SICKLE ''The Goose'' some questions

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Dunkelheit
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SICKLE ''The Goose'' some questions

Post by Dunkelheit »

I made this new sickle model for practice for myself (no more blender tutorials), and of course now i think it could help the cause for upgrading that ship, but have some questions, about the ingame.

here is the model without smooth-shading (its not the final one but by now is useful)

Image



and when i set smooth, it looks reallly bad.

Image


So i made some cuts (good to read the HowTo Bevel tutorial) and it looks like this.
Image




my question is if this is really nesecesary in game, to have a good smooth ship, or a bad one, but when it has texture it would be not so bad, because of the great diference in the plygons they have, the first version has around 300, and the other around 1000, so tell me what would be better in game.

And another question is how to unwrap it, the tutorial of Chuck, is for an old blender i think, my 2.45 doesnt have some options, or matbe named diferent, but i tried so much and dont get to unwrap a simple box :?
You know you have been raytracing too long when ...
... You take a photo course just to learn how to get the lighting right.
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Post by loki1950 »

Looks good as a replacement for the sickle not as angular as the current one 8)

Don't worry about the poly count as that is quite modest in this model IMHO

as for the unwrap that will have to wait for chuck's comments.

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Deus Siddis
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Post by Deus Siddis »

Well it looks like all of your vertices are welded together so that it is all one single mesh. This won't shade smoothly, even with normal mapping (already tried it myself, just to be certain). You need to separate areas like the cockpit so that they are smooth shaded separately, Blender and VS cannot handle such intense angle changes at once.

I can't see the poly count for the beveled mesh, but is that facted-with-rounded-edges look what you were going for or did you want your model to have smooth curvy surfaces in places as well? It will be easier for us to help you if we know what your intended look is.

About UV unwrapping, this has been changed alot in 2.46 with some nice tools added. And already I have mostly forgotten the interface specifics of how UV work was handled in 2.45, so I for one can't really help you with this unless you upgrade to the latest Blender release.
Dunkelheit
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Post by Dunkelheit »

@Deus Siddis
I think you didnt understand well, because the third picture looks exactly as i want the model to look, that is the kind of shading i want (you see the cockpit has harder edges), was just asking which version will be better for the game, the low poly with bad shading or the high poly with nice shading, anyway I think it has not so much polys, around 1000 (I said it before), so i'll continue with the high poly.




And about a new model for the sickle, I read in the little information the wiki has about the LIHW (who are the manufacturer of the ship), that they use old technologies and the cheaper they can get, so the model i want to do must be like that, with no big rounded smooth areas to make it look not so modern, and just one big engine, with also big radiators (i think they are easy to see in the pictures), and for the texture I think you have an specific color scheme for each faction, so it will be like that but i'd like to do it very rusty, and like it needs a new coat of paint :P

About the unwraping, now i found the way in 2.45, so i'll be working on that.

As I've said I'm so new with blender, and with modeling/texturing for games, but if you think the model style is what the sickle needs and you let me, I'll finish the model, need some time I guess, but as I know there's no one else working on this ship, so this could be the new sickle.
You know you have been raytracing too long when ...
... You take a photo course just to learn how to get the lighting right.
Deus Siddis
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Post by Deus Siddis »

Dunkelheit wrote:@Deus Siddis
I think you didnt understand well, because the third picture looks exactly as i want the model to look, that is the kind of shading i want (you see the cockpit has harder edges), was just asking which version will be better for the game, the low poly with bad shading or the high poly with nice shading, anyway I think it has not so much polys, around 1000 (I said it before), so i'll continue with the high poly.
At 1000 polys, my understanding is you are not even required to make a lower budget LOD, so the beveling is no problem.

It looks like the beveled areas are not welded to the flat areas of the mesh, correct? That it is a little more GPU demanding, but it might not be so bad given the the poly count you've stuck to.
And about a new model for the sickle, I read in the little information the wiki has about the LIHW (who are the manufacturer of the ship), that they use old technologies and the cheaper they can get, so the model i want to do must be like that, with no big rounded smooth areas to make it look not so modern, and just one big engine, with also big radiators (i think they are easy to see in the pictures), and for the texture I think you have an specific color scheme for each faction, so it will be like that but i'd like to do it very rusty, and like it needs a new coat of paint :P
This is more jackS department, he directs and reviews the art styles. I'm just a humber ship make myself, I've just had a few years fiddling with blender, so I try to answer the questions that I can understand.
About the unwraping, now i found the way in 2.45, so i'll be working on that.
I just won't be able to help you on the UV front then. You should step up to 2.46 when you feel you are ready though, it has some nice new UV features like a color coded UV patch display mode that shows you where your texture is getting stretched or squashed and updates in realtime as you move UVs around, which is one of my favorites. :)
As I've said I'm so new with blender, and with modeling/texturing for games, but if you think the model style is what the sickle needs and you let me, I'll finish the model, need some time I guess, but as I know there's no one else working on this ship, so this could be the new sickle.
Like I said I don't decide anything about what happens in VS, I just have some experience with Blender and am working on one of the ships for this project myself.
Dunkelheit
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Post by Dunkelheit »

Ok waiting for jackS.

meanwhile the UV unwraping is progressing.






EDIT
Deus Siddis wrote:
It looks like the beveled areas are not welded to the flat areas of the mesh, correct? That it is a little more GPU demanding, but it might not be so bad given the the poly count you've stuck to.
The whole model is just one piece, every face is welded to its adjacents, if this is what you are talking about.
You know you have been raytracing too long when ...
... You take a photo course just to learn how to get the lighting right.
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Post by jackS »

It certainly looks a lot better than the one we have, so, whether or not this will be a final replacement for the goose/sickle or an interim one, I'd definitely like to see this work progress toward inclusion.
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Post by pyramid »

Has there been any progress on this concept in the meantime?
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Re: SICKLE ''The Goose'' some questions

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Dunkelheit wrote:here is the model without smooth-shading (its not the final one but by now is useful)

Image

and when i set smooth, it looks reallly bad.

Image

So i made some cuts (good to read the HowTo Bevel tutorial) and it looks like this.
Image
Sorry; I'd never seen this thread before. First thing you want to do with just about any mesh object in Blender is Add Attribute -> Edge Split.
Click OFF the From Angle button; leave From Edges Marked Sharp ON.
Then select any edges you want to look sharp and hit Ctrl-E -> Mark Sharp.
When I do, I usually hit Ctrl-E -> Mark Seam, in addition; and also Shift-E 2 Enter, to "crease" the edge.
Reason being, sharp edges often (though not always) are good edges to place seams on, for unwrapping.
And if you use subsurf (and you will, later), you'll need to crease sharp edges to tell subsurf to not smooth too much across them.
So, I usually highlight a whole bunch of edges to sharpen at a time, then hit Ctrl-E->Mark Seam; Ctrl-E->Mark Sharp; and Shft-E 2 Enter, all in quick succession.
my question is if this is really nesecesary in game, to have a good smooth ship, or a bad one, but when it has texture it would be not so bad, because of the great diference in the plygons they have, the first version has around 300, and the other around 1000, so tell me what would be better in game.
Textures can't fix shading artifacts; and 1000 polygons is a joke; 100,000 would be worrisome.
And another question is how to unwrap it, the tutorial of Chuck, is for an old blender i think, my 2.45 doesnt have some options, or matbe named diferent, but i tried so much and dont get to unwrap a simple box :?
It's true; that tutorial is a bit old; but more or less same principles apply. The newer Blenders no longer have the "Potato Mode", but you work in the same way from the Edit window. You split the screen for a second window, make it a UV Edit type window; then over the Edit window you highlight a bunch of polygons you want to unwrap together, hit U for Unwrap, and most commonly I use Unwrap and Project From View items.
First part of unwrapping is test-unwrapping, to make sure your seams are well placed, and each island unwraps easily, without kinks or overlaps.
Once you've made sure everything is alright, highlight the whole model and hit U -> Unwrap.
Now all the ilsands will be spread randomly in the texture area.
Next step is to do selections by material in the edit window; one at a time:
For each material, group all the islands together in some area outside the square representing the texture area. I start at the bottom left.
Next material, I group them to the left. Next material; upper left.
When done, I have an empty texture area square surrounded by like a pallette of clusters of islands of a common material.
Now optimize each island so that it's tight and square, or rectangular, and so that the direction towards the front of the ship, on each island, points UP in the texture.
Then move all the optimized clusters back into the texture area.

The reason you want to keep similar materials together is to minimize the visibility of color bleeds between islands due to static or dynamic filtering (mipmap generation and trilinear and anisotropic filtering).
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