HAMMER aka TOAD - LIHW Heavy Fighter

Active development of content (Art, story, etc.). Content slated for inclusion will be listed in the parent forum.

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chuck_starchaser
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Fast progress, but won't be done today; gotta go now; I'll be back in 2 or 3 hours.

Image

Well, maaaybeee... but I doubt it. Got most of the materials grouped; but the frontal unwrap section (the one highlighted) is not really unwrapped yet; that's just a parallel projection from the front, and it contains all the cockpit interior stuff.
toad2.blend

Here's another render I had kicking around from yesterday:

Image

And another from today:

Image
Fendorin
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Post by Fendorin »

ok good i m interrested by this story about different materials???
Neskiairti
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Post by Neskiairti »

youve not been paying attention to his work on the different materials and what not? :P the CineMut stuff?

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... hp?t=11609
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Post by loki1950 »

The language is a bit technical for a non english speaker :wink: which he has expressed in that thread. So i imagine that some simplification is needed.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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chuck_starchaser
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Fendorin wrote:ok good i m interrested by this story about different materials???
Fendorin, it's a very long story. In the simplest terms, the way we've been working we have to paint textures, using colors. The way it will be with CineMut is that we will pick "materials" rather than just colors, and paint with them.
The way we've been working you could use a color for specular and a color for diffuse. That's not enough information to define a material, though.
The way it will be with CineMut is that you'll be able to specify that here you want gray metal, and here gray matte paint; and next you want a low gloss gray paint, then a high gloss gray paint, and next to it you want a shiny gray plastic, and then gray cement, and all these grays will look different and unique and exactly like what they are supposed to look like. And I'm using gray just for an example; you'll be able to use other colors, of course.

The problem is that there's no tool that allows you to paint to like 10 color channels at the same time, so the process will begin by assigning materials in Blender first, baking base textures, and putting them through a Blender node network called the "Splitter"; part of LaGrande.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

DONE! :D

Ambient Occlusion:
http://wcjunction.com/temp_images/toad/blenders_ao.png

Diffuse bake:
http://wcjunction.com/temp_images/toad/diffuse.png

Specular bake:
http://wcjunction.com/temp_images/toad/specular.png

Template (suggested for using as background for painting):
http://wcjunction.com/temp_images/toad/template.png

Blender file:
http://wcjunction.com/temp_images/toad/toad2.blend

Proof (ambient occlusion loaded as texture):

Image

Image

Image

Does 3:30 am Eastern Time count as having finished "before Saturday"?

All yours, Fendorin; I'll start baking a higher quality ambient occlusion.
Fendorin
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Post by Fendorin »

well good i m pride of you!! lol

you need diffuse and bump?
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Post by Fendorin »

just a independant clarification:

We can't make OA & Normal on a symetrical map? ( mean one uv side for two side ob the model (like i made for big unit or station)???
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

No, we can't; and it's a super-long story why. In a nutshell, some day we will have dual-UV's. What that means is, support for TWO unwraps:
One of the two would use symmetry folding, AND every trick in the book of overlapping of islands to maximize detail and texture use.
The other set of UV's will be non-folding and non-overlapping, and it will be used for the lightmap, normalmap and PRT bakes.
And, until we have dual UV support, we're better off doing the latter UV's: Non-overlapping and non-folding; because we will be using PRT's long before we have dual UV's, and PRT's can't use folding or overlaps.

What I need the most is just a paint *layer*. Not diffuse, or specular; just a paint *(mask) layer*. It will go into a stack of textures used by LaGrande noodles to produce the final textures set. So, just paint on black background; or paint on transparency would be perfect. CineMut doesn't have separate "diffuse" and "specular"; it has a first texture that is a combination of diffuse and specular, called "albedo". The second texture has a funny assignment of color channels:
Red channel is "specularity", and it indicates whether the albedo color is mostly diffuse, mostly specular, or something in-between.
The blue channel encodes the material's dielectric constant, which could be around 5 for paints, 10 for plastics, zero for metals.
The green channel is dielectric blend, which would be 1.0 for baked paints, and about 0.7 or 0.6 for plastics.
The alpha channel is shininess, which would be high for high gloss paints and chromes; and low for most metals.
So what I need is just a paint mask, or layer, that I can use as input to the LaGrande texture processor.

As for a bumpmap, if you feel up to it go for it. Don't turn it into a normal map; just gray-scale bump; as, again, I have a LaGrande noodle that will combine it with a baked, corrective normal map.

EDIT:
If you do do a bumpmap, be sure to make a set of masks first, like one for grooves, one for rivets, and so on; as I will need the masks to modulate materials.
Also, the masks for thin grooves and small features like rivets should be drawn at 512 x 512 resolution first; then enlarged to 1024 and combined with other stuff. Otherwise, when we reduce to 512 for the final set of textures, we could have rivets that straddle pixel lines, between rivets that are centered on pixels, and that looks really bad.

EDIT2:
I left xNormal baking a high quality ambient occlusion last night, and it's at about 80% now; --8 hours later; so about two more hours to go...

EDIT3:
I think I'll go for breakfast, and let xNormal finish the AO baking.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Ehm... Just in case it's not clear: Please don't paint the WHOLE ship, the entire ship. Just places where there should be *paint* on. Leave the rest black or transparent, for the metal to show through. I got the metals already. So do only the paint parts.
(Ambient occlusion still going; half more hour probably.)
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

The ambient occlusion finally finished; but I found artifacts caused by small mistakes in the unwrap...

Image

Image

In any case, while I fix the UV details, this is a much better AO you can use as background while painting:
http://wcjunction.com/temp_images/toad/ao.jpg
Fendorin
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Post by Fendorin »

Oh i was post a reply before, but it don't appear

then it said

do you want just a tag and 'fonction color' like caution or eject......
some ship info?

or a TOTAL colorful??

i think if you have made all materiel , and if it s colored by so many color
your previous "materials work" will be little bit hide no?
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Post by Phlogios »

Fendorin: Whatever needs PAINT on it, is what you should paint.

"CAUTION" = paint, Fendorin
"EJECT" = paint, Fendorin
arrows = paint, Fendorin
Tiger? = paint, Fendorin
numbers = paint, Fendorin
stripes = paint, Fendorin

metal = no, CineMut
glass = no, CineMut
Everything else = no, CineMut
"Enjoy the Choice" - A very wise man from Ottawa.
Fendorin
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Post by Fendorin »

and thruster ??? i put glow ??( anyway i can't found the UV of the thruster)
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

No, don't worry about glow map; I use radiosity bakings for such things; looks a lot more realistic than anything you could do by hand.

Regarding paint: Exactly as Phlogios says; couldn't have said it better myself.

ATTENTION:
Most of the fixes I did to the UV map were very minor adjustments, except for two small places I had to break off into their own islands. Hold on; I will upload new blend file and textures and a screenshot showing the two pices that moved. I'll post back as a new reply once I have uploaded everything.
Fendorin
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Post by Fendorin »

try first whit this one

Image

and say me if it's ugly or not

i m sorry but i can't check the texture with blender your file request more skill than i have

i never could check my work.....maybe is totaly wrong

Thank
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Okay, here we go:

The two pieces that had to move in the UV map are circled in the 3D view below:

Image

In the UV map, those two places were badly squeezed, so I moved them UP as indicated below by red arrows.
Other areas of minor changes/adjustments are indicated in orange.

Image

Here is a new template:
http://wcjunction.com/temp_images/toad/rough_albedo.png

Sorry, I don't have an ambient occlusion yet; it's baking...
Here's the current blend file:
http://wcjunction.com/temp_images/toad/toad3.blend

Got a smoothing/corrective normalmap done, btw:
http://wcjunction.com/temp_images/toad/xnormal_nm.jpg
Phlogios
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Post by Phlogios »

Fendorin:

You didn't leave ANY metal surfaces..??

I thought I was clear enough.

You were only supposed to texture the PAINT!
OK, try again. Start a new texture file, a totally transparent one, and DRAW ONLY THE CAUTION TEXT.

We can continue from there.
"Enjoy the Choice" - A very wise man from Ottawa.
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Post by Fendorin »

ahahah

i paint all like that you can choose the part you want and the part you wont...
no?

it's because my chinese way said: never watch behind you

but of course you can cut what you want

and for be serious i wanted post the PSD file with all layer but my internet company cut my account then i use the wireless of my neighbour and is a little bit slowly ...
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

That's really nice, Fendorin; but you didn't understand.
In any case, I can mask out most of it; I'll just leave some sections with paint, and the rest metal or ceramic.
But if you want to do another try go for it. It would be nice to tiny_paintings to kind of try and follow his artistic style, like he painted saber-tooth tigers on it.

Image

See also:
http://www.nada.kth.se/~gimaker/vs/toad/toad11.png

Fendorin, the idea is, about 75% of your paint texture should be transparent. Maybe 25% of the ship would be painted. Most areas would be bare metal.
In other words, don't paint metal areas gray; let me do the metal; leave metal areas transparent; do ONLY the painted areas. "Painted" as in "brush-painted" or "spray-painted", etceteras. Leave the rest transparent; --or black if you prefer.

EDIT:
Ambient occlusion is currently about 30% done...
Last edited by chuck_starchaser on Sat Aug 30, 2008 11:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Fendorin
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Post by Fendorin »

yes i misunderstood sorry

i will remake

also that:
Image
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Hahaha, the pilot was YOU! :D
Priceless.

Good, so you got the idea, and that looks good; haven't tried it on the model yet; need to wait for the ambient occlusion baking to finish, as it makes my computer very slow. So, I'll go have dinner, and when I get back I'll try it on.
Thanks!
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Post by Neskiairti »

ohhh I'm so curious..

and thats great fendorin.. the pilot -giggles-
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

This is going to work well.
This is just a quick test of diffuse:

Image

Which on the model looks like,

Image

Don't forget this is just diffuse. Many items that look dark here will be bright in specular, so they will look metallic. The body is made of titanium, which is a metal that does show some diffuse reflectivity; though not as much; needs to be darker. Finally, paint will be black in specular, but will have a dielectric constant, so it will show fresnel reflectivity.

There are visible seams, there; I haven't looked into where they come from, yet. Can't be from the AO; this AO is the mother of all AO's; just perfect.
Ouch; not quite; I just noticed there ARE seams... Why? Anyways; I can fix them by hand.

Image

Here's the pilot:

Image

I still have a lot of work to do before I can test this in-game with CineMut. Gotta,
  • bake PRT's
  • make a bumpmap
  • finalize the material definitions in Blender
  • bake the materials again
  • bake radiosity for the lights
  • put the textures through the LaGrande noodles
  • export .obj's
  • convert to bfxm's
  • throw it in-game
  • figure out why it doesn't work
  • fix it
EDIT:
Updated toad3.blend; just some minor UV adjustments.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

  • bake PRT's .................................. ***DONE*** (yep; took all day)
  • make a bumpmap ....................... ***STARTED...***
  • finalize the material definitions in Blender
  • bake the materials again
  • bake radiosity for the lights
  • put the textures through the LaGrande noodles
  • export .obj's
  • convert to bfxm's
  • throw it in-game
  • figure out why it doesn't work
  • fix it
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