mikebart

cheers for doing that Synide, i also get the way modo handles its vertex channels now after watching your tutorial. So we can pretty much confirm that the problem is happening somewhere between modo and O2. I managed to get the vertex normals into modo ok. When i froze transforms in maya after running the Project Vertnormals Out script, i didnt have a freeze normals tickbox ticked in the dialogue in maya, I thought this would fix everything but they still aren't coming through in O2 properly (still winding) heres the updated .lxo if you're interested in having a look: EnglishElm_VertProjOut_FixedVertNormals.zip ok thanks, thats really helpful to know, im working on a new test version of the tree where ill try what you've suggested with the distinct faces for polys. hmm, i might have sent you the wrong one, or opened it while I had other scenes open and then saved it in modo, (still getting used to modo scene management) thanks again for all the help with this, im not getting my hopes too high for this working now, but ill try to explore every avenue we can come up with till i hit a dead end, at least we'll know what doesnt work eh. ---------- Post added at 10:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:08 AM ---------- I just found out that since maya2008, theres been a function called 'transfer attributes', you can find it in 'mesh/transfer attributes'. Basically you can copy attributes from one mesh to another, for example vertex position and vertex normals, the numbers of the vertexes dont even have to match because it uses a raycast method, similar to how a normal map is baked from high to low poy geo. So its perfect for projecting vertex normals not only from a point but from any shape, forget about the 'vertex Normal Project Out' script if you have maya2008. I probably would have known about this earlier if I was a dedicated maya user, but i usually use 3dsmax;) I've written a quick tutorial on how to use it for your vegetation; 1. start by creating a polysphere next to your foliage model. 2. select the foliage first then the sphere, making the sphere the primary selection. 3. Open in the file menu, mesh/transfer atrributes, have only vertex position on in the dialogue (refer to image below) 4. select only the sphere object and drag/translate it over the foliage object until it 'shrinkwraps' itself around the shape of the foliage as shown in the image below. 5. freeze all transformations, now select the sphere then the foliage, making the foliage the primary selection, 6. in the transfer atributes dialogue switch off vertex position and swith on vertex normal and the foliage takes on the vertex normals of the shrinkwrapped sphere object.

not much luck with the importer synide, although i dont think its any fault of yours, i tried converting a few primitives, and the vert normals came through fine in O2, so im guessing something strange is going on with my mesh, you'll see in the pic below that all the vert normals are projecting out along x and y. this is actually whats happening to the vertex normals once imported (.obj) into modo from maya after maya's done all its magic, it looks like one axis on each vert normal is being individually rotated 90, giving it a swirly appearance, it took me a while to realize that something was wrong. heres the .lxo file which ive been exporting to .lwo from incase you want to have a look: EnglishElm_VertProjOut2.lxo Im freezing all transforms before export, im not sure what else i could be doing, i've literally only been using modo a couple of days so would be good if someone more experienced with modo could have a look at it.

great!, thanks, ill check it out tonight and let you know how i get on with the vert normals, good to know about the modo exporter

Well, I managed to get the vertex normals and UV's working in modo by, exporting a .fbx from 3dsmax, then exporting that as a .obj from modo, then importing it to maya and running the project vert normals out script, and then finally importing it back into modo. If i export it to .lwo from modo, could I get one of you guys to import to lightwave, see if the vert normals stay intact and then export to .p3d?, btw, any intention to make a modo .p3d exporter synide?

so the white numbers and markings have are a stencil alpha right?, it looks like the image is getting messed up on the smaller bits because the areas you described probably arent clean enough on the alpha channel to clip neatly, even 1 tone difference in pixel colour will affect how clean the alpha clips the image. if you cant clean it up easily, then you probably need to allocate more resolution to the numbers and markings, (then there will be more pixels for the alpha to work with giving you a cleaner image regardless) 256x256 is probably a bit low for something with that much information on it, especially if you want to read all the small lettering. edit: or try using and alpha blend shader

thanks for the suggestions, I had a good crack at it last night and today but i havent had much luck yet, i tried what you said DaSquade, all this exporting and importing from different programs is driving me nuts, looks like maya 2010 has dropped its .obj exporter for .fbx, you can switch it on in the plugin manager but it doesnt export with any parameters or anything, i dont need to export multiple UV's for this, but with .obj i cant even export a single UV, I also tried to copy the UV's from a .fbx import in modo, but no luck there, might be due to my inexperience with the program, I can definitly see modo being great for creating vegetation with the replicators, had some good fun with them :). i've uploaded a few samples to the internets for if anyone wants to have a play around with them, you'll notice strait away if you import the 'EnglishElm_maya.obj' into modo that the vert normals are projecting from a center but it has no UV information, when I import the same file into 3dsmax the vert normals reset to default and no UVs too. VertProjOut_samples.rar

looking good namman2!

It has crossed my mind that BIS are aware of this technique, its something more commonly found in sprite sheet impostors and dynamic impostors of vegetation, which is something we've never really seen in a BIS engine as far as im aware. Some trees in Arma2 do look like they could be projecting vert normals from a point, but I know they're lightmapped so that would defeat the purpose, i think. Well, I gave it a bit of a go, i couldn't get the .obj to export from maya too well, the vert normals were good but the UV's were blank when i imported a sample into O2. When i export from maya and into max, the vert normals reset themselves. ill keep trying though, thanks for the advice, any more ideas would be very welcome.

yeah, I hear a lot of things about game engines, I usually assume that one thing goes for another and often get it wrong :) Either way, lightmaps on second UV's are known to be expensive and dropping them from the material would probably speed things up. I think we could be doing a lot more with the vertex normals on the higher lods, possibly as an alternative to adding a second UV set/lightmap. Its just something ive had some experience with before and would like to apply to Arma vegetation. Its a good, cheap way to get vegetation shading nicely with no extra cost, because you're just using something thats already there to get the desired effect. the pics below show a bush that's made up of several clusters of foliage, each cluster is spherical in shape with the vertex normals projected out from the center, giving the foliage more of a volumetric appearance. I picked up the .mel script for Maya off a guy called joojaa over at Highend3d.com, here it is: global proc jooProjectNormalOutForm(vector $center,string $points[]){ for ($item in $points){ float $pos[]; vector $dir; //would need small tweak to support vertex faces $pos=`pointPosition -world $item`; $dir=unit(<<$pos[0],$pos[1],$pos[2]>>-$center); polyNormalPerVertex -xyz ($dir.x) ($dir.y) ($dir.z) $item; } } // run for all selected vertices facing away form world ceneter // no more then rudimentary chek of correctness so be carefull // what you choose. So only choose vertexes jooProjectNormalOutForm(<<0,0,0>>,`ls -sl-fl`) Just run place the proc into file named jooProjectNormalOutForm.mel in your user scripts directory and then put the jooProjectNormalOutForm(<<0,0,0>>,`ls -sl-fl -type float3 `) into your shelf as a button. (mmb drag teh text there form command editor) Restart Maya done. Select some vertices and hit the button. Modify center to match what you need. I've been meaning to try and get this going for 3dsmax, i just havent picked up my trees for a while, im not much of a scripter either so I'd rely on someone else to write it for me, I've had a few max scripters I know have a go at it, and they tell me its impossible/very difficult to do in max for some reason, maybe this is something easily done in Modo Synide?

hey ABS, i will get to part 2 eventually which will explain how i did the lod's, i've actually started rebuilding the Elm from scratch, i felt there were a few things that could be improved in the workflow aswell as testing out some new ideas, feel free to pm me about anything. I think the main reason for Arma1 trees being more efficient than Arma2 is that the arma2 trees have a second UV channel with a multiplied lightmap for extra shadow and colour variation, having a second UV channel at least doubles the vert count of a tree model.

have a look at the camo net .rvmat, im pretty sure its uses an alpha with a normal map

Thanks ZeroG, this is great!

if the "face" "sort" thing isnt working for you, you could try importing it into a 3d app, make sure the base of the cockpit is only calling 1 material and is a single object, and that the dials and animated panels, buttons etc... have there own unique textures if you want them to, then re import it into O2. I'd imagine you're going to end up with alot of sections with this anyway, with all the animated dials, flashing buttons etc..., which is pretty common for a fully animated cockpit i'd imagine, maybe you should pm Fortran and ask him how many sections his F117 cockpit is, could give you a better idea of what you should be aiming for.

thanks guys, im predicting about 50% of the polys will be in the turret, its about 8000 verts at the moment, im expecting the whole tank to hopefully end up around 16000 to 18000 verts, the rest of the tank doesn't really have a lot of protruding details so i should be able to have most of it normalmapped into the hull, then theres all the guns, hatches and things, oh shit.... :eek:

nice helmet Icewindo, funny vid :) just a small update on the mk3 turret, theres a few little rendering issues i need to sort out but its almost there,

looks awesome IceBreakr, downloading

Awesome work SA, just got a chance to have a good look at it, the extra animations really show that level of time and care that you usually only see in a good mod (as opposed to a production asset). my only minor crit is with the smooth groups, I noticed a few faceted surfaces on details that should probably be smooth, like on those round things with the handles on them at the rear. the textures look beautiful, they really are a work of art, I noticed some of the _co maps are 4096x4096, thats great, cause now i dont have to be afraid of using 4096's and if anyone asks ill just say that SA uses them too :)

some more progress on the mk3, still got lots of little details to go on the turret, but the base mesh is pretty much done.

Im not too sure what you mean, im not too familiar with that side of the tools yet, but there are a few ways to do what i think you mean found in vanilla 3dsmax. try using groups, you can open them for if you want to select objects inside of them, double click the pink bounding box to select all within the group. Im not sure if it affects the exporting or any other factor of SA's tool having grouped objects though or, try using selection sets, just left of the mirror button is a box called "Create Selection Set" you just select the bits you want and type a name into the box e.g 'all' and then you can click the drop down menu and select a selection set, this is a good way cause it doesnt really affect the objects themselves

anything to make terrain easier, thanks for the effort!

Just made a start on the ingame model for the turret, I havent had alot of free time lately to work on it, but i just thought i'd post some picks to show some progress and how the high poly model compare's to the low poly model. So you can see im baking the normal map and the AO to texture from the high poly to the low poly ingame model, and that part of the turret is actually only 420 verts, but it will end up being alot more once all the details are re modeled for ingame, then the turret will also receive AO from all the details shown in the 3rd image aswell.

Hey Berghoff, they look great!, what software are you using to make them?

Im sorry, that was a crap explanation, ill try again. Have a look in for example: "buildings2\ca\buildings2\HouseBlocks\HouseBlock_B\Data", look at the b1*.paa's, "houseblock_b1_mlod_co.paa" is a complete render of; the result of "b1_mask.paa" _co maps and "b1_mc" combined. So what im suggesting is that you could do a similar thing with your terrain tiles, with or without the _mc.paa, as a way of having a less expensive material on the more distant lods. All I was saying about 3dsmax is that you could set up all the texture maps in a shader containing; the mask result and the _mc.paa and render the mlod texture, but come to think of it again, that might be much easier to set up in photoshop using an action script. hope that was better :)

yeah, its for the normals, ill bake the normal map and the ambient occlusion from the high poly model down to a lower poly model using the projection modifier in 3dsmax.

Ive been playing the 1.40, loving the mission, nice work, is there a reason why i cant move and redeploy the MHQ from the original base position?