[Official] Project Perfection

[DavinFelth]

Ton, do you know if buildings or vehicles use one solid texture for the entire model or use seperate textures for different parts of the mesh?

If they use a whole mesh texture I could probably import them into 3DS Max and bake some nice AO into them.

Bump in case Ton missed this because of the spambot.

 

[Tonberry]

Bump in case Ton missed this because of the spambot.

Appreciated. I did miss it. xD

Ton, do you know if buildings or vehicles use one solid texture for the entire model or use seperate textures for different parts of the mesh?

If they use a whole mesh texture I could probably import them into 3DS Max and bake some nice AO into them.

For vehicles yes as far as I'm aware. All vehicle texture work I've done in the past were usually one texture but I can't confirm it for all of the vehicles. Their mapping is normal however so even if some do have a secondary texture I don't think it would be a problem.

Buildings are mapped really strangely to the point where it's difficult to even pinpoint which textures they use. I do know they use numerous textures and if you attempt to import a building model the texture mapping will be glitched (at least on the few I've tried in the past). Timbab was trying to figure out how they are mapped if I recall so he or someone who's worked with the models more may be able to shed some light on it.

As for more or less everything else, yeah, baking some AO into them is always an option.

 

[Timbab]

Buildings are weirdly mapped, they use seamless textures too.

Example with reference texture placeholders I made to figure out what is what (Click for bigger pic):

​

For a lot of the 'main' seamless textures (Example: z74 & z16 in the first screenshot), there are 'detail' seamless textures (Example: z73, z18 & z15) that are used in some areas on top of the main ones for, obvious, detail. I think their opacity might be under 100% though (see z18). These screenshots are pretty old, I'd have to make new ones to test.

I think you might be able to remap buildings completely and/or in parts through with rosuto's 3DSMAX script, I always wanted to try but got sidetracked when I had the time.


Vehicles have their own full textures, but some may be split into a couple for different parts. I just checked and for example, the Swoop only seems to only be in one .dds, along with a _n and _sm. It's in patch_06.tre, if you want to toy around. But since vehicle models are .msh, you should be able to fully remap it all, in case you'd want to.

Hope it helps!

 

[Tonberry]

As Timbab said remapping is an option and personally I think it's the best and easiest way to go. There are quite a few models which would benefit from being remapped and buildings are pretty high up on that list. A good chunk of SOE's mapping is just weird or lazy. The game would look so much better if textures weren't so warped or just plain glitched thanks to the weird mapping.

 

[Aigik]

I've been working on a lot of stuff. Most of my work has gone into upgrading the quality of prop models. I'll post some screenshots over the weekend. Also, the buildings do not use a unique texture unwrap, they are done with tiling textures. Because of the SWG engine's bare bones lighting, I thought it would be nice to add some depth to the buildings with their flat lighting. I ended up experimenting with making a duplicate model of the structure, pushing it out enough so the model faces dont overlap (to prevent flickering) but not too much so it isn't noticable, and gave the duplicate model a unique unwrap. The material on this duplicate model uses an AO texture with an alpha which gives the buildings the appearance of an AO effect. Since computers have come a long way in a decade, the extra polygons shouldn't be a big deal. These days it's more about the shader and lighting effects that slow things down anyway, polygon limits are very high. You know what, whatever, I'll post some screenshots right now. Let me get in game and take some screenshots.
[hr]
Random Props

[hr]
Part 2 of my post since there's an image limit.


Structure Fake AO

New Naboo Structure

Another thing: Anyone know how to get weapon models into the game? I modeled this DL44 for fun a while back, but if I recall, weapon models use a different model format or something like that. Here's a screenshot of my DL44, I'd love to get this in-game:

 

[Tonberry]

Looking excellent, a lot of great work there. With improved models and textures like this the game would look great, especially with some post processing effects, AO etc to make the game look even more on par with more modern games.

As for weapons I don't think any of the model export scripts are up to exporting mgn files yet. Hopefully someone will tackle this if there isn't something going on in that area already. It would open up a lot of possibilities, perhaps even higher poly player models.

 

[Timbab]

Some pretty cool and decent stuff. Glad to see people working on things.

Now if I'd only get back to work on those freaking env textures... some day, some day...

But weapons are .msh, I don't see why they shouldn't work? Nice DL44 model by the way, tad high poly for SWG though.

 

[Tonberry]

They are? I don't have the files handy right now but for some reason I remember them being mgns.

 

[Timbab]

As far as I can tell, yeah, I think so. Can't check 100%, cause I don't have 3ds max on my new drive yet though.

Weapons are in the appearance/mesh folder labeled as wp_ correct? All end in .msh, besides the .lod and .apt files.

Wouldn't make sense for them to be anything but .msh, since they're not altered, they remain one static size/form.

The only thing .mgn, are character related, as in, characters (races + customization options), armor, clothing/anything on the body itself. The rest is .msh.

Edit: To correct myself, there are a few exceptions to .mgn apperantly, like distant_ship_controller and dianoga_dumpster (?). Creatures are .mgn too, because they have a skeleton. Basically anything that has a skeleton and/or is modified by one.

 

[Tonberry]

Ah yeah seems you are right. For some reason I had thought weapons were included among the other character and creature related stuff.

 

[Kayliaah]

Waw, Aigik, you made me dream of a modern SWG again, and that ambient occlusion definitely adds some depths to the buildings which really looked flat originally even with the (crappy) static shadows, not counting the crapfest that the volumetric shadows are when enabled.

All I can say is, keep it up as long as you can, and even if you can't finish what you started, hopefully, somebody will see this gem and take over and carry this legacy to the stars.
Part of me wants to go back to fiddling with SWG and work on my Tatooine project, but the other part is a total b*tch and doesn't want anything to do with it anymore which I can't quite understand.

Hundreds of thousands of files amassed over the years are still sitting on my hard drive, and I have no idea what to do with them, I need the extra space, and whar I really need is a solid and reliable external hard drive to carry all that stuff for who knows what, they feel too precious to me to just delete, that's the first part talking.


PS: Lee Everett 4evah. Finished Episode 5 last week and what can I say but, FUCK.



EDIT: SPELLINGZ

 

[Tonberry]

PS: Lee Everett 4evah. Finished Episode 5 last week and what can I saw but, FUCK.

Agreed.

 

[Kayliaah]

PS: Lee Everett 4evah. Finished Episode 5 last week and what can I saw but, FUCK.

Agreed.

Don't know about you but I cried like a baby, though I'm sure even if you did you'd probably hide it and play the manly superbadass... in a spandex suit?

Season 2 in early 2013, I am ready.

It's kinda funny though, in the Walking Dead TV show, a certain main character dies, let's say "Judith's mother", and no facks are given.
Still <3 the show though.


And damn, why do they always keep the best stuff for the end of the mid season? Daryl and Merle FINALLY meet again, the Governor loses his eye, comics Tyreese makes his apparition... WHY do I have to wait 3 months WHY. And did I forget to say SPOILERS?

Oh and SHANE gets killed again! But this time in Rick's twisted mind, or was it Wolverine that he shot? I'm not really sure now...

SPOILER GIF ABOUT WOLFYSHANE.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mefwdcfbiX1qk0e3do2_500.gif
Pure badass.

Why am I talking about this in the Project Perfection thread again?

 

[Tonberry]

The game did have an great ending, but no I didn't break down. If I had I'd be fully fine admitting it, but so far the only form of media to make me cry like a little girl have all been epic anime endings. Even then I blame japanese soundtracks for being so amazing lol.

During the mid season finale I was like OMG is andrea gonna die here? How about here? GOD DAMN IT JUST DIE ALREADY! So many moments where she could have died... It was awesome though, but god damn it she'd better die really soon. Lol'd at the wolverine shane thing btw. xD

Looks like Game of Thrones isn't the only thing I have to wait until 2013 for now. :|

 

[Kayliaah]

Well the writers at Telltale surely know how to write a story, even if it's somewhat linear with all the choices you have to make in the game, it's freaking awesome, I wish they would make a RPG, just imagine the possibilities.

I wish Michonne would've just stabbed Andrea with her katana after "taking care of the Governor", but I guess she still has faith in her somehow, she's probably the only person in the entire universe who still does lol.

I'm waiting for GoT to come back, with TWD on hiatus till February, I'm rewatching some GoT stuff, even though it will come back at the end of March meaning TWD's half end season will come back first, I just need something to watch, and GoT and TWD are pretty much the only series I can watch now, I can't get into anything else.

 

[MechWarrior001]

Moving back on topic...

I haven't looked too much into this yet but do the building interiors use pre-baked lighting in the textures? If so we might be able to throw some caustics and GI in there.

 

[Tonberry]

I haven't got any of those textures handy to look at so I couldn't say right now, but yeah I imagine some of them are since there are certain building textures throughout the game that look far better than the norm.

Frankly baking some GI or AO into ALL of the games textures would be fine with me. xD

 

[MechWarrior001]

I haven't got any of those textures handy to look at so I couldn't say right now, but yeah I imagine some of them are since there are certain building textures throughout the game that look far better than the norm.

Frankly baking some GI or AO into ALL of the games textures would be fine with me. xD

The problem with baking static GI/Caustics into exterior textures though is that they do not change with the timescale. GI/Caustics rendered for daytime will not look right at nighttime, and vice versa. Leaving GI/Caustics for interiors would be much easier to manage in this regard.

 

[Tonberry]

Well as long as it is a subtle approach as oppose to being massively overdone or exaggerated I think it will be viable in daytime as well. It would vary depending on the texture but in general as long as it's minimal I think it'd work out fine.

 

[MechWarrior001]

Well as long as it is a subtle approach as oppose to being massively overdone or exaggerated I think it will be viable in daytime as well. It would vary depending on the texture but in general as long as it's minimal I think it'd work out fine.

The other problem with GI/Caustics is that the default scan-line renderer in MAX doesn't support it, Iray doesn't support RTT and Mental-Ray has problems with the projection modifier.

I don't know about Blender or others but in order to bake GI/C in 3DS Max we'll need to find a way to do it without requiring usage of the projection modifier with Mental-Ray or somehow acquire and use V-Ray.