UT99 War (New gametype) - [ON HOLD]

[Feralidragon]

uhmm... maybe some new shots ?

Well, I can place just 2 more, but the best ones I already showed (above), so the next are just very simple ones, nothing too detailed or something (Flame Tracker and Freezer):

[GenMoKai]

Yeah i see but with some textures it will look better for sure!

[Feralidragon]

Yeah i see but with some textures it will look better for sure!

Well, yeah, this is only flat shaded, which means, pure poly display. UT lits them as Smooth Shaded (vertex lighting), that gives a more round look to the model, and with some textures, it will just look correct.

For example, when you see the normal sniper, it's a fine model of a rifle, now try open it in flat shaded (I did, and ugh), it's ugly flat shaded.

I am not giving excuses, my modelling is just like that, just saying that it will look better smooth shaded. Besides, a some polys have special properties and special textures (to give the weapon a better effect), but it will only be visible in game.

Now, I am terrible with textures, but as my mapping improved a lot with tutorials, well, I already read some texturing tutorials myself, maybe I can do something reasonable by the time.

[GenMoKai]

Well, yeah, this is only flat shaded, which means, pure poly display. UT lits them as Smooth Shaded (vertex lighting), that gives a more round look to the model, and with some textures, it will just look correct.

For example, when you see the normal sniper, it's a fine model of a rifle, now try open it in flat shaded (I did, and ugh), it's ugly flat shaded.

I am not giving excuses, my modelling is just like that, just saying that it will look better smooth shaded. Besides, a some polys have special properties and special textures (to give the weapon a better effect), but it will only be visible in game.

Now, I am terrible with textures, but as my mapping improved a lot with tutorials, well, I already read some texturing tutorials myself, maybe I can do something reasonable by the time.

I know you dont give excuses its really hard to do that stuff, not many people can create some nice things like you if i made a attempt... it will look like a stick with a trigger on it...

If you need some mapping advice, just call me or talk to me via msn i'll be there for you

[Feralidragon]

Well, yeah, this is only flat shaded, which means, pure poly display. UT lits them as Smooth Shaded (vertex lighting), that gives a more round look to the model, and with some textures, it will just look correct.

For example, when you see the normal sniper, it's a fine model of a rifle, now try open it in flat shaded (I did, and ugh), it's ugly flat shaded.

I am not giving excuses, my modelling is just like that, just saying that it will look better smooth shaded. Besides, a some polys have special properties and special textures (to give the weapon a better effect), but it will only be visible in game.

Now, I am terrible with textures, but as my mapping improved a lot with tutorials, well, I already read some texturing tutorials myself, maybe I can do something reasonable by the time.

I know you dont give excuses its really hard to do that stuff, not many people can create some nice things like you if i made a attempt... it will look like a stick with a trigger on it...

If you need some mapping advice, just call me or talk to me via msn i'll be there for you

It's not that hard, since you domain the basic shapes. For example, I use mostly cylinders (my sniper was entirelly built by cylinders, believe it or not LOL).
Then, you just have to see a few weapon images and think how are you going to do your own weapon (I just did this for sniper, since I never modelled a weapon before).
You just have to have attention to the polys and stuff, to the UV mapping later, or UV mapping becomes a really big headache. After all, there are people that born to that, other don't (like me) and have to practise a lot LOL

[GenMoKai]

Ahhh i get it but what program you use then? 3dmax ? or something else?

[Feralidragon]

Ahhh i get it but what program you use then? 3dmax ? or something else?

3dsmax? No, too annoying, more work in the animations and very expensive for the use I would give to the program.
I use MilkShape 3D instead, has some bugs, but nothing very serious, and the best part is that you can do skeletal animations, and then export to psk/psa (unreal skeletal mesh format) or export to _d.3d and _a.3d normally, and the skeletal animation is converted to vertex animation (much more usefull and clean ). (yeah, I don't need external conversion tools, MilkShape has all those incorporated by itself) But it's paid, but worths the paying and is very cheap.

For UV mapping, I use LithUnwrap, extremelly good for UV mapping and model conversions, and it's free.

[][X][~FLuKE~][X][]

pretty much every model in UT looks awful when viewed in MS3D to to the very low poly count



the only way to get the model to look good without textures is by having it high in polys.


eg.

this is a jet i put together but UT99 would never deal with it as it has 35000 polys.





then compare to a jet mesh that is right to export to .3d for UT
big difference.

[Feralidragon]

But those are the same jet? So, how did make those? First did you the high poly one, then you reduced it directly, or did a new one low poly? I'm confused now... (HOLY SHIT!!)

[Myth]

I've started modeling a lil hovercraft.
WIP:

I was thinking of separating it into 6 sub-meshes, so that there won't be that dissapearing mesh bug: leftwing, rightwing, cockpit, back, leftweapon, rightweapon.

The outcome will be similar to UT2k4's Manta.

Got any other vehicle specific rules which I should obey?

Edit:I will only divide it to 4 sub-meshes.
~24% completed

[Feralidragon]

I've started modeling a lil hovercraft.
[...]

I was thinking of separating it into 6 sub-meshes, so that there won't be that dissapearing mesh bug: leftwing, rightwing, cockpit, back, leftweapon, rightweapon.

The outcome will be similar to UT2k4's Manta.

Got any other vehicle specific rules which I should obey?

Man, are you modelling vehicles too to this mod? And it is looking good

Rules in building vehicles (not too many):
1) Each mesh (or submesh) not more than 1500-2000 polys due to the current engine limitations;

2) There are some vehicle parts that MUST be treated like submeshes (independent meshes), like freelly rotating weapon parts, or wheels, you had to divide your vehicle by parts like this:
- Wheels (just build one, the rest are copied by the vehicle to fullfill is "wheeled" requests, unless that the vehicle has different wheel types);
- The weapons and weapon turrets that rotate freely by the player control (like a tank cannon, you have the base (left or right rotation), and the cannon itself (that rotates up and down);
- The main vehicle body (obvious, this one has to exist).

But of course, in the case of a jet, you don't have wheels, so you won't bother with those, and in the case that your jet is "normal", which means that it shoots missiles from its wings always in the direction that the jet is rotated, seperate weapon parts aren't necessary as well.

3) Don't think about doing BIG vehicles, like a big ship, or a big mothership (maybe a big stationary cannon is okay, depending on how big it is, but its kinda a problem to have a big ship that is always disappearing [that little mesh system bug] and the collision is still a cylinder.

4) OPTIONAL, if you could make the vehicle already with a good skin and such, it would be less work to me. About the skin, maybe a normal skin (team-less), and a red and blue team versions of it.

Besides that, use your imagination with anything.

In your specific case Myth, I don't know how your weapons are, but if they are always pointing in the hovers direction (like ut2k4), you could do the all the model in one mesh, since the mesh is not very big (I suppose), and since you always see the vehicle by outside (yeah, no 1st person view in these vehicles), so the mesh disappearing bug is less probable to happen, and more the submeshes in a vehicle, more laggy it becomes in net play (more location updates, more bandwith).

I will only insert and configure/script the vehicles after all of them are done in terms of models and skins, so take you time to do the model.

Keep up the good work and thanks for the contribution

P.S.: All credits for the main vehicle physics code go to Dots (VehiclePhys.u). Dots is the one that created this excellent vehicle system, and he's updating and improving it, that's why I will only add these vehicles and add my own code (I already got the permissions) when all the models are done, so they can work with latest most stable and bugless version possible.
As I already studied some of the code and understanded 50% of it (in offline terms, not replication), I sure you that some unavailable physics like boat and amphibious will be added, either by me or Dots (of course if I add those, it won't be directly in the main/original package, it will be subclassed, as everything else I add or mod).

[GenMoKai]

i edit this post tomorrow the third beer + very sleepy mind say that i must go to bed, sorry... i promise i replay to this tomorrow!

EDIT: Looks nice myth, cant wait to see the final results of it. But i agree with feralidragon. to create 1 big mesh, i think you can add this submeshes in 1 big mesh i gues. And i like the UT2k4 gun idea manta style

[Feralidragon]

Btw, in which program are you doing that Myth?

[][X][~FLuKE~][X][]

no -one can fault those models, they are grade A for unreal tournament, a model CANNOT be judged from MS3d, it has no textures, The textures define its shape.

Excellent work feri, anyone who says they are "ok" or "could do with " have never modelled and dont know how to!

with Textures, those weapons will look incredible in game.


GJ

I've started modeling a lil hovercraft.
WIP:

unnecle.jpg

I was thinking of separating it into 6 sub-meshes, so that there won't be that dissapearing mesh bug: leftwing, rightwing, cockpit, back, leftweapon, rightweapon.

The outcome will be similar to UT2k4's Manta.

Got any other vehicle specific rules which I should obey?

Edit:I will only divide it to 4 sub-meshes.
~22% completed

the dissapearing is down to LOD settings on the Exec import and set LOD bias to 4.0 in default properties.


i have successfully imported a 22000 poly jet into UT99 by changing the LOD settings, obviously it cant be used as it would stress server too much rendering, but you can stop the "dissapearing" elements through LOD setup.

[Feralidragon]

Thanks Fluke, but the problem will be the texture work (never made good textures in my life, but I will try to fix that out).

About disappearing meshes, you're talking about disappearing mesh polys, right? There's another way (the way I always use) to fix that without tweaking LOD Bias, it's by Lod parameters: Strenght. If you set strenght to 0 at import, the polys will always remain there, at LOD Bias 1 (I tell this because there are known bugs with LOD Bias when set up to 8, so just in case).

The problem I told about disapearing, is the total disappearing of the mesh in certain angles and locations of the view of the mesh (even close to the mesh), that one seems to be only solved by an entire new mesh system (that moonangel started, Shadow tried to develop and solve, but never released a stable version to public). Unless Shadow release something about it, it won't be possible to do certain vehicle types, such big cargos for example.