Model guidelines/tutorial

Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby oln » 17 Sep 2011, 12:04

I am trying to export the new forge model. Managed to export the model, but I really have no idea how to use blender. So I was thinking that we should write some guidelines and information about how models should be submitted and exported.

Issues:
  • 1. Room objects and room size
    Since rooms can have different sizes, the models has to be placed differently according to the size and orientation of the room.
    For the forge, as I have no idea how to split meshes in blender, I ended up exporting the stove, anvil and the trough(if that's what it's called) in one mesh. A small forge room may not have space for the full model, or at least it might have to be cramped a bit. I think in the old DK, not sure abouot DK2, objects would appear if the room was 3x3 or larger. What I want to say with this is that meshes in the blender model should be split logically, so that it is easy to export them to separate meshes.
  • 2. Export settings
    Exporter:
    http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=61485

    exportsettings.png

    I am not sure about all of the settings here.
    Material settings are not very important. The material files that blender exports has a lot of crap in them, so they have to be edited anyhow.
    • Only animated bones - does this only export animated parts? Should probably leave this unticked
    • swap axis - I think this should be at xyz.
    • Export scene, force lights, force camera - We are not exporting .scene files, so this is irrelevant. Just leave export scene unticked
    • Export meshes - should be ticked, otherwise we won't get any meshes out
    • armature/shape animation - I suppose these are only used for animated models, though I don't know what they mean
    • Optimise * - should probably be ticked
    • Convert lma - not sure what this is, conversion of the texture to a different format? Don't think it's needed anyhow.
    • DDS mips - We are not using DDS textures, so ignore this one
    • Trim weights - not sure what this does either
    • LOD stuff - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Level_of_detail. I think this could be used, but I am not sure about the paramaters. I think ogre does some of this automatically, I don't know if the models have to have lod information or not for ogre to use this.
    • Extremity points - no idea
    • Tangents - should be ticked
    • Tangent parity - I think this has to do with UV mapping, so leave this at the default
    • Tangent split * - not sure about this
    • Reorganise buffers, optimise animations - should probably leave this as default
  • 3. Normal maps
    I don't know where this is specified in blender, but we need to describe what settings should be used so the normal maps are correct.
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby riidom » 17 Sep 2011, 15:23

the forge is meant to stand on a 5x7 grid, and splitting it up and moving single items around is very problematic, because you have in level 3 some metal pieces in the shelves that come with level 2, as example, it all connects to each other.

To split up an object: go in edit mode, select what you want to separate, then press "P" and choose "selection" from submenu. The uv's of the remaining faces stay where they have been before, so textures will stay compatible.

To join objects: in object mode, select the objects to join (first with RMB, all others with shift-RMB) and then press ctrl-J. The combined object will have the name from the last selected one (the active one). UV's may overlap here when you grab parts of different levelobjects to join them to a new one, that probably needs redoing then.

Ok, not sure if that helps you now.. I kinda liked the effect of having no table at all at L1, an empty one on L2 and stuff on it at L3, makes the upgrade look more natural, I think. Cant there be just a requirement like "you need a x*y space to build the forge" and when the space is there, it fills in there?
If that doesnt work together with game mechanics, then there has to be another solution, probably many different objects for each level. To place stuff properly, I would probably use the object centre then.

Like, having a shelf that uses up a 1*2 space. Object centre would be in the middle of the area, on ground. A separate item could be then tools laying in that shelf. They would have object centre at exactly same place, so you place both objects onto each other and alignment would/should be fine. As I do know nothing about ogre - could it work that way?


And for normap maps .. there are basically no settings for baking, just the space they get baken into, and that is "tangent" usually.. everything else doesnt make sense for separated assets. I do set them to pretty low influence in material settings (for making the preview render). But as material settings doesnt get exported, you have to do similar in ogre then maybe.. I dont see how to adjust anything inside blender, as i dont have something else than the "bake" button there.
When you go in material settings, choose the material, then go in texture settings and select the normal texture, and scroll down, there is an "influence" tab .. there you can see how the normal map influence is.. I think I set it to low values like 0.5 or something (where 1.0 is default) .. so if you have a silent influence of 1.0 in ogre, it might look strange indeed.

Oh and I forgot to mention: The forge I uploaded on OGA is a different version than you got via dropbox from me. I cleaned all the source materials and textures up, its way simpler and cleaner, more export friendly. Shouldnt do stuff like that in middle of night, I guess..
And the front edges of the chimney are slightly smoothed now. http://opengameart.org/content/medieval-forge-v2

So dunno if that endless post helps, I hope so, though :D

EDIT:
for the exporter settings.. your choices sound all pretty logical to me, I dont know that myself, so I cant say much to it.
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby oln » 17 Sep 2011, 15:53

riidom {l Wrote}:the forge is meant to stand on a 5x7 grid, and splitting it up and moving single items around is very problematic, because you have in level 3 some metal pieces in the shelves that come with level 2, as example, it all connects to each other.

That sounds reasonable. I guess there being just an oven in the room would look odd. Anyhow we need a better algorithm for room object placement, and to decide how many squares one needs to build before it is usable.
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby svenskmand » 17 Sep 2011, 19:43

We need to decide how to do placement of room objects: should they be done 1) automatic when you build the room, in which case a complex requirement like 5x7 is a bad choice gameplay wise so here models like the forge should be split up and each piece should be placed automatic when the rooms is build, just like in DK 1 and 2. Or 2) each object is placed manually like in Evil Genius in that case a 5x7 requirement is fine.

I think option 1) is best as that allows faster an easier gameplay where rooms can quickly be build. In option 2) it is a very complex task to build your dungeon as you have to plan ahead and think very careful over where to build rooms and place objects in the rooms. And it think this will have very bad impacts on the gameplay.
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby oln » 17 Sep 2011, 20:23

In either case we have to decide what size the room has to be in order to be usable. (There should be no models/objects in a room that is too small.)
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby riidom » 17 Sep 2011, 21:13

The idea with separate items that can be placed more according to the available space sounds indeed better, as it allows more variations. Atm, the forge would look every time exactly the same. And when one has a 10x3 space available, why not building a more oblong forge then. This kind of inflexibility bugs me with many games where you have to place stuff into the gameworld.

To avoid too narrow placing (e.g. having a room where every tile is occupied by some furniture and no space to walk in), there could help a pathfinding algorithm maybe, everytime a player places something, it gets checked if the other furniture is still reachable. Something like in towerdefense games with free paths, where the game checks if the creeps are able to still reach the target, when the player attempts to set a new tower.

Back to forge: When the player can place the items individually, he expects probably some kind of "meaning" behind it. Three shelves and two anvils dont make a forge.. so simple counting the number of items wouldnt work well.

Alternative: "Primary" Items and secondary items. The forge item itself could be a primary item. Once it is placed, the room is dedicated to be a forge. It needs one or two secondary items to work on level 1. That could be an anvil, a bassin, a shelf or a table. So the player builds a forge with 2 tables, or a forge, an bassin and a shelf. Would be the same, a level-1 forge. Still pretty random, and unlogical. An anvil is needed as well. So either make the anvil a primary item too - what leads to the rule: Build all primary items you need for a certain room, and then fill up with random secondary items until the desired number of items is reached. A level1 forge would be: A forge, an anvil and one out of (shelf, bassin, table etc.)

Alternative: Give every item a certain function. Complex, often difficult, but probably very interesting for the player. Here are no more primary and secondary items, just items with a certain function.
So we have metal slugs. They get stored somewhere (table/shelf) in a cold state. A forge has the ability to heat metal parts up. An anvil can shape metal parts into something useful, requires heated metal parts. A bassin cools them down instantly and gives maybe some stability bonus (I dunno how it would be if a smith let the heated stuff cool down at air after working it at anvil). The former metal slug is a smithed metal piece now. Has to be stored somewhere too. Shelves have a capacity of items they can store.. etc etc etc can be almost unlimited complex, but you get the idea. At some point it has to stop and get abstracted/simplified.

Ok, just my spontaneous thoughts about it, maybe it gives inspiration :)
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby oln » 17 Sep 2011, 21:21

Both ideas sound interesting. Short-term the objects will really just be visual indicators of how advanced/large the room is and creatures will probably just walk around in the room, or stand still with an attack animation. In the long term actually using the objects in the room as mentioned could be really cool.
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby svenskmand » 17 Sep 2011, 21:38

It could be interesting to combine 1) and 2), but the combination should have the ease of 1)
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby riidom » 17 Sep 2011, 21:48

what about following: there is just a fixed list of items, and they need to be placed in order to make it functional

like: forge, anvil, bassin (completes level 1, makes it functional), table, shelf (completes level 2) , 2nd anvil, airblowthingy, 2nd shelf (completes level 3)

the items have to be placed in that order, just when and where, is players decision.

I still wouldnt know how to make possible, that a shelf gets placed, and later it gets populated with items.. so maybe skip that? When a shelf arrives, it already carries something, and it wont change later
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby svenskmand » 17 Sep 2011, 23:22

I have thought of something similarly i.e. in the "Spore" city mode you can place factories which make it possible to earn money, you can place houses next to factories which earns you a constant revenue of money but decreases happiness and finally you can place entertainment which decreases productivity if they are next to factories but makes people happy if they are next to houses.

So my idea is that we have three kind of objects to place in the room and they influence each other both negative and positive ways like above. Then the player can move them around to increase the rooms productivity and at the same time reduce the amount of unhappiness the creatures will receive while working in the room. This idea could be use for other rooms than just the forge.
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby riidom » 18 Sep 2011, 07:00

I find that a little difficult to imagine. This idea would work better one level above, imo. Like, consider the forge as whole as a factory unit, that suffers from decreased productivity when a happiness-room is placed next to it.

I know of only two rooms atm, these are the forge and the dojo, and both are like processing units. Something raw gets in (metal slugs/untrained units), gets processed (forged/trained) and the end result (tool,weapon/trained,improved unit) leaves the room then. Ok, then there is the sleeping room, it provides "slots" for the units, who are simply required.. and what other kinds are there? Maybe this should be categorized first, because things work slightly different for each kind.
And even rooms of same kind have differences, for example the dojo doesnt need any storage. The units walk in, train and leave on their own feet. Same goes for sleeping rooms, but is different for the forge, where stuff gets stored until someone fetches it.

Having a system that is agnostic of such details would be great, like the one you mentioned, but I still have problems to imagine how an anvil should decrease happiness when placed too close to a shelf, e.g. The terms need to be remapped probably and just leaving the principle behind it. It seems to look like paper-stone-scissor, that is pretty abstract, just need to find a way to map it properly on the function of a room.
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Re: Model guidelines/tutorial

Postby svenskmand » 18 Sep 2011, 10:23

Yes yes your should see it from a more abstract perspectiv. The essense is that you optimize the rooms efficiency by moving around objects in it. But yes it needs to be refined so it suits each room.

In the forge two of the three objects to move around could be storage space for weapons and traps and manufactoring spaces. Then manufactoring spaces and storage spaces should always be close by to minimize the distance your workers should walk when they have produced an item.
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