54 replies to this topic

[Gen.Kenobi]

Rock, scissors, paper, lizard, Spock!

Just kidding.
Well, so I trew away, some first "rock" formations. BUT I'm not sure if it's nature-cannon. Why is that? Because if I recall correctly at my Geography's lessons each rock formation was "formed" due different erosive/weathering agents. So rocks in dry regions (deserts, savana, ect) would mostly be pointy, since the wind is the main agent. Rocks in topical regions (rain forrest, these stuff) would be smooth, since the main agent is the water(rainy). Rocks in temperate regions would be a mix betwen these two. And so on. (Cold regions should have something like sea cliffs or big glaciers)

So It's quite complex. Specially the tropical ones, since getting nice looking smooth rocks with low poly without normal maps is quite a challenge.

Here's my first "formation".
Since it was mainly an experiment, I decided to go for "temperate".
(The best thing when making rocks is that they are quite modular, and the UVMapping is easy! - Hmm... just occured to me, I'm using blender's generated box mapping, does the game will need hand made maps? [please say no!!!] )



So, please trow your rock into this discussion and I'm sure the rocks will rock!

[Geek377]

General Kenobi, shown superior use of the force of Blender, you have.

[Shield Bearer]

That is, really superb! I tried doing some rocks sometime ago, but it was harder than I thought Good stuff. Do you think it would be good to have some shrubs growing from the crevices?

[Gen.Kenobi]

Tried some "desert-looking" rocks... I really enjoyed working on them. I know it's not great, since if you pay attention you'll notice severall patterns - basicaly, I made only one base model and started to edit here and there. Also, I'm not very sure, about how do you guys want the rocks to look like - Individual, mountain type, ect - so I'm creating a bazilion of types

Oh! And you may notice that in this render I added shadows and, if you look closely you'll see that the rocks have bump mapping. Yeah. It's my way of doing psychological warfare, about why Bump/Normal Mapping is a MUST



And I didn't like this texture "desert-badlands.quarry" or something like that... BUT... :/
So, I tried with this other one: "desert-quarry" ...

Looks better?
Maybe we can have both.

Tell me what you think.

Shield Bearer, on 18 June 2012 - 03:10 PM, said:

Do you think it would be good to have some shrubs growing from the crevices?

hehehe. It could look nice. Maybe we could add some prop points and put some brushes there. Or maybe the map maker could do it manually

[Pureon]

Do you want to work on some others? If yes, Mythos requested this a few months ago:

Mythos_Ruler, on 18 March 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

...Some custom and cool looking rock formations for the Desert biome, specifically for the Neareastern Badlands map. Examples:


And then let's experiment with "mountain tops" to make some cool and realistic looking pseudo-mountain ranges in the game.

So maybe some pointy rocks?

[Gen.Kenobi]

I'm on it
Just one thing... the mountains will be hard to get to work seamless with the map. You know, back in AoK/SW:GB this type of "topography" never worked out very nicely...

[Mythos_Ruler]

Gen.Kenobi, on 18 June 2012 - 11:36 PM, said:

I'm on it
Just one thing... the mountains will be hard to get to work seamless with the map. You know, back in AoK/SW:GB this type of "topography" never worked out very nicely...

SWGB was essentially a mod for Age of Kings. But anyway, ignore the mountain thing for now. I'd just work on rock formations.

[bstempi]

Rock on

[Gen.Kenobi]

Pointy rocks here:



Those are not really great, can be re-worked if requested. Pointy rocks are really a pain to get nicely. :/

Anyways, trow your rock here!

[historic_bruno]

Nice job, when do we get them in the game?

[Gen.Kenobi]

If I were in my PC, I would have added them, but I can't :/ So I sent the first two sets to Pureon.

[Pureon]

Gen.Kenobi, on 25 June 2012 - 01:20 AM, said:

If I were in my PC, I would have added them, but I can't :/ So I sent the first two sets to Pureon.

Can you send me the optimized dae files for them?

[Gen.Kenobi]

I can try, but these two weeks - from 26 to 07 - are going to be really hard for me to do anything.

But anyways, i belive I sent you the two blend files of the two first sets. If you can't and if it's really needed so soon, I'll try to get .dae files for them ASAP.

[Gen.Kenobi]

Bump!

Hi everyone! Please feel free to trow your rock here... Ops, I mean, feel free to comment, criticize, say whatever you feel like. Help me improve the rocks of the game, to make it rock even more!

So I just discovered today the mess I made. I forgot to UV unwrap the rocks, I was using Blender's Generated UV map coordinates, what unfortunately doesn't work ingame. So I have to unwrap everything... What is quite a pain, since I don't like it But, I'll get them done. Rocks are easy to unwrap, since the textures are seamless


@Pureon: Rock-desert-set with optimized DAEs sent to your email

[zoot]

Nice work. These horizontal lines seem a bit unnatural, IMO:



Think the rocks will look good with AO, though.

[majapahit]

I've installed blender for a while and still stuck on the gingerbread man tutorial
any advice on how to speed up the learning curve for blender?

[Sonarpulse]

Gen.Kenobi, on 30 June 2012 - 10:41 PM, said:

So I just discovered today the mess I made. I forgot to UV unwrap the rocks, I was using Blender's Generated UV map coordinates, what unfortunately doesn't work ingame. So I have to unwrap everything... What is quite a pain, since I don't like it But, I'll get them done. Rocks are easy to unwrap, since the textures are seamless

In 3ds Max you can bake such a "procedural wrapper" like box mapping to a manual UVW unwrap. I can't see why blender wouldn't support that too.

[Gen.Kenobi]

Hey guys!
Sorry for the delay out here. I just got my three week break started. Second semester will be like hell for me. So I must the this stuff done ASAP.
Anyways, I'll be converting the rocks in the next few days, and sending them to Pueron, which means that we might see them ingame soon!

@Sonarpulse: Looks like that Blender's generated mapping is just used for Blender's render. I couldn't find an option to bake it into an UV, so the solution is to map by hand from now on, or just box Unwrap when the model is still a box And them is just to add cuts, here and there and get some modelling done.

@majapaint: All I can say to you is to practice, practice and practice. Don't just watch the tutorials. Do them too. And once you learned the basic tools, start to get some reference of inorganic objects, easy to model, so you can learn different techiniques and see which one fits you the best. Start with chair, tables, fireplaces, weapons, and them you'll be good to go, I guess I made this scene with all the things I learned from modelling and it took a month to get it ready and the more models you do, the more assets you have to put on your future scenes. The weapon in the fireplace was a separate project, them, after I modeled it, I decided to give it a scene. And I came up with this (in the end, what was to be the main detail, the weapon, was just a mere prop):

(It has some flaws, but it's my best scene ever and my first one. )
The most important thing about modelling is to never give up. It's mostly trial and error. True Story. I started lots of model projects that I never came to finish, and it gives you a sense of failure. So try to finish all your model projects. Even the smaller one. You'll always learn something and don't forget the feeling of accomplishment when you get your work done. It's awesome. If you want to check some of my work, and my learning curve, check my moddb profile: http://www.moddb.com...nkenobi/images/ I have yet to find time to get a portfolio up and running.
Good Luck!

@zoot: Yeah, It's really hard to get rocks right. I'll try to improve on my next ones. No matter how many references you get, you just can't seen to mimic mother nature just right. Vegetation itself is a pain. All organic stuff But I hope you liked it

[Gen.Kenobi]

Hmm:


Commited.

[Geek377]

Cool work General