[WIP] Supplies Outpost

[Epifire]

Yes, it's all in Softimage. I can't say I just figured it all out on my own, because I actually went out and paid for online training within it.

Buuuuut I can certainly explain how this all works, for free! 

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll save you the paragraph and just let the image do the talking...



All of this is made possible with the symmetrical duplication tool in XSI, shown here...



Hope that helps explain things a bit! 

[MileHighGuy]

Thanks a lot! for the pipes, did you ensure that each "segment" was the same length? or just eyeball it? I know I have OCD with stuff like that .

[Epifire]

Yeah the pipe segments were just eyeballed. Generally speaking they're more less segmented to conform to the shape of the specific part, rather than trying to look like standard tubing to go just anywhere. Think like, how shapes for radiator hoses are specific to the vehicle they're designed for.

[Snake]

RC might be able to help with setting up hardpoints and things. I think Sereja has also done some custom animations. You may want to shoot them both a pm.

[Sereja]

Look's impressive. It's hard to believe, you may put such complicated models in SWBF1. Perhaps that's may cause shadow error. It's too complicated and crash the game, if in some of your msh.option exist -hiresshadow line. You need to remove those line, if you have it, or make a reduced shadow mesh.

try setting the light memory pool to something high

Code Select Expand

SetMemoryPoolSize("EntityLight", 80, 80) -- stupid trickery to actually set lights to 80

I guess, this may add memory for the light as render effect (emessive), but not for the light as a "light" exactly.

I think Sereja has also done some custom animations.

I bet I am, but I made it for door, hover and flyer only. I do not know, how to make it for props yet.

[Epifire]

Look's impressive. It's hard to believe, you may put such complicated models in SWBF1. Perhaps that's may cause shadow error. It's too complicated and crash the game, if in some of your msh.option exist -hiresshadow line. You need to remove those line, if you have it, or make a reduced shadow mesh.

Yeah generally speaking my larger buildings I made are what are giving me the most issues. But they're not actually that high on the polycount. What's crazy is that the small spotlight model I have uses a higher poly shadow mesh and works completely fine! Not even sure why, but that leads me to believe it's not a polycount issue I'm facing. It does give me an error message on the build for the shadow mesh on that particular building. Which in turn is also the building that happens to have all the light flickering issues around it. 

But I digress. Just in for another update here on what's going on. The turret, my focal point for the whole map has now been totally baked down, from a 159,000 highres mesh to a 6,154. Now that's the biggest, most detailed object that will be in this map. Everything else I've put in so far is around 800 or less. But anyway, here is the ambient occlusion version (which I'll detail and color shortly!)...

Using four 1024x textures this is the whoe tower completed on the modeling side


I made sure to detail the top a lot as the 3rd person view needs to have something cool to look at 


The bottom section has the most condensed texture resolution since players will be able to be closest at the base


After taking a painstaking amount of time on the Turbo-Laser to get it right, I'm glad to be done with it (it was a nightmare to bake to say the least  ). Whoooops, not done yet though, I also completed the Watch Tower building a short while ago as well...





And get this, the tower doesn't seem to have any shadow errors, from munger or in-game. So confused about the shadow and lighting problems from that one building. Either way, progress is being made! 

[Epifire]

Well between corrupted wld files and having to fiddle with turret ODFs ALL DAY. I managed to get the turret mechanics fleshed out. Not totally working correctly as I still have some missing sounds and effects but it is working...





Special thanks to Sleep Killer for general ODF info and advice! Slowly making more progress. 

[Epifire]

Welp just another WIP here. Got the overall stuff done on the control bunker for the Turbo-laser Turret! After much debate and annoying attempts, I finally lost it and just made a round floor texture to fit the panels as well as the ceiling/floor for the center hub where the gunner seat will go. This will be underground though, for the screenshots I just have it sitting above ground so I could get to it without putting in a terrain cutter...

Center control hub where the gunner seat will go.


Entrance that will join to the access tunnel underground. Hence why it has a really plain seam to the door.


Had a heck of a time getting the shadows to work correctly and I found a rather interesting solution that seems to have solved it. Very happy with the results though, and with lights and shadows actually working 100% as planned I'm now on track for where I wanted to be!

[Snake]

It looks amazing, keep up the good work.

[Unit 33]

Those textures are looking fairly glorious!

[Epifire]

Thanks guys! Was hoping I wasn't getting too spammy, I mean it is my WIP thread and I'm almost play by play updating with media. But art is what I love so I end up putting a lot of screenshots out. 

[MileHighGuy]

What do you use to uv? all your models look so clean

[Epifire]

What do you use to uv? all your models look so clean

I use a pretty strict set of rules I've sorta made for myself in my time with Softimage. They're a bit meticulous for some but I have a couple things I do to help speed the process up. I'd be willing to show some nifty tricks via a google hangout if you like?

[MileHighGuy]

Oh, I don't have a google account or a webcam, but thanks though. If you remember any online tutorials you follow/ed that would be great.

[Epifire]

Well all you'd need is really an account, cause I'd just be screen sharing the whole thing All you'd have to do is sit back and watch. 

I get the feeling people end up thinking the UVing is way more complex than it is though. Most of it is fairly basic beside the fact that I have made a specialized texture set to handle lots of different kinds of structure pieces. Edging, panels, floors, lights, 45 degree walls were another one (since I hate stretched textures).

But yeah whether it be a readable, picture by picture guide, or a live stream I'd love to share my process behind it.