Random WIP 2006-2011

[Hobo Joe]

I still don't know wtf to do with those ugly-ass legs.

[KaiserJ]

cool model; maybe make the feet big so you can see them clearly from above when he runs IMO

maybe add something to the top of the guns, the head, the shoulders? (not sure if it would be geometry, texture etc, but making them fancier might be a good call)

[Hobo Joe]

Well, I thought about adding detail, but I dunno, I've always really liked the simplicity of the peewee. As for the legs/feet, yeah, definitely gonna make some changes there too.


Still gonna do some detail work, and probably some changes to the legs

[AF]

I would do one of my classic gravity fail photoshops but youve done it at the wrong angle, please repost at a more appropriate angle

But yes, you need to make it so it isnt going to fall forwards when let loose flat on its face. In nature they fix this by adding tail but this may be somewhat of an issue here

[Hobo Joe]

I would do one of my classic gravity fail photoshops but youve done it at the wrong angle, please repost at a more appropriate angle

But yes, you need to make it so it isnt going to fall forwards when let loose flat on its face. In nature they fix this by adding tail but this may be somewhat of an issue here

Yeah I need to move the legs forward a little bit, and add something to the back, although the center of gravity isn't quite as bad as it looks from that angle. :p

[bobthedinosaur]

The pewee is fine, just make the legs larger in proportion to the body, the other kbot is a good model, just hideous in shape.

[AF]

The best measure is to draw a box and draw lines from the corners. The center of the box should be the center or very close to the center of the unit. If it isn't, itll start to run into rules and conventions that we have in our brains, and no matter how realistic its texture is or how many polygons, it wont feel right. It'll be like those sculptures that use trickery to do things that aren't right and it'll fall into the uncanny valley, it'll feel wrong.

Another tip, draw a vertical line from either the ankles of the feet or the centre of the feet, assuming a 1 legged or bipedal mecha. Everything in front of the line should be just as heavy of voluminous as the stuff on the other side, so that the centre of gravity matches up with the application of force and weight as the object moves forward, aka the feet.

Normally it is a good idea to focus on volume here since these objects carry little physical weight beyond what the animation and shaking effects provide, and I doubt your that talented, even the mastery of Zwszg hasn't reached that point, and it would be a hefty task without certain tools which we just don't have.

Of course you could sidestep this by providing means of visually conveying support by other means such as emitters for antigravity, thrusters, support rockets, fans, jets, etc.

I would also modify the ankles so that it appears thicker or bulkier so it doesn't look top heavy, and it looks stabler. At the moment given the barrels I would expect such a robot to sink into the ground or have major wear and tear on the ankle joints due to the distribution of forces. This is apparent in the visual design and will reflect in the users perceptions. Try to make hefty units hefty, and light units look light, the ankles ehre are a visual inconsistency, but easily fixed.

[Beherith]

I love the peewee legs, they look quick and nimble. The hammer looks good too What are you using to render these screens? I seem to see some heavy AO on them.

[Hobo Joe]

I love the peewee legs, they look quick and nimble. The hammer looks good too What are you using to render these screens? I seem to see some heavy AO on them.

Thanks. :D


And just a straight AO render in Blender. Didn't feel like setting up lights and AO shows the shape well.

[Argh]

Lose the little bevels. They're costing a lot of triangles and you can get the same effect far cheaper with a normalmap.

[Beherith]

Those 20 tris you save dont cost anything. There is no normal map support built into the engine. GFX hardware isnt getting worse.
Btw the bevels are on it in OTA.

Edit: the only reason I could think of in removing them, is that I find beveled bodies hard to texture.

[Hobo Joe]

Those 20 tris you save dont cost anything. There is no normal map support built into the engine. GFX hardware isnt getting worse.
Btw the bevels are on it in OTA.

Edit: the only reason I could think of in removing them, is that I find beveled bodies hard to texture.

I'll probably remove the bevels on the legs, but the ones on the upper body are staying, it's too sharp without them. But nope, the OTA model doesn't have those bevels on them. And besides, normal maps for negative spaces looks like shit, especially removing corners.

And yeah I know the engine doesn't support it yet.


And ugh, don't remind me... I'm planning on modeling all the T1 arm kbots, then I'll bite the bullet and learn to do some proper mechanical texturing. Hopefully. >_>

[Argh]

Yeah, you can't remove corners with a normalmap... that's one thing they can't do, hehe.

As for "it's not supported", that's wrong.

Normalmap support is available to anybody who downloaded the last release of stuff I put out here- i.e., it's been out of the box in various flavors for months.

I think I even released the post-ATi fixes, but basically it's been available in various versions to anybody and everybody for months now.

[Hobo Joe]

Yeah, you can't remove corners with a normalmap... that's one thing they can't do, hehe.

As for "it's not supported", that's wrong.

Normalmap support is available to anybody who downloaded the last release of stuff I put out here- i.e., it's been out of the box in various flavors for months.

I think I even released the post-ATi fixes, but basically it's been available in various versions to anybody and everybody for months now.

It's not in the official release, therefore not properly supported, therefore not worth putting a ton of extra time in to make good looking normal maps.

[Beherith]

therefore not worth putting a ton of extra time in to make good looking normal maps.

Now I disagree on that.

[zwzsg]

It's not in the official release, therefore not properly supported, therefore not worth putting a ton of extra time in to make good looking normal maps.

That's not the expected answer. You're supposed to bow down to Argh, who in his magnificence deigned share with us, the ungrateful plebs, his shaders, thus bringing Spring into a new golden age of normal maps and depth maps. Argh has already given so much to this community, anyone who doesn't acknowledge this is a troll. Why are you refusing to use Argh's code? He made it for you, out of pure goodwill, he only ever got flames and hate from this trollish community, and yet he keeps giving, because such is the goodness of pure-hearted Argh. So now, stop your petty trolling, acknowledge the grandeur as Argh and the mighty power of Argh's work, and humbly accept his offering of code as a part of Spring.

[Argh]

Rendering systems for Units are "part of the engine". The code is Lua, it's literally a copy-pasta (and teensy text-editing of a UnitDef) to make it work

Aaaanyhow... that's pretty much all I have to say about that, I even wrote documentation and stuff, please read it and if you have serious questions about a real implementation issue, PM me.

[Wombat]

mechanical reincarnation of deadly bird flu !

[Beherith]

Looks epic, care to post the polycount?

[Hobo Joe]

It's not in the official release, therefore not properly supported, therefore not worth putting a ton of extra time in to make good looking normal maps.

That's not the expected answer. You're supposed to bow down to Argh, who in his magnificence deigned share with us, the ungrateful plebs, his shaders, thus bringing Spring into a new golden age of normal maps and depth maps. Argh has already given so much to this community, anyone who doesn't acknowledge this is a troll. Why are you refusing to use Argh's code? He made it for you, out of pure goodwill, he only ever got flames and hate from this trollish community, and yet he keeps giving, because such is the goodness of pure-hearted Argh. So now, stop your petty trolling, acknowledge the grandeur as Argh and the mighty power of Argh's work, and humbly accept his offering of code as a part of Spring.

lmao




@wombat - looks awesome, but I have a request. Please please PLEASE change the color of the background in your renders. that blue is the worst thing to ever happen to a modeling newb. Also a lighter model color and a little multi-direction light would help a lot too. Then again I'm kind of an AO whore. :>