[VinsaneOne]

The Commander, on Jan 23 2010, 02:10 AM, said:

It's an EDuke32 feature, I don't remember the controls for it though. If there are any there is.

Helixhorned, on Jan 23 2010, 03:11 PM, said:

Yep, TAB will do it.

Thanks guys!

[Plagman]

Tea Monster, on Jan 13 2010, 04:56 AM, said:

I've been nagging to find out when they are going to apply the new features to models. No news yet.

Normal mapping should now work on models.
http://dukeworld.duk.../20100123-1594/

I don't have a normal map that matches an existing skinned model to test it, but it looks somewhat correct judging from the weird combinations I tried, eg:

[Stabs]

marvelous

explosive scrotum's

seriously, good work tho

[Micky C]

Amazing stuff. I don't care how many bugs polymer has, with that and if lights and when lighting can be applied to HUD models, the game is going to look almost completely modern

[The Commander]

lol, thats what I tried my first normal map on, looks about the same.
Just using crazybump though.

[High Treason]

Allow me to yell "Wooooooohooooooo!" at the top of my voice, that's f**king awesome! I think I know what I'll doing today, playing with that.

[Spiker]

I'm waiting to see some characters with normal maps! Awesome.

[Roma Loom]

I hope Tea Monster has something to show us related to Alien Queen, and hope Zilppuri will release his trooper soon

[gt1750]

That's great news! Can't wait to see normalmapped enemies and babes

[Mark]

I'll bet Tea Monster kissed his family goodbye and is in his computer room with the door locked, the phone off the hook and a pot of black coffee on the desk.

[Sobek]

I quickly tested it, and it works perfectly. Thanks Plagman

[zilp]

Plagman, on Jan 24 2010, 09:08 AM, said:

Normal mapping should now work on models.
http://dukeworld.duk.../20100123-1594/

Silly question.. how do I define a normal map file in .def?

[Roma Loom]

zilp, on Jan 24 2010, 05:05 PM, said:

Silly question.. how do I define a normal map file in .def?

should be like texture definition:

texture 258 {
pal 0 { file "highres/textures/0258.png" }
normal { file "highres/textures/0258_n.png" parallaxbias 0.0 parallaxscale 0.1 }
specular { file "highres/textures/0258_s.png" }
glow { file "highres/textures/0258_g.png" }
}

Hope you'll figure it up quickly.

[Parkar]

Plagman, on Jan 24 2010, 08:08 AM, said:

Normal mapping should now work on models.
http://dukeworld.duk.../20100123-1594/

I don't have a normal map that matches an existing skinned model to test it, but it looks somewhat correct judging from the weird combinations I tried, eg:

Awesome, I think I need to take a break from my UDK game and finish the Pig Cop I got started on.

[zilp]

Hmm.. I've been having some problems with the model coming out too shiny. It seems that the model is never shaded to black, but instead just brightened on places where light hits it.

But I will look into it.

So does the alpha channel in normalmap control the shinyness of the model?
And does anyone know if the color channels in the normal map map 1:1 to those used in Blender generated normal maps?

UPDATE:

Here is a screenshot:



You can see there is really high specularity (I have no spec map set yet), and that there is no actual shading on the model.
It even seems like the model is still taking the light from the floor and then the dynamic lights are just added on top of that..

Am I doing something wrong?

I can upload the model here, although it is otherwise buggy too (I haven't remade the animations to match the new mesh).

[Roma Loom]

Normal maps generated by Blender may have flipped X or Y axis or even both, or may not. You should experiment with that. Either through Blender's normal map baking setup or inverting thje Green or the Red channel of your normalmap in photoshop or gimp. The alpha channel of normalmap represents the depth (parallax mapping effect) - the darker the lower.

[Plagman]

You're right that the model is going to get flat shaded depending on its BUILD shade. This is essentially the ambient component when rendering with Polymer. If you want to start from complete darkness, do a test room and shade it very dark.
Also, note that you don't need a specular map to specify the specular material of your model. Just setting "specpower" and "specfactor" in the diffuse map definition will allow you to make your model less shiny. The specular map is just for tweaking that per-pixel.

[Plagman]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that this is not going to work correctly if you're using mirrored UV. Not sure if the new liztroop is using it, but since I know the old one is I thought I'd mention that. Any vertex that's shared by two triangles that don't have the same UV handedness will cause artifacts. I'm not sure whether it should be the artist responsibility to duplicate these vertices to create a seam in the mesh along the UV mirror or if the model postprocessor should automagically patch it up when loading it in EDuke32.

[Sobek]

I was just testing out that latest Synthesis build with model normal map support on my work PC, and while eDuke32 works just fine, Mapster crashes if I try to switch to 3d mode while running with either the Polymer or Polymost renderer. Software (8bit) appears to work fine...

The log shows everything loading like normal, it just bails out at 'Initializing Polymer Subsystem...' with nothing after that. In the case of Polymost, the log just stops after 'Cache Contains xxxxxx bytes of Garbage Data'.

I've tried deleting my configs and letting them be recreated just in case (I normally do this anyway) but so far no luck.

[Plagman]

I don't really know what could be causing that. Try deleting your texture cache, it's possible it is only enabled in mapster32 and the build you were using previously used the old format. If that fails, try going back through the synthesis history until you find a build that works for you.

[Sobek]

Ahh yes, deleting the texture cache did the trick. Not sure why I didn't try that sooner (given what the log says about garbage cache data).. Doi!

Thanks.

[zilp]

Plagman, on Jan 25 2010, 01:27 AM, said:

You're right that the model is going to get flat shaded depending on its BUILD shade. This is essentially the ambient component when rendering with Polymer. If you want to start from complete darkness, do a test room and shade it very dark.
Also, note that you don't need a specular map to specify the specular material of your model. Just setting "specpower" and "specfactor" in the diffuse map definition will allow you to make your model less shiny. The specular map is just for tweaking that per-pixel.

Quote

Oh, and I forgot to mention that this is not going to work correctly if you're using mirrored UV. Not sure if the new liztroop is using it, but since I know the old one is I thought I'd mention that. Any vertex that's shared by two triangles that don't have the same UV handedness will cause artifacts. I'm not sure whether it should be the artist responsibility to duplicate these vertices to create a seam in the mesh along the UV mirror or if the model postprocessor should automagically patch it up when loading it in EDuke32.

Would it be somehow possible to control that amount of ambient lighting on the model?
Ofcourse I could make the model a bit more dark, but still I would not achieve as much contrast as I want..

I did remake the UV maps (and most of the model) for this one, so this does not have shared UV:s. I tested it in Blenders "game engine" viewport rendering and they worked.
I think I'm having those seams because the X-axis is mirrored in Blenders normal map system. I'll try to get that Gimp Normalmap-plugin working to fix it.

[Tea Monster]

You can also use X-Normal for baking. It works a treat. If you are having problems with mirrored uv maps and baking, just copy your cage and your high-res meshes to a different layer, chop them down the middle and then bake those.

[Fox]

Hey, I am having some trouble with mod directory def loading. It seems that the game will load the duke3d.def from eduke32.exe directory, not the mod directory.

Is it possible to add an alternative def name that would be loaded instead of duke32.def (like having a eduke.con does)? That would avoid any issue with it

[Parkar]

zilp, on Jan 25 2010, 08:59 AM, said:

Would it be somehow possible to control that amount of ambient lighting on the model?
Ofcourse I could make the model a bit more dark, but still I would not achieve as much contrast as I want..

I did remake the UV maps (and most of the model) for this one, so this does not have shared UV:s. I tested it in Blenders "game engine" viewport rendering and they worked.
I think I'm having those seams because the X-axis is mirrored in Blenders normal map system. I'll try to get that Gimp Normalmap-plugin working to fix it.

It shouldn't be controled on a per object basis the problem here is that we don't have a way of controlling the ambient light in the maphack yet. I have been making my own eduke32 build with the sector schading hardcoded to a pretty dark value when working with the light hacks.

As far as the normals direction goees I think it is the way 3dsmax has them, r = x, g = -y, z = b so my guess is you might have to invert the green channel. As Tea Monster says xNormal is great for generating the normals.

[zilp]

I did use xNormal, but I did some tweaking in Blender and re-baked the maps, which obviously was a mistake since I found out for some odd reason Blender uses different setup from everyone else.

I tried to fix them up, but I am still not very sure, since the normal maps aren't that visible in the game yet, atleast for me.

Also I'm not sure how to setup normal maps and skins for several surfaces in the model?

I'm posting the model here, but it most certainly is not finished. The textures or the normal maps don't work at all.
Hopefully someone with more experience on Eduke32/Polymer stuff could take a look and help me out?
I put the textures as jpeg now.

EDIT:
Just add up, that I did switch one of the channels that blender generated for normal map, so it should work in the zip.
But it is really hard to see if this is really the case, especially since I could not get multiple textures work.
My first test was with only one texture for the entire model, but I think it became a little too blurry.

It seemed that 1024x2048 single texture was scaled down when loaded in game?

It would be nice if someone could hack in some sort of model preview tool, like an option to the games menu or console

Attached File(s)

•  trooper.zip (1.53MB)
  Number of downloads: 797

[Sangman]

Micky C, on Jan 24 2010, 08:30 AM, said:

I don't care how many bugs polymer has, with that and if lights and when lighting can be applied to HUD models, the game is going to look almost completely modern

What good does that do if the game crashes for people every so often? (the recently fixed soundbug reduced a lot of crashes but I still get them, sometimes quite often, but not as much) TBH I'd rather have stability over looks

[High Treason]

Exactly, the game would be almost completely modern
Or is it just me that gets crashes in modern games

[RPD Guy]

Roma Loom, on Jan 24 2010, 09:08 AM, said:

should be like texture definition:

texture 258 {
pal 0 { file "highres/textures/0258.png" }
normal { file "highres/textures/0258_n.png" parallaxbias 0.0 parallaxscale 0.1 }
specular { file "highres/textures/0258_s.png" }
glow { file "highres/textures/0258_g.png" }
}

Hope you'll figure it up quickly.

is this wath I aways talking about!
i need a tool to make the ''specular''
(:

[RPD Guy]

PS: why not the lights affects the HUD weapon?