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Post by herby on Apr 10, 2017 22:40:01 GMT
I had to make the hip center block bigger and lift the torso a little more. The bigger the cylinder gets, the more I have to lift the torso. I made the cylinder 50% bigger I also tapered the top of the cylinder another 30% more to make it look as massive as the model would allow. I hope the arms don't pose a problem. I had to raise the arm pivot up a 'lot'. Fortunately these arms don't move but the hands do, and they're offset from the arms so it's all good. I need to see what it does in game. I may have to tweak some things. The weapon points will not be in the same place. That got borked when I lifted the torso and raised the lower barrels into the torso. Everything's a compromise. The more I divert from the original, the more things get moved. The pic looks a little odd because I flipped the mech upside down to get the lighting to show the cylinder better.  I uploaded 'this' version to the link in the previous post and also posted it again here below... so, if there's no more requests I'll add the Firefly to the finished pile along with the Anni and Champion. firefly lod0[note @freako] You should visit here more frequently. I'm afraid I'm gonna get too far ahead  |
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Post by herby on Apr 10, 2017 23:21:20 GMT
The new project: (Added features) It will double the face count on the model. For the fly, it would probably go up to 1500 or so and that's being very frugal. That's 3X the stock model. I'll pick a mech that we don't plan to reinvent If only the engine could use normal (bump) maps I could make it a masterpiece and only add maybe 100 more faces. |
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Post by AncientxFreako on Apr 10, 2017 23:58:03 GMT
Don't know if it's going to work with the firepoints moved. Pretty much negates the whole purpose of why I wanted to try this in the first place, but who knows, maybe EOP will help us out even though he said he didn't have time.
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Post by herby on Apr 11, 2017 0:42:33 GMT
Why won't it work? The weapons will still fire. They'll just be slightly off the muzzles. The mesh has nothing to do with the weapons firing or not. Removing the hip guns and putting them on the torso won't change how the guns operate. Without having access to the weapon hierarchy we can't fix it. All we can do is change the mech mesh and make it perform and look better.
I hope I'm not doing all this for nothing.
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Post by AncientxFreako on Apr 11, 2017 9:56:33 GMT
Yes the weapons will work, but like you said, they won't be coming out of the guns...lol, not slightly off the muzzles. They'll be coming out of mid-air. I know I asked the impossible at this point, but this is how we find out these things. But, like I said, maybe EOP will help us, who knows. And it has nothing to do with the weapons hierarchy, it's the firepoints, just like the pivot points. Regardless, this wasn't for nothing. Everything you do here gives you/us that much more experience working with the game for better ideas, and other projects, so it's not all for nothing.
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Post by StoneWall on Apr 11, 2017 11:16:22 GMT
You could make a post to /r/MechWarrior and ask for help, maybe even /r/MWLL too.
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Post by AncientxFreako on Apr 11, 2017 11:31:31 GMT
Btw Herby if I didn't say it before, the firefly does look great!
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Post by herby on Apr 11, 2017 15:51:20 GMT
... it has nothing to do with the weapons hierarchy, it's the firepoints, just like the pivot points... I understand that the weapon hierarchy doesn't follow the mesh hierarchy. It's like two independent skeletons that are tied together by the animation routine. For the Fly, the weapons will be slightly off the muzzles. I really don't think this small amount will be that noticeable in a fight. It also gives us an idea of what happens when you modify a model and put it back in game, and it will point out any errors on my part regarding the modifications and steps I took. It's to my benefit to see what errors may pop up. It may be fine but then again it may be a big pile of junk. We won't really know until we see it. About the weapon points: I have all the offset data needed to relocate the weapons to their correct places. |
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Post by infinitefire on Apr 12, 2017 14:07:54 GMT
I think we should test the limits of the engine. As Freako has been saying, we could really greatly improve the mech models adding the details present in the textures to them and update the mechs. Depending on the maximum texture size supported by the game we could implement better textures too. And maybe release a "Community Edition" thingy for multiplayer too? just a random thought I wanted to throw in  oh, also the cockpit, can it be altered? |
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Post by herby on Apr 12, 2017 22:29:51 GMT
Cockpit: You mean the inside of the cockpit? I haven't paid much attention to that yet.
Texture size: I haven't seen anything over 128 X 64. Pretty puny. I'd like to test this to see if this is the limit.
Right now we don't know what the limits are. I did notice something though. When I first started playing the game again I had bouncing vehicles and when I used JJs and jumped too high I would get stuck in the sky. Now the game runs fairly smooth with no glitches. The only difference is increasing the resolution and lowering the priority. I'm thinking if we can artificially force the game and cause the CPU to work harder it should play better.
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Post by AncientxFreako on Apr 13, 2017 3:00:44 GMT
Cockpit: You mean the inside of the cockpit? I haven't paid much attention to that yet. Texture size: I haven't seen anything over 128 X 64. Pretty puny. I'd like to test this to see if this is the limit. Right now we don't know what the limits are. I did notice something though. When I first started playing the game again I had bouncing vehicles and when I used JJs and jumped too high I would get stuck in the sky. Now the game runs fairly smooth with no glitches. The only difference is increasing the resolution and lowering the priority. I'm thinking if we can artificially force the game and cause the CPU to work harder it should play better. That's something I thought too a long time ago...which was part of the inspiration for wanting the "texture details in the mesh" project. And yes Fire, the textures in the cockpit can be altered. Also I think the meshes for the cockpits are in the .flt files Herby has as well. |
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Post by herby on Apr 13, 2017 4:02:57 GMT
I don't have the textures for the cockpits. For some reason they never made it into the folder...
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Post by AncientxFreako on Apr 13, 2017 12:04:09 GMT
I don't have the textures for the cockpits. For some reason they never made it into the folder... So cockpit meshes but no textures? Probably because those textures aren't available with the mech texturizer, and when EOP did the mechlib extractor tool maybe he didn't think to include that. |
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Post by AncientxFreako on Apr 29, 2017 12:31:23 GMT
So I know somewhere in this thread I listed some modeling projects I'm hoping for...one of which is the "put the texture details in the mesh" idea.
Herby, I just tested a mech skinned with only a basic grey on every single texture and guess what....the game DOES do shadowing and if the mesh had details on it they would show up with flat non-detailed textures!!
So what I'm thinking about would be a HUGE undertaking, knowing that my work on the skins would only be "half" the job. A combination of details in the skin textures and details in the meshes is probably the best idea. I don't know if the game has limits on polys but we could test it by putting in a "detailed" mech with a flat texture like I've done and see how it looks.
Like I said, if it does work well then it would be a MAJOR undertaking: think 18 mechs...between 16 and 18 body parts per mech...plus all the "details" that would be representations of the details in the textures. A LOT of work. A team of 18 modelers might get it done within 6 months, right? lol
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Post by herby on Apr 29, 2017 15:14:32 GMT
What I'm most interested in is how the import process affects the model. It has to do with smooth groups and unwelded verts. We can do a lot with this or very little with this depending on what happens during import. I tried to explain it in Herby's Mech Model Build W.I.P.
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just checking in