Gen.Kenobi

If I were in my PC, I would have added them, but I can't :/ So I sent the first two sets to Pureon.

This is simply brilliant! You guys rocks!

Woah! It's great! Now we must come up with different tilled high-res textures, the normal maps and spec one can work better - I can see that they are in a very small resolution right now.

I noticed that I have mod powers, so I moved it for you

Pointy rocks here: Those are not really great, can be re-worked if requested. Pointy rocks are really a pain to get nicely. :/ Anyways, trow your rock here!

Well... I support this. 3D Terrain is really hard to do. We were talking about creating some 3d Mountains, but I'm not sure how would they blend well in the terrain. Maybe this approach could work.

Well, what would be ideal, in my personal opnion would be to create a good template for future Blender animators to use for mods and for animation adjustments (recreating old animations and new ones).

Couldn't agree more. The most rewarding thing is to see the development of something, help it out and see the updates going on and on and on. A final game is important. But as the word say, it should be final. And when the time comes for a final game, it shall be realesed with polished engine and art. There's no rush here.

I remember I recorded a timelapse for RoTE. Since it's a mod for 0ad, maybe we could use it? Kimball has the raw-footage, I can't acess it, since my PC is dead. Also, how is the status of the rigs? I'd like to try some animation, but If i remember correctly the lastest blender rig didn't work quite nicely and Jason was trying to figure out why...

Hmm... After taking a quick look at the code, it seens pretty much straight-foward. And yeah! A way to control the intensity of the normals/specularity within the actor file would be awesome. The only thing that is rather confusing for me to understand is the AO. So it's not dynamically generated? You must "bake" it into a new UV set and have it multiplied? Also, the collor of the spec map changes the specularity collor? Or it was there just for self-ilumination? The self-ilumination could be a different texture... It could make things easer. (I just don't see it being used very often ) Thanks again!

Indeed! I just have a coupple of questions Art-wise, specially when creating future assets for the game and maybe future mods. On Blender I'm used to work with 3 different textures: One is difuse, another one is greyscale for the specularity and the other one could be also greyscale (for bump) or mapped "normals" - from Gimp's plugins or if I'm in the mood, from some serious 3d detailing and baking the normals into a new texture. I know it may seen a quite a dumb question, but how does it work? How do you control the intensity of the normals, the influence of the specularity.... these things. I have very limited codding knowladge, I only did some really basic actor codding so far, but I'm really excited about this. Will it be controled like this suggests? http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1493 Thanks again for your awesome work, and sorry for such questions. Best regards!

I'm on it Just one thing... the mountains will be hard to get to work seamless with the map. You know, back in AoK/SW:GB this type of "topography" never worked out very nicely...

Tried some "desert-looking" rocks... I really enjoyed working on them. I know it's not great, since if you pay attention you'll notice severall patterns - basicaly, I made only one base model and started to edit here and there. Also, I'm not very sure, about how do you guys want the rocks to look like - Individual, mountain type, ect - so I'm creating a bazilion of types Oh! And you may notice that in this render I added shadows and, if you look closely you'll see that the rocks have bump mapping. Yeah. It's my way of doing psychological warfare, about why Bump/Normal Mapping is a MUST And I didn't like this texture "desert-badlands.quarry" or something like that... BUT... :/ So, I tried with this other one: "desert-quarry" ... Looks better? Maybe we can have both. Tell me what you think. hehehe. It could look nice. Maybe we could add some prop points and put some brushes there. Or maybe the map maker could do it manually

Rock, scissors, paper, lizard, Spock! Just kidding. Well, so I trew away, some first "rock" formations. BUT I'm not sure if it's nature-cannon. Why is that? Because if I recall correctly at my Geography's lessons each rock formation was "formed" due different erosive/weathering agents. So rocks in dry regions (deserts, savana, ect) would mostly be pointy, since the wind is the main agent. Rocks in topical regions (rain forrest, these stuff) would be smooth, since the main agent is the water(rainy). Rocks in temperate regions would be a mix betwen these two. And so on. (Cold regions should have something like sea cliffs or big glaciers) So It's quite complex. Specially the tropical ones, since getting nice looking smooth rocks with low poly without normal maps is quite a challenge. Here's my first "formation". Since it was mainly an experiment, I decided to go for "temperate". (The best thing when making rocks is that they are quite modular, and the UVMapping is easy! - Hmm... just occured to me, I'm using blender's generated box mapping, does the game will need hand made maps? [please say no!!!] ) So, please trow your rock into this discussion and I'm sure the rocks will rock!

Amazing!

Can I say? Oh, no.. Anyways, I'll say it out and loud: I LOVE YOU MAN! Seriously! This is amazing! You know, bump, spec and AO maps are almost a MUST in today's AAA engines and games, and you making it happen in 0.a.d., and Open-Source... It just blows my mind away. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

I don't know... I'm really out of free time to take a more in depth look into this - [just got home from school (20pm). Tomorow needs to be there at (9am).] I personaly work better with IK/FK solvers, but that's just me - I really feel that they make the animation more "realish" and "fluidish". Peharps, Jason, If you get the time, maybe you could take a look in Blender? there are some prety foward begginer tutorials that may help you get started: http://sagefans.net/ And related to Blender Rigging: http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/introduction-to-rigging

Hmm... Some people are complaining about animations. http://www.moddb.com/games/0-ad/news/new-release-0-ad-alpha-9-ides-of-march I personaly think that we should give it more attention for the next Alpha. I really would love to see the Blender Rig working and help out, but unfortunatly, my life has been prety messed up with studies... So I can't help this year. So...what do you guys think? (I have already given him a small answer )

@Zaggy: That should be avoided with a clean topology. And with a nice set of rigs

Yeah... I just find easer to go subdivinding a cube... more tham using "stock" cylinders

Do you really work better with Cylinders? Cube modelling is wayy better for me Oh... Wait... That would be poly-by-poly for me... Ah. Scratch that. But seriously, is there a specific reason? Better for animating? Maintening a clean topology? Still needs to get started. Not sure If I'll be abble to do it. :/

I never modelled any animals... Guess there's always a first try. Gonna see what I can do with the dog... Can you post some reference images for the animals/breeds? So it can be historically accurate... I dont wanna end up doing a puddle or a pitbull But I'll get started on something. - at least untill Sunday...Them, I'll be "grounded"...

Yep. And I like both "series". BTW, are you also from Brazil, Pedro?

English and Portuguese (The brazilian one, for obivious reasons ) @Enrique: Do you really speak klingon? Hehehe. It's hard to see a ST fan nowadays. If I only knew how to speak like R2-D2...

Awesome resources! Just out of curiosity, what's the animation priority list?