Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: boewolf on September 13, 2007, 06:20:46 am
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To all you people that produce high detail models out there... I am trying to work out how you get so much detail into them... Do you make many small sections and plaster them all together some how or do you devide a single face into many and build from there?
Whilst I am still unable to get to your level of detail, I have got part way there with about 10 million different object to try and make into one...
If some of you do use many objects how do you make them all one without creating hundreds of problems and or errors?
Just for the record I am using ts 5.2.
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The simple answer from me would be to not use TS. This may not be the answer you're after, but I know from long experience that TS gets exceedingly cumbersome when dealing with complex objects.
The toolset is also clunky and difficult to use when creating complex geometry, meaning you need many many clicks in order to be able to do what other tools can do in a couple of clicks/keypresses.
TS can achieve the sort of high detail you're after, but it will be ten times harder, ten times longer and infinitely more frustrating.
In terms of how the detail itself is added, well some prefer to grow it all out of a base object, but I like to build a ship in a combination of wireframe and individually created polys between the verts - as though it were a physical model wireframe model in my (highly accurate and non-corporeal) hands. It gives me an enormous level of control over the model (meaning I have almost never had geometry problems that weren't introduced by TS), and with a well-designed program workflow it allows you to build complex meshes very quickly.
Another advantage is that by starting out from the very beginning with a wireframe, you can set up a predrawn side on view of your ship and just trace the outline along the YZ plane. From there I usually go and make a top down outline as well, and from there it's just a 3d game of connect the dots (adding many many more as you go however. ;) ).
These processes mostly apply to the base ship hull rather than tacced on greebles, but you should be incorporating significant greebles into the hull mesh anyway unless you intend to make them into detail-boxes. The key points to good greebles however are fairly simple:
1) Repetition: If you look in engines and other pieces of machinery, you'll always find some feature of it that is repeated. It is important to incorporate such detail into your ships carefully though, or you'll end up with more of a tile pattern than a greebled surface.
2) Looks first, logic second: If you don't want to put in a greeble that would look cool because it doesn't have a purpose, then you're missing the point of greebling! Go crazy, making whatever detail you like. If it looks cool, then that's all that really matters with greebling. (Pipes are a great way of adding greebles that look like they have purpose, even if they don't.)
3) Balance: The Star Destroyer is a prime example. One of the most complex ships around greeble wise, it has a perfect blend of heavy greebles, simple greebles and relatively bare surfaces - they all complement each other and the overall look is brilliant. What rules that balance follows exactly I'm not really sure, but just like most models should not be made of nothing but flat surfaces, neither should they be 100% greeble. (Usually.)
4) Shapes: Individual greebles don't actually have to be very complex. In fact, they can often look better if they're individually relatively simple - especially in a game context as it means you can afford to put many more of them on.
I *think* the main point is to basically provide a bit more detail than the eye can quickly take in or than the brain can easily describe. There are probably books published on the subject. ;)
Oh, and specifically, never EVER divide a single face into many and build details from there. Otherwise you end up with ships that have so many redundant faces and verts it's just idiotic, and any detail you do create out of the subdivisions will look totally crap.
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in trusepace i actually would subdivide a face multiple times so that i could add an element of detail. but like va said this can get messy, so if you do such a thing be sure you clean up any lines and faces which arent gonna be used. i used this approach in creating the truss structures on the the high poly ragnarok. usually though i perfer a clean smooth ship opposed to a highly greebeled one.
in max one of the good points is that you can arbitrarily place points on a flat surface in any pattern while keeping them entirely flat to the face. so you can get away with the subdivision approach. add points to represent the base of what you plan to extrude, delete the face and rebuild the more complicated version. then you just extrude the detail areas.
having finally learned max ive come to realise that truespace's primary function is as a primitive modeler. which basicly means its designed to model a scene with a bunch of simple object as opposed to a few complicated ones. while it is possible to model really good models in it (look at the ragnarok), its rather cumbersome in its meshing tools.
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How do you make models symmetrical?
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Build them one half at a time - then, copy/mirror/symmetry (whichever it is for the program you're using) the side you have done already.
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i know truespace 6 has a mirror feature. though i found that it would really screw up some stuff. especially if youre doing a cockpit. in max symmetry is the perfered way to do it, unlike mirror it welds the edge verts and rebuilds the model for you. if youre gonna make the model symetrical you might as well uv map it first, otherwise youl have to do it twice (for each side).
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i know truespace 6 has a mirror feature. though i found that it would really screw up some stuff. especially if youre doing a cockpit. in max symmetry is the perfered way to do it, unlike mirror it welds the edge verts and rebuilds the model for you. if youre gonna make the model symetrical you might as well uv map it first, otherwise youl have to do it twice (for each side).
Add to that... mirror will cause the normals to be flipped if you export the model
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ive seen that happen a couple times. but more often than not it will just export a model with screwed up colisions.
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I've found that if you do the reset X-Form thing on the mirrored part before attaching it to the main model, normals are correct and the resulting POF has correct collision detection.
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I've found that if you do the reset X-Form thing on the mirrored part before attaching it to the main model, normals are correct and the resulting POF has correct collision detection.
Correct, just more work.. especially when you find out you forgot to x-form beforehand. Oh and collapse the stack before x-form, in Max 7 it's a bit buggy and undoable.
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With some stuff it helps to know what you are planning to do with it before building it, for example, angled panels can sometimes be easier to detail and texture if you make them as flat and only rotate them after the UV-ing and detailing is complete.
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Yar! Shiver me Timbers! That was a very helpful post their VA, and really bad eggs.
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For my latest ships a lot of the detail/greeble are spearate objects glued to the hull. Makes it easier on you.
O course, I allways start with a simple objects and then progressivly add more detail to it. After a point I stop adding more detail to the object iself, I ratehr add more objects to it.
I do this for 3 reasons:
1. It's usually more poly efficient..a lot
2. You cna use the basic object (without the glued greeble bits) as a lower lvl LOD easily
3. It's simpler, faster...and you can often re-use many greebel parts you made on the ship or other ships.
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ive had this idea about hard tiling, essentially making pre greebled, pretextured tiles and mapping them onto squares on a patch surface. the squares are welded together to form the model. though i dont think it would be easy to do. and you still suffer from the same problem that you do using tiled textures, boringness. you can overcome that by modeling a bunch of tiles that may be interconnected seamlessly to form any pattern you may want. though this idea seems abit ahead of the current tech level in games.
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*scratches head trying to figure out what nuke just said* :lol:
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it will peobibly make more sence when pirate day is over. :D
anyway my idea is that you model a ship with essentially a fairly smooth patch grid composed out of only quadrilaterals (square polies). then you create a series of tile models, which are square and if put side by side would form a seamless pattern. theese of course would be pre textured. you take the tile model and assig n it to one square on the patch. the tile is then deformed according to the vertex normals on the patch grid so that it fits in place neatly. in other words you can model a rather complex ship with a handfull of much less complicated objects. and sence the tiles are pre-textured, you dont have to deal with the problem of texturing a very complicated model.
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Also there is a greeble plugin tool for Max too..
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Nuke: I've considered the method you describe there in the past, but I don't think it would be a good way of greebling anything not intended for use as background in a rendered cutscene or the like. As you say, it'd suffer a similar problem to texture tiling - it's dull and boring. However such a method would be quite well suited to the creation of very high quality tiled textures. From it you could create diffuse, glow (maybe shine?), normal & parallax maps quite easily, but in terms of using it to try and replicate regular greeblage....well, I think it would be a lot of effort to do something you could do better by hand yourself probably faster.
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Trashman: That way sorta works, but you won't be able to get very interesting greebles overall. Greebling is not just a matter of adding boxes of various size to an existing surface, though that certainly is a part of it. In some cases such a style may be the most appropriate look, but if it's your only look, it's not going to look as good as it could.
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On the topic of greebles, have a look at jr2's thread of pics from orbit: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=49639.0 but look at the space station and shuttle rather than the planet. ;) These are real world examples of current 'ships' in space, and as you can see, greebles galore! :D
Other examples can be easily found by doing google searches for stuff like "engine room", "super tanker deck" and "reactor".
However, I still think the Star Destroyer is the absolute pinnacle of greebled awesomeness.
As modeled by FractalSponge from here. (http://www.fractalsponge.net/ISD/gallery/index.html)
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Misc/ISD_Clay2.jpg)
Other examples of great greebling can be found here. (http://www.alecm.com/gallery.htm) In particular:
(http://www.alecm.com/images/gallery/galleryBIG_ATLcity_v05.0003.jpg)
(http://www.alecm.com/images/gallery/galleryBIG_ATL301_059x01_0162.jpg)
(http://www.alecm.com/images/gallery/galleryBIG_ATL301_104x01_0295.jpg)
And finally, this is the biggest greeblefest I've yet constructed. :)
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/Spaceball1/Act1PirateBaseClay1.jpg)
More piccies and a flyby vid on youtube here if anyone is interested: http://www.sectorgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=48957#48957
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Trashman: That way sorta works, but you won't be able to get very interesting greebles overall. Greebling is not just a matter of adding boxes of various size to an existing surface, though that certainly is a part of it. In some cases such a style may be the most appropriate look, but if it's your only look, it's not going to look as good as it could.
I know.. you might notice my wording - saying that I "progressivly add more detail up to a point". Some greeble are built-in the object model..like armor line, windows, stuff like that. Most of the stuff that juts out of the surface I do as separate objects. Depends from greeble to greeble, but you get the basic idea.
b.t.w- nice renders. Hell, movie quality stuff there. :nod:
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Other examples can be easily found by doing google searches for stuff like "engine room", "super tanker deck" and "reactor".
However, I still think the Star Destroyer is the absolute pinnacle of greebled awesomeness.
As modeled by FractoralSponge from here. (http://www.fractalsponge.net/ISD/gallery/index.html)
Correction Admiral... it's FractalSponge (aka Ansel Hsiao)
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(http://www.alecm.com/images/gallery/galleryBIG_ATL301_059x01_0162.jpg)
Christ, that ain't no Daedalus! That is Stargate, is it from the movie? Or did you model that?
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It definatly has a good Stargate feel to it, and that definatly looks like a Stargate hyperspace window opening... But dang... How sweet does it look...
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The only model of mine in there is the last one. The others were done by people with frighteningly large amounts of skill. That ship quoted there is the Ancient's main class of warship from Stargate Atlantis. It's my favourite ship of the whole SG universe, for some distinctly greeble related reasons. ;)
Correction Admiral... it's FractalSponge (aka Ansel Hsiao)
Bleh. It was from memory. I was only 2 characters off though. :p
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its possible that hard tiling could possibly be done procedurally in games so that you can build a simple mesh and the game engine turns it into a more complicated one. but then again greebeling looks best when its more or less random. i still havent mastered the art of grebeling, but i dont think expecting a single plugin or tool to do it all for you would work. main thing i dont get is how to effietiently uv map greebeled surfaces.
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Proceedural greebling sounds to me like the sort of thing that would be good for a flight sim game - something used to quickly and easily make buildings/cities. I don't really think it would work for most other game types, and if it could work at all I'm not sure if it would have any advantage over normal mapping - which would involve a whole lot less work to implment well.
As for auto-greeble tools, I think you're pretty much right about that. With auto-greebles vs. hand made greebles it's very much a case of quantity vs. quality. Autogreeblers can do enormous volumes of simplistic detail such as these:
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/InstantCity.jpg)
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/InstantDeathStar.jpg)
(Used Blender's "discombobulator" feature - loads of fun :D )
But if you can't deal with the prohibitively high polycounts they produce (ie, you want to use the model in a game) and/or want good looking greebles, you'll need to do them by hand.
BTW, when you talk of efficiently UV mapping greebled surfaces, do you mean timewise or UV space wise?
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as far as uv space goes. a simple top town uv map would be the fastest way, but if you come in atht egreebels from an angle, the sides of thim will always look flat or worse have ugly shear lines from being uv mapped at a prependicular angle. you could also apply cubical mapping, and if the uv tool youre using is smart enough, it should map each poly from the angle in which it has the most surface projected to the map. either way would be difficult if you use anything more complex than a generic metal texture, like mapping lights to the insides of the grebels.
for example the truss structure on the ragnarok class
(http://www.game-warden.com/nukemod-cos/Images/ragnarok3.jpg)
which really isnt greebeling, rather its just a reverse-extruded pattern id say those alone took about 2 days to uv map. it was enough to push the model to the sweetspot of 15k polies and about 11k of those were for the hull. now had i just done a top down on them, id have all sorts of defects on the uv mapping, i essentially wanted the insides of theese to look like steel beams so that means i had to map each surface to the same spot on the uv map.
now for the second example you showed it looks like that sort of effect would binifit from the top-down mapping, completely ignoring the sides. now it your first pic, that wouldnt work, youd want to texture the sides of those. either way the work involved is alot more than anyone but somone who gets paid to do this stuff can do in a resonable amount of time. if i was getting paid to mod im sure id come up with much better stuff. id guestimate it would take hundreds of man hours to uv map something as complicated as a super star destroyer.
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It doesn't look like the Aurora from that angle, looks more like a BC304 with a tail end.
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Wish the Discombobulator was available for Max... I don't like the Greeble plugin. Does the Discombobulator base it's panels on the line edges? Thats how Greeble plugin works, producing more triangle shaped details than rectangles. :ick:
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Hmmm... Maybe detail boxes would work best for me... There just a separate sub-object that holds nothing but a bit of detail.... If that is so how does one go about setting them up?
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the proces is about the same as setting up a physical subobject or single part turret. thing is you define a box (oposing corner vectors) or a sphere (location vector, and a radius) in the subobject properties with the apropriate tags for that object. then if the camera is within that box/sphere, then the submodel is rendered. im not sure the exact tags but i think pcs2 can auto-insert them for you. im not sure if you need a table entry for them. ive never used them before but thats the basics of it.