Demon Model

Discuss the Wing Commander Series and find the latest information on the Wing Commander Universe privateer mod as well as the standalone mod Wasteland Incident project.
chuck_starchaser
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Sure thing; but I only know Gimp, so keep in mind I'm using Gimp terminology...

Okay first of all I made a front-side-only radiosity baking. I think I uploaded it already.
I made an inverse of it also.

So, now, I had one very rough diffuse texture, and a rust texture. I adjusted their brightness so it was the same, over-all.

I multiplied the rust texture by the frontal radiosity texture, call that A.
I multiplied the diffuse texture by the inverse of the frontal radiosity. Call that B.

Then, A+B gave me a first approximation of what I'd want as the final diffuse texture; call this C.

To turn that into a subtractor, I made C slightly brighter than my original diffuse texture, and subtracted the original diffuse texture from it; call this TheSubtractor.

THE END

(Notice that now, I could add the subtractor to the diffuse to obtain C, if I wanted to, but I opted to subtract it instead, so the rust would darken the diffuse; and I added it to the specular, to compensate the darkening by increased reflectivity; but maybe it should be the other way around... not sure.)

EDIT:
Always, before I multiply 2 textures, I add uncorrelated perlin noise with an intensity of 1 (imperceptibly subtle) to reduce precision artifacts, such as possible banding, by predithering, then I add perlin noise again, same intensity, after multiplying, and blur with a radius of 2.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Now just to figure out how to Subtract something in Photoshop. I can muliply easily enough, but there doesn't seem to be a method to subtract built in, unless I'm missing something. Blah.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Time to go with a pro tool and learn Gimp... :)
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

That statement has a cetain degree of irony in it, especially since gimp doesnt get along with ttf's too well :P

I managed to 'subtract' it by inverting it and then muliplying it. Not exactly 'subtracting', but visually similar, and the closest Im going to muster.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Here's Gimp taking a screenshot of itself with the layer functions menu open...
Image
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Photoshop has the following:
Normal
Dissolve
__________
Darken
Multiply
Color Burn
Linear Burn
__________
Lighten
Screen
Color Dodge
Linear Dodge
__________
Overlay
Soft Light
Hard Light
Vivid Light
Linear Light
Pin Light
Hard Mix
__________
Difference
Exclusion
__________
Hue
Saturation
Color
Luminosity
It is just photoshop CS, not CS2, though :P
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Okay, you win.
How about "difference"?; sounds coercible into subtraction...
Or else, invert, then add; some like that...
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

I'll fiddle a bit and see what happens.
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Post by ploppy »

have a look at the Calculations command in PhotoShop (in the image menu)
it does a subtract/add with lots of options
not as easy to use as a layer blend but it does the job
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Thanks for the tip, ploppy, I'll try that out. :)
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Okay, so I finally got WCU to work, but it crashes whenever I try to use my Demon model :( It works in Privateer :?
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Okay, but if it works in PR you can see it in-game, right? That's all you need to be able to texture. WCU is a WIP, and buggy as hell more often than not :D (spirit's gonna kill me), but I mean, problems are to be expected in WCU.
BTW, the Demon is for both: WCU and PR.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Yeah I know. I mean, I can use priv for my sandbox, but it is ultimately WCU I'm making it for :P And trust me, WCU needs it more than Priv :mrgreen:

Also, it's a tangeant, but my god, the splash screen! I'm sooooooo making a new one @_@
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

There's been some good efforts put into making a decent splash screen. The problem is the lack of decent ships to put in it... You should finish the Demon first; maybe we can put a Demon, a Hornet and a Bengal ;-)
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

I was thinking more a Hornet, a Bengal, and my reskinned Dralthi :mrgreen:

For the moment I just made a starscape with a WC1-ish title, complete with the little fighter graphic :P Erm, I couldn't find a howto to put it into the game, though? Am I just blind?
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Just find where it is, and substitute a pic with the same name :)
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Simplicity. Sweet.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

How's the Demon coming? Ferrius, you should post your work in progress, from time to time, you know? It's up to you, but getting early feedback could save you a lot of work later on. ;-)
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

There's not a lot different from the visual point of view. I'm kind of holding off because a lot of what I want to do needs a new unwrapping and I need to figure out what I want the texmap to look like roughly.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Well, you should have said so. What do you specifically need from the unwrapping?
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

See that's what I'm trying to figure out.

And there's not NO progress. Just not much. I'd worked on getting the plates a little more realistic, and had cleaned up the GLO map a lot.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Ferrius; it's up to you, of course, but you don't need to take up a humongous list of things to do. I can texture, you know? If you really want to make an impact on this project, model the characters. Once we have 3D characters and 3D bases, a lot is gonna change ;-) I'd pick one thing, if I were you, whatever you're best at AND preferably that no one else around here can do. Character modelling comes to mind... :D
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

No, I want to finish the Demon. I've just got to a point where I'm unhappy with what I have thusar, but don't know if Im so unhappy as to want to start over again.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

In my experience, starting over again takes less time than thinking about it. Let me see if I still have some stuff in my server, for inspiration. NOT Demon inspiration, but rather about the process... Gimmi a few minutes...

Okay CoffeBot and I were working on this base, with an octogonal top, military section, with little buildings on it. The texture covers one quarter of the octagon, with the center at the top left corner. So I made a mask for the buildings...
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... ldings.png

Then I blurred the heck out of it, to produce a radiosity baking. I didn't know how to do it in Blender, at the time...
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... msk_sm.jpg

And I combined that with shadows I produced in Gimp, using multiple iterations of motion blur and blending them with darken only...
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... ghtmap.jpg

My regular texture was composed of multiple layers: One for buildings, one for streets, one for rails, another for white paintings, and so on. I don't have those layers on my server, but here's the basic texture...
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/elevator/tmp.png

The light maps, multiplied by that texture became my glow map; and the rails in negative were my specular map. That's all. So, for a test in Gimp, I used the rails in negative to mask a galactic background, to fake the reflections, and I added that to the glow map into a temporary; then, to make night and day tests, I simply added a full brightness basic texture, or a low brightness one, to that temporary; and here the results:

Day:
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... e_noon.png

Night:
http://www.deeplayer.com/dan_w/goodies/ ... _night.png

Of course, I didn't get good results the first time, but since I was using multiple layers and masks, it didn't take long to fix this and that.

What you need to resist is the temptation to merge layers. Keep everything separate. Armor plates: Just a line drawing of the seams. The bumpmap then is partly just a slight blur of that. Airmarks are a motion blur of that line drawing filtered through a random scatter. Armor plate hues are like a paint by numbers watercolor fill-in of that same line-drawing. Rivets are just dots in another mask. If you want them rounded, you can blur them and stick the result into the bumpmap stack. You want them shiny? Add them inverted to the spec map. Want them matte? Blend them non-inverted with darken only onto the specmap. Want trails after them? Motion-blur, color, add to diffuse texture. Bird droppings? Dots on a mask, add inverted to diffuse, subtract non-inverted from spec. And so on.
Then, if there's something you don't like, you change that specific layer.
Last edited by chuck_starchaser on Tue Apr 11, 2006 12:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

By the way, here's some inspiration for people unwrapping models ... just look at how efficient HL is:

Image
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