Pre-Dom War V - FAQ Thread
polycounter lvl 18
Post any and all questions you have regarding the Pre-Dom War V Challenge.
I'll compile a master list in this thread as questions are asked.
3D Character Questions
Can we create mounts/pets for our characters?
Only if you are able to fit it within your polygon and texture budget. All mounts/pets contribute to your final polygon and texture budget. Having three cloned pets DOES NOT count as a single pet in your budget. All three count and add to your budget.
Can we tile our textures to increase resolution fidelity?
Yes. This is fine.
Are multiple UV Channels allowed?
No. Only a single UV Channel is allowed.
Can we use double sided polygons/materials?
Yes. This is fine.
I want to render my final image in Marmoset/UDK/Unity. Is this allowed?
Yes. All game engines are permitted.
Concept Art Questions
N/A
3D Animation Questions
Can the camera be animated?
Yes. The camera can be animated in any way to suit the animation. But the primary animation focus should be the 2 characters.
Can we create environments and is there a limit?
If you need the use of environments as a support cast (throwing a character through a wall, leaping off a roof), then it's perfectly fine.
You cannot model and animate surrounding objects to be made as weapons (unless they are included in your 500tri weapon/armour budget).
Keep the environments simple, this is an animation challenge, not Unearthly Challenge.
Can environment elements be animated?
Only if it needs to. Background animation (falling leaves, swaying trees) IS NOT important, but also is not disallowed. The focus is the animation of the 2 characters, as this is what will be judged in the end.
Can we animate more than 2 characters?
No. Just the 2 characters, and both have to use different models.
General Questions
N/A
For more information and the full brief, head to the Official Dominance War site.
Good luck.
I'll compile a master list in this thread as questions are asked.
3D Character Questions
Can we create mounts/pets for our characters?
Only if you are able to fit it within your polygon and texture budget. All mounts/pets contribute to your final polygon and texture budget. Having three cloned pets DOES NOT count as a single pet in your budget. All three count and add to your budget.
Can we tile our textures to increase resolution fidelity?
Yes. This is fine.
Are multiple UV Channels allowed?
No. Only a single UV Channel is allowed.
Can we use double sided polygons/materials?
Yes. This is fine.
I want to render my final image in Marmoset/UDK/Unity. Is this allowed?
Yes. All game engines are permitted.
Concept Art Questions
N/A
3D Animation Questions
Can the camera be animated?
Yes. The camera can be animated in any way to suit the animation. But the primary animation focus should be the 2 characters.
Can we create environments and is there a limit?
If you need the use of environments as a support cast (throwing a character through a wall, leaping off a roof), then it's perfectly fine.
You cannot model and animate surrounding objects to be made as weapons (unless they are included in your 500tri weapon/armour budget).
Keep the environments simple, this is an animation challenge, not Unearthly Challenge.
Can environment elements be animated?
Only if it needs to. Background animation (falling leaves, swaying trees) IS NOT important, but also is not disallowed. The focus is the animation of the 2 characters, as this is what will be judged in the end.
Can we animate more than 2 characters?
No. Just the 2 characters, and both have to use different models.
General Questions
N/A
For more information and the full brief, head to the Official Dominance War site.
Good luck.
Replies
So a few questions:
are multiple UV sets allowed?
can I use maps for other purposes? what if one of the channels in my glow map happens to be used as an occlusion map?
can I use the alpha channels in my maps as masks even if they have nothing to do with the intended map?
can my "bump map" be used as a parallax map?
are double sided polies ok?
Thanks
quick question:
Are we allowed to tile textures or bump maps to achieve higher texture fidelity?
thanks!
If i can fit a mount (eg horse) into my budget, is it allowed?
Also, there doesnt seem to be the restriction of not mixing races in this one?
As in this time can i cross machines with demons or humans with machines this time?
onelunglewis: I don't see why not, it's your texture space and use it how you see fit. But no bumps allowed.
Muzz: If your character requires a mount and you can fit into the buedget, then this is perfectly acceptable.
You are to create a character of any race to fit into one of the four classes available. There are no restrictions on the race type, so you should be able to create cyborgs.
Regarding colours and emblems, each forum has their own colour scheme and logo. To show which forum you are representing, you are required to use the colour scheme of that forum in your texturing, and/or simply put the logo of that forum on your character as a badge, belt buckle, mask, cape, etc. Be creative.
Here are all the forum colour schemes and logos.
Thanks for answering everything
Zadrel
If you're entering the animation catagory, I guess the colours and emblem don't exactly apply, because you aren't allowed to texture the models. Haha. But as you mentioned, putting a Polycount greentooth logo in the corner of your video would be perfectly fine.
r4ptur3: I just got a confirmation. Only single UV channels are allowed, no more that that. Double sided polygons are fine.
Baking out an AO pass on your low res mesh (without the high res mesh) should be fine in my opinion... However, I'll confirm this with Fred.
is this the real official Dominance War? or the pre dominance war? its just that this is the only one that doesn't allow high poly modeling.
I am assuming we can't Smooth the mesh, but I just want to make sure.
Snex: Yes, humans are in the Dominance War Universe. Polycount in the last few Dominance War Contests were prohibited from doing Mech/Cyborg/Robots, which is probably why there are so many of them now :P
Zadrel: Cloth simulation on a low-poly mesh? I guess so... Just seems strange, but there is nothing in the rules to say you can't.
Zack Fowler: Double-side materials applied to a single triangle only takes up the budget of a single triangle.
Sorry, just some of the specifications are a bit vague for the animation contest. Looks cool though! Thanks for taking the time to clear things up.
I'm curious why the consolidated of all the entries to 3 threads? Seems like it's going to take a lot of the fun out of surfing specific projects and documenting the progression of our work. I tend to post a lot when i'm working so i'd hate to be the douchebag that takes up the whole thread his his own crap.
There is no frame limit, however you have a maximum of 6 seconds for your animation. Your final animation should not exceed this hard limit. No, you most likely will not be disqualified if it's 6.01 seconds, but seriously?
Regarding having the other character attack and miss, there is nothing in the rules to say this would be dis-allowed. So long as it is obvious who the attacking character is and that the receiver ends up dead on the ground.
My apologies if the rules/guidelines are vague, but they weren't written by me :P
crazyfingers: My pleasure, it's what I'm here for.
I'd go with that all entries have to be created solely by the artist entering/submitting.
To be on the safe side, I'll confirm this for you.
Is this disallowed or ok to work with?
I specifically had alot of kick animations in my ideas but didn't like that the base mesh legs were all pretty much short, so before scrapping the idea, I was hoping this could be work around.
As for your question, if all you have done is just straightened the legs, then this should be fine. You're not really "altering" the basemesh, you're merely exploiting the rig to better suit your animation.
I always dig your animation stuff, so I'm hanging to see what you come up with.
Hope you boys are rocking it in Arkadia!
I cant wait to see how the MMO turns out, its looking epic from concepts I've seen on Arkadia's youtube/facebook.
Thanks for clearing that up for me. I'll try my best this year round for polycount.
- do we need to pre-register in some form? or do we just start posting our WIP's on our team's forum?
- similar to the mount question, if our character has pets/sidekicks, that are all duplicated (say... a bunch of rabbits or something) does the tri count from all the pets add to our final tri count?
hope that makes sense... thanks!
"All lighting solutions from any software package is permitted.
All shaders are permitted."
Is that mean we can use any realtime presentantion or we can render our work
with a mental ray (with GI for example)?
2.
Some photoshoped background for model presentation is allowed?
3.
Final presentation image 1000x1000 is for beaty shot only, or we need to put on it
texture and wire too?
Pets/Mounts/etc all count towards the final polygon and texture budget. If you have 1 rabbit at 100 tris and decide to throw in 2 more, that's a total of 300 tris from your budget.
Levus: GI lighting solutions are permitted.
A background image is permitted.
You can only submit a single final image (1000x1000 max res), this image should contain texture sheets, wireframe and textured model. Posing the model is optional as well is adding a pedestal.
dregoloth: Particle effects will go towards your final polygon and texture budget.
For example: If you have your character is smoking a cigar and you needed to create the smoke. You will mesh in the smoke and say it was made up of 5 planes with 2 tris per plane. That's a total of 10 tris from your budget for the smoke effect.
So any effects you do, be it fire, magic, smoke, electricity, etc. These all count towards your final polygon and texture budget.
are we allowed to use
1 1024 diffuse, 1 1024 spec, 1 1024 glow= 3 1024s maps
or is it
2 512 diffuse, 1 512 spec, 1512 glow= 1 1024 map
which is it?
DarthBartus: You are allowed to post your WIPs on any forum (including DW participating forums). You are NOT allowed to post your WIPs in another forums Pre-Dom War V WIP thread as this would confuse which forum you are representing.
Another rules update (just recieved via e-mail). Which is annoying because it contradicts what I've been told in the past. Either way, here it is for you.
"No textures or coloring allowed. Entire Mesh should be a single color. Optional: You may show the wireframe on your rendered animation (the wireframe can be a uv map texture applied to your model)."
I just need to know if that applies just to the model or not. For example if I had a floating polycount head, could I color it green?
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In addition, to "dregoloth" regarding the particle effects.
It states in the rules:
"For this warm up challenge, you may not use special effects, particles, or polygons and textures for special effects, magic effects, etc."
I know this contradicts Emil Mujanovic, so please tell me if I am wrong and why.
Thanks
Also, the particle effect restrictions only applies to the Animation entries and not the 3D Character Art entries.
just recently I was wondering since this is judged on the characters animation alone, for my final presentation video is it possible to make the video longer than 6 seconds showing different angles of the 6second animation.
eg 3 angles, totaling around 18 seconds showing the full animation and as clean as possible, instead of making it cut-scene based with a camera, where i can literally hide un-animated limbs?
bummer, but i thought it might be the case. Either way i think ill just go for a pan around, cheers emil.
If you're talking about character art entries, then 3000 tris is your hard limit. Any special effects are included in your overall budget.