Messages

166

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: August 10, 2007, 08:20:06 pm »

Zenerka just PM'ed me about the licensing thing. I said it was okay to release it under GPLv2.

My textures are completely self-made with the GIMP. There are a few brush shapes I've picked up from somewhere that aren't mine, but otherwise everything's done from scratch.

167

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: August 10, 2007, 08:11:13 pm »

Doh, I didn't upload the latest texture/ .blend to my webdisk before I left on holiday! I'm sorry, guys!

https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot/hoverbot_lightcannon_anim_RC3.blend

https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot/hoverbot_lightcannon.tga

https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot/hoverbot.anm

168

Artwork / Saracen Renders

« on: July 14, 2007, 04:06:15 am »

I've already posted these in the Loading Screens thread, but I would like some feedback on these.




I modified the saracen .blend file and textures a bit. Among the features I added are:


Thruster fans, landing gear, and fan/gear/weapons bays.


Vectoring vanes for the main thrusters.


Topside thruster fans, and the open panels were closed in for aerodynamics.

The fans were inspired by the X/F-35 JSF. Combined with those and the rear vanes vectoring thrust downwards, the craft can do a short takeoff (just like documented in the wiki/ufopedia).

Hopefully I can make some more scenes, like a hangar equipping scene, and a takeoff/landing scene.

169

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: July 14, 2007, 03:41:54 am »

I see what you mean, but I don't think I can do it.

The truth is, my uv-unwrapping skills aren't enough to put something like this into a 256x256 image, without wasting space and with minimal distortion.
So, there's a 512x512 image, with a lot of wasted space and some really bad distortion at spots - unfortunately the areas with the most distortion are around the lower pylons/spikes and front of the turbines.

Trust me, even though they look rather plain, sticking stuff on them looks much uglier.

If I redid the entire unwrapping/texturing process from scratch, I could probably make it better (at the least, I've learned what to watch out for for minimizing distortion.) However, that would be a lot of work and potentially push the release of this into an 'imaginary' zone, haha.

The jagginess you see is in my bad uvmap. I did blur some edges a little bit, and hopefully that will make things a bit better. I can't improve it much more without redoing the entire unwrapping/texturing process.


And I made some more videos, separated this time. I added some slight visual recoil to the gun firing, increased the bounciness in the death animations, and extended death1 so that it isn't over in the blink of an eye.

https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot/anims/

170

Artwork / 1st tank model

« on: July 14, 2007, 01:11:18 am »

The crazy lighting is caused by funny normals - some of your faces are 'pointing' inward, while others are pointing outwards.

171

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: July 06, 2007, 10:23:31 pm »

The turbine texture is supposed to be a snapshot of a spinning fan - blurry. By slowly rotating, it's supposed to look like when you film a rotor blade or something - the individual blades are just out of phase with the framerate, causing it to look like slowly rotating fuzzy blades.

Of course, it doesn't work as well after the turbines have stopped .

The codec is xvid, a free codec.

http://www.xvid.org/

The animations themselves are actually constrained to a 1x1 box, if I've got my dimensions right.  (16 blender units = game tile)

There's a 1x1x2.45 box on layer 11 (with the armature) for reference in the .blend files, too.

172

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: July 05, 2007, 10:26:07 pm »

Silly me, I realised I could make a video for more people to see. :p

https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot/hoverbot_05-06-07.avi

Edit: It uses Xvid codec, a free divx-like codec.

173

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: July 03, 2007, 04:00:04 am »

Right now I'm mostly done the first draft of animation. Just a couple questions:

16 blender units = 1 tile width, right?

The center of the model is directly on the origin (coords (0,0,0) ). In the death animations, I have the model treat the 'floor' as 10 blender units below it. Is this all right?

Does the game engine handle interpolation between a walkcycle and standing animations?

How many shots does the gun fire?

How many frames should an individual action be? Is there a maximum limit for total frames?

Does anyone know that the bloodspider .blend has a second death animation that isn't tracked in the .anm file?


Edit: Okay, I stayed up late to finish off the first draft of animations.
Texture is here: https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot/hoverbot_lightcannon.tga
.blend is here: https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot/hoverbot_lightcannon_anim_RC1.blend
.anm file is here: https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot/hoverbot.anm

As usual, let me know if there are any problems/suggestions, etc.

174

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: July 02, 2007, 08:10:55 am »

Thanks a lot. It definitely looks better to me, as well, and I've been staring at this thing longer than anyone else! :p

If this is good enough for final, the files can be found here:
https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot/

If there's more you think needs changing, just lemme know.

I still have to do some animations, which I should be able to handle (at least on the blender side. )


The list of animations is here, right? http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Modelling#List_of_needed_animations_for_a_character

Because this model isn't humanoid, what are the required animations for this?

Would things for the death animation, like sparks and smoke, be handled by the game engine? Can I add a couple of my own things like flying fan blades?

175

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: July 02, 2007, 02:22:50 am »

More work:



There isn't any visible sensor gear yet. (Who knows, it could be a radar or ultrasound system hidden inside the main hull )

176

Artwork / Map loading screens

« on: June 30, 2007, 07:12:13 pm »

Simple cloudscape screen:



And a couple changes:

177

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: June 29, 2007, 07:46:40 pm »

Heh, actually that's exactly the goal of this paintjob: Dirt, battleworn, and bloody. You described exactly what the goal of it was.

Still, it definitely is too dirty. It's going to change a lot, too.


Okay, after following Winter's suggestions on IRC:



I also figured out how to bake an ambient occlusion map onto these things

I should note that UV unwrapping this thing was a real pain. About 37% of the texture space is wasted, reducing the resolution of what you do see. I also don't know how to make seams be seamless.

178

Artwork / I'm back! (Hoverbot)

« on: June 29, 2007, 07:14:19 pm »

Sorry for disappearing for a while.

I've got some textures up for the hoverbot:

https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot_lightcannon_texture_final_candidate_1.blend
https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/hoverbot_lightcannon.tga

I'll get some screenshots up.

179

Artwork / Polymer

« on: May 11, 2007, 08:47:40 pm »

As a chemist, I'm getting nightmares looking at this ;-)
But for the game its quite a nice graphic. Maybe just a little too colourful.
And if you'd like to have it a bit more realistic, try constructing it with (condensed) aromatic rings in the backbone, like recent high-temperature/high-durability polymers have it (like nomex/kevlar).
Regards

Even with what I know of chemistry, I know that this thing's atrocious.

Aromatic rings are those circular ones, like benzene and that, right?

180

Artwork / Level’s Graphics

« on: May 11, 2007, 08:44:30 pm »

Maybe using starmaps from NASA could work a little better?

http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/stars.html

As with many government images, they're virtually limitless. All they ask for are credits. (I'm not sure if it's GPL-compatible, but somone who knows their stuff better should take a looksie.)