Hard Light Productions Forums

Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Developer Blog => Topic started by: Water on June 18, 2011, 05:13:57 am

Title: 2011-06-18 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Water on June 18, 2011, 05:13:57 am
The pilots were upgraded some time ago. Just recently a lighting problem on the faces was fixed. Now that they are up to scratch it's time to show a few pics.

Each of the shots except the Mk7 and Mk2 have been modified to get a clearer shot by reducing the canopy opacities. In most of the other Colonial craft they are heavily tinted.

Here's a few showing them in the game lab.
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/PAR3-1.jpg)

(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/PAR3-2.jpg)

(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/PAR3-3.jpg)

(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/PAR3-4.jpg)

(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/PAR3-5.jpg)

The pilots were created using four different faces with interchangeable bodies. There is also an injured version.
Not every pilot makes it so we do have a bit of variation to cover that situation.

Of course if you die you get to do the whole mission again. Aren't we nice. Don't want you getting slack or anything.
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/PA11.jpg)

The asteroids aren't particularly exciting. They were generated from a cube type object with displacement. The maps for them tile in both directions.
They also can be rotated and still tile. These are the Diaspora replacement for the FreeSpace standard asteroid fields.
One tiling texture map covers three asteroid shapes. FreeSpace had three different colours brown, blue and orange.
We ended up with brown, grey and grey/green. The maps though are interchangeable allowing us to use the texture replacement function.
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/PA7.png)
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/PA10.png)
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/PA6.png)

Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: NGTM-1R on June 18, 2011, 05:36:31 am
That last injured guy looks a little Stretch Armstrong-y...
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Water on June 18, 2011, 08:28:56 am
If it's the end one,  the stretch won't be too noticeable, due to how fast it takes off after the explosion.
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Halleck on June 19, 2011, 01:58:05 pm
The pilots look great from the side and from the front.

The asteroids are impressive as well. I didn't know that fs2_open could handle such detailed asteroids.

Nice work!
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Master_Drow on June 19, 2011, 03:40:46 pm
Very Impressive, Im getting very excited for the game.

Actually I have been excited for the game since the beginning, now I'm super excited!
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: MetalDestroyer on June 19, 2011, 04:34:13 pm
Do you plan to make a high poly of the pilots for the cockpit view ?
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Water on June 19, 2011, 05:07:16 pm
Do you plan to make a high poly of the pilots for the cockpit view ?
Not at this stage. All you'll see in the cockpit view is the seat.
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: karajorma on June 19, 2011, 07:55:20 pm
The problem with a high poly pilot model is that it would be static. It would never move at all no matter how much you moved around. It would be more immersion breaking than simply doing the old game trick of pretending your body is invisible.
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: AtomicClucker on June 19, 2011, 08:58:12 pm
Those be some dead pilots, any possibility of floating corpsicle flavor?
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Water on June 19, 2011, 11:40:13 pm
Those be some dead pilots, any possibility of floating corpsicle flavor?
Yup, that's the one without the seat. The main reason for the generic cracked glass look was to keep the amount of faces on the texture sheet down to four + 1

Here's a look at the actual textures.
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/Col_Viper_Pilot-texture.jpg)

The pilot is relatively low poly at 484 triangles
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/pilot-wires.jpg)
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: The E on June 20, 2011, 07:15:10 am
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/Col_Viper_Pilot-texture.jpg)

Did you guys rewrite the normal mapping shaders? Because that normal map sure as hell isn't going to work correctly with the default FSO shaders.
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Water on June 20, 2011, 07:25:40 am
Did you guys rewrite the normal mapping shaders? Because that normal map sure as hell isn't going to work correctly with the default FSO shaders.
Heh, no site I visit ever shows the DXT5nm version. The blue version is easier to read (visually) as well.
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Fish on June 20, 2011, 07:44:30 am
Great to see the effort and detail going into the finer touches of the game - visually and technically :)

Looking forward to your continued progress as always!
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: starlord on June 20, 2011, 09:42:51 am
Very nice! will this be able to give you the possibilities to reproduce the same kind of asteroid field as in the BTRL demo? I don't recall having seen any better one...
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 20, 2011, 02:23:41 pm
I think that was a skybox not a field.
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Ace on June 20, 2011, 03:57:08 pm
The BtRL effect was done with a large "ship" (bigger than the auto-depart zone of a mission) with the texture on it set to rotate. Then an asteroid field was also set within the mission and larger asteroids placed.

So... it'd not be too hard for us to reproduce that exact effect if wanted.
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Water on June 20, 2011, 07:27:06 pm
The asteroids are impressive as well. I didn't know that fs2_open could handle such detailed asteroids.
Actually the MVP versions are higher poly ranging from 1.9k up to 8.2k. These ones top out at 1.2k
The advantage of having boring asteroids that aren't so individual looking, is it takes longer to notice they are all copies once in a field.

These are a re-interpretation of the retail versions using tiled normal and diffuse maps.
(http://i229.photobucket.com/albums/ee67/waternz/BS/Asteroid-layout.jpg)
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Locutus of Borg on July 20, 2011, 06:59:00 am
What 3D modelling program do you guys use? Max? Maya?
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: newman on July 20, 2011, 10:02:51 am
Not all of us use the same thing. Most often it's max, but there have been users of other apps (though iirc not Maya). Personally, I work in Max and I believe so does Water.
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Water on July 20, 2011, 03:29:27 pm
Max / Photoshop seems to be the most common combination. These were all done with Blender and Gimp with some extra help from xNormal on the pilots.
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: Locutus of Borg on August 25, 2011, 10:28:51 am
Ah, have you ever heard of a program called CrazyBump for bump mapping?
Title: Re: 18-06-11 - Pilots and Rocks
Post by: pecenipicek on August 25, 2011, 01:02:31 pm
Ah, have you ever heard of a program called CrazyBump for bump mapping?
xNormal is a lot better, as is the nDo photoshop action. Crazybump just rapes anything it touches.