UFO:Alien Invasion

Development => Artwork => Topic started by: MCR on April 25, 2010, 02:58:39 pm

Title: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 25, 2010, 02:58:39 pm
After understanding all this skinning, texture & team*.ufo stuff, I've started working on different versions of textures & also on upgrades there...

Here would be the place now to tell me your do it & don't do it stuff (what you would like to see) ... ;)

I personally think we could easily make 16 different combinations possible for the Taman without armor for example, I am also thinking about quadrupling the texture size there to the same standard the Ortnoks in light & medium armor use already, but I am not sure if I will easily succeed in completing this task perfectly (yet)...

What I mean by 16 versions is essentially to make 4 different body skin textures & also 4 different textures for the heads...
IMHO not every Taman should look exactly the same or are they clones ?
We could give them slightly different eye-colors, skin tones, coat patterns, insignia, ranks, different colors of suits...

What do you all think about that  ::) ?

Here some screens of (very early) wip (gave the Tamans new eyes from a cat, all md2 files correctly set up & modified, ufo file modified, additional head.md2s added for light & medium armored versions to avoid any file not found errors, first test versions of different skins): 
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: BTAxis on April 25, 2010, 03:13:39 pm
Greensuit Taman looks fairly horrible, but the various symbols on the suits are fine.
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 25, 2010, 03:14:51 pm
Tell me exactly what you like to have & you will get it... ;)

How do you like the new eyes from a cat ?
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: Mattn on April 25, 2010, 03:15:19 pm
keep in mind that you have to do this for all "three" armours (no armour, light armour, medium armour) - otherwise we can't use them.
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 25, 2010, 03:21:19 pm
Yes I know. (now) ;)
But I have to just copy the head.md2 files & leave the reference to the same head for the different md2s... That saves some space ;)
I will also reorganize the naming scheme there to make it less confusing & more consistent for all of the aliens @ least...
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 25, 2010, 03:23:27 pm
but it should be consistent everywhere...
It is very confusing there really & hard to understand because it follows no logic @ all...
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 25, 2010, 03:28:13 pm
btw, I understand everything regarding this now, have also already edited the md2 files with the great perl script, but the naming scheme should really be reorganized there & follow the same standards for all of the heads & for all of the bodies ;)

Also there is much room for filesize reduction there @ the moment as it is enough to have references from different head.md2s pointing to the same head & it is not necessary to have the same head graphic copied 3 times there... ;)

But I will make them be useful as I will edit those also to bring variety (Ortnok medium & light armor heads for example...)
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 25, 2010, 03:30:03 pm
& the script is not able to 'downgrade' the number of skins, just to upgrade this number, btw., but this is no problem @ all just FYI...

I told you I am learning fast  ;)
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: Prinegon on April 25, 2010, 04:43:01 pm
Well, if you want to do different skins on aliens, as far as I am concerned a male and a female skin would do pretty awsome for some aliens (although one has to agree first, how the different gender would look like for each race and it would be properbly good to add the difference in the appearance in the description for the race, too).
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 25, 2010, 05:03:53 pm
Another problem here is that I would have to edit the mesh also for a female version, because I would think that female aliens would not have the exactly same 'form'...  ;)
So I do not think that that will happen in the near future...
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: Prinegon on April 25, 2010, 06:41:01 pm
Not necessarly. If you look on animal life on earth, mostly there is only a appearent difference in shape if the animal happens to have teats (cause male subjects normally miss this body part). More often one can judge the different gender eighter because of a different body size (female often are taller) or a different skin/fur color (male are more often more colorful).
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 25, 2010, 07:18:45 pm
You are maybe right, Prinegon.

You could help & provide a test skin & upload it here, because I have not enough inspiration & imagination to do a female taman...  ;)

You can find the original skins & heads in yourufoaiinstalldir/base/models/aliens/taman. (you have to extract 0models.pk3 [it is a simple zip])

I am sure if your Tamania  ;) looks good, devs will include & incorporate her into the game, so go for it  !  8)
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 26, 2010, 10:38:06 am
Here are some screenshots of some of the new unarmored Taman variations (former: 2 variations possible, now: 16 variations)

I am not fully satisfied yet, as each one of them does not yet have a very distinctive & individual look, although we have now 2 bodysuit colors, 4 ranks, different body skin colors, different body skin patterns, eyes colors, noses, mouths, head skin colors & head skin patterns...

Judge for yourself & tell me if you have some final suggestions before I prepare the patch:
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 26, 2010, 10:42:26 am
Here the head skins:
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 26, 2010, 10:48:30 am
I will make the heads differ from each other even some more, especially I want to make the skin patterns more individual, but I think this is a quite nice beginning already...

What do you think ? Any suggestions ?
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: Kildor on April 26, 2010, 11:28:28 am
I agree with differentiation of skin pattern. This should be differ.
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 26, 2010, 11:39:01 am
btw, I also cleaned the body textures of their jpg artifacts & will try to optimize filesizes with indexed colors & save the new skins as pngs...

FYI: There could be a problem in the near future with the way we handle our skins for bodies & heads:

@ the moment the informations about the skins for the bodies are stored inside the md2 file, for the heads there are seperate md2 files which have just one skin defined (so each head has his own md2, but the bodies have just one md2 with included skins).

This has the effect @ the moment, that glowmaps for heads can easily be defined & are used by the engine the same way like for guns or objects, but glowmaps for the bodies are ignored no matter how you name them  :'(

IMHO this has nothing to do with the animation frames the bodies have defined, but rather with the fact that the skin graphics are defined inside the md2 file of the body...
I am not 100% sure about that, as I have to find a way first to delete the additional skins from the bodies md2s  :-\ to test this theory properly...
I am working on figuring out how to exactly do that...

Here additional info (unfortunately mixed together with a second bug) for those interested:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2992015&group_id=157793&atid=805242
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 26, 2010, 11:44:03 am
/offtopic on
@ Kildor: Your changes in the soldiers statistics are great !
Do you think you are able & willing to integrate medals there also, if we throw together some  8) definitions for them ?
/offtopic off

I agree with differentiation of skin pattern. This should be differ.
Don't worry, I will make them differ even more (as this are just first fully working test versions) & also will make them look more angry & aggressive...  >:(  >:(  >:(
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: Kildor on April 26, 2010, 11:48:22 am
You are again forget about non-hymanity of aliens.
And second (always forgetting to say). Quantity doesn`t transform to quality.

You don`t need to make all possible skins, because you can, you shouldn`t make all weapons glow and even more, soldiers shouldn`t glow. Really. And don`t talk about «black beauty», this is just a soldier.
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 26, 2010, 12:37:52 pm
You are again forget about non-hymanity of aliens.
Sorry, I do not understand this one... This seems to be no English.

And second (always forgetting to say). Quantity doesn`t transform to quality.
I will prepare a special 'Kildor hates it  >:(' pk3 for you, if you want to tell me here honestly that you want to see just 2 different Tamans with jpg artifacts & unreal looking eyes in-game...

You don`t need to make all possible skins, because you can, you shouldn`t make all weapons glow and even more, soldiers shouldn`t glow. Really. And don`t talk about «black beauty», this is just a soldier.
This is offtopic here. Do not hijack this thread. ;) (Just a joke, Kildor - A JOKE  ;D  >:()

And don`t talk about «black beauty», this is just a soldier.
This is again off-topic, but
                                    is this just your well-known kindness I feel here, or

Do you really not understand things like ironic stuff, jokes, humor !? ::) ???
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: Hertzila on April 26, 2010, 03:36:02 pm
Sorry, I do not understand this one... This seems to be no English.

I think he means that the aliens are no humans, so their understanding of aggression and angryness and other feelings can be very different from ours.

I will prepare a special 'Kildor hates it  >:(' pk3 for you, if you want to tell me here honestly that you want to see just 2 different Tamans with jpg artifacts & unreal looking eyes in-game...

To be frank I too would prefer four or six well-made, noticeably different textures over 16 or more nearly indistinguishable, not-so-well-made textures (your textures are good, this is a general example). Quality over quantity holds true in most situations.
Nobody here is saying they'd prefer bad textures but it's usually a better idea to make a few great skins rather than a couple dozen "meh"-ones. Of course, if you can make over 16 well-made, noticeably different textures, go for it.

This is again off-topic, but
                                    is this just your well-known kindness I feel here, or

Do you really not understand things like ironic stuff, jokes, humor !? ::) ???

We are talking on a text-based forum. While we can imitate stuff like humor, "sarcasm" and things best left alone, fake tags are your best friends when the feel of the text must be carried over it. On irony: [/irony]. On jokes: [/joke]. On sarcasm: [/sarcasm]. And so on. This makes misunderstandings nigh impossible.
E: Actually, misunderstandings will still happen but tags are about as close as you can get to eliminating them. Overusing them makes the text a pain to read though.
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 26, 2010, 04:31:15 pm
Sorry if all my stuff here is misunderstood  :-\ :-[

For everyone here: I will make only 4 (!) different head textures & only 4 (!) different body textures for the unarmored Taman, which just means that we will have 16 possibilities for combination, you can be sure I will not make 16 heads ;)...

The downside with this system here is that I cannot use skin colors for body & head, which differ too much from each other, because 'every head has to fit on every body', if you understand what I mean - so skin tones may not vary too much for this system to work optically correct & look 'realistic', as people also often have different skin tones on various parts of their bodies, but you will usually not find a black man with a white face ;), so this should be valid for aliens also...

Here 1 W.I.P. shot of the actual 4 (!) different Taman faces & you can see 2 of the 4 (!) different body skins here also...:
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 26, 2010, 11:51:28 pm
This just needs some fine-tuning now, but is more or less ready...
Take a look:
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 26, 2010, 11:54:52 pm
In-game:
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 27, 2010, 09:38:36 pm
Finished the skins, made normalmaps for them, preparing a patch...

But first some impressions for you:
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 27, 2010, 09:39:53 pm
...
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 27, 2010, 09:41:00 pm
 :o
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 27, 2010, 09:42:13 pm
 8)
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 27, 2010, 09:45:11 pm
I hope you like those, was quite some work...
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 28, 2010, 12:02:06 am
Patch Uploaded. Here again the links:

Textures, Normalmaps & md2 files pk3 (put into your base folder) ready to test here:

 http://www.mediafire.com/file/d2ymtmwwz5z/16TamansUpdate.pk3
(Normalmaps will not work yet & are untested in-game)

diff file for team_aliens.ufo attached here...

I will attach the .ufo file as .txt also for those who do not know what to do with the diff (just delete the .txt & put it into your base/ufos folder)...

So if someone wants to try the new Tamans... feel free to do so...
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: Mattn on April 28, 2010, 09:58:43 am
normalmaps don't contain the height in their alpha channel.
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 30, 2010, 01:50:13 pm
@Mattn: Normalmap Creation Method same as here : http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4666.msg36815#msg36815
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on April 30, 2010, 04:25:24 pm
@Mattn:

Does this look incorrect ?

If so, I still have all the heightmaps - creating those makes the most work & I can restart from there...

But for me this looks more than okay, but maybe I am wrong ?!
What do you think ?
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: Mattn on April 30, 2010, 07:07:55 pm
looks ok - but things might change again - so make sure to submit the heightmap so we can regenerate the normalmap easier
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on May 01, 2010, 12:18:16 am
All heightmaps of the unarmored Tamans have been submitted (https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2994970&group_id=157793&atid=805244#).
Title: Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...
Post by: MCR on June 22, 2010, 05:17:46 pm
Arisian has repaired another bug now allowing us to enhance our animated models which have skins (soldiers, civilians & aliens) with our advanced texture-mapping techniques & additional textures [Thanks !!!].
I am currently preparing a eye-candy special-fx patch for our Tamans...

Also the folders with the modeltextures are somehow messed up in trunk (unnecessary old jpg textures still there !?).
I will clean up the models-folder also.