(WIP) MW2k7 (for UT2k7) MP Biped (lowpoly)

[Phopojijo]

Edit again: New render.

Just wondering how for UT2007 to set up a lowpoly mesh for articulation... same as current gen? Or do the parallax maps cause different amounts of detail on sections which vertex-animate?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/rilob1k_2.jpg

Any other comments or suggestions? (Apart from the shoes)

 

[Phopojijo]

Blah, I should have waited 'til now to post the renders...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/forbox1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/forbox2.jpg

Polycount's ~1500... I could go less than that -- but UE3 has a budget of 4000-5000 claims Epic's UnrealTechnology.com so I'll worry about optimizing later.

Comments? Feedback?

Note: The donuts are the shield generators -- its got a halo-esque feel to it, not that I really care... fun is fun. If you snipe out the cone on the shield generator -- instagib if its not a "spam weapon". IE: Don't expect to fire 500 rounds of an Uzi-style weapon and expect to lucky-hit the cone blowing the guy up... no. Needs to be an intentional shot (most likely limited to semi-autos)

Like always -- being the open-source-open-patent fan I am (AKA: Socialist) -- if you want anything (doubtful, I suck) for use in your own projects, just ask.

... assuming its actually my work... I can't offer you other people's work (lazy/busy-ness pending)

 

[cole_bie]

Looks good man. looks like it has a great basic shape, for more detail to go into it.

 

[Fony]

it doesn't look like you have anywhere near enough polys around the knees - if you don't the mesh will not deform realistically.
Put some more edge loops around the knee area and you're good to go.

 

[cole_bie]

Maybe just one edge loop, you dont want too many. Add a ****load more detail to that, you can go pretty high, like 5000, then clone it, and add a ****load more detail to it, and subdivide it, make that one as many polys as you want, millions if your computer can handle it. That should give you a high and low poly moel for normal mapping.

 

[Phopojijo]

Maybe just one edge loop, you dont want too many. Add a ****load more detail to that, you can go pretty high, like 5000, then clone it, and add a ****load more detail to it, and subdivide it, make that one as many polys as you want, millions if your computer can handle it. That should give you a high and low poly moel for normal mapping.

Wow I didn't see the replies. Thanks for the suggestions -- just a question, does UnrealEngine3 use VirtualDisplacementNormalMapping or Normalmapping for their displacement?

(One is simply a highquality standard ole bumpmap, the other appears to occlude itself if so applicable -- see Steep Parallax Mapping at brown.edu)

I believe static meshes use VirtualDisplacementNormalmapping in UnrealEngine3, not sure about deformable meshes though (similar to Blamengine 1's inability to bumpmap deformable objects)

 

[devilShadow]

I believe static meshes use VirtualDisplacementNormalmapping in UnrealEngine3, not sure about deformable meshes though (similar to Blamengine 1's inability to bumpmap deformable objects)

Pretty messy question actually nowadays. UE3 uses what they call bump offset mapping, which is a bit different from say the way nVidia does virtual displacement mapping. Both methods use a normal map, the main difference is in the map used to do the displacement or offsetting, nVidia's method uses an rgb map, while UE3s method doesnt. Characters mainly use just normal mapping.

 

[Phopojijo]

Pretty messy question actually nowadays. UE3 uses what they call bump offset mapping, which is a bit different from say the way nVidia does virtual displacement mapping. Both methods use a normal map, the main difference is in the map used to do the displacement or offsetting, nVidia's method uses an rgb map, while UE3s method doesnt. Characters mainly use just normal mapping.

Hmm, so if I have a grill (for instance) on a character's back, it will not appear to overlap as per E32004? Sorry, I know I sound like a noob, heh.

 

[devilShadow]

Hmm, so if I have a grill (for instance) on a character's back, it will not appear to overlap as per E32004? Sorry, I know I sound like a noob, heh.

It shouldn't, i've never really seen an issue with even more complex detail like that using just a normal map. Using a bump offset on a character i imagine would be a bit expensive, and could give some wierd results. Id say stick with normal mapping and save your resources for cooler looking shaders.

 

[Phopojijo]

It shouldn't, i've never really seen an issue with even more complex detail like that using just a normal map. Using a bump offset on a character i imagine would be a bit expensive, and could give some wierd results. Id say stick with normal mapping and save your resources for cooler looking shaders.

Nah, I already have a lot of resources to burn... Epic recommends ~500,000 poly environments where my environments are in the thousands (with massive normalmaps and dynamics-effects) due to a good third of the maps being plain old Arena-style. (This is done by making sure you only have line-of-sight on like two non-playable sections of the map at one time... for instance the space war through the skylight is placed so the only sightline for most of the actors are directly underneath the overlook -- which has several models and a couple of animations to make it seem like you're really in a space-marine training simulator) I don't expect the polycount (less normalmaps) to dip too far beyond 50,000 rendered at any one time. In fact for just the playable area of "idia" its only a couple hundred polygons. (Then again it will only take 3-5 seconds to walk from one complete side to the other, sans detail outside the spacestation flying by, or below you)

Then again I suppose I --would-- need to keep the same playermodel for the more ambitous maps too -- so I see your point.

 

[devilShadow]

Don't gauge your performance bottleneck so much based on polycount, obviously keep it optimized, but the real bottleneck is shaders and textures. You could have a two triange environment, but if you're shading it with a bunch of 1024 square textures with a 512 instruction shader, it's still gonna crawl. That's the cool and also detrimental thing about UE3, it's really easy to create awesome shader effects, but it's also really easy to go overboard and wire up a shader that makes your card just choke.

 

[Caravaggio]

Bah, virtual displacement mapping, parallax mapping, relief mapping. I wish developers would find a way to either merge them or just choose one, it's getting a little complicated for a lowly moddeler like me.

Still waiting for bump maps to be phased out too...

 

[Phopojijo]

Bah, virtual displacement mapping, parallax mapping, relief mapping. I wish developers would find a way to either merge them or just choose one, it's getting a little complicated for a lowly moddeler like me.

Still waiting for bump maps to be phased out too...

How? They're all generated, not drawn (though you can hand-paint if you wish, but its much easier to just make a highpoly mesh and raytrace)

 

[devilShadow]

How? They're all generated, not drawn (though you can hand-paint if you wish, but its much easier to just make a highpoly mesh and raytrace)

Actually its just as easy to recover bump data from a map as it is from a mesh given the right tools. I don't do any crazy hipoly mesh creation anymore, all of my normal maps are usually derived from bump maps. At the resolution you'll be running a game at, the amount of time spent pulling out crazy detail from a hi-res mesh usually just isnt worth the trade-off, even with something like ZBrush.

 

[Jackal]

Becareful about doing modeling. I don't know if you can resize that thing or not. I don't know if in Maya, you can take your character and shrink/expand him. The reason I ask is because no one knows what the player size will be in UT2k7, but it will be smaller than what is in current 2k4 game. Just a FYI.

Btw, can you select your object and resize it easily?

 

[devilShadow]

Becareful about doing modeling. I don't know if you can resize that thing or not. I don't know if in Maya, you can take your character and shrink/expand him. The reason I ask is because no one knows what the player size will be in UT2k7, but it will be smaller than what is in current 2k4 game. Just a FYI.

Btw, can you select your object and resize it easily?

Alot of the tweaking can be done on the editor side, IE you can use things like drawscale 3d or set the scale for an animated mesh in the character properties, similar to how you can in the current iteration of UED, so if you model something too small in your app, you can fix it in the editor.

 

[Jackal]

even characters and vehicles that you can play as/with?

 

[devilShadow]

even characters and vehicles that you can play as/with?

yep

 

[Phopojijo]

Becareful about doing modeling. I don't know if you can resize that thing or not. I don't know if in Maya, you can take your character and shrink/expand him. The reason I ask is because no one knows what the player size will be in UT2k7, but it will be smaller than what is in current 2k4 game. Just a FYI.

Btw, can you select your object and resize it easily?

Yea -- its a 45 second fix in Maya.

 

[Phopojijo]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/rilo_low_back.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/rilo_low_front.jpg

Yea -- here's a little update. Any comments would be appreciated. Yes its designed to look blocky.
As I tweak the polygoncount the "checkerboard" look should also somewhat disappear (even though its going to have somewhat of a checkerboard look due to it being armor, not an organic skin)