OT: Jedi Academy models

[Kirin[SC]]

I was bored out of my mind and figured I should try making something for Jedi Academy. I decided to extract one of the models for Jedi Academy and start skinning it and lord and behold this bastige has 7 freaking textures to skin. [see attachment]

You know it's sad but true

Or either that, I just picked the wrong model to look at.

[sithlord-ii]

doesnt surprise me - let me guess - Face, torso, arms, hands, legs/hips, eyesmouth, and perhaps one other for accessories
that is how they did it for jedi outcast, and jedi academy is no different

[Kirin[SC]]

Well ... I guess that's what I get for not owning JK2. (Well ... I played the JK2 demo but that was ages ago)

I just heard recently in some JK2 forums that most JK2 skins will work in JO so I'm under the impression that JO was very similiar to JK2, engine-wise.

To be honest with you, it's rather inefficient in terms of use of the UVMap. Personally, I would try to cram everything in less UVMaps, three the most. From what I recall, it's easier on some machines to handle 1 or 2 textures than a model with 7 or 8 textures, regardless of texture size. Although, if I add the texture coordinates of all the textures correctly, I could get two textures: a 1024x1024 (4 512x512 textures) and a 768x512 (1 512x512 + 1 512x256 + 1 256x256) if I combined them all. That would probably be easier on the system than 7 or 8 textures but you know ... I guess with more and more gamers upgrading their machines, it wouldnb't matter a whole lot but on the artistic side of things, it just seems like an overkill to use that many textures for game-related models. If it was a model for some movie cut-scene I would understand but player models, it seems well ... I don't know. Just a lot I guess.

sithlord-ii - Looking at your name, I guess you have quite an experience with the JK-games. Perhaps you can share your experiences on how you go around skinning 7 or 8 textures for one model. Personally, I think it's an overkill. Four was bad enough during my UT1 days but 7 was just pushing it for me.

[JackReacher]

Id probobly paste all of the UV's onto one big sheet, skin it, and then split it back up into the smaller maps. It does seem stupid to have so many maps for a charachter, for a large vehicle i could understand it.

[Psychic_313]

Originally Posted by Kirin[SC]

I'm under the impression that JO was very similiar to JK2, engine-wise.

As far as I can see, Jedi Outcast (= Jedi Knight 2) and Jedi Academy are pretty much the same game. I'd say they were about as similar as Quake 3 and Q3 Team Arena engine-wise, although Academy does have enough content to be a full game in its own right.

[JackReacher]

Out of interest, how big are the seperate maps? Id guess 256x256, in which case its much lower than UT2k3.

[Kirin[SC]]

everything except for the hand map and the feather map is 512x512 ... the hand is 512x256 and the feathers is 256x256

[Curve[UK]]

Anti delves into JA gets very confused whilst at it

[JackReacher]

Wow, quite high res skins then, a bitch to do, but high res idd.

[Curve[UK]]

I have JA know of any good skinning utilities for it? I downloaded the mesh's already.