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Just came across at (voodooextreme) an interview with Charles M at SimHQ dealing CM2


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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ron:

They did, he goes by the name of KwazyDog, you can see his work in the Maddog packs.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

True enough.

War doesn't miss one modder, thought tongue.gif

In any case, I reckon it might not be the worst use of their $ to buy/contract some "extras" to work on the textures. Would ensure that the last naff Bt-7a gets some proper textures in the release version.

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Heya Guys,

Tiger, as Matt suggest and as you guessed, no individual roadwheels as this point. I know it would be great to see, but it is one that will have to wait until processors catch up.

To put it into perspecive lets say that an individual road wheel with just one face and eight sides would take up 22 polygons. Now, add 8 of to each side of a tank and youve added around 352 polygons to your vehicle, near doubling its poly count. They are of course ways around this that we will investigate for the CM rewrite, but no matter how you play with the figures you are still upping the polygons on screen, and you will still need a stronger processor to run it all.

Anyways, Im sure there are going to be enough vehicles to fill your time up modding without having to do individual road wheels ;)

Dan

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one other thing - I don't know if this was just a "pretty" render or if it's a working model, but I would immediately suggest that you take out the hollowed barrel. I read a lot of posts on a forum dedicated to modeling for Counterstrike and one of the first things that people are told when they show up with a new model is not to hollow out barrels or other cylinders. That's obviously more prevalent in CS, since you're never going to see the barrel end, but even in CM you should be able to skin the muzzle hole very convincingly and save 20-30 polies doing it. Maybe not a lot, but when you consider that there's never just one tank on a map...

is2-1.jpg

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Hiya Paladin ;)

Yes, each vehicle is around 350 polygons, give or take depending on the complexity of the models. For instance vehicles with an interior such as trucks or open topped vehicles can are the highest.

Dont worry about the lip on the gun, its not as bad as youd first think. smile.gif Firstly they are only the outer surfaces to give the gun some thickness so it is only 12 polygons. That would be a lot if it was done on each vehicle, but we only put it on vehicles with larger guns. Lastly, CM has the capability to use lower polly models at a distance, so these 12 pollies will only be visible withing a reasonable distance ;)

Dan

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Hey Kwazy... good point on the open-topped vehicles, I can imagine they must be poly-killers.

From my calculations... well first of all, as far as I know in 3DSMax a "rectangle" is really two triangles or polies. Thus each of the edges of the barrel, i.e. the very front, is two polies - 12 right there. The inside of each rectangle on the muzzle brake (or whatever that last wide cylinder is) is another two - or 12 more polies. There is also the angled cylinder between the brake and the barrel itself, which I'm assuming is just a cylinder with either some weird perspective effect or a smoothing group applied to it... at any rate, if each vertex on the gun barrel goes to a vertex on the brake, as it appears it does, that would of course be a 6-sided cylinder, with the corresponding additional 12 polies. Assuming you put a "cap" on the barrel at the connection to the brake, you could move that cap to the muzzle itself, thus not needing any more polies added... and save 36 polies.

Of course, these are a lot of assumptions on my part, and it's a moot point if you're using separate models for near and far. Out of curiosity, what are you doing to differentiate between near and far models? Are you running some kind of plugin to cut down on the polygons a certain percentage without losing acceptable detail, or creating new models?

Lastly... are you using Max, Lightwave, or another tool? Just curious as to what someone in the business uses. Again, to make that detailed a model with only 350 polies is pretty impressive. Keep up the good work,

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Kwazy,

Tell me if this sort of graphical suggestion concerning buildings could be considered.

I love the texture work and all, but the way buildings just stick out in CM1 (and judging by these screenshots, CM2 as well) on the open grass is just unrealistic. In reality, buildings in rural areas always have the grass work away near the door and sometimes around the house itself. This is obviously because people walk in and out of their houses for various reasons. In the back or sides of houses, you could have an appearance of more vegetation or maybe even some debirs.

A great polygonal addition would be a basic box near the side or rear of the house, textured with the image of piled wood. This was common practice in rural Russia, as winters are very very cold and chopping wood under 4 feet of snow is NOT something you want to be doing, let me tell you :eek:

I see this achieved by adding a little space all around the edges which touch the ground, and texture that space accordingly, instead of the basic box model you use for a house currently. You can then add all sorts of stuff to it. Like I mentioned, patted down or worn away grass, wood piles, various house-hold objects thrown away or misplaced, etc.

Not a game saving uber-effect, but one which would greatly increase the realism in villages and small buildings.

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Hiay Paladin,

I think where you calculations are going wrong is that you are assuming that there is an 'inside' to the barrel istelf, but there is not. smile.gif The only extra pollies added this the gun which could be considered unnecessary is the lip around the end of the barrel, just 12 pollies, to give it some thickness. Without this the barrel tends to look paper thin so the small addition is worth it. Behind this though, there are no internal surfaces to the barrel and thus no extra pollies. Oh, and the cylinder that goes between the thinner and wider parts of the barrel is actually a cone with its point buried deep within the barrel, which halves the amount of pollies youd require for that piece of the structure. Trust me when I say that there are lots of little tricks going on there to save pollies and the barrel is as simple as can be whilst getting the correct basic shape, except for those 12 extra lip polygons which could be considered a luxery ;)

We havnt started on the lower res models at this point, but I will be doing them up myself. Each one will only take a couple of minutes, but should around half the amount of pollies used per vehicle at a distance which is where most vehicles usually are.

Currently I am using 3D Max, though only version 2.5. We will be upgrading this in the future though. Let me know if any of that dosnt make sense. smile.gif

Dan

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Commissar great ideas. Dont worry, extra building detail is on the 'list' of things to do, though I dont know any more than that at this point ;)

Tiger, that thing is going to be a beast for sure. Im looking forward to seeing the Elefant in action too...that is one huge vehicle smile.gif

Dan

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

He did have some classics, from "Release the hounds" to "Excellent." My fav still has to be "Smithers! Massage my brain!"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

My all time favorite is still:

Burns: *sniff* "Smithers, do you think my power plant could have killed those ducks?"

Smithers: "There's no 'could' about it, sir."

Burns: *sniff* "Excellent..."

Kwazy Dog,

Cool! Thanks for listening. I just want CM2 to be as close to reality as current processor power allows, and I think this is a major step, since most people I know play with the "village" setting in QB's.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by The Commissar:

My all time favorite is still:

Burns: "Smithers, do you think my power plant could have killed those ducks?"

Smithers: "There's no 'could' about it, sir."

Burns: *sniff* "Excellent..."

Kwazy Dog,

Cool! Thanks for listening. I just want CM2 to be as close to reality as current processor power allows, and I think this is a major step, since most people I know play with the "village" setting in QB's.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by KwazyDog:

Hiay Paladin,

I think where you calculations are going wrong is that you are assuming that there is an 'inside' to the barrel istelf, but there is not. smile.gif

Dan<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

KwazyDog,

Yeah, but it would be really nice if there was a single "inside" texture for all the barrels. It's a PITA when the barrel camouflage (like the British Firefly's used) shows up inside the barrel. smile.gif

Any chance all the models will feature unique left/right sides, or just a select few?

Gordon

(already brushing up on my Ostfront camouflage reading) :cool:

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Multiple nationalities, mmmmmm, nummy smile.gif Last I heard it was just the finns, russkies and jerries. Great to hear about the other nationalities. Even more important, it's great to hear that they will behave distinctly different depending on the time of the year. Wow, that could be like 3 branches of AI per nationality, times 6 nationlities (just pulling a number out of the air), for a total of 18 branches of AI just for unit behavior alone. That to me is very impressive. Even more impressive than the eye candy.

*sniff*, I love you man :D

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