Spring RTS Engine

i think beherit has a team of higly trained monkey coders to do his work

=P

Wombat wrote:

Imo that could be worked to be a nuke launcher, rather than a hovercraft

mobile hover nuke ftw

Totally stuck on texturing

i think they look great, add some wear n tear maybe? layers n shit

AO bake and paneling overlay?

I dunno how good your drawing skills are but you could try to remap gray scale base layers with gradient maps instead of painting in colors. You could easily add in some subtle blue or green tones into these dull grays without much artistic skills

Oh yeah models look good, liking the beefed up look

Beherith's skills are beyond my level of understanding.

I have the team color placement down, and most of the general color, and the fine detail as well (paneling).
But Im lost on the medium level details, the greebling, the panel lines. the graphical surface subdivison.

So atm is just what rattle said: pure color, panel overlay and AO bake.

Dunno. The more I look at it the worse it looks.
Any pointers on how im doin it rong?

It's the outlines. Ditch the outlines. I have a trick I use for making things look inset / outset: using layer styles, with outer and inner glow.

If it's inset, set the inner glow to black, multiply, and fiddle the opacity / size 'till it looks good. The outer glow should be set to white, colour dodge, and again, fiddle as appropriate. It's usually a good idea to make the highlight subtle though; it's mostly there for additional contrast.

If it's outset, use the inverse: inner glow is white, colour dodge, outer glow is black, multiply. You're basically faking AO for a piece of geometry that isn't there.

You might also find this tutorial on painting 'hard surfaces' useful, and this pdf is just handy as a general guide.

You're also really overdoing the 'metal effect' on the panels; let the specular map handle that. And I'd recommend using something other than that weird tile thing you're using as an overlay. Snag some pictures of metal from CGTextures, run a High Pass filter on them (use a setting of around 30), then save as a Pattern, and use them with the pattern overlay layer style, set to Overlay (fiddle opacity as needed). That's what I prefer to do.

For a 'dirt pass', snag another pic of either dirt, rust etc from CGTextures again, maybe darken it a bit, and then add it as a layer in your unit texture, with a completely black layer mask (so it's invisible). Then start painting it back on where dirt would build up and such. Focus in particular on the legs.

Finally, just look at pictures of existing war machines - tanks, obviously - and see what sort of random extra crap they have on them. Construction equipment are also good (anything with a lot of hydraulics and big, moving parts, really). For mechs, you'll have to go for concept art, other game models and film props for obvious reasons. The Aliens Loader is always a favourite for references.

Thanks for the tips, the outlines was something I should have noticed earlier.

where do the guns go :/

Sink them into the rear wings, the apparatus shielded by the wing itself. The tube in which they are carried would probably be through and through.

3900 RPM





the writings on the wall

bobthedinosaur wrote:stuff

Verrrrry excellent. Can't wait until everything is all put together.

You're also really overdoing the 'metal effect' on the panels; let the specular map handle that.

I agree with that. Really, what you want with metal is to make it look like metal, in terms of color... don't preshade it too heavily, let the shader do that. You're going way too old-skool, and for it to look natural, you need to lose the gradient fills and concentrate on keeping the surfaces looking as natural as possible.

BA has gradients on everything, if your looking at your units from a distance it doesn't matter that much. I think the metal texture is nice too.

Hello everyone.

Wow thats some awesome stuff melvin!

Sausage wrote:BA has gradients on everything, if your looking at your units from a distance it doesn't matter that much. I think the metal texture is nice too.

BA uses models and textures from an age where specular wasn't possible. As for the gradients, they were by-and-large preshading, much like an AO map. And... well, considering how old all that stuff is, seriously, we can do better. I'm not saying they're bad (for their age), but they are very outdated.

With metal, reflections just don't work like that. If you have a gradient caused by a specular, that's a sign that the metal is bent, like a barrel or similar. Flat metal reacts differently, and very much dependant on view and lighting angles, which is why it's best to let the shaders handle it.