Contribution Discussion

[Karyuu]

Glad to help! Another piece of advice I'd like to share is: never allow your 3D application to decide how your UV map is going to look. Never settle for an automatic process/result - always go back in and manually tweak your UVs to maximize your use of nearly every centimeter of space. Your 3D application is just a tool: you're still the artist who has to make decisions for it

[Jeraphon]

I think it's great work. Smart thinking on your part to make a nice big Roman 1 on the front cover...once you make the Volume II, they'll be easily distinguishable.

[Karyuu]

P.S : i didn't find how to do the overlapping thingy, if you could tell me how to do it, or give me a link for a guide, it would be cool

I'm guessing you use Blender? I'm not familiar with how it works, unfortunately, as I work with 3ds max. But try to see if you can grab your UVs and move them around on the UV page. It's that simple in max, at least

After some searching, I found this tutorial - which at a quick glance looks like it might be just the thing you need. If you're using another 3D application, mention its name and we'll try to help out.

[Cherppow]

Hi,

Overlap UVs: Yes, in Blender uv/image editor, toggle face select on with C-key. Select one, and move it with grab to overlap the wanted uv faces.

To kougaro: All in all pretty nice work, especially for your first work. I suggest you turn specularity off for the renders. Also, if possible, try lowering the screenshot image compression rate a bit.

*edit*

To kougaro: Ah, it's but a thumbnail! Sorry, my mistake, the pic is good. Hmm, now that I see it closer, I think the red areas could use some more detail, so they don't look so plain. Maybe you could add a base material image (eg. leather) as overlay over the current image. There are useable base textures in eg. imageafter.com. Good work, keep it up.

[kougaro]

Thank you Karyu and  Cherpow, i just suceeded at overlapping and modifying as i wish my uv map 

A new version of the book, as well as the second tome is coming 

@ Cherpow : will try to play a bit more with the rendering settings. As for the quality of the image, did you try to click on the image? 

[LigH]

A hint for everyone trying to display good looking but small images:

There are a few tools which are able to compress JPEGs with adaptive quantization factors per block -- means: JPEGs are divided into (usually) 8x8 to 16x16 pixel blocks (depending on the "chroma subsampling" mode), and some tools are able to compress each block with a custom ratio, depending on the degree of details in it.

In my opinion, the old XAT JPEG Optimizer 3.15 is still a very useful tool (I prefer it at least for the preview and tweaking options). Unfortunately, I don't know widely used and available freeware which is able to do nearly the same...

[Karyuu]

Come on, folks! Don't forget that we are depending on the community for these items - if you don't do them, they won't be in time the .020 release. We've given you an awesome chance to contribute to the game, and you don't have to be an amazing modeler (and therefore feel intimidated) to do this. I expected people to jump at this opportunity with full speed the moment it was announced. Don't disappoint us by showing apathy! If you want the ability to contribute to PlaneShift, you have to show us that you can do it.

Pick up the pace!

[Feline Prince]

I thought the point of 'contributing' rather than joining the team is that we wouldn't be whipped But yeah, I guess i can give something a try.

[Karyuu]

If you guys asked for a way to contribute, you better jump on it before we decide that you're too unreliable for us We're a hobby project, but we still have deadlines. If you want to help the game progress, then help us do what needs doing. If this falls apart, then the next time I hear whining about "No way to submit art" I'll point to this thread as a reason.

[Feline Prince]

What's our deadline then? I wish i knew about it before.

[Karyuu]

You have at the very least one more month.

[Nikodemus]

Do you say that what we did so far is wrong? Like we are disappointing you dear devs? We aren't in dev team because we aren't that talented/have not enough time/or unwanted because of some reasons.
Couldn't you just look what we did, and when trying to do new stuff, look at the list and see if it is there? If it is: weeeeeee! i can do something else, while it is already considered done! Amaizing! Or is this approach wrong?

Currently i'm busy with other tasks and mostly stressed by upcoming egzams, while i'm thinking about making two objects i just can't come up with something right and launch PSP. But in case of one i have one big problem, like with all the other btw. you said we should know the items from quests in game... Yeah, I suppose you know how i fell about NPCs understanding me. Basically the problem is i have no way to make the stuff really as it should, even if i'm capable.
For example if we are supposed to make a piece of papoer note. Is all what we know about it that it is paper note? Are all the other information considered ICly classified? Like we could get spoiled by knowing that the piece of paper is old, damaged, reused, or stuff like that?

[Karyuu]

Do you say that what we did so far is wrong? Like we are disappointing you dear devs?

There is no need to be aggressive. If you aren't trying to be, then I apologize for misreading your words. I absolutely adore what I've seen so far - I think you guys have done an amazing job, so I am indeed discontent when I suddenly see the work stop. There have been so many complaints about a lack of ways to contribute, that when we give you one and people don't bite, you leave us both confused and irritated.

I do understand time limitations, I assure you. But from all the artists on this board, to not see even one new item model in a whole week is pretty disappointing.

[Nikodemus]

The first was just honest question, no aggression
Yeah, I can see you can be iritated, you did a lot of job to prepare it afterall.

But you can see my problems in the later part of the post, maybe something may be done at least about part of them, because i don't expect from someone to pass my exams lol
I don't know maybe it is better to ask about details, in a place where only limited amount of people may know something what is the IC classified thing?

[Jeraphon]

I don't know maybe it is better to ask about details, in a place where only limited amount of people may know something what is the IC classified thing?

Valid point. Karyuu, would it at least be possible to release the name of the quest in which each item can be found? That way they can do the quest and view the description themselves without getting spoilers in the forum.