3D Modelling/Texturing application - Jānis Kolosovskis

[jkolosovskis]

Position: 3D or Texture artist

Do you understand that Wildfire Games is a non-commercial project, work for 0 A.D. is volunteer, and work is done for free?

Yes

Do you agree to distribute all your work for Wildfire Games under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license?

Yes

Name:

Jānis Kolosovskis

Email:

j.<surname> (of) gmail (yes, I am that paranoid)

MSN Messenger:

Not an MSN user

Location:

Leamington Spa, United Kingdom

Availability:

Varies between 1-6h per week

Age:

22

Occupation:

Telecommunications Engineer / Student

Skills and Experience:

I have been using Blender for helping open-source projects and commercial game mods as a mental exercise since I was 17 years old, with long gaps between projects. I am relatively good in static modelling, and know how animation works only in theory, never done it in practice.

Motivation:

Some men just want to watch the world improve.

Personality:

The guy who thinks too much.

Short Essay:

I found out about Wildfire Games from Free Gamer blog, and have been loosely following the project for a year. The driving factors for my motivation are curiosity and willingness to improve my skills.

Interests and Hobbies:

Volleyball, guitar, piano, physics, cryptography, psychology and a lot of other completely unrelated things.

Staff:

None known

Community:

I observe the modding communities for TES series games and Mount and Blade. To be fair, I have not been keeping contact with the gaming community apart from reading news that I accidentally find out.

Favorite Game:

Current and all time favourite - modded version of TES3 Morrowind. It robbed me of social life for more than half a year.

Work Examples:

Some models done for TES 4 and 5 engines:

http://imageshack.us...2/1531/7aaa.png

http://imageshack.us...91/705/ghto.jpg (the halberd)

http://imageshack.us.../highfane34.png (incomplete)

http://imageshack.us...ighfane3702.png (later version, back shot)

http://imageshack.us...61923151089.jpg (the sword with scabbard)

http://imageshack.us...61923141781.jpg (not really proud of this, the DDS compression destroyed the textures)

http://imageshack.us...334/renderc.jpg

[Enrique]

Hello Janis! welcome to the forums!

Nice work examples. I like the texturing work you've done. I imagine you primary interest is working on hard-surface models.

We currently need a new model for the iberian barracks. Would you like to give it a try and test your skills?

We're looking for something following the layout of the carthaginian and greek barracks.

You can import the carthaginian mesh into blender to have a reference for the scale here: http://svn.wildfireg...hes/structural/kart_barracks.dae

(in blender File-> Import -> collada -> select kart_barracks.dae)

You have to map the model to this texture:

http://svn.wildfireg...ins/structural/kart_struct.dds

Some notes to keep in mind:

- The engine do not render double-sided polygons, so if you want a polygon to show both sides, you'll have to duplicate the poly and flip the normals.

- The texture do not tile if you get the UV outside the texture space. (blender tiles the image, but the engine don't) so UV islands should be inside the texture space

- The model should extend a little under the ground, so the building don't look floating when constructing on uneven terrain.

- Ideally, the model should be under 9k tris.

- The building will use an AO map mapped to a second UV coordinates but I'll explain this phase once you finish the model

You can use this thread to post WIP images for review and critique.

Please don't hesitate to use this thread also to make any question or look for feedback.

Looking forward to see what you come up with!

[jkolosovskis]

Hello Enrique, good to see such a fast reply

You are correct, I would be mostly interested in modelling architecture or (preferably non-organic) environment models.

I will do some research into the existing iberian models and get a feel of what the style is like.

Meanwhile, I have some questions regarding the models in general -

- Looking at the model you recommended, would I be correct in assuming that the camera viewpoint can never be moved under the horizon? I see in the model that some faces with their normals facing the ground are deleted, and some are not, so I am slightly confused. What about reflections from water?

- When you mention the limit of vertices as 9k, is that meant to be 9k as seen by the engine or 9k in Blender? Not that I think that I will be over that limit, I just want to be sure.

- I'm 99.9% sure of this, but I will still ask to clarify - does the engine interpret normal maps in tangent space? (in one project I was helping, they used object space for normal mapping, which meant that no UV island overlapping was allowed)

EDIT: Is http://play0ad.com/wp-content/gallery/building-concepts/7103.jpg the concept art for iberian barracks?

Edited August 28, 2013 by jkolosovskis

[Enrique]

- Looking at the model you recommended, would I be correct in assuming that the camera viewpoint can never be moved under the horizon? I see in the model that some faces with their normals facing the ground are deleted, and some are not, so I am slightly confused. What about reflections from water?

The possibility of having an angle where you can notice a "hole" on the mesh because the reflection in water is very rare. I normally model without deleting facing-down polygons, and I remove them if the polycount is really high. Keep in mind that this project started a long time ago and polygon budget was much more limited than it is now.

- When you mention the limit of vertices as 9k, is that meant to be 9k as seen by the engine or 9k in Blender? Not that I think that I will be over that limit, I just want to be sure.

I mean 9k tris in blender (if you work in quads, just halve the number ) I just mention the tris because before

- I'm 99.9% sure of this, but I will still ask to clarify - does the engine interpret normal maps in tangent space? (in one project I was helping, they used object space for normal mapping, which meant that no UV island overlapping was allowed)

Normal maps are calculated in tangent space. You don't have to worry about them.

EDIT: Is http://play0ad.com/w...ncepts/7103.jpg the concept art for iberian barracks?

It was. We have introduced the blacksmith building into the game design and that building design/layout was chosen for it, and a new barracks needs to be designed.

Speaking from experience, I recommend not to detail the building a lot at first, just block/sketch it to give it the overall form. You may start detailing and working harder on a design and we may ask you to make heavy changes on the layout.

[jkolosovskis]

Taking account of your advice not to detail the building too much, here are two screens of the first draft I came up with (heavily influenced by red wine, please don't ask any hard questions )

http://imageshack.us/a/img853/975/9r32.png

http://imageshack.us/a/img203/4915/ckdj.png

http://imageshack.us/f/829/sru4.png/

Let me know if this is the design direction you expect to see.

[Enrique]

Hey Jkolosovkis! The design looks cool, but we're looking for something more squarish (like the iberians built) and compact.

I've attached a sketch of what we're going for. It's very basic, but you can get an idea

The entrance of the building is not facing the camera from this shot.

Here's a reference on the way they built:

http://farm6.staticf...c82a5014f_b.jpg

[jkolosovskis]

Hey Enrique, thanks for the clarification, the concept picture really helps. I don't think I will have time to work on this for the remainder of this week, but I will post another update next week.

[jkolosovskis]

Is this closer to what you expected?

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/7572/q4mu.png

[Enrique]

Yes, that's the direction we're looking for.

I think the big building part (back part) could be wider, getting inside the wings a little more, and make the wings shorter.

The door seems now a little off scale. You can try importing an existing building for scale reference, it helps get it right.

Good work so far

[Ludo38]

Hello Jānis,

Welcome to Wildfire Games!

Your references are very good, and as Enrique said it, especially in term of texturing. I also enjoy this curvy building you did. I am new on Blender and am looking forward to modelizing similar shapes. I'm on my way to master the program's toolbox.

I like how your first 0 A.D. model is going.

Keep it up, and feel at home here !

[jkolosovskis]

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/1815/9sge.png

Enrique -

I widened the main structure and did some overall resizing, if you feel that the proportions are still out of shape, please fee free to draw on the image the way how you expect the model to be.

And I hardly did any change on the door, you can see on the imported model that they are not that different. What did you mean by it being out of scale?

Ludo - thanks for the welcome, may the gods of modelling be with you

Sorry for not being active lately, R2TW has been released, and despite it having a lot of problems, that game has completely devoured all of my free time.

In any case, I hope to finish the model in the next two weeks, before I return back from my placement to university.

[sanderd17]

To me, the door looks smaller then the carthagian one. Also note that they need to have the same footprint (for gameplay reasons, they should be equally easy to find a good spot for).

Thanks for working on it, it's heading in the good direction IMO

[Gen.Kenobi]

It's looking great, however I personally think it resembles too much the Mauryan Barracks... Might be just me.

Keep it up mate!

[Lion.Kanzen]

may be you can strart to modelling Gauls and Britons new Buildings and some props, eye candy.i hope bring you a lot of changes to in Britons and Gauls.

Welcome .

[Enrique]

It's looking nice.

The only thing it looks a bit different from the current iberian art direction is the curved roof, other than that you can start detailing/texturing as you see fit.

[jkolosovskis]

Sorry for not updating this a long time, I have been doing overtime for the whole week and this weekend, so I am too exhausted when I get back home. I will post a new update once I have something to show.

[jkolosovskis]

Tried my hand at texturing with the iber_struct resource from SVN (I assume you were mistaken in your first post about using Carthage resource, Enrique )

No details yet, please let me know if this is what you expect the model to look like.

http://imageshack.us/f/534/dbu4.png/

[Enrique]

Tried my hand at texturing with the iber_struct resource from SVN (I assume you were mistaken in your first post about using Carthage resource, Enrique )

No details yet, please let me know if this is what you expect the model to look like.

http://imageshack.us/f/534/dbu4.png/

You're right, I linked the cartaginian texture instead of the iberian one, my bad

That's the direction we're looking for. Some remarks:

- It looks like the buildings is too tall, may be because of the shots angle, or because of the masonry texture being too low, not sure.

- That door still looking too small to me compared with the rest of the building.

- We will need that the building geometry extends underground, so it doesn't look like it's floating when placed on uneven terrain.

- Could you try the multicolored masonry part of the texture on the lower part of the building? (like the rest of the iberian buildings) just to see how it looks

The last shape modification I'll ask for is to remove the back corners, this will differentiate the shape from other barracks and make it more interesting having room to add some details or eyecandy on those spots when detailing. Something like this:

After that change you can proceed with the details

[Enrique]

Hi Janis!! Any progress to share with us?