Halo 2 Photography

[Thrasher Alpha]

I thought I was looking at MC's or gravemind's protection, you know he is on the halo alone except from alien company, a cyborg can get lonely ya kno,

PMI.

Dat condom.
That's not for my really shit hornet is it?

No, its for my really shitty helicopter.

Dat cryogenic chamber, looks glassy, good =)

Actually, it can look a little better and I know how to do it

[DemonicSandwich]

So after browsing through this thread, catching up on what I missed, I got a few ideas to work with.
A few revolving about collision of some sort. A couple revolving about vehicles and their models.
No ideas pertaining to animations....yet.

As for that Outpost 11 map...
Contrary to what some might think, the map works fine still. Only time it ever failed to load is when I forgot to start Yelo beforehand. (because I save and send without signing)

Life just got tired of me ignoring it which resulted in me quitting H2X modding.
I still have the map too. May finish it someday. Not on my list of ideas ATM.

[Thrasher Alpha]

Cant wait to see what you have in store, demonic.

Anyways, guess what I got working in game? The mother fucking hull. I really wish we had spoilers so I could hide the pictures, so the page wont be stretched too far.















If you can tell by now I like to take a lot of pictures of work in progress... just to get all angles and lighting.

[DemonicSandwich]

Many verts, weld you must.

[neodos]

Looks like you need to disconnected eges, also its called "smoothing groups" in 3DS max.

[DoorM4n]

Nice job man! it looks awesome!

[Thrasher Alpha]

Many verts, weld you must.

Which ones do I weld again? And I did in that picture - you should of seen it BEFORE I welded some.

Looks like you need to disconnected eges, also its called "smoothing groups" in 3DS max.

I cannot model to save my life. What is this exactly?

Nice job man! it looks awesome!

Thanks! Hopefully I can place all of my objects that I need to today.

[bumlove]

Looks like you need to disconnected eges, also its called "smoothing groups" in 3DS max.

I cannot model to save my life. What is this exactly?

Typo I suspect edges was what was meant

[Thrasher Alpha]

Looks like you need to disconnected eges, also its called "smoothing groups" in 3DS max.

I cannot model to save my life. What is this exactly?

Typo I suspect edges was what was meant

How do I do that, and what to?

[NotZachary82]

I have nothing to do. I could fix up your model if you're willing.

[Thrasher Alpha]

I have nothing to do. I could fix up your model if you're willing.

Depends on how complicated it is for me to do it

[NotZachary82]

In 3ds, select your mesh (Edit Poly or Edit Mesh, w/e), and scroll down towards the bottom in the editor panel. There are a bunch of boxes labeled 1-30. These are smoothing groups. Any faces connected together that are within the same group will appear smooth (all normals are hidden). I must warn you not to smooth the whole damn thing in the same group because you will be left with an inflatable children's toy.

And if welding is giving you some issues, just select every vertex and weld with a threshold of 0.001. You'll probably get better results in Edit Mesh instead, I'm not sure how optimized your model is.

[Thrasher Alpha]

In 3ds, select your mesh (Edit Poly or Edit Mesh, w/e), and scroll down towards the bottom in the editor panel. There are a bunch of boxes labeled 1-30. These are smoothing groups. Any faces connected together that are within the same group will appear smooth (all normals are hidden). I must warn you not to smooth the whole damn thing in the same group because you will be left with an inflatable children's toy.

And if welding is giving you some issues, just select every vertex and weld with a threshold of 0.001. You'll probably get better results in Edit Mesh instead, I'm not sure how optimized your model is.

I optimized it from around 40k triangles to 16k, each individual piece was optimized as much as it could. I used edit poly to weld the vertices... what exactly should I weld/smooth? I was thinking it was everything of a common face or curve... such as the outer shell of the hull maybe? Im not sure.

[NotZachary82]

That's still way too many triangles for a model like that. You may have some duplicated faces/edges lying around. It can't really be said without seeing the model in an editor.

Also, is it UV'd?

[Thrasher Alpha]

That's still way too many triangles for a model like that. You may have some duplicated faces/edges lying around. It can't really be said without seeing the model in an editor.

Also, is it UV'd?

Attachments are wonders

And no not yet. I was going to UV it and all after I got it looking good and positioned in game. Thanks to demonic for his clay shaders.

Edit: I forgot to mention.

The WHOLE copter is 16k (two rocket pods, chaingun, hull, glass, etc). The hull is actually 4k.

[rentreg]

even 4k seems a bit too much, you should try to make a few LODs for it after you uv it

[Thrasher Alpha]

even 4k seems a bit too much, you should try to make a few LODs for it after you uv it

Five LOD's for the hull

Outer shell, tail, cockpit, two chairs. I know its a bit much, but then again the full pelican model (if you include all [0] through... I think its [7]?) is around 9k polygons. If I can get it all working in game I wont be complaining... though I may try to break the game and keep spawning multiple copters till the game starts to lag to see the limit :p

[DemonicSandwich]

That's not what he meant by LODs. An LOD, Level Of Detail, is a method of conserving system resources by intentionally reducing the quality of the models and textures as you get farther away.

What you are thinking of Thrasher, is called Regions.
Regions are intentionally separated sections of a model to allow them to change independent of the rest of the model sections.

You have 5 Regions on your model.

Regions break down into Permutations.
Permutations are the different variants of a Region. Usually Permutations are used to show different models based on health status of that Region.

Permutations break down into LODs via 6 indexes.
That way you have different levels of detail per Permutation.

This adds up rather fast.
That's why vehicles like the Scorpion and Warthog have hundreds of models but only one model per Region can be rendered at any one time.

[Thrasher Alpha]

Ah I see. I got confused because in the PMI it is labeled LOD instead of region.

I will touch up on details and all after I finish the copter in general. Once most of the core parts of the copter are working I will skin it, smooth/weld, lod's, etc.

Thanks for the idea, though.

[rentreg]

... though I may try to break the game and keep spawning multiple copters till the game starts to lag to see the limit :p

try spawning 2.

[DemonicSandwich]

The game is robust. You can spawn so many things and it will cope by reducing bitmap LODs, then model LODs, then by deleting effect objects (particles, lensflares, light volumes) and entire objects.
I've even seen it halt animations

One action that can freeze not just the game, but the graphics hardware itself, is what I call texture overload. I did a lot of texture overloading with Outpost.

[rentreg]

[DemonicSandwich]

I was not aware of this.


I knew they could sample lightmap data....but cast shadows too? This deserves research.

[rentreg]

The hog?

[DemonicSandwich]

The shadows are being cast on a machine. I've never noticed this machine can have shadows cast on it.