Spring RTS Engine

I decidet to translate creation of skin to famous harconnen unit "devastator" step by step

at first my unskinned model. occlusion is good way to show all the geometry readable


then unwarping and pre-baking ambient occlusion grayscale map. it perfectly shows all intersections and geometry on skin. also shadowed diffuze map looks much tragic ingame.


after all preparations i coat my devastator with base colors(cast iron and steel) and some filter made scratches, after filtering i erased scratches everywhere except corners of model.



The other critical part of miniature painting(we lay with miniatures, not real tanks :) keep it in mind) is lightening of corners. take another layer and enlighten corners with blend effect
now it looks more volumetric, yeah?



next step is to draw basic texture under shadows and light areas. also i am adding some noisy dirt and others, its really "alives" miniature. think carefully jf model constutution and intersections - they must be shown



after all - scrach and age your model for best scale-read results and dramatic look
also, keep in mind spaces of housecoloring. it must be part of texture not just chaothic sripes over detail!


There was discussion in team so some geometry were added. do not mind some model changes.
Make final spellcheck(texture bugs) correct it and add another overbrigtening jn corners(invert shadowmap and make small brightness/contrast ajustments to light only corners.... also it is good to tune colors to other models in projects(so you model is not darker or brigter, precisely same style and color).




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final render after all changes and extra owerlightning

very pro look. i would love to see these in game.

brb gotta change underwear

Best model ever saw on this forum... great work!! Obeisances...

nice, very true to the original

Having that much wear and tear actually makes sense on arakis

Very professional work. I love the details! The "turret" looks as it is not turnable - I don't know how good Spring will handle aiming with that sort of ground unit. Did anyone try that yet?

Thank you for the walk-through. I especially enjoyed the edge lighting trick where you inverted the shadowmap. I didn't know about that!

The model itself, of course, is beautiful. You guys do Dune justice.

azaremoth wrote:Very professional work. I love the details! The "turret" looks as it is not turnable - I don't know how good Spring will handle aiming with that sort of ground unit. Did anyone try that yet?

I believe so. You could animate it convincingly by having it turn in place with the treads working in opposite directions.

i dont know anything about texturing but those progress pictures are always interessting to look at. nice unit too of course.

You could animate it convincingly by having it turn in place with the treads working in opposite directions.

turning the "base piece" will only work when the unit is standing still otherwise it will appear to drive sidewards. (ie like the Byte in KP)
i do not remember having seen a spring unit with a weapon loadout like this:

(only forward firing weapons) where the unit actively tries to aim its chasis in a realistic way so that the weapons can fire.
Maybe it is possible (and then i would be very interessted) but I think only the fighter airplane AI actually "aims with the whole unit."

Yeah, having a handful of units that turn their entire base to aim on the y_axis, I can say it does not look good. If you could find a way to prohibit it from moving while firing, it'd work, but otherwise it just looks crummy.

If you could find a way to prohibit it from moving while firing

that is possible:
(there are probally more, better posts about this)
Spring.MoveCtrl.SetGroundMoveTypeData(unitID, "maxSpeed", newSpeed)
or
Spring.UnitScript.SetUnitValue(COB.MAX_SPEED, newspeed)
iirc the second would not allow speeds of zero but 0.001 is close enough

S44 has a bunch of such units without anything fancy. Engine does all the work if primary weapon is set to use a forward only firearc via weaponmaindir.

same. Magella tanks seem to work pretty well.

azaremoth wrote:Very professional work. I love the details! The "turret" looks as it is not turnable - I don't know how good Spring will handle aiming with that sort of ground unit. Did anyone try that yet?

turret = false,
tolerance = 3000,

^^ that's prolly the easiest way to do it, though limiting firing arc is possibly a bit more elegant.

like this. barrels have some degree of freedom. also it not shots while moving

^^ What I posted essentially does this. What the others posted is more of a cone. I prefer my way the most but either should work,but should take into consideration HOW you want it to work.

Edit: Oh shoot, I didn't see the not shooting while moving thing. That would need some script fu.

That would be a simple script though, a number of units in different spring games do this already.