An impossible thing we might have seen one day
By
airhead,
Posted on: 2012-09-01 01:19 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I'm amazed at all that's going on for CoH posterity. This is absolutely fantastic, thank you very much. I demorecorded all my favorite costumes just in case after learning the command (and how to demoedit) last night. It's great to see everyone being reminded. Now I'll figure out OGLE, thanks to all who are trying it and have described their hurdles.
This post is timed to say THANK YOU to Arcanaville for reminding me to turn off client updates. My greatest fear is hopefully absolved by that. My greater fears already having reached fruition.
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I would love to paint up some of these.
I paint up toy soldiers for commission now days.
For example.
http://shuggnuggath.deviantart.com/gallery/30508147
Very nice painting jobs. Must take one hell of a steady hand to be sure.
Awesomeness!
Really i'm amazed. That's ace!
Les Gardiens de l'Equilibre / Les Disciples de l'Equilibre / Les Traqueurs de Chaos
Wonder if any of the devs could pipe in with "suggestions" on making this process simpler? 
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Another alternative - nightmarish, I imagine - is to export the base models in the T pose, stick them back together, and create a new skeleton for them. All the textures are there and it would just be a matter of Re-UVMapping them or pulling from the PIGG files.
Even when you load the model all blasted apart it's very easy to re-attach the seams since the models are not very hires.
My first render attempt:
I've noticed these issues with Subsurface Modelling and it may that while the obj was exported in the pose it was taken in, all the object groups are still separated.
Very cool stuff but at one time I really wanted a 3-D figurine of my main at the time Fire Chief and through Grae Knight I got in contact with this guy...it was a loooong time ago but he still has this DA page up. Just fyi 
...http://thebluecanary.deviantart.com/gallery/510495
www.paragonianknights.com
Prestige Award
My DA page
@Fire Chief
Thanks folks, been painting toy soldiers for over 25 years now so my painting has come on a long way.
What do you need UVW wrapping for in regards to this?
The 1st Message Board Warrior. m/
Quote:
If someone is attempting to import the models into another 3D program for the purposes of rendering, and particularly animation, that might be the best way to do it. You'd have a neutral pose to start with, and obviously, that's basically what the devs were doing if those are the model object subgroups that actually exist for the characters.
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Originally Posted by VoodooGirl
Another alternative - nightmarish, I imagine - is to export the base models in the T pose, stick them back together, and create a new skeleton for them. All the textures are there and it would just be a matter of Re-UVMapping them or pulling from the PIGG files.
Even when you load the model all blasted apart it's very easy to re-attach the seams since the models are not very hires. |
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Kramer made his
I'm curious about the tool as I think it can export animations albeit each frame as itd own obj file
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OGLE? It can do multiple frames but I never really experimented with that much because it takes so long to do a frame that I was worried the client would time out and die.|
Originally Posted by VoodooGirl
I'm curious about the tool as I think it can export animations albeit each frame as itd own obj file
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But it occurs to me that problem wouldn't exist for demorecords, I would think.
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Building a new skeleton would allow you to pose the figure in whatever pose you'd like for printing
Quote:
2 immediate problems with using Subsurf;|
Originally Posted by VoodooGirl
My first render attempt:
I've noticed these issues with Subsurface Modelling and it may that while the obj was exported in the pose it was taken in, all the object groups are still separated. |
1) The models rip with all tris, gotta get rid of the tris and clean up the edgeflow, or Subsurf looks like crap. This is because Subsurf uses Edge loops, if it cant make clean edge loops it doesn't work so well.
2) The polys aren't 'melded' together. Each one is separate, easy fix for this in blender is select all the vertices, and click the "remove doubles" option in the mesh toolbar. At least this was the case for me.
Here's a little experiment I did last night really quick, tried to up the poly quality of the Incarnate Boots, because they are ever so smexy;
(Thumbnail, click for full version.. dunno why, but my image embeds aren't working)
Now I did a sloppy job, and it took the whole of 10 minutes, but its possible.
Also, ripping it in the T-Pose is your best bet if you want to pose it yourself, makes setting up a skeleton and rigging it so much easier. It's possible to do it without it, but you cant rely on great stuff like mirroring the weight paints.
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I understand #2 (I figured that one out when I did the prints in the OP), #1 sounds like I need to reverse the polarity on the warp drive. I'm not fishing for an explanation: I can look it up. I'm more pointing out why this thread needs more people like you guys that have a clue what they are doing. My expertise ends with figuring out how to yank the models, and to an extent how to get an extrusion printer to deal with them. In between, I'm going to need help.
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Originally Posted by Primantiss
2 immediate problems with using Subsurf;
1) The models rip with all tris, gotta get rid of the tris and clean up the edgeflow, or Subsurf looks like crap. This is because Subsurf uses Edge loops, if it cant make clean edge loops it doesn't work so well. 2) The polys aren't 'melded' together. Each one is separate, easy fix for this in blender is select all the vertices, and click the "remove doubles" option in the mesh toolbar. At least this was the case for me. |
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I can't see Primantiss' image.
The 1st Message Board Warrior. m/
Quote:
Aha! You're saying the subsurface subdivision filter that increases tessellation has problems because the models are composed of triangles and not general surfaces, so you need to take the triangles and properly assign edges to appropriate polygons so that subsurface can then extrapolate surfaces and then retessellate them.|
Originally Posted by Primantiss
1) The models rip with all tris, gotta get rid of the tris and clean up the edgeflow, or Subsurf looks like crap. This is because Subsurf uses Edge loops, if it cant make clean edge loops it doesn't work so well.
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And I didn't even need wikipedia either. Still, that took an hour longer than it should have; I only figured it out in the drive to work.
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Shame it's too late to use that for a sig for very long.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
PS: I know you guys think I'm making up the dick texture, but I'm not. Do the capture yourself, its so far shown up in every 3D capture I've done. Whatever it is, its burned into the DNA of the game.
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Dang it, now I'm going to have to go trawling through texture files to find out what that is used by...|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
PS: I know you guys think I'm making up the dick texture, but I'm not. Do the capture yourself, its so far shown up in every 3D capture I've done. Whatever it is, its burned into the DNA of the game.
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Though it wouldn't surprise me if somebody thought it would be funny and used it as a bump map or something. I mean, have you ever looked at the ceiling in Arachnos bases?
Quote:
attempted image fix
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Originally Posted by Primantiss
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Quote:
Photobucket was failing for awhile, sorry lol.|
Originally Posted by Moderated_IRL
I can't see Primantiss' image.
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Arcana, in simple terms you need to turn the Tris (3 vertices per poly) into Quads (4 vertices)
This allows loop cuts, and better Subsurfing.
Quickest way to do this in Blender is Alt-J, though its automated and still leaves some funky edgeflow.
Highest quality way to do it is Retopo(Retopology), but that can be time consuming.
Somewhere, and I really don't know where, I have a python script that does something similar: it will generate camera paths for circular, hyperbolic, and bezier curves based on control points. It might be faster to rewrite it than look for it at this point honestly.
The Titan hackers might be able to do one better one day. They know enough, I believe, in theory to be able to adjust the memory that the demorecords are stored in on the fly, and with that be able to alter the camera positions on the fly.
Editing camera positions on the fly for a demorecord that's being played is, in effect, a free form navigation system without the need for a server. That's currently beyond my knowledge base and time availability, but it might be within theirs.
But they are currently quite busy with another more critical project at the moment.
And yes, they're busy with more critical things and I wish them the best of luck - I fear they're going to need it
Who knows, it appears I'm going to have substantial amounts of leisure time available next year, and I'm going to have to do something with it...
Synchrotron, level 50 Radiation/Radiation Defender
Fighting crime on Champion since 2004