eh, I could, but there's only about 10 days left in the competition, and 2048x2048 is already more than enough resolution for a throwing axe. In fact I might even have to scale down the res just so it looks like it belongs in the game.
Sort of fell asleep around 1:30ish, but I'm cutting out the UV for the mace The power is out and the internet is down, laptop is tethered to my phone. Hopefully the power goes back online.
@jo420; I don't think throwing weapons have blood masks, since they disappear when they hit a target. I'll post a screenshot of the axe without the blood to see which one looks better.
Have you thought they might not even include throwing weapons,the rules say only main weapons will be considered. Thats why my scimitar went from a 1 hand archer weapon to a 2 handed messer.
Throwing weapons are secondary weapons, sort of like shields. It doesn't get factored into the judging, but I want to make sets that people would want to buy, not a set that's sole purpose is to win this competition. If you had two sets that were identical in awesomeness and pricing, but one set had an additional model replacement for the throwing axe, which one would you get? The more stuff that's in a pack, the merrier!
Throwing weapons are secondary weapons, sort of like shields. It doesn't get factored into the judging, but I want to make sets that people would want to buy, not a set that's sole purpose is to win this competition. If you had two sets that were identical in awesomeness and pricing, but one set had an additional model replacement for the throwing axe, which one would you get? The more stuff that's in a pack, the merrier!
Yo yo wasn't meant to be discouraging, was an FYI. Hate for you to put in a lot of work for nothing.
@JO420; haha, no worries, I didn't take it as discouragement. And I really love this kind of work (the other main reason why I make extra set pieces). If I don't win, I wouldn't really care, since it's a lot of fun, I learned a lot, and I'll have some great pieces for my portfolio.
Anyway, oops! Internet was down for two days, power was out for another day, and I ran out of money on my phone so I couldn't call anyone. Talk about fun
Managed to get some work though. Here are all the screens that I would have posted, but couldn't. There's still a lot of tinkering to do, though.
Currently still adding a lot of base painting, highlights and shadows, fixing small areas of normal and diffuse map, etc. Will probably be done by morning, then I'll work on the helmet, or perhaps specular mapping and importing into chiv SDK.
Mesh explosion helped a lot for the normal map. I sort of wanted to do it for the AO map too, but I ended up deciding that the shadows of the horns/feather appendages really puts the weapon together, aesthetically.
Thanks! Taking a quick snack break atm, but I'm having a lot of fun with this mace project, and I'm sure it'll be done soon. One thing I learned is that my high-poly repousse detail is a bit too fine for the normal map to pick up, so I selected the polygons of the surface repousse and moved them out a bit, then rebaked.
It's a quick fix because the deadline is closing, but I'll know in the future to make more pronounced details for normal map baking.
That's where isn't important to prioritize your UV space on what has tons of details, what's larger, etc. What size are you baking your maps at? I normally bake 1 size up from the final size I am aiming for.
Hey 9th, I'm baking them at 1:1, haha. What is 1 size up? Like 1024 to 2048? Does that make for a more accurate bake?
I've baked maps for this weapon at the guideline sizes; normal and diffuse at 2048.
I generally keep UV shells in proportion to each other, but the areas near the hilt, handle, etc would get a little more attention.
Yeah, like if I am aiming for a 1024, I bake it at 2048 just because you get crisper details initially and they are more likely to hold up when downsizing depending on how much smaller that actually makes the parts.
It's good that they're pretty relative to one another. Texture space can just be used a bit more efficiently if you have a blank part with little detail and making it smaller to allow more space for more detailed areas.
I'll get to that other set soon. I'm redoing the mace's normal, AO, and diffuse maps, I ended up having to do so much manual tinkering and fixing of the maps, that I decided it was better to just start over from scratch.
Got the maul into the SDK. It's very easy, as long as you read the instructions slowly and carefully.
I'm very confident I can finish my three submission in 5 days, now that I know the complete steps from concept to 3d to importing into an SDK. I have a feeling that submitting the item to the workshop won't take very long
My brother said the maul's metal texture was going to be too light, once it's in the SDK, and even lighter still with an specular map that I haven't added yet, so I'm going to add a specular map next, tone down the brightness, and add final adjustments before finishing the rest of this set, and moving onto The Crown of Cobalt, and the Blade of Mercurial Wrath.
Looking good. In general a metal texture's diffuse should be pretty dark, and the specular is very light. It differs based on what metal you want but chrome would basically be black diffuse and white specular (not speaking to gloss or whatnot).
Oh, the specular is supposed to be light too? I thought they were supposed to be both dark, at least on metal parts. IIRC black designates shiny parts of the specular map, and white designates not shiny textures.
This is what it looks like when I made the diffuse too dark, and also the specular a little too dark (shiny).
Oh, the specular is supposed to be light too? I thought they were supposed to be both dark, at least on metal parts. IIRC black designates shiny parts of the specular map, and white designates not shiny textures.
You might be confusing spec with roughness. but either way, White is most shiny, black is least shiny.
and actually the diffuse should be darker, and the spec lighter. not both lighter.
uses "M_Weapons_Master". It's a bit too shiny, and sort of obscures the normal map and really shows the low-poly geo, which is what I don't want. I'm going to see how to change the material settings, and also change my specular to a lighter color.
Okay, I figured out how to change the shininess on the material, it's in the next step with environmental map mask intensity, specular map intensity, and specular power.
Make sure to read it carefully though... everything talked about is important and necessary, and it can be a little difficult to digest if you're completely new to UDK or this chiv SDK.
The basic gist is that you need all of your maps and your model saved in two FBX files; one with two bones, one without the bones. That's for weapons, I'm sure the process is similar with helmets, but I haven't tried yet.
Well since I already know what to do (clean up and enhance my TGAs, fix the wonky looking beak, play with specular settings, make a blood mask, append the weapon to the mason knight), I'm going to set this project aside and get the more difficult parts out of the way first. I'm going to get the hi-poly stechhelm done, then bake normals, the rough diffuse, AO, specular, and basically get it to where the maul is now. Same with the francisca axe, should be done before afternoon.
If you feel like something is off, like the specular or diffuse looks too dark, it might be because part or all of your normal map somehow became inverted when importing to the SDK.
You can go into photoshop, select the area that appears to be inverted, and do Image > Adjustments > Invert (Ctrl - I) and save your TGA. Reload the image in Chiv SDK, then undo the invert you just did in photoshop, save, and reload the image again. It worked for this mesh.
I am not exactly sure to understand what you mean by this piece of advice : "select the area that appears to be inverted".
It's actually a "all or nothing" situation : a normalmap has either its y/green channel inverted compared to what an engine expects, or not. If some areas seem more broken than others, that means that there is another issue at play.
(now of course I am glad that you managed to get something that looks fine - I am just trying to make sure that technical misinformation is not spreading too much, as it has been the case in the past )
Similarly, if everything is setup properly there should be no need to "clean up" a bake, at all. Now of course if time is running short and/or the tool being used to generate the normalmap is not properly synced with the engine, it might seem to be necessary. But there is always a way to make things technically correct to begin with. I can actually happily report that the Unreal option of Handplane works flawlessly, hence I would suggest using that (if time allows of course !)
Ahh, well this maul is actually my first foray into baking maps, I definitely messed up here and there, but it'll look better after I work on the diffuse. Learning the workflow for making game assets, and having a good end result is a good enough goal for me.
Sorry if I accidentally spread misinformation, but the technique did work for me. Perhaps my normal map did not invert, it could have been a myriad of different possibilities.
I have to smooth out some sections of my normal map, the problem was with my high-poly model; some of the creases and edges were laying too close to the surface of the rest of the mesh to pick up with my low-poly + normal map.
No worries man - and don't hesitate to ask if you run into any bump in the road.
This whole baking process has been basically turned into something much more convoluted that it should be because of the lack industry wide standards (for instance, some programs used to generate normalmaps cannot display their own maps properly), but thankfully, the people behind Handplane managed to almost completely solve the issue thanks to their original approach.
On a side note, and quite ironically, the *only* engine that I know of providing a completely synchronized workflow from the baking tool to the final display is IDTech, going back to the Doom3 days. The baking tool is integrated inside the game engine, for flawless map generation. It's gorgeous
But now that Handplane provides compatibility options with Source and UDK, things are easier now! Until recently, working with these engines was still very approximative.
Thanks Pior! That's awesome. I remember when doom 3 came out... I think I was like 11 or 12, or something. I got to the point where a guy was trapped under a door, screaming for help. When I walked near, he was dragged under the door to the other room by some horrible spawn of evil. Then I stopped playing....
Adding the finishing touches to the repousse of the helmet. It's a bunch of scary masons pushing Simba's dad off a cliff
And that's how I make repousse for the normal map bake. It's really fast and easy, and feel free to use the method if you can't think of anything else. I made a few zsphere figurines, turned them into adaptive skins, flattened them with the move tool, and added a bit of noise with just clay build up.
It should bake fairly well, I made sure to leave the details far more prominent this time. The rest of the details can be hand painted.
I can't really think of anything else to improve for this helmet (well, I can, but improvements can always be made, and you have to know when to stop)
Ah, this question comes up often. It's certain that they did;
There are also many coats of arms and house symbols that include the stechhelm with ornate plumes, often featuring something bird-related. I'm pretty sure some of these are not from the times, but several are.
When you have small repeating things like this, just delete most of them, leave 3-4 variations. It will be easier to do uv and baking. After that you can duplicate them back
Done with the normal/diffuse. Going to rough out the colors, smooth parts of the AO map, and work with the normal map a bit before going into specular.
Here's the preview. Instead of working on 3 sets, I think I'll just spend the rest of my time improving this set to... unholy levels of awesomeness. *sunglasses*
Replies
Yo yo wasn't meant to be discouraging, was an FYI. Hate for you to put in a lot of work for nothing.
Anyway, oops! Internet was down for two days, power was out for another day, and I ran out of money on my phone so I couldn't call anyone. Talk about fun
Managed to get some work though. Here are all the screens that I would have posted, but couldn't. There's still a lot of tinkering to do, though.
Mesh explosion helped a lot for the normal map. I sort of wanted to do it for the AO map too, but I ended up deciding that the shadows of the horns/feather appendages really puts the weapon together, aesthetically.
It's a quick fix because the deadline is closing, but I'll know in the future to make more pronounced details for normal map baking.
I've baked maps for this weapon at the guideline sizes; normal and diffuse at 2048.
I generally keep UV shells in proportion to each other, but the areas near the hilt, handle, etc would get a little more attention.
Yeah, like if I am aiming for a 1024, I bake it at 2048 just because you get crisper details initially and they are more likely to hold up when downsizing depending on how much smaller that actually makes the parts.
It's good that they're pretty relative to one another. Texture space can just be used a bit more efficiently if you have a blank part with little detail and making it smaller to allow more space for more detailed areas.
I'll get to that other set soon. I'm redoing the mace's normal, AO, and diffuse maps, I ended up having to do so much manual tinkering and fixing of the maps, that I decided it was better to just start over from scratch.
all your sets look great zetheros, pls do not neglect the two other ones !
I would really like to play with them in Chiv.
Good luck,
TheMightyKnight
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=140143
TheMightyKnight
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=140143
I'm very confident I can finish my three submission in 5 days, now that I know the complete steps from concept to 3d to importing into an SDK. I have a feeling that submitting the item to the workshop won't take very long
My brother said the maul's metal texture was going to be too light, once it's in the SDK, and even lighter still with an specular map that I haven't added yet, so I'm going to add a specular map next, tone down the brightness, and add final adjustments before finishing the rest of this set, and moving onto The Crown of Cobalt, and the Blade of Mercurial Wrath.
This is what it looks like when I made the diffuse too dark, and also the specular a little too dark (shiny).
and actually the diffuse should be darker, and the spec lighter. not both lighter.
After changing my specular map a few times, I noticed nothing was really happening. I found out that the material from the tutorial at https://tornbannerjira.atlassian.net/wiki/display/CHIVCOM/Tutorial%3A+Adding+New+Weapon+Skins+to+Chivalry
uses "M_Weapons_Master". It's a bit too shiny, and sort of obscures the normal map and really shows the low-poly geo, which is what I don't want. I'm going to see how to change the material settings, and also change my specular to a lighter color.
Make sure to read it carefully though... everything talked about is important and necessary, and it can be a little difficult to digest if you're completely new to UDK or this chiv SDK.
The basic gist is that you need all of your maps and your model saved in two FBX files; one with two bones, one without the bones. That's for weapons, I'm sure the process is similar with helmets, but I haven't tried yet.
If you have any questions, feel free to PM me!
If you feel like something is off, like the specular or diffuse looks too dark, it might be because part or all of your normal map somehow became inverted when importing to the SDK.
You can go into photoshop, select the area that appears to be inverted, and do Image > Adjustments > Invert (Ctrl - I) and save your TGA. Reload the image in Chiv SDK, then undo the invert you just did in photoshop, save, and reload the image again. It worked for this mesh.
It's actually a "all or nothing" situation : a normalmap has either its y/green channel inverted compared to what an engine expects, or not. If some areas seem more broken than others, that means that there is another issue at play.
(now of course I am glad that you managed to get something that looks fine - I am just trying to make sure that technical misinformation is not spreading too much, as it has been the case in the past
Similarly, if everything is setup properly there should be no need to "clean up" a bake, at all. Now of course if time is running short and/or the tool being used to generate the normalmap is not properly synced with the engine, it might seem to be necessary. But there is always a way to make things technically correct to begin with. I can actually happily report that the Unreal option of Handplane works flawlessly, hence I would suggest using that (if time allows of course !)
Sorry if I accidentally spread misinformation, but the technique did work for me. Perhaps my normal map did not invert, it could have been a myriad of different possibilities.
I have to smooth out some sections of my normal map, the problem was with my high-poly model; some of the creases and edges were laying too close to the surface of the rest of the mesh to pick up with my low-poly + normal map.
I'll look into using handplane, thanks Pior!
This whole baking process has been basically turned into something much more convoluted that it should be because of the lack industry wide standards (for instance, some programs used to generate normalmaps cannot display their own maps properly), but thankfully, the people behind Handplane managed to almost completely solve the issue thanks to their original approach.
On a side note, and quite ironically, the *only* engine that I know of providing a completely synchronized workflow from the baking tool to the final display is IDTech, going back to the Doom3 days. The baking tool is integrated inside the game engine, for flawless map generation. It's gorgeous
But now that Handplane provides compatibility options with Source and UDK, things are easier now! Until recently, working with these engines was still very approximative.
Adding the finishing touches to the repousse of the helmet. It's a bunch of scary masons pushing Simba's dad off a cliff
And that's how I make repousse for the normal map bake. It's really fast and easy, and feel free to use the method if you can't think of anything else. I made a few zsphere figurines, turned them into adaptive skins, flattened them with the move tool, and added a bit of noise with just clay build up.
It should bake fairly well, I made sure to leave the details far more prominent this time. The rest of the details can be hand painted.
I can't really think of anything else to improve for this helmet (well, I can, but improvements can always be made, and you have to know when to stop)
Onto the low poly!
It's 1200 tris, yep the inside has geo too.
There are also many coats of arms and house symbols that include the stechhelm with ornate plumes, often featuring something bird-related. I'm pretty sure some of these are not from the times, but several are.
Done with the normal/diffuse. Going to rough out the colors, smooth parts of the AO map, and work with the normal map a bit before going into specular.
http://grooveshark.com/s/Metal+Invasion/1Yyglg?src=5