Weapon modelling?!

[TheReddog 0]

Just a few q's;

- What sort of tri count should I aim at, I know it's subjective but give me a ballpark figure.

- How many lod's would be best for a weapon?

- What sort of format/exporters will I need (I model in maya 2008)

- Anyone got some good tutes for normal mapping etc?

Thanks in advance.

[Panda-PL- 0]

Just a few q's;

- What sort of tri count should I aim at, I know it's subjective but give me a ballpark figure.

- How many lod's would be best for a weapon?

- What sort of format/exporters will I need (I model in maya 2008)

- Anyone got some good tutes for normal mapping etc?

Thanks in advance.

Quote[/b] ]- What sort of tri count should I aim at, I know it's subjective but give me a ballpark figure.

The BIS M4A1 has 2.5k. in 1st resolution lod and 3.5k in pilot view lod.

However if a weapon is scoped, has RIS etc. it will be double the value or even up to 10k. if it's a really complex shape.

My advice is to reduce polycount as long as reduction is little noticible ingame, but stop when it is seriously hurting the model.

Some things have to be hipoly, for example if Aimpoint Scope had less polies it would be noticibly squarish. There are also objects like for example muzzle flash hider which appears on the game screen 99% of gametime and it would look horrible if you could tell it is a hexagonal, not circle.

Quote[/b] ]- How many lod's would be best for a weapon?

BiS weappons have around 6 resolution LODs (M4A1 has 6).

Quote[/b] ]- What sort of format/exporters will I need (I model in maya 2008)

You need .3ds file for meshes and UV coordinates. Textures are imported separately - you apply them in O2, the UV coordinates are imported allready.

You need TexView2 to convert textures.

O2 supports floating geometry. If you have problems with edge hardness (and you probably will) uncheck "automerge" window when importing in O2 - this will split mesh along hard edges that form a loop (you can also do it before exporting).

BTW: the hard edges will be split anyway later, durring binarisation, no use merging them manually.

You do not need to binarise model when testing/beta.

Quote[/b] ]- Anyone got some good tutes for normal mapping etc?

Normal maps and specular maps are well known in 3D arts. Esspecially with normal maps you should have no problems.

As for Specular and AS maps it is enought to make them in grayscale and save in TV2 with propper file extensions (names ending for example with _smdi.paa and _AS.paa). These can be found on BiS Wiki.

The TV2 autoimatically clears unused color channels.

[dmitri 0]

- What sort of format/exporters will I need (I model in maya 2008)

O2 supports Maya's native OBJ too as an alternative to 3DS, just enable the objexport plugin under Maya's plugin manager and you're good to go.