[Guild] Community of Vaalnor: SoR

[Raleigh]

I wish I had the minimum skills require to give a headstart on something like that...
Wait, can't I make something like that with Qwaek 3 Worldbuilder or UnrealED?
I know too little of texturing for that either... 

Anyway, nice greek/roman-like scenario.

[Induane]

Jek got me some new textures, and I rearranged the lighting to be a bit more realistic.  I still haven't textured the chairs or the bar but it is coming along nicely:

[Zan]

Tavern is looking better and better .. as soon as my life calms down a bit I'll be roaming around there!

[Karyuu]

Wow, that looks great

[Mhyrage]

That looks nice. IMO it's nothing special though...aside from the lighting. I'm new to lighting. The lighting is really good either way.

[Jekkar]

Mhyrage, these are pictures of work in progress. Some of the textures are even simply there to substitute for empty space.
And we can always use people that can do a better job than us so drop by the chatroom sometime and show us your stuff

And thanks for the compliment Karyuu. Any support is always welcome.

[Mhyrage]

Mhyrage, these are pictures of work in progress. Some of the texture are even simply there to substitute for empty space.
And we can always use people that can do a better job than us so drop by the chatroom sometime and show us your stuff

And thanks for the compliment Karyuu. Any support is always welcome.

I'm simply referring to the architecture. Still, it's always nice for an MMO. IMO I'd make the tables have a few more sides. Also...how the heck does that roof stay up? I'm a mapper I don't do textures very much, I'm just an architecture guy.

[Jekkar]

Hehe, you'll have to ask Induane about the architecture. The exterior of the tavern is a giant block of marble though, i'm not sure the roof needs to be supported by anything.

[Induane]

There IS actually a center support but for some darned reason it makes lighter2 crash and so I've always set export to false on it.  Its simply a slightly ornate pillar with 4 sides, and some nooks for storage shelving of bottles of ale.  Its all set to not export though.  I also have a cliff face on the exterior thats not set to export currently because it also crashes lighter2.  I sent the map off to sueastside who used it for a test case and submitted it to res2k with a back-trace for debugging so I'm assuming those issues will be fixed soon.  I know it must have something to do with the way I applied the uv-map but I can't get it figured out.  Its one for the CS team to handle. 

I'm glad you like the lighting.  I've found that for unskilled persons like myself, good lighting can make up for other weaknesses, and I'm fairly proficient with lighting in CrystalSpace.  If performance with pure dynamic lights on a stencil shadow based renderloop was a little better I would have animated the flames lights to flicker a bit and used some parallax mapping, but the performance wasn't good enough.  I may later switch to a diffuse renderloop since it has a lightier step and I could combine some of both.  I'll have to experiment with that though.  I am a sucker from the cool lightmap shadows.

[Mhyrage]

I'm starting to feel like mapping for this game. I'd stick to to the insides of buildings though. Furnishings and wall detail and such if I could. Karyuu saw a bit of what shouldn't be done to walls already lol. What is the lighting like in crystalspace? Do you have to change the intensity and everything? Does each light cast a shadow too? Etc.

[Induane]

Lighting in CrystalSpace is complex.  It depends on many factors:

Renderloop:  Depending on what shaders you use you need different renderloops.   I have some good information about renderloops on my website on this page:

http://vaalnor.mine.nu/psdoc/?q=node/48

Now lights have two types: static or dynamic ( there is also pseudo dynamic in certain renderloops but I don't understand that fully myself ).

Static lights require the lighting to be pre-calculated with a lighter.  There is the standard lighter, and the new lighter - lighter2 which is more accurate.  If you use the mesh type: genmesh (which you absolutely should) and use the shader std_lighting.xml then lighter2 can do lightmaps on genmeshes.  The old lighter only supports lightmaps on thing meshes which are being obsoleted anyways.  If you light genmeshes with a standard shader applied with the standard lighter, then the lighting is calculated based on vertex shading.  This works great for somewhat complex geometry, but for big flat surfaces is fairly useless.  For this reason I favor genmesh + lighter2.

Dynamic lights do not require relighting, and if used in moderation can do some really nice things.  Map testing is also quicker as it never requires relighting.   Too many has a horrible performance hit though, so you need to be careful. 

So whether a light casts a true shadow is dependent on what type of shader is used on a mesh, and in what renderloop.   You can also set intensity, as well as influence radius, attenuation, etc.  You can also set color, and use ipo for animating them if they are dynamic, including animating a color change.

[Mhyrage]

Do you have predone renders? I map in GTKradiant most because I used to play JA a lot, and I'm fairly used to it. They had a lot of preanimated lights like flicker and strong slow pulse, etc. You could do a lot of original stuff with the lighting in that game. Because of the perspective and the ability to jump say 25+ feet, it's quite hard to scale as well. It's also a good starting engine since it doesn't like too much small detail in one spot. Either way, is crystalspace free download, have to have connections, or what? It sounds like something I might enjoy. Is it more of a modeler or a mapper, by the way? I'd have to say I'd be quite useless without the stability the grid/snap to grid for brushes mappers have.
A friend said 3ds has that though. I bet I could do a lot in a modeler if I could have things snap to grid. Especially with all the extra power they have.

[Induane]

I am not sure if pre-animated lights are possible in CS or not - I'd have to ask res2k the man behind the lighters CrystalSpace is a 3d game engine which can be downloaded free of charge and compiled from source.  I used blender for modeling because its crystalspace exporter is the most mature.  In most ways its just as powerful as the big modeling programs like 3dsmax and Maya, and it runs on Linux (Maya does too but it costs too much and I don't want to pirate it).  Everything in Peragro Tempus is done in blender, all of our maps are, and exported to CrystalSpace.  Much of PlaneShift was done in blender - the bronze door region for instance, and the winch area.

[Mhyrage]

Aye, aye. I just went to BD recently. It was very creative. Much inspiring. That and the temple of Laanx would be the things I would have problems replicating. Or at least would take a very long time...thanks for all the info though. I might have to look into getting into the Dev team one day. It'd be nice to have some experience with a real game. I doubt I ever will though. I do definitely have enough time to volunteer on my hands xD...

[Induane]

Alrighty Jekkar sent me a few more textures, and I made one for the chair finally though it isn't much good.  Here is the result: