R Soul on 12/12/2012 at 01:12
I'm about to sign off but you can PM them anyway and I'll check them tomorrow.
Renzatic on 12/12/2012 at 01:19
K, I'll bug away then. And probably look up the answer in the meantime.
sNeaksieGarrett on 13/12/2012 at 05:57
Hey renz, I decided to try out the dark exporter thingy for blender (which worked flawlessly I might add) and here's your newer, lower poly version in-game:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1546[/ATTACH]
darthsLair on 13/12/2012 at 06:41
Good looking corn ! I had to fabricate a couple objects to simulate corn stalks in Tell Tale Heart.
Very nice !
Renzatic on 13/12/2012 at 06:42
Not too bad looking. Think I might need to make it taller?
Also, those leaves are definitely single sided. I'll tell you the quick and sloppy way to make them doublesided right fast.
Go down to the bottom of your materials tab (the chrome sphere for reference) and make sure the one material you have is highlighted. Now, head all the way down to the very bottom to "Custom Properties", expand it, hit add, type DBL, save it, and reexport.
The reason I say it's sloppy is because DBL doubles the polycount on all objects it's doublesiding. The only thing you really want to add the DBL modifier to are your leaves. The way we're doing it adds it to the stalk, the corn, and everything. It'll change your 734 tris object to an effective 1468 (give or take, I don't think it always perfectly doubles it).
To do it right, you'll have to select all the leaves, apply a separate material to them, link it to the same texture, and add the DBL modifier to it exclusively. I'll show you how to do that later (I'm slogging through Blender as we speak, figuring out all the hotkeys and stuff). Right now though, doing it the sloppy way is good for testing. Seeing how the final will look.
sNeaksieGarrett on 13/12/2012 at 16:34
Okay I did as you said and re-exported the file. Dromed's mono tool reported that the model had too many polygons, and then I proceeded to try to look at it in dromed and it crashed.:o
From MONO:
Warning: model 'CornStalk2' has too many polygons, bsp 16-bit offset overflow (results in missing polys and can crash on render)
I don't know how to view tris in blender, but I seem to remember that polys and tris were more or less the same thing, just a different word? In that case, blender had exported to over 2,000 polys.
Daraan on 13/12/2012 at 18:12
tris = triangles
I dont know which person made that crime but nearly every object in DromEd (.bin format) will have more polys than in blender. Because if two faces intersect each other BSP will cut these faces and subdive them -> more polys -> faces.
If you want to see it make a model with a few intersections. Convert it to bin and reconvert it to 3ds.
An example from my plant creating:
I had some faces very much intersections -> 3dstobin 8000 polys
Deleting 2 faces -> 6000 polys
Deleting 5 more -> 1xxx polys
it's not very much detail loss but as you see it makes a different from nearly 7000 polys.
Since I new that I'm very careful that I make no intersection where I really don't need. If I make a trunk and add some leaves my leaves are always 0.0X away from the trunk.
-------
There are still some other things that I don't understand with very simply objects with 20 'corners' and I end up with 18 polys:weird:
Another thing is I insert a square face I get up to 24polys more
Renzatic on 13/12/2012 at 18:25
Quote:
I don't know how to view tris in blender, but I seem to remember that polys and tris were more or less the same thing, just a different word?
Time to give you a primer on...
The Lexicon. A tri is a polygon with 3 vertices. This is what all engines use, and what your model has to be made out of before a game can see it. A quad is...yeah, 4 vertices. All editors default to quads, since they're much easier to work with. You can look at them and tell exactly how your topology is flowing. Whenever you go to convert a quad model to tris for a game, the editor will split the faces of your polygons diagonally between two vertices, making one quad into two tris, doubling your polycount.
Elendir's exporter does this for you, so it's not something you have to worry about all that much. It's more something you have to keep in mind when editing. If you're making a model, and Blender's telling you it has 360 quads, you need to think it'll be 720 tris in Dromed.
...then, when you set an object to be doublesided, it's doubling the polycount on those faces, since Dromed has to draw both sides of the mesh. What's confusing about that is no 3D editor will tell you it's doubling up on the polycount. Modo just draws it doublesided without reporting a bump to GL specs, and Blender shows everything doublesided as default.
It's sounds like a bigger pain in the ass than it actually is. Trust me. :P
Okay, now to fix your problem. The leaves make up about 360 tris of the entire model, which means that doublesiding those will only add an extra 360 tris to the entire model, which will make the gameready model 1094 tris. That's much more manageable.
First thing we're going to do is make a new material, this will be for your leaves. Go to your materials tab, and at the very top hit the + button. next to the box listing your materials (you'll see "corn" in there). You'll see an unnamed silver sphere pop up.
Once you're there, hit the New button just below it, and it'll create a new generic material called...wait for it...Material. If you want to rename it, just click in the light grey box that used to be "new", highlight it, and name it whatever. I'm calling mine "Leaves".
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat1.jpg) Click here for visual cue.
The next part you're already halfway familiar with, but we have to take a couple extra steps to tell it to look for a texture and not a procedural. Go to the texture tab, and hit the big "New" button at the very bottom. You'll see all the usual stuff pop up. What you want to look for is the "type" dropdown menu just below the texture box, and set that to "image or movie".
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat2.jpg) Click Nao
This next part you've done. Go down to the "Image", open it up if it isn't already, and you'll see the "New" or "Open" buttons. Hit "Open", and lead it to CornStalk_UV.tga. You'll see the the the image preview pop up with in it there.
Last for this section, and this part annoys the hell out of me because it's a TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY EXTRA STEP I KEEP FORGETTING TO DO DAMN YOU BLENDER, go down to the "Mapping" tab, and under the "Coordinates" dropdown menu, tell it to use UV. Keep everything else the same.
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat3.jpg) Clickety
Okay, now you've gone through the more convoluted than has any right to be process of making a material and applying a texture to it, you're ready for the next step. Applying this material to your leaves.
Go into editing mode by rightclicking the stalk to highlight it (why Blender uses the right mouse button for selects, I have no damn idea), and hitting the Tab key. You'll see the wireframe overlaid on the model, which means you're now in edit mode. Hit ctrl+tab to bring up your element select menu, and choose "Face".
Now we're going to select one face on each of the leaves. Don't worry about the corn wrapping so much right now. If it doesn't look right ingame, we'll repeat this upcoming process on them later.
...okay, hold down shift and rightclick one square on each leaf. Doesn't matter which, you just want one on each.
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat4.jpg) Like So
With that done, hit Ctrl+L to activate select all linked (this selects all faces, edges, or vertices connected to the highlighted element within the object...yeah, that's pretty obvious by the name and now I feel like I'm being condescending, but this is a tutorial so shut up and bear with me), and you'll get this...
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat5.jpg) Clack.
If you missed one, don't fret. Just hold down shift, select one face on the unselected leaf, and hit Ctrl+L again.
We're almost done. With your leaves still selected, go back to your materials tab, highlight the "Leaves" mat, and click the "Assign" button.
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat6.jpg) Swish
...you're done. Now while still under the leaves mat, go to the bottom, custom properties, add DBL. You should now only be doubling your leaves, and keeping your polycount relatively low.
Now Blender's kinda confusing because it doesn't always let you know what surface is assigned to what material. Since we're using the same texture and the same UV map, that just makes it twice as confusing. If you want to check it out, highlight the leaves mat, go back to the textures tab, and scroll up to the top to see your texture. See the little checkmark next to it? Click it off, and the leaves should turn from leafy to solid grey.
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat7.jpg) Like so
...if it doesn't, that means you're not in GLSL mode, and gawww DAMNIT....Blender is goofy sometimes with it's wiggity whack weirdness. Lets walk you through that right fast.
Hit the N Key, go down to display and pop it open. Look for shading. It should say multitexture. Open it up and select GLSL.
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat8.jpg) 'are you go!
"Well, that's simple enough", you're probably thinking, "I'll just click that right fast, and...MY CORN TURNED BLACK! YOU MESSED IT UP FOREVER YOU GODDAMN BASTARD". Naw. It's not black. It's just no longer lit. GLSL mode requires you to have a light in the scene for anything to show up. We'll fix that by adding a hemisphere light (which I have highlighted in the shot above), and show you how to use the 3D cursor right fast.
Okay, lets switch you to a quad view. Do this by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Q. Hit Shift+C to center your 3D cursor to the origin (fancy word for 0 XYZ). Now, in one of your side views, left click above the stalk. Your cursor should be floating over the corn.
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat9.jpg) Like so.
Now, go to the header, hit "add", go to "lamp", and select "hemi"...
(
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3018396/NewMat10.jpg) LIIIGGHHHTTSS
There you go. Now you can do all kinds of fancy stuff.
...and this probably scared the shit out of you and chased you away from 3D editing forever. Understandable, but really...it's not that hard. At first it is, sure. Everything's weird and confusing and dumb looking. But once you've done it a couple of times you get used to it. By 5-6 times, it's practically old hat. By that point, you can do it without really thinking about it.
Export your model, and you should have your double sided leaves along with fancy Blender realtime rendering to boot!
sNeaksieGarrett on 13/12/2012 at 19:54
This is just a quick post for the moment. I have to get back to work, but I'll check out the tutorial later today. Thanks Renzatic.
I'm familiar with tris and quads. After all, I've done modeling classes before in college. It's just that it has been a while since I've messed with 3d studio max or anything (until the other day with anim8or and now blender) and I forgot what the term polygon really meant. I always found modeling frustrating, especially when we had to model a hand at one point in this one class. I was simply asking if tri = polygon. I always get confused by the term polygon. In any case, wow, I didn't think about how converting to bin would actually increase polygon count. I guess that explains why the model is so intensive, although I also made it double-sided per renzatic's instructions which adds polys.
sNeaksieGarrett on 13/12/2012 at 23:34
I know I shouldn't double-post, but time has gone by, I am getting sick of "last edited by..." at the bottom of my posts so. Yeah.
Anywho, woot! Thanks for the tutorial dude. I got it exported and here it is (no annoying disappearing of leaves):
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1551[/ATTACH]
Stupid question: How do I see tris in blender? Or am I gonna just have to manually calculate what the tris would be?
I have to say, I'm lovin' the dark exporter plugin. Much easier to just open blender, modify the file and export right into the thief folder. Not that 3ds to bin can't do that, but it's an old program and tries to automatically scale the image, blah blah... Just sayin', the dark exporter is great.
