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Zaggy1024

WFG Retired
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Posts posted by Zaggy1024

  1. -On the Roman version, I find the tiled terrace very out of place, not working at all with the rest of the building. Also the two vaults on the left, for now look too clean and "plastic".

    That may just be because of mipmapping and/or antialiasing, although I think that bit of the texture map might not be the best quality.

    Generally, I imagine blacksmiths as pretty rough constructions, looking very different than houses, with a utilitarian and steady feel.

    So, the Iberian works very well for me, while the Roman needs to be rethinked in term of architecture (maybe less windows, less nice roofs and arches).

    Yeah, the second floor would probably be pretty useless (and perhaps expensive) to a blacksmith. :P

  2. I think I got the features down, more or less. Will continue tweaking. I was planning for some whiskers and neck-fluff with alpha maps.

    The leg joints have at least two loops (at least on the side it bends away from). You can give it more rounding on the side it bends away from, if you want to save polys. The tigers need to be very flexible. :P

    Don't be too conservative with polys on the joints, we don't want the transforms to be ugly. :)

    Also, make sure to keep the distances between the loops on the tail even.

  3. I just noticed something about the archer's icon... Something about the bow makes it look like the bottom is much longer than the top. I think perhaps the top wooden bit of it shouldn't bend back so far.

    Edit: Just saw the new ship icon. Looks really epic with sharp edges! Even at a small size, it still makes a big difference.

  4. I'll let more active artists, like Enrique and Pureon offer their criticisms... But one thing I'd like to mention, and it's something our hoplite animations do, is that your attack animation incorrectly lunges the right foot along with the right (attack) hand. In fact, in a real fight, the left foot move along with the right swinging hand.

    As an exercise, stand up from your chair in your room and pretend that you are a guy wielding a sword or spear or just your fist.. and make a striking motion with your striking hand. Shockingly few first-time animators actually do this kind of thing... You must understand how the body moves before you can correctly animate it, right? That's why animators in Hollywood take dance lessons and acting classes to sharpen their skills.

    If you stand up and take a "boxer's pose" you will find that that your left foot is forward while your left fist is forward (if you are right handed). This is the idle or ready position. Then when you make your punch or strike, your left foot takes a step forward while your right fist punches forward. It maintains the "tripod" stance. When right hand goes forward, the left foot goes forward, as if walking. Understand? :) This kind of thing is fundamental, and I say this not only for your benefit, but for any animator that reads this. (y)

    Heh, that's something I hadn't thought of either... I guess I haven't really done enough biped animations. :P

    Any time I'm animating a human, though, I do test out the movements, so I may have done that correctly without realizing it.

  5. Perhaps to make us able to have a lot of particles without too much worry about performance, when the number of particles goes above a certain amount, particles are chosen at random and removed? That way, it'll hopefully look okay even when particles start getting removed. (It doesn't look very good when you just delete the oldest particles, because then you can easily see particle trails start to disappear, which is UGLY)

  6. I

    The unfortanatelibity of modern war is that units don't fight with parts of them i.e. tanks don't fight with axes or swords, but "exchange" each other projectiles. The curious question is where the texture maps of those projectiles should be placed. Above you see my collection of aircraft weaponry - it will belong to 6 different type of warplanes ranging from fighters to bombers. During the action the projectiles should separate themselves from their carrier vehicle. So where should I better place the map?

    1) make 1 big map with all the projectiles (like 512x512)

    2) place each projectile along with the carrying vehicle (torpedo with the sub, bombs with the bomber and so on) (then it will lay along with the carrier vehicle, which has a typical texture of 1024x1024)

    3) make each projectile an individual tiny map (128x128 or so :P )

    It's your choice whether you have the textures all in one file or separate, it'll work either way. You should take a look at an actor that fires projectiles (like a javelinist).

    II

    Also the only-housecolor-or-opacity thing also worries me :\ Problem is we have made a lot of buildings containing both opacity and housecolor! Each building has a texture of 2048^2. Attaching two such textures (one with opacity, second with housecolor) to every building my curtail the performance severely. What should we do?

    Do you have sections of your texture that have player color and transparency? If you don't, just separate the models into two separate files, one with faces that have player color, and one with faces with transparency, and attach one as a prop to the main actor (and set its material to what you need).

    III

    Is it possible to realize a ballistic missile locomotion in 0 AD? It should first fly vertically upwards and than meet with the target via ballistic trajectory. All this should be done automatically as soon as I choose the victim of the attack.

    I'm pretty sure that would require changing the engine (as well as JS). :(

    Edit: Actually, I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean a tall curve that comes down on its target, then it shouldn't be too hard to do with just a few JS changes.

    Have you had a programmer start working on adding turrets? If you do add them, I'm sure we'll be able to add them to the engine and use them ourselves. :)

  7. Having a modeled city with animated people would be way too much work for just a menu, I think... :\ It'll probably just have to be nice render maybe with some people painted in (or in-game models rendered in it). To make use of the parallax, we could put some clouds on it, too. :D

    • Like 1
  8. I like these two.The first one should require a embedded 2D videoplayer which is currently missing from 0 A.D. however. The latter looks nice, I'd suggest to implement it like a regular scenario replay rather than a recorded pre-rendered 2D video. Size will be much smaller (note that Linux distributions often remove or make optional from their repositories large video or music packages), also it can be updated with no effort when models and textures get updated.

    The thing about updated models and textures is a good point, but having it be a replay would mean loading times which may or may not be able to be completely masked by a 2D video before it.

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