Author Topic: Kit Bashing 'Mechs  (Read 2975 times)

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Offline Ma.Din

  • 28




It has begun. 10,196 tris/ 5,236 polys. :)
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline Zarax

  • 210
Nice work but if I recall requirements correctly you may want to drastically reduce polycount for MCO...
The Best is Yet to Come

 

Offline Mad Bomber

  • Booooom
  • 210
Yeah, MCO is an old engine. 1000 tris for the standard model, half that (or less) for the shadow.
"What the hell!? I've got a Snuffleupagus on my scanners! The Snuffleupagus is active!"

 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28
1. The Engine loads the models just fine. I can take screenshots, if you'd like.

2. This isn't for MCO. It's for the 64 bit version that's being worked on. The developer wanted incentive to port the engine to SIMD and GPU. (he's already ported it to Open GL 3.0, which is almost 8 years beyond DX8, which is what MC2 used.) I don't know about you, but I'd happily take a 64bit, multi-threading Mechcommander 2 build that uses T&L with CUDA GPUs.

I merely gave him one. Now that I know exactly how to import models into the engine, I can redo all the animations using bones and IK in Maya, only using Max as an ASE exporter. (If anyone wants me to explain Magic's adding mechs tutorial a little clearer, let me know. )

3. The engine supports LOD, though no one used it, including Microsoft. This was a mid-ranged model, to bake normal maps to a lower poly model.  I should be able to reduce the poly count to about 50%, so 6 or 7k (It's currently sitting at just under 12k tris.) I can easily bake normal, spec and AO maps into diffuse maps. I just never did, as I got frustrated with not being able to successfully import models in-game for 5 years now. I only got a hankering to play MCO again, 'cos I wanted a break from MWO. 

4. All of this is done for portfolio work. Now that my son is older, I can focus on getting back in my career field, which was as a modeler and animator.

:)
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline Zarax

  • 210
Please do tell us more about this 64 bit version, it might be interesting... And yes, an in-game screenshot would be really nice to have
The Best is Yet to Come

 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28


It's completely UV'ed, but I'm  still tweaking the model, so I haven't committed to a UV map yet.

Right now, it just partially compiles for me. The developer hasn't updated the readme with full docs on compiling in VS, using 3rd party plugins (it's linux based) Linux version works fine, though. I've compiled it on a virtual machine. There's no sound and it's still an alpha build, but it's playable.
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28
Ugh.......





I've got Fleas.......





and Fireants.......
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline magic

  • Moderator
  • 211
MCO can support 5000 polys, but if you have too many of those on the screen it can be too much for the engine.

Why do you all try to make mech designs that look like MWO designs.
To me, MWO designs look like cheap plastic robot transformer toys, not a real war machines.

The more small artistic details you put to the mech design will make it less realistic.


 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28
MCO can support 5000 polys, but if you have too many of those on the screen it can be too much for the engine.[\quote]

Yeah, the engine starts to lag after a dozen or 10k tris Mechs are on the screen with the other poly objects on the screen.  Hence why I've been cranking out mechs to convince the 64 bit developer to code SIMD support and full OpenGL. 64 bit means more ram and with multi=threading, the engine could be amazing.

Quote
Why do you all try to make mech designs that look like MWO designs.
To me, MWO designs look like cheap plastic robot transformer toys, not a real war machines.

Believe it or not, this started as a contract job. I was hired by a couple of people to make 3d print models of the MWO mechs.  From a concept stand point, they're pretty accurate, coming from someone with a military background.  To do this took away time from MWO for me, so I got bit by the bug again and fired up MCO. That made me start missing this engine (it's by far, my most favorite game, ever - I just wished it had a pause command, like Baldur's Gate) and you guys, so when I build a 3D Print model, I set it aside and then convert it for engine use. I'm disappointed that Microsoft added LOD to the engine, but only used it for trees.


In other news, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong with rigging mechs all these years, after hitting up an old colleague from my developer days. He's a 3ds Max god and after explaining to me why my ASCII files were crashing (I was never saving the poly normals, nor converting the helper objects to bones. -_-), he also pointed out that this engine could support IK, as since Max 2011 or something, IK handles are supported with helpers that act as bones. The engine won't see them, 'cos Max will bake them out on the ASCII export. I've started on the Wolfhound mech, so I'll have the humanoid mech done. Once I get at least 1 mech done of all the skeleton files, I'll start building rigs that can be used to redo the animations. Then, we can get rid of the useless ones, like walk to run, walk to stand, etc. They'll be done in a way that you will be able to to just name new mech models pieces mech_left_thigh, mech_center_torso, etc, link it to the the helper object and save out the ASE file. Then, you just use the animation files for whatever skeleton type you use, with a simple copy and rename.

 
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28






Team Colors.
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28



Wolfhound. (Work in progress)


I still have a few pieces to build, to finish the UVs and to trim up the topo, to keep the polys down.
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28



Quick and Dirty Render Test from Substance Painter. This is a 1k map, mostly hand painted, so there won't be much quality loss. This was just a test, though. I still need to bake better maps and make an ID map for better painting in Substance Painter.
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28



Fully painted in Substance Painter using an ID map and rendered with a 512k map in Iray. :) Sadly, the MC2 engine can't do a render like this, but I'll bake all the maps into the diffuse map in Maya.
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28




Still working the kinks out of Team Colors. They don't play nice with shading. I may end up doing lots of heavy photoshop editing. Disregard the team colors. My Son wanted a Locust for each of the Ninjago Team.  :lol:
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

  

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28



Firestarter





Raven





Commando



None of these are UV'ed and the Firestarter is a little on the heavy side.
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

 

Offline Ma.Din

  • 28



Ubermench  :cool:


Erm, I meant Urbanmech.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2018, 03:06:41 pm by Ma.Din »
"Using no way as way. Having no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee