===[TASK]=== Roma Helmets

[Stan`]

36 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

aren't there dynamic LOD systems that don't require any new modeling work?

There are. I'm not sure they are compatible with 0 A.D.' s license though. Someone with enough motivation could take the STK code. Maybe @fcxSanya could like he did in the past for the STUN code.

@wraitii worked on something like that. With a little polish and the suggestiona I made thete we could make the game a bit easier on low end pc.

@Alexandermb I have no issue whatsoever with you making higher quality art (lol) My focus at the moment (For 0 A.D. not the mods) is making the art assets repository robust. Consistency, Tidyness, Low Maintenance requirements. 

On consistency the important thing is to avoid big gaps of quality between assets so nothing looks out of place. Respecting Texel density is important because it basically tells you what resolution objects will be. If your unit is 512x512 then your big shield is gonna be 256x256 because it takes half of the unit while your helmet with either be 128x128 or 64x64 depending on the size it has. A kite shield would be something like 128x256 because it doesn't need to be square. 

One thing that is also important is to not use useless geometry. In general you are fine but some little optimisations can be made here and there like I remember deleting all the hidden faces of some peytrals because they never could be seen. And while one or two units were fine when 200 are moving it can make a significant difference.

Last but not least I think we should prioritize the assets dragging us down like the bear or the stuff missing animations. Art is also everything else than the units and it has to be up to par. I still suck too much to update the terrain texture but it'll have to be done at some point. Just look at how hyping is the new vegetation by @LordGood and @Bigtiger (Keep them coming guys !)

We have to remember that we are also the showcase of the good art open-source world. How many time have I heard : "if it's open source it's ugly", "Artists working for free are either lame or a disgrace because they make people think they can demand things for free".

On the mod front my goal is to showcase the power of the Pyrogenesis engine with mods covering all eras (pyrogenesis-1944, pyrogenesis-1861 - Civil war, Stella Artis, TM, Millenium AD @Bigtiger's mod) even the futuristic ones so we are not" just an AOE clone", just a starcraft clone"

Good art is good for reaching people and future contributors. That creates the missing links. With @Sundiataupcoming devs reports maybe we'll reach more people.

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

(20.000 poly's is considered low-poly, pretty much everywhere these days). I don't think anybody still uses 256x256 textures anymore, so having 512x512 or even higher variants on hand for when the engine gets on point is a good idea.

There is a big and important caveat with that. Since we have the time to do good we should not rush things like current games do. People care less and less about optimizations since you can "Just buy more RAM man". I believe it's not okay to waste 100GB of HDD just because you can. Sure we can't support everyone but we also have to remind that a lot of devs in the open source community ( the guys actually making the engine worthwile) work on thinkpad laptops with no dedicated graphic card on some obscure linux distribution and we need those guys too :))

 

 

[Alexandermb]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

.@Alexandermb I have no issue whatsoever with you making higher quality art (lol) My focus at the moment (For 0 A.D. not the mods) is making the art assets repository robust. Consistency, Tidyness, Low Maintenance requirements. 

 

Speaking of that, im thinking on merge celtic helmets to "Hellenic" helmets blendfile with b2.80, ive done the persian conical and the gallic rome helmets in that file to keep a single file of helmets.

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

We have to remember that we are also the showcase of the good art open-source world. How many time have I heard : "if it's open source it's ugly", "Artists working for free are either lame or a disgrace because they make people think they can demand things for free".

Thats exactly what we need to avoid, just because we are an RTS we need to get stuck in a point of graphical uglyness because the engine already works like that, and neither because we are free it means we should be the uglier as possible.

[Alexandermb]

2 hours ago, Sundiata said:

@Alexandermb I really love the work you do! But I guess you know that by now. Maybe it doesn't get said enough, but you art contributions all look fantastic, and I love to come to the forum and see what you're up to this time. I'm one of those people who zooms in a lot. A lot! In single player I remove the camera restrictions almost by default, and love to bring the camera down to a really low angle every once in a while to "see things from my soldiers' perspective". I've been doing this for years before ever even joining the forums. I've noticed friends of mine zooming in like that to appreciate the art up close as well. We notice details a lot, and love them. The more the better, lol... I also agree that it's good practice to make new art assets of the highest quality, even if they're not immediately useful or need to be downscaled for their final inclusion in the game. I think it's obviously a bad idea to constantly be playing catch up with bigger titles... 

Ive zoomed a lot because we can, otherwise if we were like aoe back in those days where you only could see everything from the distance. Its just like Warhammer Dark Crusade. Sometimes you losse some units because you got lost looking the death scenes animations.

[Alexandermb]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

On the mod front my goal is to showcase the power of the Pyrogenesis engine with mods covering all eras (pyrogenesis-1944, pyrogenesis-1861 - Civil war, Stella Artis, TM, Millenium AD @Bigtiger's mod) even the futuristic ones so we are not" just an AOE clone", just a starcraft clone"

 

You forget something here, if we enter in the whole timeline civ type we enter in another comparation: Rise of Nations and Empire earth. The only way we won't end being compared is being The best of that games with the best of others.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

27 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

You forget something here, if we enter in the whole timeline civ type we enter in another comparation: Rise of Nations and Empire earth. The only way we won't end being compared is being The best of that games with the best of others.

They're just mods, showcasing the power of the engine.  

[Alexandermb]

8 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

They're just mods, showcasing the power of the engine.  

Thats true.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Just now, Alexandermb said:

Thats true.

Because more and more I'm thinking that Empires Ascendant is like the tech demo for the engine, where the engine is the real star of the show. That's not to say that EA couldn't and shouldn't be made the best it can be, I'm just thinking there are others out there who will take the engine and do incredible things with it that we can only currently imagine, if the engine is feature rich enough. For instance, make an RPG or something, maybe with your cool new assets as a basis.  

[Alexandermb]

Just now, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Because more and more I'm thinking that Empires Ascendant is like the tech demo for the engine, where the engine is the real star of the show. That's not to say that EA couldn't and shouldn't be made the best it can be, I'm just thinking there are others out there who will take the engine and do incredible things with it that we can only currently imagine, if the engine is feature rich enough. For instance, make an RPG or something, maybe with your cool new assets as a basis.  

Exactly, im thinking more in an RPG just like Titan Quest. With the power of RTS yet sometimes the engine limit so much the benefits or at least the work.

i've been thinking on include directional firing arrow animation on horse movement, yet i don't know what would be the best option since i don't have the option to test it (kinda like doing testudo blindfold)

Or making the tree fall when cutted down, generaly the trees were made whitout having that in mind and later that feature is desired but requires tons of work to make it possible and now at least i just imagine at least how it is now using sink animation like but reaching only the floor and using the "spawn entity on death", but you get the point.

As my point of view EA is just as you say, the showcase. While mods like ABC and DE are the cherry on the top.

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, Alexandermb said:

You forget something here, if we enter in the whole timeline civ type we enter in another comparation: Rise of Nations and Empire earth. The only way we won't end being compared is being The best of that games with the best of others.

Yeah though as @wowgetoffyourcellphone said they are just separate mods not a complete game.

37 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

As my point of view EA is just as you say, the showcase. While mods like ABC and DE are the cherry on the top.

The engine should be split eventually (and the public mod as well). I guess @elexis gave up on that...

[Nescio]

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

Last but not least I think we should prioritize the assets dragging us down like the bear or the stuff missing animations.

Exactly! Better helmets are certainly welcome, but critics tend to judge things by their worst aspects, not by what are the best assets. Animals certainly deserve more love!

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

On the mod front my goal is to showcase the power of the Pyrogenesis engine with mods covering all eras (pyrogenesis-1944, pyrogenesis-1861 - Civil war, Stella Artis, TM, Millenium AD @Bigtiger's mod) even the futuristic ones so we are not" just an AOE clone", just a starcraft clone"

Most of those are merely more of the same, aren't they? If you really want to showcase the possibilities of 0 A.D., you ought to highlight a mod that does something completely different; e.g. Hyrule Conquest.

17 minutes ago, Stan` said:

The engine should be split eventually (and the public mod as well). I guess @elexis gave up on that...

Yes, that would be a great improvement, eventually. Napoleonic mods don't need Greek hoplites and Mars mods don't need trees.

[Stan`]

12 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Most of those are merely more of the same, aren't they? If you really want to showcase the possibilities of 0 A.D., you ought to highlight a mod that does something completely different; e.g. Hyrule Conquest.

I could have quoted this one as well yes. My point was just that the game isn't just Antiquity.

13 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Yes, that would be a great improvement, eventually. Napoleonic mods don't need Greek hoplites and Mars mods don't need trees.

Indeed. Though it was mostly removing time bound material (eg civs) than removing all the art. The last time we discussed it flora and fauna could stay in the main bundle as they are more reusable than let's say britons.

 

[Alexandermb]

1 hour ago, Nescio said:

Exactly! Better helmets are certainly welcome, but critics tend to judge things by their worst aspects, not by what are the best assets. Animals certainly deserve more love!

While i would like to work on animals i don't have the proper materials to paint them (bake them) and that limits pretty much my workspace, i can't just take the actual model and do something with it because the actual models are pretty much rigid and unable to do animations like the horse ones.

i've already have the bear with animations and mesh but i don't have the proper material or texture to work with and i can't just take the actual bear and adjust it or adjust the uv to the bear texture because they are a total mess, squared textures for animals are just a pain and useless totally.

Just see how much time it took me to work with the new horse model before i've updated the texture. i spent most time adjusting the uv rather than animating.

And clearly i won't like do something like cattle and being pretty much tie handed when doing textures and after some time have a better option to do them and easily one.

So at least until i don't get a proper way of baking animal hairy skin i won't be able to update some kind of animals.

[Alexandermb]

And getting to topic: ive done an itallic helmet:

Spoiler

And downscaled to 256 looks like this:

Spoiler

 

[Alexandermb]

@Nescio as an example of how its work properly with the knowledge and reusing assets (horse included in this) and procedural materials, see how fast ive done tons of helmets and see how i can make properly variations of itallic and gallic. Back in the days when i've did my first "gallic" helmet like i felt proud but nowadays i look it and see what a waste of time i've spent doing it.

it took me like a whole day to do it or maybe more, when in one day i've did 3 gallic helmets and reusing the gallic helmets high poly model i've done the itallic in minutes today. Same theory applies to animals, i reuse the horse armature and i reuse materials and that offers a better way of making models and updating high quality assets for reusage.

My old gallic helmet is pretty much useless and limited to that model, while i can rehuse this helmet with 1 single mesh and use many cheeck piece as props for reduce the necesity of having tons of meshes of the same kind.

[Stan`]

5 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

So at least until i don't get a proper way of baking animal hairy skin i won't be able to update some kind of animals.

You could use photo texturing... That's what I do  

7 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

i've already have the bear with animations and mesh but i don't have the proper material or texture to work with and i can't just take the actual bear and adjust it or adjust the uv to the bear texture because they are a total mess, squared textures for animals are just a pain and useless totally.

They are the best use of the texture space though, nearly 100%

8 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

Just see how much time it took me to work with the new horse model before i've updated the texture. i spent most time adjusting the uv rather than animating

Some models just need animating. Also I can texture animals, but I can't animate them, so you could do that and I'd handle the rest  

 

Italic Helmet : Looks nice, maybe some more edge wear also why is the bronze less dirty than the rest ?

 

[Alexandermb]

Just now, Stan` said:

1 You could use photo texturing... That's what I do  

2 They are the best use of the texture space though, nearly 100%

3 Some models just need animating. Also I can texture animals, but I can't animate them, so you could do that and I'd handle the rest  

4 Italic Helmet : Looks nice, maybe some more edge wear also why is the bronze less dirty than the rest ?

 

1 i'ts take more time at least to me to do that.
2 Yeah but a pain to use if the model is an animal, and if other artist want to paint over them they will get lost because of the shape.
3 Thats a better idea.

4 That bronze is the one i've used for the persian conical helmet, i will reduce the gray tone of the white area just like @wowgetoffyourcellphone suggested yet i've been working with this as base since is the one ive used before.

[Alexandermb]

Im afraid of touching sometimes the colors because of the aspis bug, but here it is with increased brightness in the gray areas:

Spoiler

 

[Alexandermb]

i think the before matches better with the actual texture, yet that need to be updated also.

Spoiler

 

[Stan`]

Yeah the old one indeed fits better. Why does it need to be updated ?

[Alexandermb]

Just now, Stan` said:

Yeah the old one indeed fits better. Why does it need to be updated ?

The upper zone is okay, the lower zone of the tunic kinda could use some @wackyserious magic. also the belt.

[Stan`]

1 minute ago, Alexandermb said:

The upper zone is okay, the lower zone of the tunic kinda could use some @wackyserious magic. also the belt.

Well I guess you could do what do what @wowgetoffyourcellphone wanted and take the arm armor out of the texture, so the unit could have one or two protected arms. But I think that's  one of the good skeletal texture we have

[Alexandermb]

13 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Well I guess you could do what do what @wowgetoffyourcellphone wanted and take the arm armor out of the texture, so the unit could have one or two protected arms. But I think that's  one of the good skeletal texture we have

Do you mean use the new prop bones? Also, the actual texture is pretty good but the quality is lost in the resolution, specially in the edges

Spoiler

 

[Stan`]

35 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

Do you mean use the new prop bones?

Yes.

35 minutes ago, Alexandermb said:

Also, the actual texture is pretty good but the quality is lost in the resolution, specially in the edges

Yeah cause they got half the resolution density of the rest so that people can do what's in the art design document... Basic Human Template - 6th image

 

[Alexandermb]

Neider_mormter: (Missing upper visor)

Spoiler

Difference on the height of the back neck zone:

Spoiler

@wowgetoffyourcellphone should i continue using the cleaner metal or the dirtier one for match the bodie texture?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

Well I guess you could do what do what @wowgetoffyourcellphone wanted and take the arm armor out of the texture, so the unit could have one or two protected arms. But I think that's  one of the good skeletal texture we have

 

2 hours ago, Alexandermb said:

Do you mean use the new prop bones? Also, the actual texture is pretty good but the quality is lost in the resolution, specially in the edges

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See Delenda Est for new already fixing the shoulders. The texture there is fine. Already have a prop there.