Dawn Of war Based guy

seforin

hey guys im about to start up my next char which is going to be a Warhammer 40k dawn of war character.

But my question to you guys is this.

How many polys where those characters roughly (space marines)

2k polys at most? 1k?

And the texture sheets, I know they had the weapons on there own sheets from the bodies

but what sized maps where the units, 512 or 256?

I wanted to paint my guy at 512 to show off good texturing but im not sure if I should or shouldnt since I am aiming to work with one studio that works doing 40k stuff (ok I can dream cant I?)

And lastly Im pretty sure the weapons are like 256 maps on there own, or am I mistaken and there 128s?


Im trying to do my homework on this one just by observation, but I would like to know from you guys and your watchful eyes.

Mark Dygert

Taken from the DoW section of the Relic Community Wiki:
[ QUOTE ]
Polycount is around 4000 triangles for a trooper model, including all upgrades, banners and so on. Models with few upgrades, no banner, etc... can be around 3000 triangles. Heroes or models with lots of upgrades or random parts can go up to around 5000 triangles. Buildings are 3000 to 5000 triangles, plus the polycount of the transporter. For instance, the Space Marines HQ is 5000 triangles + 2000 for the ThunderHawk. All in all, polycount is not a critical issue to memory performances, so you don't have to respect those figures very strictly, but you should try to keep polycount low for units which will be seen in large numbers on the screen.

[/ QUOTE ]
http://wiki.relicrank.com/index.php?title=DoW
is a great place to get started, all you'll need to know is there, and then some. If you hit any snags I think the forums are pretty active. Even if the forums are less active I bet most of the issues you'll run into have either been stickied or are easy to search for.

Hito

Everything is packed into a single model.

eg the space marine trooper has the basic bolt gun, combat knife, heavy bolter upgrade, flamer upgrade, rocket launcher upgrade, plasma rifle upgrade, chapter banner, etc, are all in one model. All that stuff totals to 3 or 4000 polies.

But at any given time in game around 2000 polies are visible on screen.

Textures are 512x512, again, all are packed into one sheet, so the space marine sheet has the head textures for marine and seargent and all the upgrades as well. I've read people using 1024x1024 in mods, but never tried those personally. By default only Diffuse maps are used, plus alpha; gray-scale sheets to mark areas where colors are customizable via army-painter; and a gray-scale dirt map. Some modes have tried adding spec maps, but I read there's a hefty hit on the frame rate when you add spec.

grab the modtools archive with the art samples and you'll have a clearer idea of what specs to follow.

Honestly though you'll probably earn better rep points with the devs if you do something to Company of Heroes specs. there's no probable Dawn of War franchise continuation after Dark Crusade and the engine is much too dated. If relic does do a new WH40k RTS it'd probably be based off of the COH engine or something new altogether.

seforin

man really? all in 1 texture sheet? jesus thats alot of shit in 1 sheet then.

anyone ever get any rips of the texture sheets so I can get a more clear Idea or no?

indian_boy

i do.
i'll email them over to you along with a model if u want? what's ur email id?

in case ur wondering, it was for mod-work.

seforin

its more for recreation work, but if you have the game rip models I dont care

a space marine perferabbly

and my email is seforin@gmail.com

indian_boy

lol no i meant what i'm sending u was done for mod work. [ i was t3h animator. the model and the tex are _not_ done by me]. And i haven't mailed over the anims either.
just the model and the textures.

seforin

ah I was kinda hoping to see the ligit versions of the texture sheets to get some ideas,

But I'll check out what you have, if you based yours off the original I dont mind

Im not looking into doing a mod, im looking into recreating one of the models because Im hoping to apply to one of there studios..(*tear drop*)


Dont worry about the animations , thanks =p

seforin

ah ok after looking at this file I see what you mean now, examing the texture sheet I noticed they not only fit EVERY weapon in the game on the 1 sheet, they also had 2 different heads, 1 being a face and another being a traditional marine head. I think every box with it by itself just body and head alone is a 256 sized map.

Jesus I dont know how those guys even began to make the textures.

I always run into this problem, do alot of people paint at 512 and just shrink it to 256 near done, I mean Ive tried painting at 256 but I can never get to the details they make in games ever, and Im not sure if my approach to this isnt right or not?

Hito

http://www.gamershell.com/download_7520.shtml

you can download the modtool pack with art samples here.

for painting textures you can go either way. though starting at whatever the final resolution will save you work since there's only 1/4th the size to cover than if you start a power of 2 higher. If you start at 512 and shrink to 256, run a sharpen filter afterwards and touch it up with a small brush. Alot of highlights are lost after shrinking the image.

Wells

Make sure to check out the art for the expansions - they'll have streamlined their pipeline and you'll get a better sense of what you should be doing.

Also, re-creating a game asset doesn't seem like the ideal way to get a job, especially when you can get the actual geometry and texture files out of the game. I think you'd be better off making one of the many many miniatures not covered in the game, just sticking to their art style and specs. Getting it in game beside their models would be pretty pimp, as well.

seforin

yea well its not like im making a mod, im planing on making a totally new unit thats nothing really like the rest of the guys they have in the game, im just trying to match up there style to show I can mimic if need be..

to be honest I really have no idea whats a good way to approach even doing work for that studio/ getting my name recognised by them. Is anyone on polycount a member of them?


Also off topic until I can research there pipeline a bit better I deceided to work on my ds guy until next week =p

MoP

I think John Warner works (or used to work) at Relic.

seforin

mop: Is he a friendly person? I dont wanna bug him if he dosent want to be bothered or anything like that

indian_boy

haha lol.

but yeah, those texture files are killers. they make no sense what-so-ever... to me at least. but i think i can give u the email of the guy who was modelling/texturing em. i'll ask him. if u want?

seforin

well examining that file it looks as though that body was all the same ones from the game, all they did was add a new face a few new decals (Which looked pixilated already) And the flag, everything else looked identical from the game.

I could be kinda harsh here and be wrong, all that might be actually hand painted from scratch just that well, but Im not sure based off the curent level of detail.

is that person who textured them on here?

indian_boy

nope.
well not that i know of at least.
so i'll ask him if he wouldn't mind u asking questions.

seforin

yea let me know about that

indian_boy

before u think i haven't contacted him, i have, he just hasn't replied. i think he's away from his computer, i haven't seen him online on messenger in a few months, and he's in quebec, so there's no real time difference.

don't worry, i'll get back to u asap

seforin

its fine, I plan for now to model out a raven wing dark angels biker + his dark angel cloaked character.

Well see whats up soon