Once again, I'm volunteering for work.

I'm up for retexturing. Particularly some of the new guns. I noticed their textures need a bit of next-gen lovin.

Not experienced with character modeling sadly (I attempted it but gave up because I had to do the animations myself too). But I can try and upgrade the textures too if it's unwrapped and ready.

I can't be arsed to do the digging and implementing though (finding the needed files, converting them to usable formats, etc.) since I'm very bad with even the tiniest bit of coding needed and also very busy in other areas. What I just need are simple: The needed .obj or .3ds files and the old texture sets. I will then work with them and submit them back.

So if anyone wants to and can spare the time to get me the needed files plus a little briefing on what they want it to look like. I can take them and give you back a retextured model with a full material set: color, luma, bump/normal map, specularity, and additional masks for team colors.

Examples of my texturing/modeling work:

Awesome work sample's there my good Sir!

Please don't give up the modeling. I'm sure that if you model something (or ANY content that you might suspect have a Nexuiz feeling to it), upload it to box.net or similar and share the download url here on the forums. People will use it if they appreciate your work!

Please license it under the GPL though, so it can be used with nexuiz. As far as animating and any other problems that might arise, people will help out!
Especially if they find it awesome stuff and based on their own willingness, amount skill and spare time, people will help out!
This is a community, you are not alone! :3

IMHO, the textures on the maps could need a over haul, also of course some of the models.
Get a copy of the current SVN and look under trunk/data/textures
Look at my signature below, on how to getting a copy of the SVN.

Oblivion wrote:I can't be arsed to do the digging and implementing though (finding the needed files, converting them to usable formats, etc.) since I'm very bad with even the tiniest bit of coding needed and also very busy in other areas. What I just need are simple: The needed .obj or .3ds files and the old texture sets. I will then work with them and submit them back.

What format do you want? You can get anything you ask for as a .obj
Or if you just want to see some of your completed work in nexuiz post a model as an OBJ and the normal, colour and specular textures. Someone on this forum (like me) will compile and package it for you.

Oblivion wrote:Not experienced with character modeling sadly (I attempted it but gave up because I had to do the animations myself too). But I can try and upgrade the textures too if it's unwrapped and ready.

Well since basically all of the animations in nexuiz are the same you don't really have to worry about that. Just do the geometry and someone on this forum (like me) will compile and package it for you.

Of course, I'll GPL my work. I really want to help, but I do not want to get bogged down learning stuff specifically for Nexuiz when other people can do it much faster. It's why I gave up contributing before. My area of expertise is texturing, and that's what I'd like to contribute to the community.

I do not want to make new stuff, I'm too fizzed out after the recent harrowing release rush of the mod project I belong to, to have any creativity left. I basically just want to texture/retexture preexisting stuff.

So if anyone has any models (preferably unwrapped) that they'd like to have textured, I'll gladly do it. Just supply me the .obj or .3ds file. The Player models for example (since I have no idea how to extract those from the pk3 files, nor any desire to hehe).

Also after scrapping the old player model I was working on, I'm working on a new much simpler one, but will only give the obj file and textures once I'm finished. So definitely not giving up character modeling, heh. Hopefully someone will animate it for me. But I need to finish it first. Will still take a while, while I make the head and arms, unwrap it, and texture it.

An hour's work:



Taking a break now.

EDIT: And no, no SVN lol. My internet is sketchy enough as it is. Only small stuff for now.

You come in the nick it time really. I have modeled out a new Nex gun however, I am far from being a good texture artist and I've tried to texture this model but failed miserably.
I've asked Morphed if he wanted to texture it as he as well is good with that but didn't want to. I was thinking releasing the model for future people to just grab it and all.

I would be glad if you could texture it.
Link to some images (latest update): http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?p=69292#69292

Link to .obj: http://ai.kurotorobert.com/nexuiz/models/nex.zip

PS. What app do you texture in? If you want, you can have my photoshop file as I work in that app, if you want to continue with the current texture. Or if you want you could just redo it completely.
I'll edit this post later with a link to the model, .obj of course and it is unwrapped. Though, it may not be the best unwrapping (as it was meant for me mainly and for me it worked) but hopefully it will be of better use than non-unwrapped.

PPS. I have a high poly version of this weapon. It's not meant to be released as GPL but only serve as reference for normal map, meaning I do not wish for this model to be released. If you want it I can give it to you and see if you can extract a normal map from it. I haven't done that yet.

Nice to see a new talented texturer/modeller in the community!

Welcome!

Really awesome works!Compliments!I'd like the semi-automatic shotgun very much! Lovely texture! What software do you use?

I'm not new (see date of joining). LOL. I'm actually coming back after a year's sabbatical due to the new version of nexuiz BSOD'ing my computer more and more in servers where I have high ping (pretty much every server left) after Galt's Gulch died.

Will do ai. And thank jeebus it's unwrapped.

I use GIMP and Photoshop. But primarily GIMP. (only use photoshop for organizing masterfiles for compatibility with our art resources in our mod). GIMP can open pretty much anything PS can. But yeah, the reference picture will be enough for me.

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.

And hm... messy unwrap heh.

Tips:
A lot of the parts can be mirrored AFTER the unwrap to save texture space. And minimize as much space as possible between the islands as well as rotate them first so they align better with whatever grain of metal/wood/etc you're going to texture them with. Also the parts nearer to the viewer (the stock and the scope) usually have larger texture spaces than the parts farthest to the viewer, as they are the ones most seen and thus need higher resolutions. I can try and fix it then give you back the obj for baking the normal map in a bit.

I'll do this now.

Oblivion wrote: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.

Hm... wait. I didn't see your high poly before. Looking at your high poly... it's so radically different, it will be very difficult to fit a texture over it without rendering out an ambient occlusion map based off the high poly model first.

That means, I can't modify your unwrap at all. Unless I'm also willing to do the high poly to low poly baking myself. Which, I'm not, sorry. The process is still new to me and it's very intensive. I have actually only done it once before. For this gun:



The difference is. The model above was actually a high poly baked unto a medium poly. Very little difference between the two (just smoother edges), so I actually could texture it from the lowpoly itself easily.

Your model is more problematic because there is a sharp difference between the high poly and the low poly which necessitates the texturing to be AFTER rendering out the normal map and the ambient occlusion map (for texturing reference, as well as picking out shadows of the grooves and whatnot on the highpoly).

Also, once the high poly has been baked unto the normal map and AO of the low poly, it will then require very little further texturing.

So... I can't do anything with it until you have rendered out a normal map and AO, sorry.

P.S. Also I suggest reunwrapping it to minimize the empty spaces between the islands as much as possible. Your normal mapped low poly will look very bad if the resolution is too low on the texture itself. So it's in your best interests to use as much of the space in the UV map as possible so your normal map remains sharp and not smudgy or blurry.

Indeed, if you can, I suggest halving the entire gun then unwrapping it as it would mean you have less surface area to fit into the map. Then halving the high poly as well then baking its normal map to the halved low poly. Then mirror everything again. This will result in a much better quality normal map.



Also for unwrapping, it is helpful to use a checkered material when unwrapping your model. And to try and keep the squares from distorting. The blue checkered area are the areas I had started to reunwrap. The blue squares are not distorted unlike in your unwrap (the black and white textured one). For instance. Try applying a texture with lettering on it unto your model and you will notice that the letters are very distorted, the distortion would actually be impossible to correct in texture.

Don't be afraid to not keep the vertices together in the uvmap like in the bottom picture. That can be compensated via texture as long as the seams are properly aligned. It's much better than distorting your uv's in the interest of keeping your islands together.

Remember that this is not an organic model. Organic models can afford that, but hard surface models like guns need to minimize distortion as much as possible.

Anyway, as I said. It's very intensive, so... I'm sorry I can't do this I guess. :/ I mean I can, but I really don't want to spend 2 weeks on it. Heh.


P.P.S. Use Box/cylinder autounwrap as much as possible. 3dsMax has the Box mapping tool. Box map it first then snap and adjust the pieces generated together. I don't know about blender and other apps though, but I'm pretty sure they have that too.

Flying Steel wrote:

Oblivion wrote: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.

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.

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.

ai wrote: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.

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.

Oblivion wrote: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.

ai wrote: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.

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

ai wrote: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.

WB Oblivion, some ace looking samples you have there .

indeed some really nice examples.

about texturing. why dont you pick an old texture set (like the e7 set) and make some new high-res textures to replace the old?

Thanks guys.

And will check it out Rad. Have to download blender though. And yep will include a PSD masterfile or a .xcf (for GIMP) if you want. And will answer questions.

Also, for future reference it might help to always include a .obj file of your meshes. Those are industry standard and are cross compatible with virtually all known 3d apps, whereas .blend files could become obsolete with newer blender releases. (Although, of course, .obj will not save animation data).

Anyway since you won't be back for two weeks, I'll finish my own little project I started two days ago first so I can give it to Dib.





Roughly 3000 polies. Finished unwrapping and rendering out ambient occlusion. Will still need to correct some parts by hand. But I have everything needed to start texturing, and will do so after I eat. And Gun is not included, hehe.

cortez wrote:indeed some really nice examples.

about texturing. why dont you pick an old texture set (like the e7 set) and make some new high-res textures to replace the old?

Exactly, I have no idea how to extract those files.

Oblivion wrote:Exactly, I have no idea how to extract those files.

when you have downloaded nexuiz as a zip file and extracted that one, look in nexuiz/data dir and you will see a data*.pk3 file.
The .pk3 file is just a renamed zip file.
Extract the .pk3 file and you will see a texture/ dir where all the textures are.

You could do this with the SVN that you can read about how to get that one here OR use a recent one like the Beta builds of 2.5.2

Walk around a bit in game and look at the different maps and see what textures you would like to re do and look for them in the above mentioned texture dir
I would like to suggest that you walk around in game on the maps: stormkeep, ruiner, soylent, reslimed, warfare, toxic, final rage and darkzone is good fun as well. :3

Do the pk3 files contain mesh files too? And no, sorry I don't want to do environmental textures. ;d And I simply don't want to dig. Heh. I just want to upgrade/do textures on hard surface stuff (not organic).

And no, as I mentioned before, my internet (the unbearable slowness to be precise), makes SVN somewhat suicidal for me.

Anyway... started the texture...

Nice progress there.

I said that you don't have to use the SVN: "OR use a recent one like the Beta builds of 2.5.2 "

Yes, both textures and the models are in the .pk3 file.
Extract the data.pk3 and look under the data dir there are a model and a texture dir's.

Good modeling technique but those horse hind legs won't match the standard skeleton
I'll have to do some custom animations for this. I don't care 2 much for the cylindrical upper body bit it's good.

I like it, got a ton of attitude, keep up the good work =)

ihsan wrote:Good modeling technique but those horse hind legs won't match the standard skeleton
I'll have to do some custom animations for this. I don't care 2 much for the cylindrical upper body bit it's good.

The standard animations have to go anyway, redoing everything is very much needed. We should not even try to keep current animations, but in fact, create new ones. Player based if needed (which will end up like that eventually I believe).

Great model Oblivion and, moreover, great metal texture! I'd like to have your talent!