Weapon Models or objects

by James007 on 09/16/2007 17:07, 28 messages, last message: 09/22/2007 06:49, 6362 views, last view: 05/04/2024 19:27

If any one here doing a Sauerbraten project I could make weapon models and maybe even objects. i cant texture(really bad at that),havnt learned to animate, or code, but maybe my models could be useful? i can make high poly or low poly models, and give you them in a few formats so you can get one of them into a .MD2 format or whatever Sauerbraten uses.

Here's my latest model for an example of what i can do.

Pistol model, 504 polygons- 644 vertices- some uncounted time

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=2.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=1.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=newren5.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=newren4.jpg

504 polygons really isnt as much as some of you people think is. Well maybe for the sauerbraten engine, i have no idea. At the moment i am working on an AK47 model, its coming along nice i guess(but no where near done).

so any request, suggestions, or comments?

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#9: Re: ..

by demosthenes on 09/17/2007 03:16, refers to #8

The GPU has to render each individual triangle one at a time, point by point. Since a hudgun is a constant load, you'd like it to be fairly small, though as the average GPU speed/power increases, you can use higher poly models, of course. So early hudgun models (all games now) had fairly low poly counts, because of the limitations on GPUs. Newer cards can handle large poly count hudguns without blinking.

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#10: ..

by Captain_Ahab on 09/17/2007 04:04

regardless of cpu/gpu power, fewer tris are better. Especially for monsters and mapmodels so that more can be displayed at once without slowdown. Detail should come from texturing for the most part.

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#11: ..

by SheeEttin on 09/17/2007 04:32

Nobody's mentioned it, so I might as well...

One of the "selling points" of Sauerbraten is that it can run pretty well on older hardware. Assuming you turn the shaders down and water effects off, of course.

That's the biggest reason for keeping the triangles down.

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#12: ..

by tentus_ on 09/17/2007 04:42

Some of my favorite hudguns to date had even fewer polys than the cube weapons... and I remember when DCP's hudguns (several of which are in use in Sauer now) where intended for people with "extra frames" just as shadows are intended for people with extra frames now. Goes to show how fast things are going in the graphics world.

But unlike shadows, reflections, and shaders, hudguns can't be adjusted to fit. Unless we have redundant models (low- and high-poly versions), everyone has to render the same guns every frame. I don't think people with older machines will appreciate being told they have to play with /hudgun 1 because the extra thousand triangles is making their machine hurt.

And those extra tris will rack up even faster if the plans for visible enemy weapons becomes a reality: suppose we have all the vweps at 1000 tris, times twelve players or so... 12000 tris at a time, which is about 11700 tris more than average right now. If the guns were streamlines to say 750 tris then we're only looking at 9000 extra, or 8700 tris above current.

Bottom line is, fewer polies will always have its merits. Most detail work can be achieved with clever use of texturing and angles, you just have to plan.

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#13: Re: ..

by shadow,516 on 09/17/2007 04:55, refers to #12

for detail, you can always make a ridiculously detailed model and a regular one, then generate normalmaps...

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#14: ..

by James007 on 09/17/2007 12:24

thanks for the info, i understand better. i have a lower poly version of the pistol, and of course its lower detail(and i am not going to texture it myself).

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#15: Making different vweps for different weps

by Jake77777 on 09/20/2007 02:53

I was planning on making vweps for each weapon. Like if a person if holding a rifle then i can see them holding the rifle. I was wondering if i would have to change any of the files, and then have to recompile the whole game. Im pretty sure you dont because i saw the files for the vweps and each weapon has its own vwep, which is \"pistol\" for all of them. So if i make the models and then change the names of the vweps for each weapon, then do u guys thing it will work?

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#16: Re: Making different vweps for different weps

by SheeEttin on 09/20/2007 04:09, refers to #15

I think you need to somehow tell it where it should be in relation to the body (so it's not being held by the barrel or other weird place), but other than that, yes, you shouldn't have too much trouble.

Of course, if I were doing it, I'd have no clue what I was doing.

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#17: ok...?

by James007 on 09/20/2007 21:27

Well any ways.....

Here is the AK47 im making, which is not quite not done yet. Its 587polys(1476 triangulated), 1718 vertices, the high* polycount is not because of detail(which i havnt really added any yet) but because the model is so big. The clip(which does need some work) and trigger are not attached to the actual model. Over 2 hours of work i think...

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=AK377.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=AK378.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=AK3710.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=AK379.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=AK3711.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=AK3712.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=AK375.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=AK376.jpg

I "made up" some parts of the model, but other wise i tried my best to make it look like an AK. Comments or questions, any thing?

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#18: Lower poly pistol.....

by James007 on 09/20/2007 21:40

The lower poly pistol model is 299 polys(616 triangulated...), well any ways here are some pics....

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=new1.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=newren2.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=newren1.jpg

http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=new2.jpg

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#19: ..

by SheeEttin on 09/20/2007 23:26

Not bad.
However, there are three things I don't like: on the AK-47, the magazine has a funny curve to it... You can see a good picture of an AK-47 here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AK-47_type_II_Part_DM-ST-89-01131.jpg

As for your pistol, the trigger exhibits the same funny curve. Also, the grip is rather thick and irregular; compare the shape of the Jericho 941 F here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jehrico_941_F.jpg

Of course, none of these will be really noticeable in-game... I'm just saying what I saw.

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#20: ....

by Jake77777 on 09/21/2007 01:30

I like the AK but i agree with SheeEttin that the magazine is curved differently then the real thing. I know a way to reduce the polycount. If you look at the existing models for sauer, the sides of the weapon you cant ever see are not there, to reduce the count. You could do that and, if you want to, add more detail to your model.

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#21: ..

by James007 on 09/21/2007 02:30

Yeah, i agree about the AK mag(and the pistol trigger). It is a bit oddly shaped. The pistol's handle isn't that thick, but i could make it slimmer to be more realistic looking.

o and jake that is a good point, I could chop off the whole back of the AK if it were in a game(you wouldn't really see it unless there was iron sight aiming). But to just show it off, I'll leave it as a whole ;). I would give it out for someone to use in a project though, They could modify it to how ever they want.

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#22: Re: ....

by tentus_ on 09/21/2007 02:35, refers to #20

To Jake:
Doing that invalidates it from becomigna vwep or used as a normal model in the environment. It's a great trick, but it means the model is then usable for only one specific thing. Also, doesn't Sauer have fairly efficient backface culling now, or am I remembering wrong?

To James:
http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l196/junkwarJAMES/new%20models%2007/?action=view¤t=AK3711.jpg
I noticed in the above screenshot that the barrel of the gun is merged with the body into a single mesh. I'm guessing that 0% of any of the polygons is not visible (or all of every triangle is visible, to word it another way)?

In game modeling, it is fine to have polygons partially obstructed, so long as you have space on the skin for the unseen triangle corner. This means the 8 polygons that make up the flat surface perpendicular to the barrel could be reduced to 4 polygons, give or take. It really doesn't matter that there's a spot that cannot be seen.

Similarly, where the octagonal bands go around the barrel... they're meshed with the barrel too, right? So there's actually 3 sets of octagonal cylinders making up the barrel, and then the bands themselves have 24 polygons in order to bulge. The barrel can be just one octagonal cylinder, and if you really want to get the best out of your polycount, you can make the bands have points rather than empty flat ends... so you would have 8 polygons and 16 triangles rather than 24 polygons.

If you need a graphical explanation I can cook one up, my wording is not so hot right now.

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#23: ..

by James007 on 09/21/2007 02:42

yeah, the whole model is one mesh except for the clip and trigger.
thanks for the info, i will use it when i cut the polys down. Any info thats helpful is welcome tentus.

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#24: ..

by geartrooper^2 on 09/21/2007 02:47

There is a workaround. After skinning, texturing and animating, duplicate the mesh and set the dupe aside for vweps. Then strip the original to only show viewport faces. Voila. Hud and vwep.

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#25: ...

by Jake77777 on 09/22/2007 04:38

I know, but the vwep mesh could be different than the hudgun mesh. Even make the vwep mesh less detailed then the hudgun mesh.

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#26: Re: ...

by SheeEttin on 09/22/2007 04:46, refers to #25

Right, the vweps should be much less detailed, because there'll be several on-screen at once, and they're not big enough (nor stay in one place long enough) to really get a good look at them.

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#27: Two models, vwep and hudgun

by tentus_ on 09/22/2007 05:57

Would it save performance to have additional texture maps (normal etc) for the hudgun but not the vweps? Would it make sense for vweps to have a lower skin resolution than the hudgun, or is the difference negligible?

It would certainly make sense to have two different models. If having different skins wouldn't save much performance, it could be done with relatively little increase in file space, by means of the model hierarchy system.

This is somewhat unrelated, but couldn't vwep occulling be done more loosely to save performance as well? If we're talking about models over 1000 tris, it could save a lot of performance to have vweps only appear at a relatively close range (maybe have a general "mystery gun" model that is hard to make out noticable features from a distance.)

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#28: ..

by Acord on 09/22/2007 06:49

The textures are usually what eat the performance unless the polys are SUPER high, since an extra 1000 polys spread across 16 players makes little impact on a card that pushes millions.

Textures on the other hand would have to be loaded twice, and they'd take up more video card ram.

Mind you, I could be totally wrong.

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