Covert-Ops Mod (lots of pics inside, just as a warning.)

[rcdraco]

If it is a low unit mod which it seems it is why are you so concerned about faces and polygons

[Relinquished]

If it is a low unit mod which it seems it is why are you so concerned about faces and polygons

Because it's not a low unit mod :). I'm just doing everything myself pretty much so it's coming slowly, there are (hopefully) going to be about 75 - 100 units per race. And ingame the unit counts actually get quite high believe it or not.

[smoth]

Relinquished, I hate to rain on your parade here but the #1 slow down is the unit sim code. So # of units will slow the game down more then poly count.

[rattle]

Not gameplay relevant but the UV maps are horrible for such simple objects.

[Relinquished]

Relinquished, I hate to rain on your parade here but the #1 slow down is the unit sim code. So # of units will slow the game down more then poly count.

That's fine. I actually mainly wanted a low poly count for two reasons.
1) I like what it looks like, it sorta gives it a unique style .
2) It's easier to uv map .

[Relinquished]

Not gameplay relevant but the UV maps are horrible for such simple objects.

How so? They aren't supposed to be textured really, just shaded...

[rattle]

The UV maps, not the textures. Same objects don't share the same UV map space and so on. Anything in a certain team color should share the same location either. A lot of them aren't orientated correclty. If you use wings' UV mapper then try "Chart to X/Y" on an edge on the UV map. Actually I'm quite confident that most of the textures can be made to share one 1024x1024 texture or use one 256x256 or even 128x128 instead of 512x512 each, without a loss in quality.
Yes I do look at other people's work and give feedback. :P

Anyway I quite like the tron style, but they need some more work. The borders are too blurry for me (means, don't a large soft brush), IMO.
Also, most of the texture work can probably be made automated, i.e. all you need is a sketch and either some fill effects or a couple of gradient layers applied on the cut out edges, what ever one prefers.

[Relinquished]

The UV maps, not the textures. Same objects don't share the same UV map space and so on. Anything in a certain team color should share the same location either. A lot of them aren't orientated correclty. If you use wings' UV mapper then try "Chart to X/Y" on an edge on the UV map. Actually I'm quite confident that most of the textures can be made to share one 1024x1024 texture or use one 256x256 or even 128x128 instead of 512x512 each, without a loss in quality.
Yes I do look at other people's work and give feedback.

Anyway I quite like the tron style, but they need some more work. The borders are too blurry for me (means, don't a large soft brush), IMO.
Also, most of the texture work can probably be made automated, i.e. all you need is a sketch and either some fill effects or a couple of gradient layers applied on the cut out edges, what ever one prefers.

What do you mean they're not oriented correctly? They're all fine to me and I've checked each unit at least 50 times . Even look at the screen shots on pg1, the textures are right...

I'll reduce the size of the textures to 128x128 (I'd prefer that, smaller file size), I just read somewhere that 512x512 was the minimum size for UV maps with spring.

I agree with the borders being blurry. I'm still experimenting with them. If you look at the metal extractor you'll notice it's a really thin border compared to the others, I'm probably going to go with that.

Right now the way I'm making the textures is:
1) Reflection map solid 220,220,220
2) Illumination map is solid black with a white outline of the edges slightly blurred
3) Texture is a solid 50,50,50 with a white outline of the edges slightly blurred
4) Team Colour is just shades of gray from 25,25,25 to 255,255,255 per polygon.

[rattle]

What do you mean they're not oriented correctly?

The UV maps aren't, a lot of them have odd rotation. Yes you don't notice it on the texture but that wasn't the point. For perfections sake I thought I mention it.

Also I didn't mean to scale the texture down to 128x128, what I meant was redoing the UV maps so everything fits on a 128x128 map without any loss... for perfection's sake yet again.

[Relinquished]

I'm confused about what you mean then. Just so you know I'm not that good at modding/texturing, or scripting really. I'm not NEW to it, I'm just not good. So it would help if you could explain what you mean a bit more basically if you don't mind .

What do you mean by they have odd rotation? Because they look fine... unless you're talking like, down to every last pixel (which no one would really notice when just playing a game) .

And by redoing do you mean making a 128x128 UV map instead of a 512x512 one?

[rattle]

I'm talking about redoing the UV map. The map where all your faces are layed out upon. It's just that you have 17 MB of textures which could have been a mere 3 or 4 MB with proper UV maps.
Anyway forget about it. :P

[Relinquished]

I'm talking about redoing the UV map. The map where all your faces are layed out upon. It's just that you have 17 MB of textures which could have been a mere 3 or 4 MB with proper UV maps.
Anyway forget about it.

Okay, that's what I meant too. I just didn't say it properly. The only reason they're 512x512 in the first place is because (like I said) I read somewhere on the wiki that in spring, UV map sizes HAVE to be either 512x512, 1024x1024 or 2048x2048. If they can be smaller I'll happily do that .

[rattle]

Gear Commander started out with 256x256 maps if you've been following the thread. So yeah they can be smaller and you don't have to scale them down if you (or whoever did the models) redo the *cough* UV maps. By redoing I mean making same shapes share the same space or assigning maps which have for instance a solid (team) color all to the same spot using only little space of the map. This leaves lots of space open for the more detailed stuff and will be as pretty or even prettier on a smaller texture (which conserves GPU memory/load). Optimizing is important IMO and one of the things you should stick to from day 1.

I think I'm in a time loop... :P

Oh and I'm pretty sure textures can be in any size and can be rectangular, but it's of advantage to do them in a square format - mainly for the UV mapping tool - and powers of 2 for the size.

[Relinquished]

Gear Commander started out with 256x256 maps if you've been following the thread. So yeah they can be smaller and you don't have to scale them down if you (or whoever did the models) redo the *cough* UV maps. By redoing I mean making same shapes share the same space or assigning maps which have for instance a solid (team) color all to the same spot using only little space of the map. This leaves lots of space open for the more detailed stuff and will be as pretty or even prettier on a smaller texture (which conserves GPU memory/load). Optimizing is important IMO and one of the things you should stick to from day 1.

If you can tell me how to do that in wings3d I'd be more than happy to

[rattle]

Did you ever edit one of the UV maps? I mean you've done them apparently and have no clue what I talk about... well it is quite some to redo each UV map AND texture but it would be worth it.

Alright, open up one of your models in wings, group all pieces together and edit the UV map. Now look out for shapes which seem similar.

First of all you want to orientate them. You can do that by selecting an edge (preferably one which is supposed to be horizontal or vertical) and use Chart to X/Y from the context menu (on the UV map). Now select all parts which have the same shape on the map and use Move -> Center from the menu.

Then drop them somwhere. Repeat this until everything which can share texture spaces does it. Now try to arrange them on the texture so most of the texture space gets used. Don't refrain from scaling some parts up (using uniform scale, still in UV map mode).

Don't forget about parts which have a solid (team) color. They don't need to occupy lots of space. To make things easier select all of them and use Move -> Center again. Then move them (as a bunch) somewhere. Simply make that spot a solid blob which fills out all the parts. Takes away some uneccessary work.
Visually I doubt someone will notice much or anything at all, though. Not when you keep this texture style.

When you're done with it draw the texture. You can do a low resolution texture right away or just do a 512x512 one and scale it down to your likes. In this case I doubt that going down to 128x128 will make much of a difference to 512x512 maps quality wise, even if they were scaled down from your current textures.

Hope that helps. If it doesn't google for some tutorials on Wings3D or UV mapping tutorials in general (not neccessarily for wings).

If you don't feel like doing lots of work for such "little" improvements you might as well try to scale your textures down and see how they turn out in spring.

[Relinquished]

Okay, I'll try that. Thanks . But you are right, I didn't really know what you were talking about. Like I said I'm not really that good at it. I'll probably end up just scaling the existing ones down simply because I don't want to have to re-uv everything. For new models I'll try to use that method though

[Maelstrom]

I can UV map things quickly for you if you want, Ill be happy to re-UV all your models pretty efficiently.

[rattle]

That's the spirit.

[Relinquished]

I can UV map things quickly for you if you want, Ill be happy to re-UV all your models pretty efficiently.

Sure . Thanks for the offer. Just one thing though, make sure to keep the same style. I just really want this style to stay.

edit: I'm making all the new model's uv maps though. But if you re-uv any of the existing ones just email them to me at apurelinquished@hotmail.com

[rattle]

UV mapping != making the texture, so there is no style to be kept.

Also Maelstrom would need the wings project files because (obj/3ds) exports from Upspring are useless to work with, at least for me.