MrLux

That's a nice model they did. It lacks artistic value but it's a good base. I could say what's wrong on an artistic point of view about the persians buildings you mention, @Nescio . Could you elaborate or point where elaboration was already written ?

So... Does the current model of the Apadana is enought for the wonder? It's was a bit on the small size.

Chop chop ! Knifes done. Variants and texture and actor. Dae and actor: knife_tool.rar blend: knife_tool_blend.rar Atlas screenshot of a collection of the knifes, cause I don't know how to instantiate a specific variant. Some strange reflection in the model, maybe because the texture as a high specular. Also it might have some problems with where the unit handle the weapon. I don't know how to test that. But I tried to keep origin point of the models as close as the knife, original, one.

Ok, great. Perfect ref pics, thanks. I I'll take care of that.

@Stan` The knife model is 78 triangles. @Nescio Variants but for the same utility, knife for vilagers, or variants to use other types of weapons ? I then to lose a lot of time doing research and it's indeed hard to be historically accurate. So if you have other exemples, I'll be glad.

Nothing fancy. A knife machete to cut and splash. 79 triangles. butcher_knife.xmlbutcher_knife.dae Textured with the tiny texture called props_tools. Don't know if it's an artefact or not. Comparaison in game with the present knife

The form from those vases makes me thing of those butcher knifes use to break bones and cut tendons. I'll take a moment to look into it this week, so that will complete my round of types of models by doing a 'weapon' prop.

s I've done some test and boy do I have question. Right now I understand how to replicate the 'fancy' grass elevation effect, and done some test with other textures. Feels fine, but I really don't know how to make the terrain triplanar material work. With the right textures nothing seems to happen. Does anyone have an idea? I've also refine the pipeline between substance designer and the engine. I'll make some terrain test along the week. The great advantage is that they are going to be tileable and coherent and easily color swapable. Substance is a proprietary software but the work done is propriety of is author. It's a standard in the game industry so I think any artist passing along will be able to pick it. Anyway, it's not perfect but it's promising.

Where I'm not getting it it's how to express multiple uvmap in the engine, because ao uv use and diffuse use are not on the same uvmap Ahhh, yeah of course. So for the other types, no use?

If we bake ao into the diffuse, why do buildings have an Ao map ? This is a example of a packed texture. It's for a pbr material but the idea is that the specular texture (in this case all is black and white) is in the red channel, roughness in the green, displacement (or height) in the blue and ao in the alpha. Then the shader gets from those channels the information, instead of getting it off 4 different textures. It helps reducing the size. In our case, i guess specular is tricky because it can be colored but if not, ao, specular and maybe height could be packed in one texture instead of having 3. sorry, don't compute. I mean I really don't get it. edit: Thanks, but I didn't know 0AD had a discord. Where is the link ?

Oh ok. Would parallax be interesting for terrain or would that be to taxing ?

So my first question are: Should I lightpack my uv and be done with it ? I've seen the ao texture doing that, but not the rest. I know for buildings it's normal as we use atlases and they need carefull use of uv. But what about unique textures. I'm not knowledgeable of game art logic (yet) so I was wondering why. Should all my models use all textures available? Should I make normal, spec, albedo and ao maps for everything? Can the engine make use of combined textures in RGBA channels? I presume you are familiar with it, but since I didn't see anywhere that type of texture packing I was wondering why?

------------------------------------------------------------------- Modelling ------------------------------------------------------------------- UV-layout ------------------------------------------------------------------- Texturing ------------------------------------------------------------------- Rigging ------------------------------------------------------------------- Animation ------------------------------------------------------------------- Export to the Engine; Actors & Templates -------------------------------------------------------------------

As I was looking through the terrains I saw those labelled 'fancy'. Do they use something like parallax occlusion mapping ? I'm not really familiar with the method,but I find the result really neat. What does the engine need to make those, because the textures that I see (a specular white pixel spots, and an albedo) don't make sense to me.

Hey folks, Per the #1997 ticket , starting a thread for the gharial. ---------------------------------------------- Model The crocodile as in source blend as a comparaison. Triangle count of 507. Waiting approval. ---------------------------------------------- Texturing: Not being able for now to procedural texture the animals given the need for high detail on low poly, I decal photo texture into the lp model. So I prefer to wait for model approval to have as little as possible deformation in the texture. Question: I found some nice images on a website called pixabay.com . Create an account and the texture are said to be under their #pixabay licence which looks like a creative commons, sort of. Link to their terms: pixabay licence I guess that allows us to use them to texture cc0 models? Anyway, here is my list of textures that I will use, probably not all but well. I have a list for me, but I figure that if someone wants to take the mantle for whatever reason, better documents and threads are good to have. Pixabay or wikimedia commons for the deposit source. ---------------------------------------------- Rigging done by reusing the crocodile .blend in the source ---------------------------------------------- Animation Crocodile animation do not cleanly translate to the new model. I need to some clean up of the swim animation. For the walking, I learned that the gharial doesn't have the musculature to walk. He gliddes by dragging is body on the ground. Animation should reflect that, but then is it possible to code the behavior for it to not go to far from shores. I mean, it would be great to see a giant reptile glidding through the map but well not really realistic. XD

It's the sad reality that everything an art department does does not necessarily cut to the final release. I'm ok with that. On the other side, that revision was a great way to learn the use of the props and building limitations in general in the pyro engine. So for the next ones I'm confident in making better results. I also check the tickets still pending and this one is old. More than happy to focus on more pressing matters. as long as it's not modeling humans, really don't like that.

Hey hey hey So done some tweaks, cleaned the model gain and merge what was merge-able. I wanted to add some props to add detail on the roofs, but I don't really feel like that vases and rugs on a palace roofs is silly. Someone has ideas ? I was thinking about adding market stands inside the yard, would that be strange ? So there where we are. I'll try the stairs alternative version tomorrow. @Stan` Are the specs enough ? 28 draws for 26k tri. Closer to the other models.

@m7600 I thought it was high but I crosschecked with the other wonders. The selenid, the actual persian wonder are higher, but other ones are indeed low, 20k for the whole actor. Mostly it's triangles on the walls that cramp the count. each is a model of 10 tri and there must be 50-100. Frankly I don't know if the technical specs for the art are about individual mesh or the whole constructed entity, so counting all the props. @wowgetoffyourcellphone I was not satisfied by the silhouette of the block version, but it does look more defensive and fortress-like with the high towers. For the front stairs texturing, it's the same one from the civ center. It wouldn't be hard to swap the prop, but I think it would look too similar to the civ center.

Yep sure. 57 draw calls and 33492 model triangles. Careful how ? is it better to have a prop with various models than various prop points ?

Hey there, I want to say to thanks to Enrique. Original model and texturing draft was his (for what I've understood). I cleaned it, organised, optimised and have changed texturing part of the texturing choices. To break form I chose to play with the walls and tower elevation, critiques are welcome. I have used extensively the prop system. from the 'technical' screenshoots you can see that the wonder is made out of the inner core building and his floor. Then 4 props for the 4 towers, 3 for the outer wall, 3 for the inner, and one prop for the small frontal wall and the one for the stair. The columns in the inner yard are 8 props, so we can maybe change to the second type of column (dubbed 'heavy' in the blend file).On the outside as a test, there are 12 props, six by the Est and Ouest side, to change the outside decorum. I've put for now a bench some trees and bush. I love the prop system and the fact that with variants buildings can build/decorated themselves differently each time. I've choose to insert more the specular tintable texture to allow better visualisation of the player team. you can see in the screenshoot how cute it is. Same template that the gardens. Critique welcome. for the fine people that will see the hellenic vases in the rooftop of the inner building, you are not delusional. Those are placeholders for the initial in-model props I found in the file. I will make a batch of eyecandy props based on the persian texture (vases, rugs, etc) to embellish it in the afternoon. but with the prop system again, it will be easy to switch it. Lastly I gathered a lot of question in the process. I think I will compile them in a separate threat and also update tutorial and technical doc for artist; because boy did I found some interesting things. As a note, the material used is the spec normal player, because I still don't get how to get the ao working. -------- Files ---------- Composition scene for a idea of style and scale -------- Screenshots 'technical' - 4 views -------- Screenshots 'technical' - props/parts ------- Colors !

Found it, I was looking for it in wonders.

So, do we need to do the gate of all Nations with the stairs or the some other structure ? I took a look at the blend file of the gate, texturing is indeed all that it needs. I guess a lot of prop points could be added. The block shape could be broken with some outside trees, columns, maybe one shop or two as props. To not have that cube like thing standing on the map.

I like the light house wonder idea. do you have the source of your images, mostly the last one seems to be a 3dmodel of low poly. Did'nt see it in the game.

Wait I just saw on the document that it's 25.000 triangles, not 2.500... And there I was optimising like a mad man for a tenth of the budget Well, it will be the smoothness running wonder.

Just to make a pause and share technical progress. I have 1480 triangles for now. We are good, still good. Edit: Abort mission, abort mission ! 3500 triangles and we are not finished. We need more dakka ! I'll get it, eventually