Ferrius' Workshop

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.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Spirit should be back any time; the current version of wcu is just too buggy.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

If someone has a working copy and could stick it up for me, it would be nice to have files to put into my installer :P
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Well, what I have is what you have, the downloadble and the latest two patches. It "works" on my machine, but it is utterly unplayable.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Well that's not really working now is it? :P
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

By the way, I should note that if I use MilkShape for my modelling that it is a low poly modeller so nothing terribly complicated or breathtaking geometry wise is going to come out of it :-P
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

I'll wait and see. I wasn't really hoping for photorealistic characters like in Lost Coast; but something somewhat higher in polycount than the original Half Life would be nice.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

It can do up to UT2003 type polycounts, which is respectable, but not as good as say Doom3.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Well I've kind of stalled out on this one, and Chuck said he would do his own from scratch, but for those intested, here is the source for the Demon diffuse texture (sized down to ingame size for filesize's sake):

http://lfs.lfhost.com/wcu/demon.psd

[edit]:

Did some work, although idn how much I've added is visible.

A random detail thought: Should I texture in aeilons/rudders/fins on the wings or not?

[edit2]: Fixed the link. Please not that this is not the most recent version of the PSD.
Last edited by Privateer Ferrius on Wed Apr 12, 2006 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Yep, sure; Demons *are* atmospheric flight -capable, officially speaking, so they would indeed have rudders and stabilizers.
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Post by klauss »

I get 404.
BTW: What "free" software opens .psd? Does gimp open .psd?
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Post by Halleck »

Gimp can handle .psd, albeit half-assedly. You can also "view" them with quicktime player, although that's not 'free software' per se.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

@Chuck: Alright then. I have everything textured except that and some details then. Ill get a screenshot, hold on..

[edit]: Here you go:

Image

Probably am going to redo those plate in the front. Way to dark and trying to lighten them washes them out. Still have to fix the inside of the front thingys too, but thats childsplay compared to the rest of the texture :P

Have to go now, but will hopefully steal some internet tomorrow (am out of town till Sun)

BTW, a thought: if I texture in the flames into the GLO map, would that make flourescent paint?
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Post by klauss »

Privateer Ferrius wrote:BTW, a thought: if I texture in the flames into the GLO map, would that make flourescent paint?
Yep... but to get best results, do both - darken it a bit in the GLO map so that it doesn't saturate too much - that will look like fluorescent paint.
Privateer Ferrius wrote:Probably am going to redo those plate in the front. Way to dark and trying to lighten them washes them out. Still have to fix the inside of the front thingys too, but thats childsplay compared to the rest of the texture :P
Can I be picky? (if the answer is "not", read no more)

I think panels don't make a tiny bit of sense.
Well... maybe the back wings (they're ok) and the engine (not that bad)... the main body too is "acceptable" (panel-layout-wise). But the two front-thingies (I think they're like engine intakes?) have totally nonsensical panelling.
The overall texture is nice... for a boat. There's way too much corrosion (or whatever the spots are) - looks more like a seacraft than a spacecraft to me. A more shiny & polished look would be better. Some stains... yes... but nowhere near that pronounced.
The "bolts" on panel joints are also too big. They look like... well... big. It's not the bolts what they ruin, it's the ship - they make the ship look much smaller than it should (by those bolts, I'd say that ship is 2-3 meters across, and I'd be generous).

Now... let's be helpful: what you can do to achieve better panelling, is start to draw red lines on that texture you have there, and outline panels with them. That will make you see where you should draw the panel separations in the texture to accurately place them on the right spot on the model.
Try to always follow contour lines. Like the front engine-thingies should have this cross-section:

Code: Select all

 ___
/   \     <-- one single panel

|    |    <-- another (two) panels

\___/     <-- another single panel

(totalling 4 panels)
Surface panels on wings and the main body (also the engine parts) should try to follow the contour. This is not a functional view, but just aiming at enhancing contour lines - when the texture and the geometry agree, it is much easier to the eyes.

Have some arbitrary small panels too here and there - access ports or something - that make panels look like they're there for some reason.

The round thingies should have NO panel gaps (on the round surface) - it won't look right otherwise. Though you could place "access ports" quite believably on them.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Also, although I love the looks of those flames; a) they depart too much from canon, and b) they grab way too much attention, to the point of looking tacky; --never mind making them fluorescent... :roll:. Besides, paintjobs will go on separate decals, but I don't think there will be glowmap decal counterparts. And like I said before, any paintings or markings should be on a separate layer, and are less important, changeable, mutable, customizable... --IOW not really a part of "the texture"; and right now they are obstructing visibility of the real texture in the areas that they cover, which is what matters atm and we'd like to see.

I agree with klauss' remarks about the panels; and I'd add, for my taste, the seams and rivets are a bit too big, too high contrast, more "schematic" or "artistic" than "photographic". I'd prefer photographic subtlety. If you look at a real airplane, seams and rivets don't stand out that much, in most cases.

I'd say the two main goals are:
1) From the distance, the texture should pretty closely approximate the in-game look of the original Demon. I think some grills are missing on the hood, at the front, like squares full of slots or something, can't remember now. In other words, you should be able to show an in-game shot from the original game and an ingame shot of the new model side-by-side, and they should look pretty much identical to the least detail. Maybe not "pixel perfect", since the original had too few pixels to begin with, but pretty much identical.
2) In close proximity there should be a lot more detail than in the original, of course; but as much as possible, the viewer should be fooled into thinking it's a photograph of a real thing, rather than a rendering of a model. --As much as possible.--, but I think more IS possible.

Not too bad, overall, tho; in fact, I think it's quite a good job; but if you look at the textures of Pioneer, we'd like them to look like crap next to ours... :D
No, I'm joking, in a sense, but seriously, Howard's textures are top of the line, but they are not "photographic" (I don't think their intent was to make them look photographic); but that's precisely one way wcu will distinguish itself from other wc fan projects: The new VS engine will be by far the closest thing any engine out there, whether open source or commercial, gets to photorealistic; and we should take full advantage of this ace of spades we've got up our sleeves, thanks to Klauss.

But then again, this model is really too low poly to warrant the effort of coming up with a photographic texture, so you might as well take my goal number 2 -related comments with a grain of salt, though goal #1 still applies. But I'm talking of general directions here, and in advance of your tackling the Hornet. Photorealism is fully expected with new models. And if after you texture the Hornet, I feel I could do 5% better, myself, I will retexture it; --bewarned. ;-)
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

You guys are speaking as if it's a finished texture. It's not. Getting the panles on is only the first step in the process. Now I have to:
  • shape the plate contours to be appropriate to the model,
  • clone out the details from the photos source
  • add my own details such as rivets, access hatches, etc
  • do up the glomap properly
  • fix the specular map so the metal looks a bit more shiny
By the way, I wasn't planning to do flouresence, it was just an idea that occured to me, and I wondered if it was possible.

Also, the flames are a seperate Layer Set, so I can disable them easily. I just like them, so I use them. So there :P As well, until decals are implemented, I'm not worrying about seperating them, especially since my texture is one of how many that'll need redone if thats what you're doing.

Have to skedaddle in about 40 minutes, but if you reply before them I can try to fix something up for you, or at least respond to ya. If not, then I'm done till tomorrow. :)
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Ah, I thought you considered it quasi-final or something.

Sure, add another item to the list: The various parts the mesh is made of... the best thing, of course, would be to weld them together, in the geometry, to make smooth corners, and I might do that after WC1 and 2 are done; but, for now, if the textures for the various parts could have seams and rivet lines right where they meet, on both sides of the crossing planes, it would fix the dislocated look of it; like the engines' cover panels, which seem totally divorced from the rest of the ship.

Don't get me wrong; I like the flames too, and if you put them up for download as an alternative texture, I might use them :), but the official texture put into the downloadable game will have to look almost identical to the original, unless it is to fix some canon error; can't think of an example now.
Last edited by chuck_starchaser on Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

That went completely over my head Chuck. I don't get what you're trying to get across.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

The engine covers are parts of the body. They are supposed to be the same continuum :D
In other words, they are not like the round tank that rotates in a cement truck, which is a separate object from the truck. The engine covers are part of the Demon's body, so the textures on the body and on the engines should correlate. Right now they don't, which makes them look like separate objects glued on. Same thing with the smaller ovals, and with the roof and sides of the cockpit. The texture patterns don't mesh :D

Also, painting some kind of border or rivet line, whatever, along the lines where the parts meet, something dark, would help hide the discontinuities in the mesh.
Last edited by chuck_starchaser on Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Ah. Thing is, the mesh doesnt cooperate much with attempts to make things 'mesh' in the texture.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Don't expect cooperation; use force! :D

The engines are almost there, anyways; just need to shift the texture back a bit, and put some eye-shadow along the seam.

You could use the radiosity texture for the eye shadow; just extract the square root of it, or make a square-root-like curve, so that only the darkest parts of the radiosity remain dark, and the rest quickly fade to white; then use that to multiply both diffuse and specular. May need to fiddle a bit with blending factors; might be too dark. Maybe square root of the square root (fourth root) might be better.
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Post by klauss »

Privateer Ferrius wrote:You guys are speaking as if it's a finished texture. It's not. Getting the panles on is only the first step in the process. Now I have to...
Phew...
I thought it might be the case, but I deemed it much more disastruous if it wasn't than a bruised ego if it was and you got downed a bit from the comments.
Imagine, if I had come up with all that when you were done.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

You know what bothers me, is how harsh the lighting ends up being on the spheriod things - especially the smaller ones.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Standard Open GL lighting is quite unforgiving, indeed. Luckily, Klauss's new Global Illumination (TM) invention should go a long way to address that.
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Post by Privateer Ferrius »

Just a note for you guys that may be wondering about me or wondering why I've been quiet lately, I've been suffering from some health problems lately, so I haven't had much time (or inclination) to do much work lately. Hopefully they'll pass soon and I can get back to work ... sorry if it's holding anyone up, but I can't really help it :?
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Me too; my arm keeps getting worse, it seems... I have to be ultra careful which way I move it, and I have to take breaks from the mouse like every 5 minutes...
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