FreeGameDev

When you look all the characters we have in STK, you think : "Yay good, but there're only two or three that I want to drive with. ".
That's what I thought too.

I've a list of karts that I want to improve.
Firstly, here's a character that I never played before : Konqi.

His kart took a facelift.


Now I'm working on Konqi's texture himself, but there're problems with his animation that I don't know how to manage. If someone…

wow ... yours modify kart model looks like really cool than before
i did make one, but your own work seem more better
good job, buddy .. i am for sure support this one

Amazing jymis, keep continue !

Thank you guys ! ^o^

betharatux1, don't delete your kart, I will delighted to see it.
Maybe one day, you can choose one character AND one kart. But this dream will require much work =)
In any case, for my part, waiting for this day I like to make lots of karts.

Konqi's green color and the purple will look good together. Can we see it in game? Will the kart reflect light?

jymis {l Wrote}:betharatux1, don't delete your kart, I will delighted to see it.
Maybe one day, you can choose one character AND one kart. But this dream will require much work =)
In any case, for my part, waiting for this day I like to make lots of karts.

i make new model kart for konqi too, but i am not sure with my own design ( cause i'm not agree konqi use eviltux kart model )
after look your, i think your design is appropriate for konqi .. and for kart color, just try orange

@betharatux1
Well, if you ever want to show me yours there's always my mailbox.

This design I made is always eviltuxkart model.
I just removed overage surplus, removed two "cylindrical pumps", made them a texture, made and painted a texture for exhaust pipes, made … ok, a lot of things.
But I just upgraded the existing kart.

Before being flashy orange, it was already a purple flashy.
I thought it was a shame because it wasn't clear scratches on the body. And generally I like green-purple duo more than green-orange duo.
But this purple is more desatured than the first purple. It gives a purple-pink. And I thought that was a good idea, knowing that Wilber has orange.


@antoine
Normally kart's texture is influenced by light.
I often test karts on maps brightly. I'll have to think more about that, thank you.

More than sreenshots, here's the kart's files.


I improved Konqi's eyes. But I think I'll cover the back with the skin.

I await your feedbacks.

jymis {l Wrote}:@betharatux1
Well, if you ever want to show me yours there's always my mailbox.

This design I made is always eviltuxkart model.
I just removed overage surplus, removed two "cylindrical pumps", made them a texture, made and painted a texture for exhaust pipes, made … ok, a lot of things.
But I just upgraded the existing kart.

Before being flashy orange, it was already a purple flashy.
I thought it was a shame because it wasn't clear scratches on the body. And generally I like green-purple duo more than green-orange duo.
But this purple is more desatured than the first purple. It gives a purple-pink. And I thought that was a good idea, knowing that Wilber has orange.
.

about "i dislike eviltux kart for konqi", that just my selfish opinion .. sorry if i wrong
feel embarrassed for show it, but here the screenshot

opinion are welcome ...

I really like both, actually.

I would suggest adding pedals to the orange kart and where is the purple kart's steering wheel? Is that part of the character model? betharatux1, can you upload the model. I would like to compare both of them in game.

Hey, a formula one, isn't it ? x)

Honestly, your own model is better.
Even if I said that one day we could choose a character and a kart separately, it's useless to keep ugly stuff like mine.

I'm not sure for orange (we have to test both, anyway) and not convinced by actual KDE logo (too much copy-pasted).
Maybe we can add some details from my model.
So I shall like to see your files.

I'm not disappointed to have forced you to show us your kart

Your kart is good but for konqi, not good :s

Both karts are very high quality and nice. I would suggest using jymis's kart for konqi and betharantux's for another character who needs an upgrade, like Elephpant.

Another possibility is to have both, like there are three versions of tux (Normal, SuperTuxCart and Alternative Tux).

Both kart are good !

I really like the orange one
My view is that in the end, characters should be able to have several karts, and we should be able to choose the color at runtime, but that's a long-term goal that requires a bit of work...
And that would allow us not to throw people's work

betharatux1 {l Wrote}:feel embarrassed for show it, but here the screenshot

konqiV1-byBetharatux1.jpg

opinion are welcome ...

Wow, very beautiful. I like it

Great Models. Have you looked at the performance in game?

Funto {l Wrote}:My view is that in the end, characters should be able to have several karts, and we should be able to choose the color at runtime, but that's a long-term goal that requires a bit of work...
And that would allow us not to throw people's work

I totally agree with that. It might even give us more variety, since it would be easier to only create a kart (it would only need to follow certain guidelines, and you would automatically have a set of characters for it) or a character only (again which would automatically have a set of karts available).

It would somehow restrict creativity somewhat, e.g. karts like puffy would be a problem - but perhaps we can support both - all-in-one and combined. Not sure how the gui would work - perhaps the karts would determine physical properties (e.g. heavy/slow, high/low acceleration. high/low max-speed, handling, ...) - and the all-in-ones would have no choice.

Volunteers? E.g. working out the guidelines (e.g. character and kart sizes, location of steering wheel ... or perhaps it is possible to automatically adjust character animations to reach a wheel (with some restrictions of course), ... and implementing it?

Cheers,
Joerg

hiker {l Wrote}:Volunteers? E.g. working out the guidelines (e.g. character and kart sizes, location of steering wheel ... or perhaps it is possible to automatically adjust character animations to reach a wheel (with some restrictions of course), ... and implementing it?

That's Inverse Kinematics you're mentionning, and that's usually not an easy task. Maybe there is some code for that in Blender that could be useful?
I think at some point I will try to do the color thing first, as that's useful/needed for my soccer mode: each team would have an associated color.
Would it be a problem for STK if GPU shader support becomes mandatory? Or are 10-year-old cards still to be supported?

Funto {l Wrote}:That's Inverse Kinematics you're mentionning, and that's usually not an easy task. Maybe there is some code for that in Blender that could be useful?

I was more thinking of something simple like 'scale arms in z direction (forwards) by between 0.9 and 1.1. That factor could be specified for each kart.
Or perhaps we can add arm-armatures to the karts, and then re-attach vertices from the character model to the armature of the kart? Not sure how this will work actually (since karts and characters would be different scene nodes ... likely, unless we merge the meshes).

I think at some point I will try to do the color thing first, as that's useful/needed for my soccer mode: each team would have an associated color.

That should be reasonably easy. Iirc we already change textures for the referee (graphics/referee.cpp)

Would it be a problem for STK if GPU shader support becomes mandatory? Or are 10-year-old cards still to be supported?

We can discuss this certainly. Though I am not sure if this is really necessary just to change the colours - but I guess it depends what we want to use it for. E.g. let people customise kart colours? That might be more work than just supplying two (or three) different textures.

Cheers,
Joerg

hiker {l Wrote}:I was more thinking of something simple like 'scale arms in z direction (forwards) by between 0.9 and 1.1. That factor could be specified for each kart.
Or perhaps we can add arm-armatures to the karts, and then re-attach vertices from the character model to the armature of the kart? Not sure how this will work actually (since karts and characters would be different scene nodes ... likely, unless we merge the meshes).

I was thinking of duplicating the arm bones of the kart and its animations into the mesh of the character, but you need to synchronize the animations...and that leaves the problem of moving the hands to the position of the bones anyway.

hiker {l Wrote}:That should be reasonably easy. Iirc we already change textures for the referee (graphics/referee.cpp)

But I'd like to avoid embedding many textures in the STK package...I was more thinking of something like graying out existing textures where needed, and using the alpha channel to mark the zones that need to be colored. Note that this would prevent textures that define transparent zones, I don't know if there is such a texture...in that case we could also add another texture layer to mark the zones that are to be transparent, or we could make better use of the apha channel (lie in 0 to 0.t for coloring, 0.t to 1.0 for transparency).

hiker {l Wrote}:We can discuss this certainly. Though I am not sure if this is really necessary just to change the colours - but I guess it depends what we want to use it for. E.g. let people customise kart colours? That might be more work than just supplying two (or three) different textures.

Yes, people would be able to customize their kart colors, and we would gain more flexibility in the way we do our lighting. Furthermore, using fragment shaders for the karts is necessary for GPU skinning (which is the best optimization to come to STK) as skinning requires vertex shaders, which themselves force us to use fragment shaders if I'm right (I checked for GLSL shaders, not sure for assembly but hey we're in 2013 )

OR we can keep compatibility by adding an optional extra texture that marks the zones to be colored, and in the shader use the original texture to extract the luminance where the zone is marked and modulate it with the wanted color. Compatibility is kept, addon karts and current karts still work and shaders are still optional, at the cost of extra textures and un unnecessarily slightly more complex shader.

wah, i miss a lot comment

antoine {l Wrote}:I would suggest adding pedals to the orange kart

good suggest, i will make it soon

jymis {l Wrote}: and not convinced by actual KDE logo (too much copy-pasted).

i got some idea for that ... and keep stay tuned

okay, enjoy for test ... and tell me if got bug

Player should choose between differents karts and characters. With one color par character (same karts but different colors for each kart)
Example: Red for emule, Yellow for suzanne, etc... but there will be problem, with mozilla for example this character is too big
We were speaking about these thing with funto there viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4001

Really good eye (better than mine) and I love the wheels.

You forgot the marks on Konqi's cheeks and wings.
Missing texture for exhaust.

Konqi hurts the eyes. Especially with this orange color.
Desaturate green please x3

I see that everyone forgets something on his tail and his back. ^^


Icon is missing on the minimap, don't know why.

One or two textures are distorted, it's unfortunate. I count on you to solve it

betharatux1 {l Wrote}:lets rock guys ! XD.png

Ah no, not him ! xD
Actual Eviltux is ugly. In fact, like Tux.

And be careful, don't use my texture like this : there are some references to KDE for those who have not seen.
Betharatux, you should try to put KDE dashboard (mine or similar) on your model. It should be nice !

For KDE logo I have an idea but I don't know how to explain it in English. :s
If you'll send your .blend, I'll show you what it is.


Otherwise, it's a very good job. Thank you =)

Funto {l Wrote}:I was thinking of duplicating the arm bones of the kart and its animations into the mesh of the character, but you need to synchronize the animations...and that leaves the problem of moving the hands to the position of the bones anyway.

That's why I thought of adding some additional scaling from the kart for the arm bones. A certain stretching might be possible without too much graphical impact (I think you mostly can't even see the hands, unless you look backwards). So we would define where the steering wheel must be, but would allow it to be moved by a certain degree, which we do by additionally stretching the arm bones (e.g. if the steering wheel is 0.4 m further away, and the arm has length 0.8, we would stretch the arm b 50% ... now that I write this, that might actually not work, if we need that much stretching. Well, I'll leave it as a brainstorming contribution ).

But I'd like to avoid embedding many textures in the STK package...I was more thinking of something like graying out existing textures where needed, and using the alpha channel to mark the zones that need to be colored. Note that this would prevent textures that define transparent zones, I don't know if there is such a texture...in that case we could also add another texture layer to mark the zones that are to be transparent, or we could make better use of the apha channel (lie in 0 to 0.t for coloring, 0.t to 1.0 for transparency).

Makes sense. This mechanism would allow us to remove the three different textures for the referee as well

Perhaps we could even get away with a more procedural approach: find all points where the red contribution is 50% larger than green ... or so. But your solution would certainly be better.

Yes, people would be able to customize their kart colors, and we would gain more flexibility in the way we do our lighting. Furthermore, using fragment shaders for the karts is necessary for GPU skinning (which is the best optimization to come to STK) as skinning requires vertex shaders, which themselves force us to use fragment shaders if I'm right (I checked for GLSL shaders, not sure for assembly but hey we're in 2013 )

I am not saying that I am against it, but we could also just pre-compute 10 (or so) frames for steering, and switch from one to the next. That might already be good enough.

One other comment (in order to get soccer mode out earlier): instead of using colours, you could use different head gear: easter bunnies vs santa's elfs

Cheers,
Joerg