Ballistic Bro Changelogs Discussion

[CaptainXavious]

I did not know about avoiding UV splits on convex edges. Generally speaking I try to go for concave ones more, but I never had any preference towards one over the other, only that concave ones tend to hide seams better.

But my models compared to Azarael's don't even come close in complexity (compare CYLO UAW vs CYLO Firestorm), so I tend to have less islands to worry about.

Good stuff though, Az is still somewhat new to textures (I think), I'm sure any pointers you could provide would be helpful.

[Aberiu]

I did not know about avoiding UV splits on convex edges.

This is my personal preference.
By the way, if you do uv mapping the right way, reducing the texture size can actually help you achieve a more realistic look, because it will also make your hard edges a bit softer.

[Azarael]

Thanks for your feedback.

I started using high texture sizes simply because of distaste with how bad previous attempts tended to look in first person view. I'll have to study the UT3 examples; I uninstalled it recently too ._.

Definitely see your point about loss of detail breakup at distance leading to flat colour there.

I did overlap textures on older models, but found the effect was very obvious when viewed from above or below. Having looked closer at Rocket, I've realised that the lower legs and arms are overlapped.

The padding problem is a stupid mistake, as I used an even greater size of 4096x4096 with the margin still set to 1. I should be able to fix that.

I'm really curious to know how you are lighting your models and creating the specular mask, btw.

Good stuff though, Az is still somewhat new to textures (I think), I'm sure any pointers you could provide would be helpful.

Yeah. I've no background in art beyond modelling and don't know anywhere to study this either, so any tips you can provide help.

[Aberiu]

I'm really curious to know how you are lighting your models and creating the specular mask, btw.

In case of Rocket I didn't actually paint anything (except for the face part). I sculpted her armor in zBrush, baked a normal map, tweaked it a bit and after that baked ambient occlusion and specular. You probably know what ambient occlusion is, I prefer it over the lightmap as it's easier to set up in 3ds max (just choose mental ray AO in the render to texture dialog and click render). To bake specular I set up a scene with 6 direct lights like this:



After that I bake a "complete map" which can be later used as a mask for whatever you want - UT2 specularity, lighting and shadows (inverted, of course).

Since you don't have a highpoly mesh, you can create a normal map from a diffuse map with nvidia photoshop plugin or crazy bump. Your hard edges and overall lighting will remain lowpoly, but the details - scratches, dirt, metal textures - will get more volume.

You should definitely look into UT3 models - characters, weapons, vehicles. I learned a lot just by looking at this stuff for hours. Not only their design is a masterpiece but they are also perfect from a technical point of view.

[Azarael]

Thanks. I don't have 3DSMax myself (using Blender right now for modelling and have Maya access for exporting) so I will see about finding the equivalent settings here if possible.

[Aberiu]

I think I've already seen an ambient occlusion baking tutorial for blender somewhere on youtube. And I suppose it's capable of baking lighting as it's a very simple and basic task.
One more important note: don't forget about sharpen when you will be working on your specularity mask. I sharpen everything (especially after baking and resizing) and it's probably the most frequently used filter in my workflow. I even sharpen mipmaps before exporting dds in the editor. Specularity mask should be ridiculously sharp - this is the only way to keep its details visible in game.

[Azarael]

It can bake AO and lighting, yes. The more advanced renderer for Blender that they're currently working on doesn't have support for baking at the moment.

Gotcha.

[Skaldy]

Azarael wrote:
GetLoadoutWeapon

Thanks for that - trying different weps will be much less of a bind (!) because it was always difficult to remember which switchweapon they were.

Now I can finally standardize my keypad for Loadout.

[Azarael]

Fixed the implementation to remove an obvious exploit (DynamicLoadObject on client) and to fix the breaking of the commands if the loadout is changed while alive. These commands now work in all cases.

Added the option in 3SPN gametypes via the F5 menu for miscellaneous options to automatically redirect SwitchWeapon(1-7) to GetLoadoutWeapon(0-6). Since in DM you can pick up weapons, I have not added this option there and do not plan to.

[Aberiu]

Female meshes have their own reload animations.

Yay! Finally :)