drake power-ups HD

[talisa]

@xage
yeah its crazy amount of polies with each link modelled, even with the links being hexagonal and having just 4sides.
each link is still 48polys and there's about 60links or so, adding up to nearly 3K polys

btw the amulet itself is also nearly 3K polys
EDIT: also checked for fun, and the chest i made is also 4400polys total


ill see what ill do....
mebbe ill make 2 versions, one with fancy hi-poly chain made out of actual links,
and one which has a simpler cylinder-chain with that texture on it

[talisa]

some more progress on the version with fully-modeled chain

went ahead and stuck with it and UV-mapped the links all logically, while before during the test i had just let blender do its 'smart UV-mapping' on it, which resulted in the UV-map being a mess cuz it split links into multiple island and scattered them all over the UV-map.

now each link is a single island on the UV-map which makes a lot more sense

.

so this version is now ready to have an AO-map baked for it and get textures made for it

[MadGypsy]

@ the first thing you said in reply to me: I understand what you mean but, isn't part of the fun, taking things that may not be "right" and customizing them to "work". I also disagree with there being no screws in medieval times. EVERYTHING back then was fabricated metal. You're trying to say that they could fabricate your intricate charm but they couldn't make a screw/bolt of some kind.

@ too many polys - what if you did this - make an oblong cube and texture all the sides appropriately to look like one chain link (using transparency for all negative space). Then copy/paste and rotate(90), position it properly on the previous link, then copy and paste that group multiple times to create the entire chain?

A link would then only be 12 polys (triangulated) meaning your entire chain would be around 720 polys.

@poly count - are you using blenders poly count to count your polys? The reason I ask is blender is counting quads and your model will be triangulated upon export. Meaning your 4000 polys are actually 8000 polys. Now you know why the original amulet looks like shit.

[MadGypsy]

You also have a size problem going on. Now that the chain links are there we can from a perspective on the size of the shield. I'm in the pocket to say that the shield is about as big as a mans chest and your amulet probably weighs over 100 pounds. Actually probably more than that cause the stone in the middle is about the size of a basketball. It would also hang quite low from the neck.

The alternative perspective is that it wouldn't even fit over your head. You either need to make the chain much longer or the links much bigger.

EDIT: I assumed the target dimensions for the amulet is about 3 inches tall. Which means your chain is only 15 inches. The ranger is over 6 feet tall and built. His neck is probably 15 or so inches and his head quite a bit more.

The problem is, your chain does not look like little links for a necklace. It looks like a real chain. Like something you would lock your bike up with. So now the shield doesn't look "3 inches" it looks 2 feet.

dont get me wrong, your model looks awesome... it just also looks gigantic

[xaGe]

Wood screws originated sometime in the 16th century. The first screwdrivers were called turnscrews, flat-bladed bits that could be attached to a carpenter's brace. The inventor of the hand-held screwdriver remains unknown, but the familiar tool does not appear in carpenters' toolboxes until after 1800. There was not a great call for screwdrivers, because screws were expensive. They had to be painstakingly made by hand and were used in luxury articles like clocks. It was only after 1850 that wood screws were available in large quantities.

[MadGypsy]

By the 1st century BC, wooden screws were commonly used throughout the Mediterranean world in devices such as oil and wine presses. Metal screws used as fasteners did not appear in Europe until the 1400s.

source

we can all find summin' (lol). Mine said screws have been around since before Christ (although not the fastening kind) BUT the 1400's is the end of the medieval period, meaning metal fastening screw could have been used to make that amulet, with relative historical accuracy.

[talisa]

about polycount:
no when i checked for poly-count of chest i had the model triangulated, so what i said is the actual poly-count of the chest

about screws:
screws werent invented yet in medieval times
that, and mainly i also just dun like the idea of screws


about making links even less polys:
i wouldnt wanna go that far as to completely fake the shape of links with semi-transparent textures...
it would also give alpha-sorting problems since itll be partial transparency on a single model,
and ive seen before in DP what happens if you try using semi-transparent textures on a single model.

the flask for example only works fine cuz the liquid and the flask are seperate models and cuz the transparency is the same amount all over the texture

.

on the size problem:
ive gone with about the same sizes for the amulet and the chain as the original model had.
the original had a thinner string though however, and the sizes look off prolly cuz the links
make the chain as a whole seem much thicker then the string the original model had.

but i personally dun really see anything wrong with sizes.
the amulet is of course bigger then a normal charm on a necklace,
so the chain just has quite big links

[MadGypsy]

screws werent invented yet in medieval times

Yes they were. For like the last 50/60 years of the medieval period screws were used as fasteners in England. As far as not wanting to use them is of course your choice but they did exist in medieval times. It's more simplified brother, the pin and socket was around even earlier. Which is essentially the same result as my screw concept (a cylinder)

ive gone with about the same sizes for the amulet and the chain as the original model had.

who said those were right?

[talisa]

you're right, nobody ever said the original dimensions were right

added 4links to each side of the chain to lengthen it a bit so it doesnt look so short.

better like this, or should it be more longer even?

i also downsized the whole item as a whole a lil bit which you cant see in pic cuz you only see the item....
but i scaled the whole down to 90% of what it was to make up for the longer chain

[Frost R17]

Getting better, I bet a lot of people would love this.

[talisa]

thanx frost

[Spike]

regarding transparency as an optimisation:
alpha testing instead of alpha blending (ie: discarding all pixels under a certain alpha value) has no issues with depth sorting.
alpha testing will need a shader with the term: alphafunc ge128
so long as you have no 'blendfunc' term, you should not have any issues with the order that stuff is drawn in. and no, alpha tests instead of alpha blends will not work with your flask model, but will work just fine with something that has holes like a chain or a weirdly shaped leaf or whatever.

[talisa]

dun-dun-duuuun!

the amulet is done

includes fancy reflect-maps and gem is semi-transparent.
both might not be very obvious on the pic, but in-game they are

DOWNLOAD AMULET OF PROTECTION

[gdiddy62]

Your talents are growing in leaps and bounds Talisa! Great work!

[talisa]

thanx gdiddy


yeah its nice that when looking back at older models i made you can tell that with each model i made
i got a little better at modelling, and that ive got much better already since i started modelling

i still have a looong long long way to go before being able to make something as complex as a monster or such,
but with every model i make i get a little better in modelling,
and gradually i learn new things, new tricks, new techniques, and my skills grow