SnowFella
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Posts posted by SnowFella
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Well, I've found a huge flaw with said tutorial so I might just have to go in an rewrite portions.
The flaw being that letting the normal map handle all your smoothing doesn't really work for GRAW2 use, the game engine just doesn't have a renderer exact enough to process the normals correctly...looks more like it is a simplified processing.
So if you are going to use this for GRAW2 work you first have to make sure your model smooths properly and then generate normal maps.
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Well, I've just finished running a quick and dirty ingame test to see if my models hold up. And have found out 2 things.
1: The models do hold up
2: They end up looking like crap as GRAW2 can't really process the normal maps aswell as I had hoped.
If I am to get these things ingame and looking reasonable I'm going to have to move away from letting the normal maps handle all the smoothing and assign some smooth groups myself. Means I'm going to have to redo just about all of the normal maps once again 
I bloody knew this would happen! 
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Well, I think the problem in Lancers case is the A8L8 format of normal maps used in the game....you can't really go in and do any changes in them without severely messing them up.
I tried helping him with painting out a patch on the characters shoulders from the bump and even though the bump was gone afterwards the lighting was severely messed up.
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To follow suit with Brettzies basic weapon modding tutorial here's something alittle more indepth into the whole modeling process, how to normal map your model.
Simple normal mapping tutorial, illustrated.
It's very basic and the end result of the normals generated in it is well below par...but it does go through all the needed steps to generate a normal map in 3dsm aswell as adding detail using photoshop and the Nvidia plugin.
Hopefully it comes in handy for someone.
Snow
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Should be nice and easy to do mate
Open the "lib/managers/xml/weapon_data.xml" file and scroll down untill you find the RX4, it's the 5th weapon down the list.
The line you are looking to remove is this one
<mod mod_id="23" />Just save the edited file using this folder tree /language/english/lib/managers/xml/
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Sweet! Grabbing it now!
On another note...I've just set Brettzies up with an FTP account for his own little online storage space, not that I can guarantee he'll use it. But atleast now he's got an option instead of fileplanet/filestorage.
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Oh screw a perfect rating on the first mission....here's my way of dealing with those arty pieces.
1: Send the drone in overhead to get a decent reading on where the badguys are.
2: Wait just out of sight untill they all are fairly close together, preferably just behind the rock outcroppings.
3: Lobb a frag in their general direction over the rocks.
4: Watch through the drones cameras when the frag tears any oposition to shreds.
5: Casually walk up to arty pieces and plant democharge.
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Here's the thing though mwgfghost...it's nothing that just comes overnight. To date it's taken me around 4 years of first GR modding, GRAW modding, VBS1 modding and general modeling to get to where I am! I still have renders of the first ever model that I completed, for a GR mod, and it ain't pretty.
Here's a render of it.
LAR Grizzly...blocky and sidemapped.
So my best tip to anyone who want's to get into this is to try...and try and try again. Getting a basic hang of the different tools available in 3dsm doesn't take all to long but the "gift" to see what to use and where takes some practice. Heck, I still have to remake nearly 25% of the details that I add in atleast once...most of the time several times!
Anyways, here's the near finalised normal map on the Carbine version.
Rendering another 360 turnaround of it now and I'll toss it up as soon as it's finished.
Edit: here's the turnaround, with the Trijicon Reflex sight on it.
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Either ship it to Rocky or just bump it over to me mate...I'll be happy to host it till the cows come home
Got the room and the bandwith to do so -
Don't need a state of the art rig to do modding mate...I'm working on an old P4 3.2, 2 gig of RAM and an oooold GF 6800 Ultra. The only thing having an older rig will affect is the time it takes to render things out.
All you need is the right program and some patience to learn it.
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If the mapping doesn't show up properly during renders it's unlikely to get translated right during the exporting.
As for polygoncount vs. detail shown...it's really to high compared to what we are seeing mate. Looking at it there's no warrant at all for that polygon count...and taking a wild but most likely correct guess most of those polys are in the cylindrical parts.
Here's a tip, instead of using 18+ sided cylinders try using 8 to 10 sided Ngon's. You won't see any difference ingame unless you poke your nose right up against the barrel/scope/whatever and you will save a crapload of polys.
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Cheers guys.
@Brettzies: You really ought to take the time mate. It will both help make your model light better aswell as give you a chance to keep the polygon count to a minimum and still get the detail. Sure it does take a while to create a highpoly cage for the whole model but you really don't have to model all the minute details in if you don't absolutely want to. I could just aswell of "cheated" in areas and painted it but it's alittle bit of a personal challenge for me to see if I can cut it into the highpoly mesh
@Pz3: A fair bit of it is modeled mate
I've only really painted in the markings, some reciever detail and all the minor "bumps". Could just aswell of modeled more of the reciever detail but didn't really see a need to do so, the main reason for the highpoly cage in this case is just to get the main parts to look smooth even if they ain't. Rendering a view of the highpoly right now, but at 1.3 million polys it's taking it's fair time 
Could probably of optimised the mesh alittle but didn't see a need as I do everything in pieces as opposed to the whole thing all at once.Heaviest overall bits are most likely the top rail section, magazine and that front handguard....but even the 9 or so groves across the mag release has been modeled
Here's the render of the highpoly.
Snow
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Thanks mate.
This is what I'm talking about when it comes to learning new stuff...6 months ago I hadn't really even bothered trying to generate a "full" normal map from a highpoly cage, instead relying on using the Nvidia normal pluggin to convert my colourmap into a normal...something that just about never ends up looking right!
Anyways, here's a link to the 360 turnaround.
Masada SPR 360....2.2Mb .mov file
If you look close you can clearly make out one of the "problem" areas at the very rear of the sight rail...the lighting ends up being off from some angles.
Snow
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Alright, the normal map for the SPR version is more or less finished now...still some funky areas that I might have to revisit though as the lighting is alittle bit off.
3499 polys all in all and I've added a very faint ambient occlusion pass to the colour map to give some subtle shading in areas.
Right now rendering a 360 turnaround of it, ought to be done in about 45 minutes or so
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Sweet! Now I just have to get around to acctually finishing my model before I can test it out
Tackar för hjälpen Straha
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I've told Grin_Straha about your problems, who is the main weapon guy for GRAW2. Hopwfully he can drop by and shed some light on this.
If he doesnt' I'll just hunt him down on the SoldF forums and squeeze the information out of him there, shouldn't be hard to squeze it out of an amf1 ambhibian like him
If I remember right he even tried to recruit me for SilentHeroes once upon a time -
Yeah Eric, that above post isn't suprising at all
And this is no dig at anyone in perticular.
I'll have to echo Brettzies here, being a modder you do tend to start feeling like a short order cook....and that's a short order cook who's off the clock, generally just wanting to fix up his own prefered meal...but before it's even close to finished you have the whole darn diner full of freeloading customers shouting out orders left right and center. Hell, some of them even send back meals they haven't payed for in the first place and demand changes to be made as they didn't like what they got from the start.
Just as Brettzies I do this as a hobby afternoons and nights, it's the one single hobby I have nowadays, but as opposed to him (atleast asfar as I know) I also do this as a freelance artist. I still have a dayjob though so my afternoons can either be spent working on something that will add to the family budget, Ie the freelance gig I'm currently involved in, or spent working on free mod projects like this GRAW2 project.
Take a wild guess what I spend 99% of my afternoons working on.....well it ain't this GRAW2 project that's for sure! Right now I've got atleast 2 other commisioned models that I need to finish in the coming 5 or so weeks so the little time I've already put into this project has put me pretty far behind scedule already!
This I'm doing because I need a letout, I need something of my own choosing that I can work on from time to time to releave some of the monotony of working on something ordered by a 3rd party. Plus it's something I can try new ways of doing things in, I have tried and tested methods that I use on commisioned pieces so I can get them out quickly (not really pretty but quick) but if I don't try new ways I'll never learn anything new.
Lastly, as a note to folks that do chime in with "requests", I don't mind and I do understand where you are coming from....but take a moment before you voice your deepest darkest desires and think about this. Here's something I posted up at the BFS forums not so long ago in regards to invested time into one single model...and a fairly simple one at that. It's a rough estimate into the time I spent making just one new weaponmodel from scratch, and this doesn't even include time spent setting the model up for exporting, animation and scripting.
Nowadays it's a whole different ballgame! If I were to guesstimate the time the last model I shipped took, and modelling/mapping vise that was an easy one, it would come out something like this.*4 to 5 hours to model it with animations in mind
*1 to 2 hours to fix up smooth groups, generally have to change this around somewhat during the normal mapping stage aswell.
*4 to 5 hours to map it out...it's my pet hate...sooooooo booring!
*6 to 7 hours to convert my lowpoly mesh into a highpoly cage for the normal map and render that out. I "cheat" and do it piece by piece instead of the whole thing at once, combined it was something along the lines of 815 000 polys compared to the gameres mesh of 3700 polys.
*1 to 2 hours of painting in additional detail into the normal map aswell as fixing any errors in the highpoly to lowpoly bake
*and another good 10 to 12 hours to paint the colour and specular maps, and that's not even finalised maps!
This is time you instead of sitting infront of 3dsm or photoshop will spend ingame either killing badguys in SP or with friends in MP
regards
Snow
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Might not be GRIN Logo grafitti but there's some tiny little funny bits to be found in some of the weapon textures aswell.
I'd suspect they are in order:
RX4: The modeler/texture artists signature, the diesel file has information in it pointing towards a Michal...hell just about all the .dilesel files have what I'd suspect to be the creators grin email address contained within them
G36: Just a funny little smilyface...looks just that tad bit like the grin logo to me
M14: Well there is a GRIN_Straha...comes up in the .diesel file as the same Michal as the RX4
M99: never ever heared of the ammo brand "Burrito"....guess someone in the GRIN office was a tad hungry or something
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This is with the original weapons though mate
Here's what the SCAR-L looked like just 10 minutes ago when I did the testing
Also had similar problems with the Mk46 and HK416.
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Nope, it seems to be a no go. I tried altering the file so that the beretta instead of it's proper icon should have the MK45 icon...and it changed F all.
Even tried altering the .xmb file to see if that would make a difference but did nothing aswell.
On a side note...I'm getting more and more mesh problems here with the weapon models, and they wary in severity from time to time. Just looks like there's something wrong with the skinning as I get vertices "popping" out in all kinds of weird directions
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I'll have a swing at altering it to see if the same carries over to the full version aswell...give me 20 minutes and I'll have an answer for you Brettzies
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And here's the painted detail on it.
Doubt most of it will even be visible ingame though...but I know it's there
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Alrighty, it's all been mapped and I also managed to cull some polys in places where I didn't need them.
More or less finished with the highpoly normal map generation for the common parts, going to paint in the remainer of the detail I think...it's getting to fiddly to cut in anymore.
Common parts with normal map applied, there's still some errors here and there.
(Click for larger render)
And just highlight now much detail the normals give the flatshaded mesh
(Click for larger render)
@Bat21: Always had a good sense of self mate...that's probably why I get so ###### off when ppl rip of my work without asking
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Wouldn't that be DX5 for diffuse maps and A8L8 if you are dealing with normal maps? That's atleast what I used when modding GRAW
Magpul Masada
in GR:AW 2 - Weapon Modding
Posted
It's going to take me a few hours of solid work to sort out I'd say, luckily I already have all the highpoly pieces made and saved so it won't really require any remodeling of any kind.
What I'm going to have to do is go in and smooth out my game mesh properly, re-render all the normals and combine them together in photoshop again.
Means I might just take a step back here and wait a while with kicking this pack ingame untill we have a working exporter for 3dsm 8, or atleast wait till the next patch is out to see if we'll acctually get one.
Now, as for weapons...I'm going to slightly alter the original setup (SPR, Carbine and CQBR) and instead do just the SPR and Carbine in 5.56x45...and add another carbine version in 7.62x39. So it will still be 3 new rifles
What I'm looking for though is a handgun and possibly an SMG/PDW for close in work, the 1911 that I have could fill that handgun slot but I'd be more interested in making something new instead of rehashing old work....So at this stage I'm happy to take suggestions for both the handgun and a possible SMG/PDW.
Lets hear it folks!