New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds II - Page 5

New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds II

Discuss game development here, from a distinct game project to an accessible third-party mutator, down to the interaction and design of individual units if you like.

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smoth
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by smoth »

Pyrometheous wrote:I did it!!!!! Wooohoooo!
Confession: Didn't work on this as much as I'd hoped over the holiday, but I just now finished my UV mapp (totally had to reduce poly count) I'm very excited, what do you guys think? :-)

Now I'm going to work on texturing, I've downloaded and installed Gimp, I believe this little ASP-7 will be very simple to do, but any advice or recommendations would be great! As always thank you all for your support. I hope I didn't disappoint you in my long delay. I'm hoping to make more and more progress every week going forward, but I suppose we'll see. I'm going to try and build the Tech Level 1 Command Center after I get the ASP-7 textured, and after I have those two units I'll be working on importing them into Spring.

I'm so very excited about this. UV mapping was the biggest pain ever. I have sooo learned my lesson as far as poly count goes, I had far too much detail (I kept finding surprise faces on my model that were not doing anything useful at all.)Image
Image

the fun part comes in when you realize all the distortion in your uv map and the fact that you probably could shave off roughly 40% of your polies. Try and learn to pack your uvs tighter.

take a moment to study this texture if you can
Image
(click image for larger)

you will notice how different pieces have been setup despite all angles to be cleanly pack into all space. I leave around 4-5 pixels space between each item due to "bleed" which happens at different mip levels.

You will also note that all optional equipment is on this uv. Do not make the mistake of leaving your equipment out as you will have to do many redundant textures. This is both an efficiency thing as far as textures in memory and a major time saver. Also mirroring saves massive amounts of space.
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FireStorm_
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by FireStorm_ »

@Pyrometheous and smoth
First things first: It is possible to start texturing the UV, before mirroring mirriorable-parts.

@Pyrometheous
I advice not asking general questions to much, but try only asking specific ones.

I advice not to let people repeat themselves, when asking questions.

I advice not to dismiss these advices, when continuing with spring...
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smoth
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by smoth »

FireStorm_ wrote:@Pyrometheous and smoth
First things first: It is possible to start texturing the UV, before mirroring mirriorable-parts.
it is, it is possible to start texturing as he is now. That doesn't mean it is wise. It is best to get your uvs organized and sorted before you start texturing.
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Pyrometheous
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by Pyrometheous »

@Firestorm_ Understood on your points of asking only specific questions. I will not be bothersome with my progress reports unless I've already done the research and re-read this thread.

@Smoth Thank you :-) I decided to take your advice on compressing the UV map a lot more (although there are a couple larger spaces in there still). I also Added all of the equipment for ASP-7, I'm not yet sure how to reduce the space between the pixels. BTW your picture of the UV map textured was super helpful.

So I suppose I'm going to work on reducing the space between the islands in the UV map.
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FireStorm_
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by FireStorm_ »

Perhaps I meant for you to read a bit of a stern tone into my words, but don't take it the wrong way.
I meant to convey that I believe that you can help yourself a lot (and not in the least with making a more workable UV-map) by taking more advantage of some of the advice already mentioned earlier in this thread.

Simply put: I think you made cuts in weird places...
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Pyrometheous
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by Pyrometheous »

@Firestorm_ yeah, I got the sternness of your last post. I'm sorry I frustrated you, and I agree, I had some weird cuts, I was experimenting with what I wanted to work with. I've made a lot of adjustments and I discovered that additional cuts were needed in some places, and cuts needed to be removed in other places. I've finally condensed everything down a lot as far as distance between pieces.

I think I'm finally ready to actually texture this model. I am very excited about it.
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Anarchid
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by Anarchid »

Smoth and Firestorm both seem to take the most painstaking path possible! Being a very lazy person, i'd just recommend the following workflow myself:

1) Complete the model with all the different pieces you'd get to animate later.
2) Assign vertex groups to each piece.
3) Join everything.
4) Slice half the model off.
5) Abuse smart unwrap. Laugh at anybody who says there are too many gaps. They would spend hours doing it, you spend seconds. Yes, there might be gaps or minor stretching. But it beats working.
6) Separate mesh back into objects by vertex groups, reconstitute sawed-off half by mirroring.


... and once you're done unwrapping? There's texture paint waiting for you, which also beats* drawing your model by hand in a separate editor.

* Atlassing is probably more efficient on resources if you have many models using same atlas. But that requries *work*.
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FireStorm_
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by FireStorm_ »

Am I being accused of not being lazy?
I don't think I have to take such an insult.
Pyrometheous could delete a leg and cut his legwork in half (pun intended), but if I look at his UV I think there's even more advice he didn't use...
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smoth
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by smoth »

Well that does bear repeating.

1: if both legs look the same only keep one. Same for arms. that is why my model has one leg. normally they have 1 arm as well but for some reason i left it here on this model.

2: anarchid is giving you a lazy man's way, that is fine depending on the style you want. I spend roughly 4-6 hours uv mapping my units for the best possible layouts. That is not always necessary.

3: anarchid's points about texturing. Even in a fps you do paint textures. I don't see why he believes that method produces attractive results. FWIW, here is me texturing a tank. 6 hours with one break. It is in 1080 so if you want to see what settings or tool I used, it is all there.

Firestorm, anarchid was saying HE is lazy and just giving the guy an alternative method of texturing.

You uv is looking well. See if blender has an option to draw the edges at 2 pixels instead of 1, that is important. You want the extra pixels to help you predict bleed a bit. Each mip level halves the texture.. so 512->256->128 etc
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Pyrometheous
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by Pyrometheous »

@smoth I don't know why I didn't see it before but you're right, you're model only has 1 leg. I've just created a new save, and removed 1 leg and 1 arm. The UV map looks much more simplified. I intend on re-reading through the entire thread sometime today. I'm very excited about getting some textures on this model.

@Anarchid I think I'm going to continue the painstaking approach suggested by smoth. Although I appreciate the simplicity of what you recommend. I don't want to cut any corners, and I want to develop some good habits. I may turn to your simpler method in the future for some models, but I want to experience the more detailed approach before I try any shortcuts.

@Smoth, let me know what you think about the lost leg/arm UV map.
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FireStorm_
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by FireStorm_ »

Firestorm, anarchid was saying HE is lazy and just giving the guy an alternative method of texturing.
Dear smoth,
What makes you think I didn't know that?

@Pyrometheous
... ?
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Pyrometheous
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by Pyrometheous »

So I've noticed something weird. I'm starting to apply some rough textures to the model. However, the 3D view is showing most faces inadvertently, when I render an image it shows up the right way. Does anyone have an idea why that would be? Or is this normal?

@Firestorm_ Why the "?"
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Anarchid
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by Anarchid »

I think you need to assign your texture for display in texture mode by going into edit, faces, select all, and then pick your texture image in uv/image editor.

You also have to remember to reload the image if you change it externally.
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FireStorm_
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by FireStorm_ »

@Firestorm_ Why the "?"
Because to me it seemed you thanked smoth for something that I though I pointed out. Don't worry about that though. In any case, good luck getting more familiar with Blender basics.
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Pyrometheous
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by Pyrometheous »

@Anarchid, thank you I'll check that out when I get home

@FireStorm_ Sorry! (picardfacepalm.gif) my bad! and thank you. As always I appreciate the support.

I have made some basic textures for my model for practice. I am going to keep at it until this ASP-7 + accessories are complete. Then I am going to re-do the ASP-7 with everything in mind that I've learned with this first go at it. I must apologize for my frustratingly slow progress and hopefully after these first few hurtles I'll be making more frequent posts with more promising leaps into a working alpha.
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smoth
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by smoth »

FireStorm_ wrote:
FireStorm_ wrote:Pyrometheous could delete a leg and cut his legwork in half (pun intended), but if I look at his UV I think there's even more advice he didn't use...
smoth wrote:Well that does bear repeating.

1: if both legs look the same only keep one. Same for arms. that is why my model has one leg. normally they have 1 arm as well but for some reason i left it here on this model.
I was merely echoing your advice and using my model to illustrate the point.
Firestorm, anarchid was saying HE is lazy and just giving the guy an alternative method of texturing.
Dear smoth,
What makes you think I didn't know that?
Also sorry I didn't catch your joke, I had some(probably expired) food and was sick for much of yesterday and puking until last last night. Probably a good idea to do a ;) when you are doing sarcastic humor as sarcasm is often lost online because we cannot hear your voice or see your facial language.

pyro a few things.

1: 4096 is much too large. Give it is a common unit with accessories and much of the details are metallic, I would go with 1024. My texture above is a 512x512 and a 1024x1024 is 4x that At that point you will notice your parts are too close.
2: Texture memory is more of a worry than polycount. All spring maps eat a massive chunk of it. On top of that you will have explosion & effects(CEG & LUPS) sprites as well. So it is important to consider your sprites.

Image

3: before you start texturing. look at the highlighted areas See how there is much redundancy.

For something like this. any piece that is bottom, top or side needs to be handled differently. All side parts will need to be done where they are duplicated. so if you have a left and right side, you will want them on top of one another sharing that uv space. Be sure to test up and down.

Another thing, start your texture by boxing out color and drawing up arrows on all that space where you overlay all those side pieces. The reason being is that you want to make sure they are all up just the same.
Image
top is blue, sides are green bottom is that reddish color.

Only when your side parts will have different details should they have their own space. IE, the inner thigh does not need to be stacked on top of the outer thigh as you have a hip connection to draw there.

I am flying off to take care of IRL stuff. I will be gone a week I may or may not have time to post further details in this thread so if you don't see me reply, it is just because I am busy IRL and what replies I make are likely limited to things of higher priority.
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FireStorm_
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Re: New Game Development: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Post by FireStorm_ »

smoth wrote:Also sorry I didn't catch your joke [...] cannot hear your voice or see your facial language.
:-) No problem. Fair enough.
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