Art Lead Application - 3D Artist/Texture Artist

[Kicking_Bird]

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

Skills and Experience: low and high poly modelling, mobile optimization, texturing, baking etc

Staff: Iv'e talked to Mythos_Ruler on msn 5 years ago, what's up dude? Did you end up selling your playwrite?

Work Examples: http://imgur.com/a/8iTZR

I just want to say that I was here last 5 years ago in 2010 and on the random occasion I would remember this game and check the site, today I decided to play it and noticed no a lot has changed.

It's been FIVE years. So here is a well deserved critique of things that need to be fixed in order to even qualify for crowdfunding or building a bigger fan and player base or even become a popular Steam title.

a. voice overs are the same GrASSO, grosso, GrAsso

b. user interface (grey gradients) is the same and looks like some kind of brushed steel, does not suite the time frame or theme of the game.

c. sound effects (battle) are the same and undramatic like in age of mythology which sounds like bbq skewers being rubbed together vs age of empires 1/2 were it actually sounds like heavy metal is being bashed together - this takes away from experience, one reason of age of mythology was a "bleh" game compared to aoe1/2

d. low poly photo source environment models (trees and rocks are outdated, and a bunch of other things)

e. noisy high contrast terrain textures (all textures should be low contrast and have shadows/highlights removed so cg lights light them properly with their normal maps)

f. keeping the historical names as the primary object name of buildings/units creates a steep learning curve, MOVE them to HISTORY section of the menu and UNIFY the game names, axeman, barracks etc so people understand what they are working with. Keeping the historical names CRIPPLES your player demographic severely. Most people want to play a game and not learn a history lesson or try to keep track of all the different units with poorly organized suffixes

g. campaigns have not been implemented since 5 years ago, they should be removed and multiplayer should become the focus, if you weren't able to get done in 5 years there is NO point in keeping that goal.

h. pixel density of certain objects and terrain textures do not match

i. trees and foliage is static, no vertex deformations or bending - takes away from realism

j. super tiny gui anchored to the corners/middle of the screen, no gui scaling? Get Scaleform.

k. no villager building hotkeys

l. farms grown on stone tiles

m. no colormaps to break up the obvious terrain tiling

n. hard edges and blocky buildings, its 2015, you can chamfer the edges to make it smooth now...

o. birds in every level, no other ambient sounds

p. the specular mapping and normal maps seem to be barely working in game

q. villagers should stay villagers and military units should stay military units. You claim to be a historical rts, legionaries didn't build brick barracks's in the middle of the battlefield, they pitched tents and built encampments. you should have the ability to call your villagers to arms or garrison them however, but never allow military units to build anything besides stockades and encampments (tents, palisade walls etc) maybe you could add a new building (tents) to allow military units to convert to villagers (logicically leaving their weapons at the camp to work and, rearming when you need to them to fight) instead of them magicly pulling weapons from thin air

Its quite annoying when all the gui gets shoved in the corner anchor points on a 2560x1440 screen. It's super tiny.

Also I have to ask, have the programmers implemented an LOD system? Implemented the use of UV2 channel for light mapping bakes? Are there any plans of implementing GUI scaling like Autodesk's Scaleform?

That said I'd be interested in repairing all the terrain textures and creating brand new vegetation and rocks and see were it would go from there, I'm not going to mod. I want to work on the vanilla release copy of the game.

Edited March 14, 2015 by Kicking_Bird

[Lion.Kanzen]

You can try to fix and send files there there

[Stan`]

Hi Nick Welcome back to the forums.

My name is Stan I have been working for a little more than two years to add new content to the game, I'm not in the team for quality reasons but I might be able to answer some of your post.

First of all you need to know that Mythos left the community, after a team argument, I don't have much detail because this is intern discussions.

Also, Enrique is the Art DPT Leader, and he is quite busy atm.

b. user interface (grey gradients) is the same and looks like some kind of brushed steel, does not suite the time frame or theme of the game.

The UI is being reworked by Pureon and the team, If you drop by IRC you might be able to catch up with that. We are currently in release process, so nothing will change for A18

d. low poly photo source environment models (trees and rocks are outdated, and a bunch of other things)

I have been trying to update them, but unfortunately don't have enough time for the anims.

campaigns have not been implemented since 5 years ago, they should be removed and multiplayer should become the focus, if you weren't able to get done in 5 years there is NO point in keeping that goal.

Triggers have been added, and therefore made a lot of things possible see http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19093

i. trees and foliage is static, no vertex deformations or bending - takes away from realism

Not true if you enable advanced graphics, they bend to the wind.

n. hard edges and blocky buildings, its 2015, you can chamfer the edges to make it smooth now...

We still support IntelHD 3000 and below, so we keep stuff low poly as much as possible.

o. birds in every level, no other ambient sounds

This is a coding issue, see http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1962

p. the specular mapping and normal maps seem to be barely working in game

See i ↑

q. villagers should stay villagers and military units should stay military units. You claim to be a historical rts, legionaries didn't build brick barracks's in the middle of the battlefield, they pitched tents and built encampments. you should have the ability to call your villagers to arms or garrison them however, but never allow military units to build anything besides stockades and encampments (tents, palisade walls etc) maybe you could add a new building (tents) to allow military units to convert to villagers (logicically leaving their weapons at the camp to work and, rearming when you need to them to fight) instead of them magicly pulling weapons from thin air

I disagree with you but I respect your point

About textures As I said before two artists are in the main team now, so that's very little, if you can provide new textures that'd be nice. Now, we need someone to review them.

Also this might interest you

http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19546

On a side note, If you want, you can help me improve so we can work together. Browse the art forum thread to see new stuff, and have a look at mods if you have time.

Edited March 8, 2015 by stanislas69

[Lion.Kanzen]

I disagree with citizen soldiers perspective

Is a main point in the game,nth at is writing in stone, even our best players love that feature. But that is gameplay perspective.

[feneur]

Thanks for the interest, and I'm sure you have a good interest, but please mind your attitude. It's really hard to take someone serious if they can't present their criticism in a polite manner. Also, to be able to make the most of your arguments it would help if you would try and understand the goals of the game.

We'll most likely keep the names as they are, not because we're trying to be different, but because our goal is to teach people about history. It might mean that it's a bit harder to get into, but as the generic name is displayed right next to them I don't really see the issue there. Especially since you're not very likely to be looking at the names at all in the middle of playing, but rather focus on the images.

The GUI can most certainly be improved, but it needs someone to do it. Since we do this in our free time we're relying on people being available and having the time (and interest/skill) to do things. So yeah, it needs to be improved, but so far it hasn't been done. If you have ideas for it, great. Though honestly most people have been concerned that the GUI is too big so far, so the needs vary (people might want to play the game on smaller/lower res screens as well). But again, if we had a scaling system that would help in that regard, so it's not a bad idea. It certainly doesn't seem like the easiest thing to do though, so don't expect miracles.

The textures might certainly need improvement, but two things to remember:

1) Since we're open source the available source materials are limited. Many sites providing high quality textures don't allow them to be re-licensed, but we need to be able to do that. We do have some old textures from CGTextures which are from before we went open source and are used by special permission, but that permission only applies to those old textures. So many textures have to be created by hand which requires more skill of the artist, which in turn limits the number of available artists who can do it.

2) Not everyone is going to have a graphics card which can make use of the more advanced features, so either we make the game look a lot worse for them (by not having any shadows etc in the textures), or we have to implement a system with different textures for whether or not one is using specular etc, which would complicate things. It might be worth it, but the question is whether the look of the game is improved enough for it to be worth doing.

We're definitely going to keep the Citizen Soldier concept. Both because it's something that makes the game different (and not just a AoE clone or something), and because it's inspired by history. Mostly in the sense of armies being based on citizens taking up arms to defend their city state, and in the sense that armies did build more than just tents. It's true that the degree of professionalism in ancient armies varied, but to keep the game balanced we can't differentiate too much between different factions or it would become unnecessarily hard to keep them balanced. Also, the armies got more professionalized towards the end of the period which the game features, and more so in the period which the second part will feature (1 A.D. - 500 A.D.). Plus of course we do have the champion units which represents the professional soldiers.

[Kicking_Bird]

We still support IntelHD 3000 and below, so we keep stuff low poly as much as possible.

That isn't a problem, I asked if there is LOD stages. Every RTS has this, you can do as much detail as you want.

Please tell me pyro has lods... if it doesn't tell the programmers to start programming lod stage support. Every video game ever has level of detail meshes, cheap mobile phone games are are the only exception.

HD 3000 can run modern games fine:

You are setting artificial boundaries for the game if you don't have lods and making it look like a game from 2002.

On a side note, If you want, you can help me improve so we can work together. Browse the art forum thread to see new stuff, and have a look at mods if you have time.

There is plenty of content already in game, I want to create new terrain textures, foliage, rocks to replace the horrific current ones which hurt my eyes to look at, because of the high contrast and noisiness of them, they are just bad and reminiscence of the earlier builds that need to be replaced, they don't even have proper normal or specular maps.

I would also like to start HDifying the Gaul civ's buildings and eventually all the buildings in the game, provided you do have and do implement lod stages, I would fix the pixel density issues along with the new buildings, which is another issue.

I was also asking about accessing the second UV channel layer to overlay a multiply ambient occlusion on top of the first layer, commonly known as lightmaps, except instead of baking a scene, each building has its own lightmap. Do you have and could the programmers implement this? Vertex color ambient occlusion could be a temporary solution and is probably easier to access and code. You seriously need an AO solution and LODS for this game. It looks like some outdated game from 2002. Rome II is bugged, but its more fun than this right now.

[Stan`]

A ) No we don't have LODs.

B )There is an experimental grass in the game that might suit you.

C )

There is plenty of content already in game, I want to create new terrain textures, foliage, rocks to replace the horrific current ones which hurt my eyes to look at, because of the high contrast and noisiness of them, they are just bad and reminiscence of the earlier builds that need to be replaced, they don't even have proper normal or specular maps.

Feel free to do so.

D )

I was also asking about accessing the second UV channel layer to overlay a multiply ambient occlusion on top of the first layer, commonly known as lightmaps, except instead of baking a scene, each building has its own lightmap. Do you have and could the programmers implement this? Vertex color ambient occlusion could be a temporary solution and is probably easier to access and code. You seriously need an AO solution and LODS for this game. It looks like some outdated game from 2002. Rome II is bugged, but its more fun than this right now.

We already have that see http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17542

As I said earlier you need to add enable some graphical options to see them.

Edited March 8, 2015 by stanislas69

[niektb]

I second new terrain textures. Note that the temperate textures are not even that bad (compared to the other biomes) when it comes to detail. I could (as a somewhat experienced map maker) fairly easy come up with a list of textures / biome(parts) that could use an upgrade.

However I'm not sure if we could achieve the same amount of detail on slower computers (and yes, 0 A.D. is played on really old computers) as on those PCs normal, spec and AO maps are disabled (and should be disabled since they're too slow to render those)

AO maps are actually supported (with the exception of animated object IIRC). They use a second UV channel layer (see http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17542&p=273078 )

[...]

B )There is an experimental grass in the game that might suit you.

Grass.png

[...]

That texture does actually blend poorly with other textures. (paint another texture through that texture and you'll see why)

Edited March 8, 2015 by niektb

[wraitii]

Kicking_Bird: I suggest you check the configuration file and change the material quality to 10.0

We indeed do not have LOD currently, mostly because we would have no artist to make the lower quality meshes (it could be automated but that would give a meh result).

[Kicking_Bird]

I just read up the cg textures clause conditions use, that's a real bummer, it currently winter up here so I cant do much. And not having lod support isn't exciting to hear. Will lod's ever be supported? Programming wise it sounds very doable with a in-house engine. I can get around textures, but having no lod's won't do as it severely limits what you can do creatively. Consoles were bad enough with the low memory, but having no lods is even worse. What are the current stretch goals or plan for this project? I mean 5 years ago 5 years sounded like a pretty good time frame, but its not even in beta yet.

[wraitii]

LOD can certainly be implemented, it should not be that difficult to do, just takes some times and preparation. I'm not really seeing how not having LOD can limit you creatively, though.

The game is basically in Beta without the name now, someday we'll actually get the whole team on board and call it that. It still lacks a few fundamental features but it's very playable, includes a somewhat complete and competent AI, and is not as slow as it once was.

[Kicking_Bird]

Kicking_Bird: I suggest you check the configuration file and change the material quality to 10.0

We indeed do not have LOD currently, mostly because we would have no artist to make the lower quality meshes (it could be automated but that would give a meh result).

I love creating lods, as long as its mostly on my own work. Isn't it fun for you to weld verts? If you did implement them I would create lod's for every building I create and everything else I would produce, occasionally someone else if they would need it. Units don't need them unless its siege equipment.

Lods would give me the creative freedoms I need as 3d artist and make the game look alot better.

Are there any pros for staying open source? Being open source is probably the reason this project was grinded to an almost halt, if it was commercial you could do crowd funding and have multiple resources... And it would get done faster and better. You could develop better tools and faster work pipelines.

tris/mats/memory

[wraitii]

Basically you mean what you want to do is LOD, not new models?

Again, read on what we want to do with this game and you will understand why it is open-source. The aim is not to finish it quickly, the aim is to make a quality, free, open-source game. So yeah, we're staying open-source.

The project also has definitely not grinded to a halt, in fact in the last 5 years it's been rebooted from scratch. We tried, and failed, crowd funding.

[niektb]

The fact that it was closed-source made it nearly stall. Going open-source saved this project a couple of years ago.

[Stan`]

I second new terrain textures. Note that the temperate textures are not even that bad (compared to the other biomes) when it comes to detail. I could (as a somewhat experienced map maker) fairly easy come up with a list of textures / biome(parts) that could use an upgrade.

However I'm not sure if we could achieve the same amount of detail on slower computers (and yes, 0 A.D. is played on really old computers) as on those PCs normal, spec and AO maps are disabled (and should be disabled since they're too slow to render those)

AO maps are actually supported (with the exception of animated object IIRC). They use a second UV channel layer (see http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17542&p=273078 )

That texture does actually blend poorly with other textures. (paint another texture through that texture and you'll see why)

A ) Correct we decided instead of adding support for AOs (Unless someone wanted to explicitely work on it) to prop the animated mesh so only the strict necessary would move and most of the mesh would have Ao.

B ) Yeah I know it blend pretty bad, we really need textures that decals over other

I love creating lods, as long as its mostly on my own work. Isn't it fun for you to weld verts? If you did implement them I would create lod's for every building I create and everything else I would produce, occasionally someone else if they would need it. Units don't need them unless its siege equipment.

Lods would give me the creative freedoms I need as 3d artist and make the game look alot better.

Are there any pros for staying open source? Being open source is probably the reason this project was grinded to an almost halt, if it was commercial you could do crowd funding and have multiple resources... And it would get done faster and better. You could develop better tools and faster work pipelines.

If we were to make LODS it would be engine wise not artist wise, we rather have our artists work on one of the tasks here :

http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17730

http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16224

Warning not updated, I tackled some of them already

Also I see you quoted persian civ which is under rework, though not for now, and is a really, really, really old civ.

Ah one more thing you probably have realised by now is that people don't work on priorities (unless release blocker) but mostly on feelings. So they pick randomly tasks.

[sanderd17]

The concept is really rather simple. If you want to improve something, and you have the time and skills to do so, then just do it.

There's no need to go @#$%ing programmers around for doing this or that. You can give suggestions, but since everyone is doing this in his spare time, you can't obligata anyone.

And about being open source, that's the beauty of it, there's no way back. I contributed code to the project, and as long as I don't want to relicense it, it's gonna stay open source. Every programmer that ever contributed to the project has a veto on changing the license of the code. Just like every artist that ever contributed to it has a veto on changing the license of the art stuff. So in short, the only way to change the license is to start over.

I'd appreciate it if you'd come here with a more open mind. Getting a finished game isn't a very big priority. The artists and programmers contributing here mostly do it because they like to learn stuff, improve their skills, or just like to spend their free time in this group. Making this game work is actually part of the game.

[Giotto]

Well said.

[historic_bruno]

I tend to agree with the suggestion for LOD support, even if we don't have the artists to do extra work creating the models today, that didn't stop us from adding AO, specular, parallax mapping to the renderer, with basically the same concerns. There never have been enough artists and there never will be, but you notice all our buildings now have AO and specular The worst case is we would never use it, but I have the feeling we would over time.

Of course, AO, specular, parallax, bloom, were all basically a community contribution, not from someone officially on the team (that's how it started anyway). There hasn't been any similar effort for LOD, but perhaps if it was a desired feature...

That being said, I think the renderer looks and functions well enough to not be a focus of the programmers, unless a feature really improves performance or attracts a lot of interest. Any evidence this would do either? I can imagine some performance benefit, I don't know if it's enough to justify all the extra work (look at 0 A.D.'s default camera behavior - how would it be used in practice?) and we would have to solve LOD "popping" behavior too.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

This man must understand that many texture made many years ago before spec map and normall map in the game, so shadow and highlight needed to be baked intoo texture "back in the day." Over the year it is plain to see that the art has been updated over and over again and will continue to need uptading as this man shows. But as the amount of content grows the effort to update the content increase as well. As a modder I see many of the issues this man says, but I try to fix them myself. Eventually I release it all once AOE icons remade, but the point is if you see an art problem and you have the skill then you should fix ir and present the fix to the community. This community-driven environment, especially now that modding has supported by the game. Saying that, there are better things for programmer to spend timeon like adding the promising features like formation that work right, charging, running, ramming, new technolgy effects (I would very much like to make techs that can modify other techs, like cost, etc.) and others. Fix pathfinder is big too.

I would advise steppng back and reassess what is possible in the engine already and see if you would have the time and energyy to make improvement to the art with the engine how it exists right now. Later, engine can be improve for LOD. Maybe experiment to see if there is way to add AO maps to trees (transparencies). If can add to transparencies then maybe we can add to decals for under trees and buildings to simulate ao.Ideas are many.

[Kicking_Bird]

So apparently I don't have permission to send PM's... or view profiles, what? Neither do the current .dae files import to max. gpa profiling tools don't work with this application neither does dx ripper, is this whole engine OpenGL?

Also is there a database or .zip archive of the textures from CG Textures which we can still use, and the current collection, before the licence cancellation?

Edited March 9, 2015 by Kicking_Bird

[niektb]

You can send PM's as soon as you have posted 5 ordinary posts.

[Stan`]

So apparently I don't have permission to send PM's... or view profiles, what? Neither do the current .dae files import to max. gpa profiling tools don't work with this application neither does dx ripper, is this whole engine OpenGL?

Also Is there a database or .zip archive of the textures from CG Textures which we can still use, before the licence cancellation?

Whol engine is opengl 2.0 (No upgrade will be made for compatibility)

If you use 3dsmax you can open those files

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/art_source/trunk/art

Also you shoul be able to import daes from svn. Anims are trickyer since a lot were made on blender the later the former were made on 3dsmax6

You wont be able to open pmd files with max you'll have to clone the svn repo were most of the files are dae. Remaining pmds will be anims and the source files are max.

For textures I dont think so we have some tutorials if you want il will make some for scratch in the future but afaik youll have to dig the web for open source and or CCBYsa 3.0 ones

[feneur]

The limit on PMs to people who have already made 5 or more posts is a measure to limit the risk of PM spam which we had issues with previously.

We were only allowed to use/relicense the textures in the way they exist in the game. In other words, if you want to use them you have to reuse the ones which are already in-game (or parts of them), otherwise you're probably better off creating them from scratch or finding some other source which has got textures with an appropriate license.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

kicking_bird. Beneficial would be for you to work up a good scene with new or repurpose assets and put into the game and offer it as a good example of what you would like to see happen with the art for the future. Even better would be to post it as mod (with a mod folder and mod.json) so everyone can put it in their game and look. This would make your ideas a "big hit" and make your purpose clear. Of course screenshot are okay too, but a mod folder would be knock out of the park.

That is, if you really have the skill and willpower to do this and you believe in the project.

[historic_bruno]

gpa profiling tools don't work with this application neither does dx ripper, is this whole engine OpenGL?

One tool that shows promise for profiling/debugging the game is AMD's GPU PerfStudio. An older, simpler tool is gDEBugger. I'm sure there are many others besides.