FreeGameDev

M3dm would you be interested in doing a snack sized animation? this little guy needs little to be ready

http://opengameart.org/content/slime-mold

That should be pretty interesting to animate, I'll give it a shot. but what other animations would it need? would a amorphous blob of acid need to sleep?

just an still frame for sleeping is fine, this one should be fast: walk (slide?), attack, hurt, sleep,die ; and it says its already got most of them, i wouldnt spend too much time in animating those if i were you. Just a few contractions, this one doesnt need the same level of quality as in the Troll

Ugh; that's a pretty rubbish looking model. You'd almost be better off starting from scratch.

Its not like a slime needs to be more detailed, as long as it is decently animated it will be useful as a starter creature

charlie {l Wrote}:Ugh; that's a pretty rubbish looking model. You'd almost be better off starting from scratch.

I thought it was pretty basic myself, but was surprised to find that there's multiple model sculpts in the blend file. the preview picture on OGA appears to be the lowest poly(least detailed) one.

I've only just started animating it, but here's what the higher detailed model looks like.

I remain unconvinced that it's a worthwhile base model. It just looks like the product of a "my first Blender" tutorial. Compared to the rock golem or the beetle golem, it is very amateurish.

IF you would be an expert you would see the countless details there are in here , which makes it look like real slime mold. Seems you never saw the real thing .... I would send you a pitctures of a real one from my fridge .... where was my camera .... ?

Hail to the killer mocus!! now if we only get a rat model we will have all the staples of dungeon vermins .
This one will go with the basic tier of creatures used for the early levels of the map/game and sacrifices recipes, i plan for it to be the tank of the basic tier, having the most physical armor of them, soaking lots of damage but poor attack and non-existant magical defense.

The basic tier would be composed of Cave hornet, spider, roach, swamp pup, slime, tentacle, rat (maybe?) and the goblin being at the top statswise. We gotta start somewhere, rigth? even if its commanding bugs. Starts are never easy...

IMHO, for a slime, there is no need for lots of polygones and complicated animation. It is a basic creature so it is better to spend time on more interesting ones

charlie {l Wrote}:I remain unconvinced that it's a worthwhile base model. It just looks like the product of a "my first Blender" tutorial. Compared to the rock golem or the beetle golem, it is very amateurish.

I agree. it's not the greatest slime model and I have some reservations concerning the shape of the model ( I would prefer something similar to Wizardry 8's slime model, which still looks pretty good considering it's age ). But for the time being, it should do. And as hwoarangmy more or less said, the time spent making one from scratch could be better spent working on higher priority creatures.

paul424 {l Wrote}:IF you would be an expert you would see the countless details there are in here , which makes it look like real slime mold. Seems you never saw the real thing .... I would send you a pitctures of a real one from my fridge .... where was my camera .... ?

Exactly and Wikipedia has you covered on that one paul! well, kinda.

free time is looking sparse this week , but I should beable to knock it out this weekend(with some luck before then).

they exists?!

For such a basic creature this is good enough; lets just make it and move on. Its not like we dont have our share of ugly models already ingame...

I've been pretty silent lately, but I'm still alive . I got some good news and some bad news, good news is the slime animations are basically done! I just need to finish up the sleep animation and I'll (reluctantly) call it finished. the bad news is the higher sculpt version is 20482 Tris . So looks like we may have to use the lower poly version(see the OGA preview), which makes the horribly rushed animations I made look... even worst . (I'll try make a preview gif of the lower poly version tomorrow)

Try the high - poly version in game, 20K verticies is not an overkill as long as you don't have too many materials ..... Modern OpenGL scene can reach up to 10^6 vertexes. true is OD is lacking everything , and that's the LOD;'s levels , most of the models have only one detail level so far , so it's hard to demand from you that you create them ..... or can you create ... can you write for us how much time does it takes to create low-poly version of a model >?

Retopology on complex models is hell, and then you have to match the uv map and bones. Its something to be avoided where possible, and normally is used to apply a normal map over the low poli version.

Dont worry D3dm ; even the low poli version looked alrigth

paul424 {l Wrote}:Try the high - poly version in game, 20K verticies is not an overkill as long as you don't have too many materials ..... Modern OpenGL scene can reach up to 10^6 vertexes.

True, it's pretty insignificant for modern software and hardware(especially with Culling, Geometry Batching and a LOD system in place). but just having five of these things on the screen is 10% of that 10^6, a creature of this caliber could easily get by with less then half of that and still look good.

paul424 {l Wrote}: true is OD is lacking everything , and that's the LOD;'s levels , most of the models have only one detail level so far , so it's hard to demand from you that you create them ..... or can you create ... can you write for us how much time does it takes to create low-poly version of a model >?

I believe the "Ogre3d XML Converter" application can procedurally generates LOD models for us.

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

 The option switches
-l lodlevels   = number of LOD levels
-v lodvalue     = value increment to reduce LOD
-s lodstrategy = LOD strategy to use for this mesh
-p lodpercent  = Percentage triangle reduction amount per LOD
-f lodnumtris  = Fixed vertex reduction per LOD


There might be some caveats involved, but hopefully that solves the problem for us . otherwise, as Danimal said, it's quite a job to completely Retopo. a already rigged and uved model.

Animations:

-snip

It looks good; fodder doesnt deserve better

Regarding the LOD, i guess its worth experimenting; but i have my doubts, we are already using quite low poli models (even the updated ones barely reach 4k) opposed to the 20k+ normally seen in industry. I guess its all a matter of testing in lower end machines to see if even our low poli models makes it lag; To the code guys, is there any support for LOD alredy in OD?

There is no need , Ogre3d supports LOD's pretty well , you just set once a strategy how the LOD's are choosen ( size in of model in pixels, distance from the camera) , then when creating entity you just set from this value to that model LOD1 , from this to that model LOD2 etc. There is no tough points in here ...

http://opengameart.org/content/slimemonster

Danimal {l Wrote}:Regarding the LOD, i guess its worth experimenting; but i have my doubts, we are already using quite low poli models (even the updated ones barely reach 4k) opposed to the 20k+ normally seen in industry. I guess its all a matter of testing in lower end machines to see if even our low poli models makes it lag; To the code guys, is there any support for LOD alredy in OD?

I think the potential pros would far out weight the potential cons. worst-case scenario is it has negligible impact on performance and the player disables it.

Nice D3md, when i get back home next week he is getting in for sure. Little by little OD uglyness is fading

if you feel like animating another model please go ahead

If you want you can try your hand at creating something new as well, we have plenty of work for everyone

I'm probably going to hold off on animating until we get more beds and rooms completed. which rooms are high priority at the moment?

Im working on training room, so the most pressing would be getting props for forge, temple, guard room or torture room. Floor textures are covered thanks to Nobiax uber textures, you can have a look at my room thread to get a better idea

Edit: there is also our extreme lack of monster beds, even one of them would be welcome

Excellent news guys.

FYI: Hwoarangmy is looking at animating the training dummies when the creatures are attacking them.
I'm still on the GUI, and need some time to figure out a nasty thing related to the title bar disappearing when bigger than before.

Regards,