Contagion Theory - a few bits n bobs

Psionic · Dec 2006

Hi, I'm working on a few weapons and creatures for a standalone mod (using the darkplaces engine) called "Contagion Theory" website here:-
http://mods.moddb.com/7789/contagion-theory/

Anyway heres some stuff so far:-

More updates soon...

ultra · Dec 2006

The second weapon roks! and if u add some color could be perfect for me

rooster · Dec 2006

sweet! love the creature although I would have placed the forearm(or leg rather) elbow joint a bit lower down. yeah second gun is really cool too!

Psionic · Dec 2006

Thanks for the comments, yeah I think I will move that joint down a bit as well, Taa!!

CheapAlert · Dec 2006

Good art, but it's kind of a shame you're doing this for a mod leader with a large dead mod track record (all died for its "promotional material first; fame second; pr third; game twentythird" mentality). I'll never get to fire these weapons

Your guns needs more colors. Slate blue metal only isn't going to do the job for long.

ElysiumGX · Dec 2006

good stuff. I'm curious, is that creature rendered with the correct type of normal map?

acc · Dec 2006

Looks like a world space normal map instead of tangent. Bad for an animated model, it won't work properly if it moves at all.

Wells · Dec 2006

Thats what I was thinking, Elysium. looks like he used the wrong setting.

Jarrod1937 · Dec 2006

whats the difference between world space and tangent and how do es world space not work with animated models? i'm new to generating normal maps from meshes myself.

poopinmymouth · Dec 2006

World space maps are for objects that won't move or transform at all. They are easier for most engines to render without errors in seams, etc, but they just don't work in any engine on characters. This type of asset should be rendered with a tangent space map, and not a world space normal map.

acc · Dec 2006

The information a world space map saves is just "pixel X is facing direction Y". That's fine if the object never moves -- you know a texture that is facing east will always face east if the surface it's on doesn't change.

But if you were to rotate the model 180 degrees, the surface the texture is on would now be facing west. A world space normal map, however, doesn't know anything about the surface. All it knows is that the pixels are supposed to face east.

So no matter how you move that model, the lighting on each pixel will never change. The normal map will always say that the pixels are facing the same direction.

Tangent space normal maps work in the opposite way. They don't care about the world and only care about the surface. So you can move the model around all you want and they will still work, because the polygons in the model are what they are based on.

Smirnoffka · Dec 2006

Wow, I remember this guy. I did his milkshape gun tutorial like 3 years ago. Anyway, I agree with the crits on the second gun. Looks fucking awesome, just needs a touch of colour somewhere imho. I don't know alot about normal maps but it seems like you have rendered it wrong. Shouldn't be too hard to rerender with tangent space, should it?

Psionic · Dec 2006

Wow thanks for all the comments, agreed guns definately need a touch of colour, Thanks!!

Also the normal map I generated is a tangent space map (mostly blue), its just when you show normals in xNormal it displays it as a world space map in the viewer for some reason!!

Heres another creature I've been working on:-

render test

CrazyButcher · Dec 2006

about world space normal maps, they are mostly supposed to be called "object space" normal maps and work well even when animated. the only thing where they really suffer (harder to achieve) is animating on vertex level (deformable...)

but if you have some machinery and it is made of different objects, and you animate those rigid objects (vehicels: main body, turret, wheel are separate objects) then object space normal maps work just fine.

another benefit of tangentspace hwever is compression, though for the sake of simplicity and less issues I'd favor object space for mechanical objects that are only animated on object level

it is not true that the they are "fixed" in the world, if you have a box with object space normal map, you can move, rotate, scale it freely in the world.

Jay Evans · Dec 2006

just for a counterpoint.. All the BF:V\BF2\2142 chracters use world space normal maps. Strange, I think it's one of the only games that uses them for animated meshes.

Although for bf2, we created them in tangent then the imported concerted them to world.

Contagion Theory - a few bits n bobs

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