Morgoth

Are you actually using a level editor for building the maps or do you build all that stuff inside e.g. 3ds max? Not only the props, but the whole layout as well? If yes, how is the compiling process handled? I just ask because I did myself some leveldesign (for UT and Quake3) two years ago, and those games provided powerful level editors, so I'm just wondering whether Bioware cared about programming similar powerful level editors for the KOTOR engine too or whether they just provide compiling tools for 3ds max export...

I'd say Commandos 3. The first two games were excellent, they were very intensive, innovative and well balanced, but C3...oh boy. Everything that made the first two ones great was gone in C3. WORST GAME I EVER BOUGHT.

Uhh uh uh, I found 15 new screenshots just for you! Danke Morgoth.

Woahh, let's hope this game plays as good as it looks like... Clicky And keep your eyes ready on www.ensemblestudios.com. Now that the Teaser Picture is at "The Titans", it's just a matter of hours until they announce AoE3 officially.

Well, I always thought that story telling that encourages your brain activities and let your phantasy plays some parts is more interesting than, let's just say, story telling that throws all in front of your screen and don't offer me the option to actually interpret it how I want it (and not being forced by the story teller how I should interpret it)... if you can follow me. Anyway, that's probably the reason why I loved PS: Torment so much, and most probably why I'll love Kotor2 too...

It should better be called "The Bug", since it's literally more bug than game.... and that still after 6 Patches....

No, Gabe already mentioned a while ago that HL3 should be done within a hamster's life, otherwise the team would kill him. I can't really blame them, because working 6 years on the same title is certainly not a funny thing...

Wow!!!...wait... this is not a screenshot. This is an actual photo! HA! Thought you can fool me hah?!? Yeah Yeah, no one can fool Morgoth and his insanely high perception for distinguishing game screenshots from Reallife pictures! No no... Nice try though, Ender... ... *grumble*...Why does sometimes this reflected like image of this incredibly good looking guy shows up on my monitor screen? Hey, here again!

Beware! The end of the world is near!!!!1111 Doom Doom Doom!!! Nah, actually that's a picture for a music band I did over a year ago.... The main idea behind their project was some kinda Doom, so I did my best to fulfill their desire. :ph34r:

Don't worry mate, sooner or later you'll know how to handle UV's properly, but only through the hard way... I'll continue with my modeling sessions soon, but before I must practice with layouting UV's myself... oh and I'm also itchy about knowing how to prelight a scene (aka baking lightmaps). Have a nice and productive day!

Ok here's just a little update about my progress, because I know you're all insanely interested in my magical stuff. I replaced the crappy "Trolo the Troll" shot with a new one, this time with better UV layout, hence a better result with the Normal Map too. I also managed it to reduce the polycount of the head down to 1577 Triangles. Trolo the beautiful Troll I've also an in-game HL2 shot (Update: This time with Lightmap) of the head, but unfortunately the Normal Map does not have that intensity I was hoping about, maybe it's because Maya and HL2 use a different up-axis, or maybe it's because I used an object-spaced NM instead of a Tangent-Spaced NM, or does it even matter? Hmmm....

So, after writing some exams, working on another project and playing too much Bloodlines, I finally found (took) some time to crawl my ass back to Maya and doing some magical stuff with it. My groundbreaking discovery of today: Normal Maps! Yes, Normal Maps. Those things you extract from a Hi-Res Model (normal vectors saved into the rgb channels) and then apply it to a Low-Res model. This method is very common in the game industry, because you can fake details on your Low-res objects/characters that actually do not exist, at least not as polygons. I also figured out how to export and convert that stuff from Maya into the Source Engine (Half-Life 2). That was a pain into the ass, but I did it eventually. Unfortunately my normal map for my troll does not look like as supposed to be, but that's another story.... Here's an example of a wall. The Wall Here the same wall (actually a plane), loaded in HL2MV: The Wall (again) And here's my famous Troll, let's call him Trolo: Trolo the beautiful Troll (Updated) Unfortunately I didn't spend much time to layout the UV's (well, in fact, I only applied a spherical mapper), so the result looks pretty messy. The Normal Map is okay, the UV's not, but I think you should get the idea.

It's funny that I never ran into these performance and sound stuttering problems people are complaining about. Game run's very smooth. You people really need 1 Gbyte RAM, that's mandatory for playing any modern game decently today. The only thing that really sucks about BL is that it just gets too hard in the end... after trying to kill this snail monster (without any luck) I gave up... Now let's see if I can make the snail driving nuts with my Malk! (w00t)

No, how? In fact, I thought the Blinn material looks sexier! :D Actually, the ribcage was a bit wedge-shaped, the new one (although it's hard to see now without the sexy Blinn material) is rounder... I shortened the legs just a little bit on the shank, though I admit they look still too long from the front, but look okay from the side.... :ph34r: I guess I'll make a mermaid or an elve out of it, and will completely redo a human female body another time... For now, I'll let it be as it is and better move forward to do something new instead of wasting time to fix a half-broken model... Looks more like a dwarf now! Autodidact.

Okey Dokey, now I fixed the ribcage as well as shortened the legs a little bit. I've also tried to add some ribs, but decided to leave them out, because they just didn't look good, or maybe it's just because I don't like meager woman. Anyway: Female High-Res Body Update#1

Well, I showed you the smoothed model. Of course I'm working with a "Cage" Model (Smooth-Proxy method called in Maya), otherwise it would be a single nightmare to alter the smoothed model.... Edit: Your female model looks very...robust. But the edgeloops are very clean, and the feet from what I can see even look better than mine (err, my model I mean).

Thanks for the response people, I appreciate it! @Oerwinde True, the legs are a little bit too long, and I'll try to fix the ribcage and add some ribs. Though, I think the butt is alright. The feet and hands aren't perfect either, but I think for game-usage it's ok. I'll keep that with the lambert material in mind. Oh, and here's a shot where you can see the linework. Female Linework Keep in mind that's my first high-res model, if I think the ribcage and ribs cannot be fixed anymore due to messed up edgeloops, I think I'll redo it completely. When I get home I'll look into it... @Weiser Cain I'll look into that, thanks. For the future (if I've the time) I'll also make a male body, as well as maybe a horse. And several faces.

Very kewl design... Reminds me a bit of a Klingon weapon. Keep up your good work!

Ok, here I've some models I created in Maya, those are my first high-poly models where I really worked hard, while my previous one's aren't really worthy to show you. Keep in mind that the UV's and Textures (as you can see) aren't placed yet, that's a discipline I've yet to learn properly. For now I'm more concentrating on creating clean Polygon Meshes, both for in-game usage and Renderart. Okay, here's a female body I created last week. Please feel free to comment what you like and what not. I used a blueprint for the general shape and muscles splitting from an anatomical draw book, scanned it and imported the Image Planes into Maya. That's the way to go anyway... Female High-Res Body Female High-Res Body (Updated) The same model, but stripped down for in-game usage. With a poly-count of 4208 I think it's a very reasonable number for most games today (although with a head that could raise up to ~6000 polys). Female Game Mesh And here's my first high-res Troll-head I just created today, guided by a nice Tutorial I found here. Troll-Head Side View Troll-Head Rendershot Just tell me what you think and give me feedback in this thread if you think something doesn't really look natural from an anatomical standpoint. Enjoy! Edit: First link fixed.

Not bad Oerwinde, I like that Demon very much. I think the overall shape is very good, but as you said, that demon would probably look more dangerously when you intensify the stomach muscles and the chest, as well as adding kneecaps and make it less "out of gum" and more like "tough badass". I think blueprints are very helpful when trying to model, you can import these Blueprints as ImagePlanes into your 3D Proggy and then cut the edges along the muscles... You can look into this thread where links are collected for downloading Blueprints, i.e. human anatomy etc. Keep up your good work!

Appropriate to the EA Spouse article I found this one where a former EA executive now speaks out how to avoid such bad management decisions that are apparently very common in the game industry. Very good read.

Btw when does EA's Slaveholder 2005 come out? :ph34r:

Very appropriate to the forthcoming US election, I found this movie. [5MB] You really must watch it, it's just hilarious!

Deutschlandsberg/Austria/Europe/Earth/Milky-Way/Universe