Offering my services - Modeler/Texturer

[Oblivion]

I've only done normal map baking once. So not that experienced. I get my normal maps from hand-made height maps. If you're better at it yourself, you can bake it after I'm done and merge it with the normal/bump map I will provide later.

Tips:
A lot of the parts can be mirrored AFTER the unwrap to save texture space.

Just a suggestion here- the normal map bake can be difficult if you mirror and overlap the uv surfaces.

Actually no. Hand made height to normal maps have no problems with mirroring or overlapping at all.

But for baking, yep I know (the submachine gun I posted above has mirrored UV's). I just realized how difficult it will be after seeing the high poly. LOL But it is actually possible to bake mirrored (and as such overlapped) UV's. As I've detailed above. You just need to delete (or detach and hide) half of the mirrored areas before baking it. The problem is, this needs to be done early on, before texturing.

[Oblivion]

Oh... and P.P.P.S. I can still continue reunwrapping it properly for you HALVED, if you want, and give it back to you for baking the normals/AO. But you'd need to split the high poly as well yourself.

[ai]

I just wonder, does the UV matters if you are going to bake normal from a high poly version, cause if so they need identical UV layout or it'll blow up.
I actually have never done such a thing before, created normal maps from high poly equivalents.

But still, unwrapping a halved version will probably be easier than the whole thing.

[Oblivion]

I just wonder, does the UV matters if you are going to bake normal from a high poly version, cause if so they need identical UV layout or it'll blow up.
I actually have never done such a thing before, created normal maps from high poly equivalents.

But still, unwrapping a halved version will probably be easier than the whole thing.

Yes it matters. A lot. Heh.

The high poly does not need to be unwrapped at all. You can simply just halve it too and fit it over the unwrapped halved low poly, then bake it like thus.

But, you need to unwrap it properly or the results will be bad. I know that 2048x2048 material sets are the standard for normal mapped modern game resources, and if you use tiny UV islands instead of utilizing the entire 2048x2048 res area, you will still have a 1024x1024 quality texture or worse. It's important to keep the resolution of the actual used areas high especially in something as detailed as this gun (awesome high poly btw. ). One thing to keep in mind: The spaces between the islands in your UV's is wasted space. They will still factor in the file size of your maps, while contributing nothing at all to how the model looks ingame.

For mirroring: it's not so much the ease, but the optimization. The only reason why some modern game resources are not mirrored is so each side can be uniquely textured (like lettering for example, on the chest of a character model), and even then, artists will cheat as much as possible by mirroring parts which can be mirrored without affecting the rest (the arms, the feet, the pants, the eyes, etc.).

For guns of first person shooters, that is not the case, since you rarely if ever see the other side up close. So they're usually mirrored as a rule.

And also, why is your low poly version so very low poly? Heh. Even nexuiz can afford much higher polycounts for the lowpoly, I'd imagine (our guns for our mod for example, average at 3000 polies). The closer the low poly versions are to the actual shape of the high poly (the tighter they fit together), the better. The normal map generated from the high poly projected into your current lowpoly would not be very good.

I'm still offering to unwrap the lowpoly for you halved and then give it back for baking (if you decide to not do any more changes to the lowpoly, and even then I can't guarantee it would bake well given the drastic difference between the two models). This would also mean resetting the pivots though (as the .obj model you gave me was off-center and rotated.. ). You won't be able to work on it until I've finished unwrapping. And you will have to reattach any animations you have done to the new unwrapped mesh.

So... not ideal as well. You could try and bake it now with your current unwrap and see how it turns out first before spending more time with it.

As I've said, I've only done high poly to low poly once before, so I'm not much help sorry. I find it difficult still and the generation of the normal maps itself will take hours if not an entire day depending on the complexity of the model. Also, for your first time high poly to low poly baking, it's recommended to build the low poly first before the high poly, I think. High poly first then low poly is usually reserved for more detailed areas of the models like faces for characters etc.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Sorry. Don't mean to sound pedantic.

[ai]

Ok, I'll halv the models then make a few tests with baking normal maps to get the hang of it better. I have played around with such things before but nothing really big. The reasoning for such poly count is that for Nexuiz it's rather much actually (as it's meant to run good on older machines as well). People want 2000 top be the limit, though certain models (like this) have a bit more. But who knows, I might talk to the devs and see what they think and want.

If my test with the normal baking gives a good result I can re-unwrap the whole thing again. I'm using UV Layout and it's very easy and fast doing it with such an application. It's almost fun as well. -_^
If it turns out that I have too few poly's for the normal to look good I might spare a few here and there so that it reaches like 3000 poly's.

So I'll start doing this tomorrow, going to sleep for now.

[C.Brutail]

I'm not new (see date of joining). LOL.

Yeah, sorry, it was my fault.
Though I've had a strange feeling I've seen you around in the past, especially your signature pic was familiar.

[Oblivion]

Ok, I'll halv the models then make a few tests with baking normal maps to get the hang of it better. I have played around with such things before but nothing really big. The reasoning for such poly count is that for Nexuiz it's rather much actually (as it's meant to run good on older machines as well). People want 2000 top be the limit, though certain models (like this) have a bit more. But who knows, I might talk to the devs and see what they think and want.

If my test with the normal baking gives a good result I can re-unwrap the whole thing again. I'm using UV Layout and it's very easy and fast doing it with such an application. It's almost fun as well. -_^
If it turns out that I have too few poly's for the normal to look good I might spare a few here and there so that it reaches like 3000 poly's.

So I'll start doing this tomorrow, going to sleep for now.

Wokey. Good luck. I still need to familiarize myself more with the process myself. But not now. I'm a bit burnt out from our project work and hoping to do what I enjoy the most - pure texturing. So I can't help out on that.

Anyway, The offer still stands for the texturing afterwards. In the meantime, anyone else? I'm really itching to retexture the quark player model for example.

And Brutail, nah. I didn't hang out in the forums much.

[Rad Ished]

Hi there,
I just finished this model of a flameball weapon, all the links and pics are in this thread:
http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=5418
Please feel free to have a go at it, while you're at it you could have a look at my textures and tell me what im doing wrong, id be very interested to have a look at your source files to see how you go about texturing.
Let me know if you require any other resources.
...
I'm around a bit tomorrow, but then im away for two weeks,
also i've just started today on a tiger based player model:

but i won't work on this for 2 weeks or be around at all :/
and welcome back

[Flying Steel]

If my test with the normal baking gives a good result I can re-unwrap the whole thing again. I'm using UV Layout and it's very easy and fast doing it with such an application. It's almost fun as well. -_^
If it turns out that I have too few poly's for the normal to look good I might spare a few here and there so that it reaches like 3000 poly's.

You might try setting up your low poly model for subdivision surface smoothing (set "creases", not sure what they are called in Maya) and then just use that to create a high poly version. I find that subsurf keeps the meshes fairly similar so that you don't end up with errors in your normal map bake. And both versions inherit the same uv map automatically, if you want to use the high poly model textured for any reason.

[tZork]

WB Oblivion, some ace looking samples you have there .