Authentic Model Improvement

[osjclatchford]

@TM I'd say thats extremely likely that that might be the case. just looking through q1.5 again (and even loaded the game to check) most if not all of bloodshot's altered sock models have this issue. in fact the ogre model I based this on I assumed was an unused asset. seems its not.
the ones in the finished mod do this q2 style vertex wobble.

I wonder if I hadn't been working on the souce model first and then moved on to this one, and this was the first version of this I posted would any of us even have noticed it?
its not that terrible i suppose and as I say I'm playing with it like it. but having seen the other non-wobbley one first it is a bit of a wank in the eye department to be honest...

yet i played through q2 multiple times and not a single model in there diddnt have vertex wobble.
LOL why is that anyway? id went from q1 to q2 and the quality of the skin mapping went down!? whats that all about then?
still, could be worse: https://twitter.com/quake_txt/status...552912903?s=20

just an fyi q1.5's file organisation is an utter shambles (no pun intended) inside the pack, theres just a big ol' mess of stuff in there with multiple copies of all sorts of models that seem to be backups or wip that got abandonned then just left in. I swear he could reduce the file size down considerable if he bothered to go through and clean out the fridge...
then I'm a stickler for that kinda thing (he says not looking inside the mess that is his doom modfiles...)

@NF eew... that indeed sounds un-promising doesnt it...

[Tea Monster]

If the model spent some time as an MD2, that can introduce the dreaded vertex wobble.

[NightFright]

His description indicates that maybe only the first frame of each anim cycle has been improved. In that case, it'd be pretty useless, I guess. Anyway, first I need to see the damn thing.

[osjclatchford]

1- I'm not sure It can even be fixed. to me it looks like the result of hand manipulating each frame (or using another program to do it. the resultant wobble being due to either doing it all by eye or lossy format in an automated process.
2- these are now fixed.

also fixed the muzzle of the barrel showing the front wrong. (also due to manipulation of the model mesh, I assume...) it was showing a verticle line down the middle where the whole in the barrel should have been. its fixed now with the skin...
god theres tons of this on the model. its such a shame. if only we could nab the walk anims from this one and put it on the model of the other one with better texture mapping... -big sigh-

anyway, even though this is kinda moot now, with the state its currently in, i'll post the file with the changes for you: https://www.mediafire.com/file/gm2ml...ed+v2.zip/file


this russion guy's ogre has got my imagination running... cant help but wonder if its a wip of something we know already or just another alsoran...

[NightFright]

So, latest ogre review:
1) I didn't notice any issue with the face with the model standing idly, but the "vertex wobble" is definitely visible on the weapon. Looks like it's made of very weak rubber or something, lol. Should indeed be fixed first.
2) The multi-grenade skin for the head gib has quite a lot of fullbright pixels.

I have written to the Russian guy now, let's see what he will come up with. According to him, the model is switching back to the shapes of the original id1 model when walking or something. That doesn't sound good.

[osjclatchford]

lols... well this might cheer you up then.
I was casually looking through a copy of bloodshot's quake1.5
you'll never guess what unused model I found tucked away in there..?


yup it seems that BS was too working to get the ad ogre to work without new code too! I believe he then went back to the regular ad anims as his mod is riddled with all sorts of complicated code that allows it to work.
Like me he's rejigged all the anims to match the id1 numbers and names etc... however unlike me he's made it work much better as far as the walk animation is concerned! LOL

I've again removed the unwanted spikey pad geometry and then ported my skins (id and doe) over from t'other one I did.

get it here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/gm2ml...ed+v2.zip/file

also it seems the model geometry is a bit different too. the arms and head have different detail, nose is slightly different. gun looks less sophisticated.
Ive the sneaky suspiscion that this is due to whatever processing magic he's done to this to get it to animate properly...
still, its so odd that I found this but a few hours after almost giving up on this!

however its not without its faults. there seems to be as much vertex wobble as a quake2 view weapon on the model so I'm not sure what process led to that or if it can be fixed in post but, yeah the ogre's no longer doing the limpy shuffle I had him doing. however his skin now looks like its made of jelly... SIGH! what is it with this cowson, eh?

You know what, fuck it, if anyone can help with that, great but if not I can tell you now, this is good enough for me so I'm using this as it is now. LOL its not that often you can see the issues with the vertex-wobble (if thats actually what its called, thats just what I call it) as most of the time the ogre is running about slinging grenades and chainsawing you. its only when you've got the ring of shadows on you'd really see it and then only if you stopped and stared directly at the ogre's face for a few seconds... which is unlikely... good thing is its not actually at all that visible from the back so standing with back turned or walking away ogres that have not seen you (e1m2 or e3m3 for example) look fine to my eyes...

good god can it be this is actually solved?

[NightFright]

Haven't contacted him yet. Will try tomorrow if I don't forget again. My expectations are low, though.

[osjclatchford]

oh, yeah, meant to ask, NF, did you find out what 'the ogre model with the broken anims' the russian guy was refering to was in the end?

[osjclatchford]

well I for one loved your work on the dukehrp. fond memories of wasting your pigcops with the shotty!
...and i'm really sceptical of sprtite to model conversions but I always liked your's, they're really, REALLY faithfull to the sprites (which is not easy is it?) and much more performance friendly than the obsession with voxels that seems to be the latest resurgent craze. gah, I remember the first official voxels that came with a version of shadow warrior, first thing I turned off. couldn't stand them. messy objects that only looked like what they were supposed to be from the angle of the sprite they were based on... shudder
dont get me wrong, when they're done right they work. (chillo and boron's latest stuff is rather good) but more often than not look like lego constructs that tank performance...
plus you have to draw EVERY FRAME like a sprite to animate them. talk a bout a shitload of work for nothing... if you want it to look THAT much like a sprite then hell, use sprites.
meh, I know, each to his own, but, to me, its either all voxels or all sprites. yet its not a crime to have sprite effects/explosions and the like amongst 3d model monsters (perhaps because quake did it?)

anyway re. the ogre. I'm officially calling it on it for the forseeable future. I'll be putting the latest version Ive done in its own wip thread here as a standalone add-on for easy access and for those who might be passing by in the future...

[NightFright]

The Duke3D HRP mainly had the issue that too many different artists were involved, with different amounts of talent. Later on when higher quality content got added, it made the old stuff look even worse. By that time, user activity had dropped too much so we were stuck with inconsistent content quality.

Looks like we will be able to avoid that here. Maybe Chillo's work is sometimes deviating a bit too much, but partially it can be compensated with skin edits.

[Tea Monster]

That is the problem I had. As far as I know, the only way to 'fix' the animations is to go into something like QME and manually, vertex by vertex, frame by frame, alter every single point on the model. I never learned animation in QME. I used to use it to mess around with meshes back in the day, and I could find out, but it would be a huge pain in the dong to relearn a new animation program just for one idle animation.

What I did with the Vore was copy a vertex from a local area, move it to where I wanted extra geometry and then rebuild faces around them to reconstruct the chest. I was hoping that the vertices would retain their vertex animation properties and 'go with the flow' when the new faces were built around them. This worked for the Vore, but didn't work when I tried to do more drastic edits with existing Id monster meshes. I can easily export the mesh of say, the Centroid, to an Obj file with no vertex animation data, but that keeps all the UV and texture information intact. I can easily re-edit the mesh, adding detail and not have too many problems with the UV map and texture. Then I would create a skeleton for the monster and recreate all the animations from scratch. This sounds like a huge deal, but isn't really with modern rigging and animation tools. It just takes a lot of time. Time is something I don't have at the minute till I finish this other project. Once that's out of the way, I'll concentrate on getting some more Quake stuff done.

As an artist, it helps to have a thick skin with these things. Everyone has an opinion on stuff, especially on the interwebz. I've learned to take opinions and look at them objectively. Over at the Duke forums, their response to most of the stuff I worked on is "I played your mod, I hated it." Before that, there were arguments over if models were 'too cartoony' or 'not enough like the sprite' the complaints were everywhere and nobody seemed to be able to agree on what they didn't like. If I let it get to me, I'd probably be a nervous wreck and never go near Blender again. I learned to take criticism objectively, and pass it through my own on-board art filter. When people complained about models being too cartoony, I'd fire up Blender and put a sprite behind my model and see if what they said was right. In the end, I decided to trust my own judgement on these things. The people who don't agree with you have their own opinions. It doesn't mean that yours is wrong, just that you are looking at from your perspective, not theirs.

With everyone having their own idea on what is right and wrong, you are never going to please everyone. You just can't. You do what you like and makes you happy (within the project's art directors instructions!!!! )

I decided to stop doing Duke modding for a variety of reasons. The popular consensus was to ditch models and the HRP and concentrate on sprites. I could have got upset with everyone saying "Your work sux" but in the end, I decided to move on as I thought that there is no point in making something that nobody is going to play. I'm doing the best job I can as far as I can see it. I take pride in what I do and do the best job I can. If they don't like it, that's their opinion, not mine. It's certainly not a reflection on my work.

[osjclatchford]

man, yeah that would be sweet... how is it actually done anyhow..? I just cant do anything in qme. if you move vertexes or polies around it just produces a mess...

[NightFright]

I wished there was a way to just switch the model mesh and put it on top of the existing id1 animations, like a new coat.

[osjclatchford]

yeah. sure...

here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/7cpns...WIP)4.zip/file is yet another attempt at fixing the anims somewhat...
now he looks like he's power-walking with a limp... I give up. all I can do this end is take existing anim frames, duplicate or remove and move them around... its never gonna get good results but hey, cant blame me for trying eh?

[NightFright]

Guess we'll focus on the Sock model and see what we get out of that. Give TM some time, it's ok if we have to wait a bit longer now.