing them under better lighting conditions i can make out the details.

is there a work around you could use for dark textures like this during development? i remember some of my doom 3 rock textures were very dark, so i overlaid patterns or uv markers to help align them etc, then removed the overlays for the final versions.

[kat]

No workarounds other than pretty much what you mention, UV's are mapped using checkers then baked and used as an overlay guide for texture making, otherwise can't see a blinking thing during the day!

[ratty redemption]

understood and i love working with laptops, except the screen issues we've mentioned. correct me if i'm wrong, but with old crt monitors, this didn't used to be so much of a problem did it?

[kat]

Aye, it's something particular to laptops and flat-screens, ideally both should use an IPS panel, with the surround bezel also needing to be non-reflective and flat (e.g. something like this).

[kat]

Texture flat open in Corel PhotoPaint with the exported UV over the top (which Blender can thankfully export semi transparent). And then shown using Blenders UV Editing with texture assigned.

[ratty redemption]

that ips lcd tech sounds a lot more advanced than when i was last researching into monitors, a couple of years before i got a laptop.

and cool to see the uv layout of your models.

[kat]

Working on updating Bob relative to idtech 4 specs (this is technically the third version/update to the character). Using bone shapes is interesting but do not necessarily make the animation process easier.

[ratty redemption]

cool, i remember some of your earlier tests with bob. weren't they with doom 3? which engine are you now using for that project?

[kat]

This iteration is still rigged relative to idtech 4, if it were for Unity it would be rigged in a different way (same overall structure but some of the master joints that enable AF ragdoll would be removed).

[ratty redemption]

interesting.

edit: what is af?

[kat]

AF = Articulated Figure, the component used for in-game rag-doll behavior. It was generated using the inbuilt AF Editor (console accessed) where a basic rag-doll profile of the figure was created (text file output as *.af iirc)... don't remember the exact details these days but model was originally built with that in mind so the rig itself is essentially split into three sections; lower, upper and head.

[ratty redemption]

understood and i'm looking forward to learning how to use ragdolls in unity. are the principles the same?

[silicone_milk]

Man it's been a long while since I've last been on here. I didn't realize how fast time flew by.

Kat, it's interesting that you're doing some "brush-based" modeling in Blender. I've been working in Blender cursing the inability to just select mesh faces and arbitrarily texture them with independent rotation/scaling/translation like one would in Radiant.
I'm really struggling with the UV mapping process for meshes (for use in UE4). Unwrapping UV layouts is easy enough but I want to re-use a tiling texture that is scaled differently across different faces (to use sections of a tiling texture like just the trim) or to rotate to fit on faces not grid/axis-aligned.
I've also been working on keeping a consistent texel density which I posted about over on Quake3World.

I'm working on a modular set of assets for a medieval village and a cottage.
Here's a window + ledge asset (window_ledge_a) with manual unwrapping + a tiled default UE4 stone/wood/glass material. There's no absolute control over a single face.

In Blender with cube projection uv unwrapping:


The texture is a lot more 'stretched' with the manual unwrapping which is a little hard to see compared to the color grid.

Good to see you guys are still active

[kat]

Man it's been a long while since I've last been on here. I didn't realize how fast time flew by...

I know right!

What you're trying to can be tricky to say the least when using generic textures that would otherwise be used 'as is' (tiled/used without modification), what artists often do is create assets with that type of segmented use in mind, each 'usage' area has it's own dedicated section of texture specifically designed for purpose - this keep the pixel destiny the same no matter what area is being used because they're all pulled from the same image.

When trying to do something 'unique' whilst using 'generic' assets what does help is to keep in mind the same 'power of two' rule as applies to images, i.e. structures are built using regulated sizing - building that wall segment for example and wanting to use a 1024 image, to make sure the texture maps uniformly to the mesh you'd have to make sure its dimensions are easily divisible using the power-of-two rule. As UE uses metres as its unit of measurement that can be a bit confusing but it's the same/similar principle to the way you draw out brush volumes to fit certain textures or texture areas, only in metres rather than idtech compatible units - a wall that's 3m x 3m x 1m will fit a 1024 pixel image 1:1:1/3rd (height/width/depth).

Build with that sort of formalised size/dimensions in mind and you should be OK for most bulk structures because each mesh is then textured according to the power-of-two rule - objects placed side-by-side match because texture edges/mapping match across units.

[silicone_milk]

I'm trying to do the opposite of a 1:1 mapping of texture to mesh; I'm trying to figure out how to have a more radiant-like texturing process to say "tile this texture 5 times along the x and twice along the y". The tiling seems to be controlled at the material level though so to increase the tiling for a single face would cause the tiling to increase for all other faces using the same material.

I've been building in metric (3 meter high walls, 4 meter wide) which helps with getting a grip with the texture sizes but Blender is making me want to just throw everything out the window as vertices magically drift off the grid despite using grid snapping, and it's super unfriendly with modifying volumes as opposed to just working per-vertex or per-edge. Maybe it's just me though.
If there was an easy way to pull .map files into Blender I'd be working in Radiant right now. I'm definitely missing the clip tool and the perfect grid snapping