First try moddeling

[Mr.lie]

Hi guys,

please don't lough about the result, but i would show you my first try making a model from scatch. After downloading hundereds of models, inspect them, try to learn things about meshes, unwrapping, texturing, baking and so on i've decided to build my "own" village for 0ad, which i can share without having trouble with licensing.

So, here it is:

 

[Mr.lie]

I'm using:

1. The textures came from 3dtextures.com and/or cc0textures.com and/or textureheaven.com and/or textures.com and/or opengameart.com

2. Blender 2.91.0

3. Addon's Node Wrangler, Magic UV and Building Tools

 

 

[Stan`]

Be careful about textures.com.

For opengameart if non CC0 make sure it has a commercial license, and also that if their are authors to keep their names somewhere;

Do you wish to have feedback on your 3DModel?

[Mr.lie]

6 minutes ago, Stan` said:

For opengameart if non CC0 make sure it has a commercial license, and also that if their are authors to keep their names somewhere

Thanks, i'll check again the used textures, if there is one from opengameart, i will replace it.

 

6 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Do you wish to have feedback on your 3DModel?

Yes

Edited January 25, 2021 by Mr.lie

[Stan`]

11 minutes ago, Mr.lie said:

Yes

Can you compress it and upload it here?  Make sure to pack textures into the blend file.

[Mr.lie]

11 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Can you compress it and upload it here?  Make sure to pack textures into the blend file.

Here it is, and please: don't lough ...

FachwerkhausForStand1.zip

[Mr.lie]

Here is the blend-file from the joined and baked model:

FachwerkhausForStanAsDae.zip

[Stan`]

Do not worry, I will not laugh. I may frown however.

You can optimize this

The trick is to separate those pieces, and use limited dissolve to clean the rest up.

 

Support beams have useless bottom faces

Also bevels are nice, but be careful about polycount.

Same for the door and the bottom window but you should check all the wooden beams

Using what I said above you should be able to clean up the roof

 

Bonus. After cleaning everything up, you can add some props, maybe some climbing plant on of the side. It's a 3D game, so make sure to make all sides interesting  

 

 

 

[nifa]

Sieht gut aus!

[Mr.lie]

7 hours ago, Stan` said:

Do not worry, I will not laugh. I may frown however.

You can optimize this

The trick is to separate those pieces, and use limited dissolve to clean the rest up.

 

Support beams have useless bottom faces

Also bevels are nice, but be careful about polycount.

Same for the door and the bottom window but you should check all the wooden beams

Using what I said above you should be able to clean up the roof

 

Bonus. After cleaning everything up, you can add some props, maybe some climbing plant on of the side. It's a 3D game, so make sure to make all sides interesting  

 

 

 

Thank you for your feedback, Stan. Yeah, all these faces and vertices appearing after i had export the model as *.dae and reimport it. I was surprised, i think i make a mistake by export or import. So, i manually dissolve all these darned faces. Meanwhile i make a new model, this time from zero without "Building Tools". I began with only a cube and a plane. Also the door this time is "handmade".

 

[Mr.lie]

Some "eyecandy" - handmade ...

[Carltonus]

Ihr Hausmodell ist sehr wunderbar.

Da following Sentence ist pseudo-Deutsch:

Dieser Herr hast ein grosspotential fur ein neues Thrakerfaktion (oder Subfaktion)!

Edited January 26, 2021 by Carltonus

[Stan`]

5 hours ago, Mr.lie said:

Thank you for your feedback, Stan. Yeah, all these faces and vertices appearing after i had export the model as *.dae and reimport it. I was surprised, i think i make a mistake by export or import. So, i manually dissolve all these darned faces.

When you export models they get triangulated. Most games do not understand n-gons. To go back to quads select the mesh and press ALT+J.

5 hours ago, Mr.lie said:

Meanwhile i make a new model, this time from zero without "Building Tools". I began with only a cube and a plane. Also the door this time is "handmade".

You now use a lot of polygons for the door. Since it's very unlikely it will open it is a bit of a waste and those details should probably be in the textures / normal maps.

The model looks good though. Also keep in mind that foundations need to extend into the ground else you'll get flying buildings.

[Mr.lie]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

When you export models they get triangulated. Most games do not understand n-gons. To go back to quads select the mesh and press ALT+J

Thank's a lot for the tip ...

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

You now use a lot of polygons for the door. Since it's very unlikely it will open it is a bit of a waste and those details should probably be in the textures / normal maps.

The model looks good though.

Yes, this was only a try, i was inspired by the models from "The Enterables". Those models are really high detailed, but we can't use them in the game, because the exported dae's are giant and "Atlas" doesn't like them . While going on to add more buildings i'll take only a cube or plane for the doors and windows.

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

Also keep in mind that foundations need to extend into the ground else you'll get flying buildings.

For this case i've added the bottom "Kanthölzer". Below them i'll add a cube, texture it with a stone/wall texture similar to the most models of the game.

Thank you very much for your feedback.

For now i've finished the "little shed", i've seperated the sections of the model for reusing. Next i will try to create a dock.

[Mr.lie]

Some questions i have, and when you have time you can give me the answers:

1. Does the game consider the Blender-Render-Settings (i.e. whether or not i use evee or cycles?

2. Does the game consider the Blender-Shader-Settings (i.e. all the settings in the Node-Editor?

3. The Game-Materials allow to use 4 maps: Color/Diffuse, Normal, Specular and AO. In Blender there are more than these 4. Which Maps should i bake for 1. Normal and 2. Specular? Sometimes i've read, that one also can use a "Height-Map" instead of "Normal". After hundreds of errors i've found out, that for using "aoTex" there must be a second UV-Map in the dae. Otherwise it always causes the error "... has no UV1Set. Which map should i always use for the "specTex"?

4. Baking a "Combined" Map in Blender does this mean, that i only need to use this 1 texture-map for the actor? Does this map also include i.e. AO, Normal and so on? Or results this art of baking always for a plain texture?

5. This is the most important question: when using a "*_struct.png" or a "*_struct.dds" as you experts it always do, one have to unwrap "every single face or vertex" one by one and place them one by one in the right place/direction/rotation of the texture-map? In the moment i use materials and unwrap the faces i need, when done i add a second UV-Map and a image to the shader-editor for every material, unwrap the model with "Lightmap Pack" or "Smart UV Project", bake the maps i'll need, duplicate the model and attach the baked Imagetexture to one material, select the second UV-Map and all is fine. But following this manner, there are so much Texture-Files as models are. Can the Game work with this?

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, Mr.lie said:

1. Does the game consider the Blender-Render-Settings (i.e. whether or not i use evee or cycles?

2. Does the game consider the Blender-Shader-Settings (i.e. all the settings in the Node-Editor?

No, it does not. I also recommend you delete any materials your mesh has prior to exporting, because it ignores them as well. (And having more than one will crash the game).

1 hour ago, Mr.lie said:

3. The Game-Materials allow to use 4 maps: Color/Diffuse, Normal, Specular and AO. In Blender there are more than these 4. Which Maps should i bake for 1. Normal and 2. Specular? Sometimes i've read, that one also can use a "Height-Map" instead of "Normal".

Ok so for normals you need to bake the normal map. The Y channel of the normal map needs to be inverted because blender uses OpenGL normals see wiki:NormalMaps

If you want to make use of the heightmap you can add it to the alpha channel of the normal map. See wiki:ParallaxNormalMaps

Quote

After hundreds of errors i've found out, that for using "aoTex" there must be a second UV-Map in the dae. Otherwise it always causes the error "... has no UV1Set.

Indeed you need a custom uvmap for AO

Quote

Which map should i always use for the "specTex"?

The spec map works as follow:

- Color defines the specular color (eg a yellow specular will reflect light like it's yellow)

- Intensity (eg. dark vs white) The brighter the shinier

You should be able to get away with a tweaked B&W normal map

1 hour ago, Mr.lie said:

4. Baking a "Combined" Map in Blender does this mean, that i only need to use this 1 texture-map for the actor? Does this map also include i.e. AO, Normal and so on? Or results this art of baking always for a plain texture?

Combined maps are just one texture, the game cannot however extract the other maps from that one. It's just the texture you can see in blender, it has no other information. It's sometimes useful when you want to bake reflections on the texture.

1 hour ago, Mr.lie said:

5. This is the most important question: when using a "*_struct.png" or a "*_struct.dds" as you experts it always do, one have to unwrap "every single face or vertex" one by one and place them one by one in the right place/direction/rotation of the texture-map? In the moment i use materials and unwrap the faces i need, when done i add a second UV-Map and a image to the shader-editor for every material, unwrap the model with "Lightmap Pack" or "Smart UV Project", bake the maps i'll need, duplicate the model and attach the baked Imagetexture to one material, select the second UV-Map and all is fine. But following this manner, there are so much Texture-Files as models are. Can the Game work with this?

Yes the game can work like this. However it is recommended to use textures atlases, for the more textures you have to load the slower.

[Mr.lie]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

No, it does not. I also recommend you delete any materials your mesh has prior to exporting, because it ignores them as well. (And having more than one will crash the game).

Ok so for normals you need to bake the normal map. The Y channel of the normal map needs to be inverted because blender uses OpenGL normals see wiki:NormalMaps

If you want to make use of the heightmap you can add it to the alpha channel of the normal map. See wiki:ParallaxNormalMaps

Indeed you need a custom uvmap for AO

The spec map works as follow:

- Color defines the specular color (eg a yellow specular will reflect light like it's yellow)

- Intensity (eg. dark vs white) The brighter the shinier

You should be able to get away with a tweaked B&W normal map

Combined maps are just one texture, the game cannot however extract the other maps from that one. It's just the texture you can see in blender, it has no other information. It's sometimes useful when you want to bake reflections on the texture.

Yes the game can work like this. However it is recommended to use textures atlases, for the more textures you have to load the slower.

Thank you again for your efforts, this was very helpful.

[Mr.lie]

WIP of an simple, ancient dock ...

[Mr.lie]

WIP - storehouse/farmstead

[DerekO]

looks pretty sick

On 26/01/2021 at 4:41 PM, Mr.lie said:

WIP of an simple, ancient dock ...

this one looks like it's for a south asian civ maybe. what do you have in mind?

 

[Mr.lie]

After hundereds of crashes in Blender ...

 

[Stan`]

Wow that's great! Keep it up

[DanW58]

On 26/01/2021 at 6:28 AM, Stan` said:

The spec map works as follow:

- Color defines the specular color (eg a yellow specular will reflect light like it's yellow)

- Intensity (eg. dark vs white) The brighter the shinier

You should be able to get away with a tweaked B&W normal map

Here's a mini-course in materials and optics:

The diffuse texture represents the color of the material for the portion of light that reflects "diffusely" (randomly, sort of, in a photon by photon basis).

The specular texture represents the color of the material for the portion of light that reflects "straight"... mirror-like.

Some materials are entirely diffuse, or at least best modeled as such, such as dirt or cloth.  Represent as colors in diffuse;  black in specular.

Some materials are almost entirely specular, such as highly polished metals.  Represent as color in specular;  black in diffuse.

The FIRST RULE of scientific texturing is to never make the sum of diffuse and specular greater than white.  Morover, never make any single channel add to more than 1.0 (or 255 if using char color notation).  Doing so makes that pixel in the texture set indicate a material that reflects more light energy than it receives, which is not physically possible.  Blender, unfortunately, entirely ignores this concern in its light/material pipeline.  Blender's pipeline is NOT physics based, no matter how much they repeat it is.  If you want realistic materials, you have to enforce the rules of optics yourself.  And this is your first rule;  make sure no pixel adds to more than white if you add diffuse and specular.  They should never add to more than 0.9, 0.9, 0.9, really, as even mirrors have trouble reflecting more than 90%.

So, something white in specular but black in diffuse looks like a mirror.  Something white in diffuse but black in specular looks like white chalk powder.  Something white in both looks like an ugly glowing thing from another universe.

But there are many kinds of impossible colors that can ruin a game asset without adding to greater than white.  A material that is red in diffuse but green in specular is a complete optical atrocity.  No such material exists or could ever exist.  From this point of view, the old texturers' trick of taking the diffuse texture and desaturating it to make a starting point for a specular texture is not entirely without mertit;  it does prevent at least some atrocities.  The problem is that everything ends up looking like plastic when you do that.  Plastics behave precisely that way:  diffuse color with gray specularity.

Assets look infinitely better when you understand basic optics and make sure the materials are deliberately represented.  I prefer to use separate textures for metallic and non-metallic areas, and later combine them.

Metals:

One thing that is fundamentally different for metals, besides their being very specular, is that their specularity has color.  That is, if you look at a blue object reflected on a polished gold surface, it will look dark, because gold is yellow in specular, which doesn't reflect blue as well as red and green.   The same is NOT true of paints and plastics, which reflect WITHOUT coloring their reflections.  Another thing that is fundamentally different for metals is that their "diffuse" specularity, if any, is more like an over-saturated and dimmed version of their specular color.  This is because light reflecting off a colored metal that reflects diffusely, randomly, implies that it bounces two or three times before coming out, probably by entering and exiting a micro-cavity on the metal surface, and at each reflection it becomes MORE colored by the metal.  Thus, if your metal is gold, which in specular would be about 0.9, 0.9, 0.5, after a second bounce it becomes 0.81, 0.81, 0.25, that is, the square of the specular.  And if it bounces a third time it will be 0.73, 0.73, 0.125, i.e. cubed.  If we assume two and a half bounces average, we could use the average of the square and the cube, roughly 0.77, 0.77, 0.185.  But probably less than 10% of the surface is pockmarked by microscopic cavities, so we can take a tenth of that figure, and compensate by reducing specular by 10%.

So, our final physics modelling for gold's color is 0.077, 0.077, 0.0185 diffuse, and 0.81, 0.81, 0.45 specular.  If you try it, you'll be surprised how remarkably golden that looks, even if in the diffuse texture it looks too dark to even see.  Science delivers!

Another thing that makes metallic reflections recognizable is that the angle does not matter;  they reflect the same at any angle.

 

Non-metals:

Specular reflections from non-metals are a completely different animal.  Here reflections are caused by photons being unable to refract into the material, which depends on the incident angle and the material's index of refraction (related to its dielectric constant), and following Fresnel law.  If the photon reflects, it does so color-blindly.  If it does not reflec, but enter the material, instead, then it may meet a particle of pigment and become colored, and eventually come out of the material in a diffuse way.  This is how a typical car paint works.  To represent car paint in a game you need a fresnel shader that will typically ignore your specular texture color, compute a variable intensity of specularity based on the angle of reflection, and make that specularity white;  and then use 1 minus that specularity to modulate diffuse color.

If you cannot use Fresnel, then you are relegated to the horrible last option of making specular color gray for paint, which will actually look like cheap plastic.

 

What about things like plants, and human skin?

Well, with shaders you can do wonderful things, like sub-surface scattering;  but if you are limited to using standard OGL pipeline diffuse and specular, make plants green and human skin pink or brown to taste, and then make specular dark-grey.  Plastic looks look better than metal for living things...

 

[Mr.lie]

A little church ...

[Mr.lie]

simple tower ...