(Egyptians)==TASK== Hero: Pharao (New Kingdom Era)

[Radagast.]

Crown

okay, it's not really good and I feel like the golden or silver (which color did it have?) snake is too big too.

Pharao Head (beard)

TODO

Pharao Face Texture (currently Cleopatra)

TODO

Edited June 23, 2014 by Hephaestion

[RoekeloosNL]

Cold with blue/white stripes would look nice i think or red/white stripes.

[Radagast.]

Thanks for the input, I will create variants with both blue/white and red/white stripes. Was the headband + snake silver or gold? I know often gold is used but it may have been silver instead like with the Roman standardbearers. Though I think even historical magazines like GEO used gold and then we best also use gold?

[Lion.Kanzen]

Thanks for the input, I will create variants with both blue/white and red/white stripes. Was the headband + snake silver or gold? I know often gold is used but it may have been silver instead like with the Roman standardbearers. Though I think even historical magazines like GEO used gold and then we best also use gold?

gold

[RoekeloosNL]

gold

Yes Gold but maybe you can make small details silver.

[Lion.Kanzen]

The blue helmet is needed too.

[Radagast.]

ok, as a variant for the pharao.

I thought of player color instead of the blue (also instead of red -white and blue-white stripes better let's use playercolor-white stripes as it was mentioned in the art department that all color should be playercolor).

[Radagast.]

Celtic hood as size comparison. May it be that I have to rescale the Pharao Ramesses II's crown?

Variations:

Reference:

[Lion.Kanzen]

The firsts two. Im not sure about variations.

[Radagast.]

I know it's not ideal. Imagine the black being player colour (what it were if it were looked at ingame).

capable of using 1x8 pixel texture for the stripes. (currently using 1x64 but it's still redundant)

The gold texture size is 64x64 and reusing an existing egyptian texture. It's definitely too low-res.

I will create a bronze_age_materials.png texture which will hold all typical bronze age materials. Such a texture will be created for each epoch but Iron Age (where Enrique is going the proper way, see his awesomely detailed tutorials, though we modders neither have enough skill nor enough 3D modelers to go his proper way.).

[Enrique]

I suggest to use separate textures for each prop - specially helmets - except for small ones and/or very similar (like weapons).

1.- You can't predict how many textures for props you'll end adding, so you may run out of texture space for new things (you can still create new separate textures though). Or maybe you end up using much less texture space than you originally planned and not using all texture space (waste resources).

2.- If you have to rearrange the textures combined in the big one for whatever reason (i.e.you dont need such a big texture), you'll have to remap every single prop that uses that texture.

3.- If it's not being shared between different props, you can add specific detail for the prop like AO in the diffuse, fake shadows, fake reflections, etc.

Regarding the pharao prop... keep in mind that the whole thing will rotate with the head, so the flaps that would rest in the chest may (and probably will) look rigid and/or clip through the torso when the head moves. The only solution that comes to mind (if you don't want that to happen) would be to make the helmet reach the shoulders, and make the flaps part of the body texture.

[Radagast.]

Didn't think of that flaps-issue yet. Perhaps we should shorten the flaps' length? I'm not sure a separation in crown- and body texture will look better than flaps going through the torso?

Thank you for pointing out the benefits of the proper method. I admire the helmet's you create with this method. this image tells it all:

Nevertheless I fear that going this way via high poly models and then rendering the details is too much work for our small team and the goal of creating the whole timeline.

That's why I prefer using the high poly model directly with as much decimated geometry as possible but not low-poly. This way, fake shadows don't need to be painted (which is tremendous work as can be seen in your tutorials). Instead we use the geometry directly.

Those helmets (especially of heroes) don't occur often enough to be worth the trouble (only 1 hero at a time allowed) and therefore I prefer letting the engine do the shading according to the geometry (which implies less redundant textures and thus less RAM used which compensates for the extra polies).

I wish I were up to your skills, then I could go the way you outlined. We want to create all art assets for all epochs soon and will be generous with the texture space for the different epoch's materials. If all ropes break, then we can still add more individual textures, but there is the problem that we can only have 1 UV map and thus only 1 texture:

<textures>    <texture file="bronze_age_materials.png" name="baseTex" /></textures>

If we were able to use multiple UV maps and define more textures (which the <textures> element somehow implies and perhaps it was even planned) then splitting it all in individual textures would be great (but I think it's not worth the programming trouble).

Or was the <textures> tag meant for blending textures?

[Enrique]

Or was the <textures> tag meant for blending textures?

It's because you can add more types of textures, other than color: AO (multiplied b/w image), specular and normal/parallax.

AO uses a second UV coordinates, while specular and normal/parallax uses the same UV coordinates as color (the 1st UV coordiantes).

RGB makes the normal maps and the alpha layer is what tells the height used for the parallax effect.

[Radagast.]

Thanks commander, I somehow only thought of multiple diffuse textures. Great your posts directly explain how things work.

Committed the pharao. Atlas currently not working for me, must be connected to my current local changes. Therefore couldn't test for errors. Oh no!! I didn't activate selection only on COLLADA export. Will recommit.

Am I right that mirror modifiers have to be applied and blender handles UVs for us?

[Radagast.]

Next is to create the head model with the special beard.

[Radagast.]

hehe

[niektb]

Does the head rotate correctly now?

[Radagast.]

Did it ever rotate before?

No idea how the issue with the flaps intersecting with the body/shoulders looks but I think Enrique's proposal to make the crown's flaps a texture might look no better when the head moves but we can try later if the intersection anomaly turns out to be really awkward.

I have still to commit the pharao's head mesh + xml, beard mesh + xml, fixed pharao Ramses II xml, head texture. I have to raise my morale to commit it today.

[Radagast.]

Also an interesting variant?

[Radagast.]

Can be committed soon. The head looks even bigger than in blender, having been scaled down.

[Stan`]

Rada, you should make it gold and player color It would look better.

Edited July 10, 2014 by stanislas69

[Radagast.]

I tried to make it player color but it apparently failed.

Gold instead of white is an option but is it historical accurate? Might the crown even be reusable for other common Egyptian units in the white-player-color variant if we use gold-player-colour for the Pharao?

[Stan`]

No common Egyptian units will were the crown right ?

About historical accuracy, I don't think pharaohs were poor, so gold should be accurate. If you wanna keep it black an white, add a little pattern on it (I'll do it if you want) Can you please fix aristeia to work with SVN beforehand ?

Edited July 10, 2014 by stanislas69

[Lion.Kanzen]

Use short tunic dae not long or dress.

[Radagast.]

No common Egyptian units will were the crown right ?

True, though the commoners may wear the the cloth (without the gold parts).

Use short tunic dae not long or dress.

Ok, I'll change it.

About historical accuracy, I don't think pharaohs were poor, so gold should be accurate. If you wanna keep it black an white, add a little pattern on it (I'll do it if you want)

Wait, it's not black and white. It's player color. No idea why it doesn't show up as such. Isn't player_trans as material correct? Also I checked in Gimp using quantumstate's procedure and it shows correct player color there.

Later of course it would be nice, though I don't think anyone will notice it on the cloth but you are right it would look better than clean colours though it might be less universally applicable then but we'll see. (btw. there is no custom texture, it's using bronze_age_materials.png instead)

Can you please fix aristeia to work with SVN beforehand ?

This means I don't have to wait for your UnitAI removal commit anymore and should fix it myself? I would be happy to fix it, if it's ok.