Dune Wars Art Thread

[The_J]

I really think, the pictures should be in the welcome-thread. Nothing gets the people better to play a mod than pictures (and these sure do it).

 

[Deliverator]

Yeah, the welcome thread could use a bit of work, as much as I like keldath's train-of-consciousness prose style and the concept of a 'sun-forum' for Dune Wars.

 

[keldath]

yeah i agree with you guys,

i think for version 1.4 ill add many pictures that will capture the dune theme and the uniqueness of our mod.

 

[Deliverator]

Sounds good. If you want me to take some good screenshots of particular things let me know...

 

[Deliverator]

Project Ornithopter

I've been steadily working on the Ornithopter for a while. I have now rigged and animated it using the hawk animations. I wasn't sure how well this would work, but it has turned out pretty well. One of the 'feathers' stick out a bit, but overall it looks cool.

I know Lord Tirian was interested in skinning this thopter, so hopefully he will help us out...

It is now down to less than 2000 polys which considering it started at 29000 I'm quite happy about. The mesh can be tidied up and simplified further I'm sure. The body work is a bit of uneven mess. I haven't done a proper UV unwrap on it, perhaps you can have a go LT? Otherwise, I can do it for you to weave your texturing magic.

Also, the mesh needs something to attach the wing tips to the rest of the wing, as you can see from the screenshots. The original mesh from Google 3D warehouse has a little oval blob to hold them on:

We have a number of Thopters we need create. In order, lightest to heaviest, they are Scout, Kite, Falcon, Buzzard, Eagle and Assault (I ran out of birds of prey).

There is also the Hawk Thopter (Atreides UU replacing Falcon). The Guild and BG Thopter UUs could well be changed/dropped. We can handle the UUs via reskins, so that would mean we need six thopter model variants.

My plan is once we have the basic thopter wings finalised, we can then graft the wings onto other chassis or customize different bodies for the different variants. For example, I'd like try putting the wings onto these two choppers from the EE2 future units set.

If we use the same wings, we can then use the same animations for all the thopters. As well as making bigger and badder looking meshes for the heavier thopters, we can create variety with the skins and also more powerful weapon effects.

That's the plan.

The basic thopter unit is attached if you fancy taking a look LT. These are the art defines bits:

Spoiler :

		    <fScale>0.8</fScale>
			<fInterfaceScale>1.0</fInterfaceScale>
			<bActAsLand>0</bActAsLand>
			<bActAsAir>0</bActAsAir>
			<NIF>Art/Units/basic_thopter/bird.nif</NIF>
			<KFM>Art/Units/basic_thopter/bird.kfm</KFM>
			<SHADERNIF>Art/Units/basic_thopter/bird.nif</SHADERNIF>
			<ShadowDef>
				<ShadowNIF>Art/Units/01_UnitShadows/JetFighterShadow.nif</ShadowNIF>
				<ShadowAttachNode>BIP Koerper</ShadowAttachNode>
				<fShadowScale>0.75</fShadowScale>
			</ShadowDef>

 

[Lord Tirian]

It is now down to less than 2000 polys which considering it started at 29000 I'm quite happy about. The mesh can be tidied up and simplified further I'm sure. The body work is a bit of uneven mess. I haven't done a proper UV unwrap on it, perhaps you can have a go LT? Otherwise, I can do it for you to weave your texturing magic.

Pretty bird! Downloaded! I'll do the UV unwrap, that way I can set it up the way I want it for texturing - plus I immediately see spots where I might be able to cut some polys without hindering the looks or could smooth the mesh a bit, let's see. I so want to get this bird textured and flying... but I have to ask for a bit of patience: It looks quite complex and I really want to do it justice, so it may take some time!

And oh, do you have some colour-scheme in mind? Part of me really wants to keep it in warm beige tones, but I'm afraid that might not provide enough contrast considering it's flying in a desert. Ideas?

EDIT: Out of curiosity: How did the bones get German names?

We have a number of Thopters we need create. In order, lightest to heaviest, they are Scout, Kite, Falcon, Buzzard, Eagle and Assault (I ran out of birds of prey).

Can we get... an owl? I know that it doesn't sound that menacing - but they are actually scarily good hunters, so it might be a nice name for a recon/stealth-thopter...

Cheers, LT.

 

[Deliverator]

I'm sure you'll do a great job. Take as long as you need.

I did consider Owl Thopter - it is definitely appropriate for the desert. It just sounded a bit weird though. Maybe it's OK...

Edit: The hawk must have originally been done by a German artist for FFH2. I had to use Google Translate on 'Koerper', but you will feel right at home.

Colour scheme wise, it is sort of tempting to have everything in desert matching colours, but that could get dull pretty quick. I quite like the old Dune 2 colour scheme, the white/orange makes quite a nice contrast with the desert. A bit of a tribute to that game perhaps.

 

[The_J]

that looks like the next really awesome unit .

 

[keldath]

oh how awesome!

cant wait to have a new set for the thopters )

great work!

 

[Lord Tirian]

Colour scheme wise, it is sort of tempting to have everything in desert matching colours, but that could get dull pretty quick. I quite like the old Dune 2 colour scheme, the white/orange makes quite a nice contrast with the desert. A bit of a tribute to that game perhaps.

That's a nice theme, I'll see what I can do. Though I thought of making the wings team-coloured... I think it's a nice place to put it.

By the way, I'm going to put the wings and the disc above the main body on an extra texture to make it easier to re-use it for other models!

Also, the disc had way to many polys, I replaced it with a smooth 12-sided one, which works just as well, even on a Blender full-screen scale (and found some other bits and bobs to cut) - I'm at 1700ish polys now, with the same looks! Makes me happy!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Deliverator]

Sounds good LT. I would have used two textures too.

 

[Deliverator]

I decided the Ecaz leaderhead needed some work. Hopefully, he looks a bit less cheap 80s sci-fi now.

 

[keldath]

reall nice deliverator

 

[Lord Tirian]

Small update on the ornithopter: Still working on it. White textures, as on the dune 2 screenshot, look very bare - but I don't want yet-another-desert-golden thing - it might end up looking a bit cliché (though it does look good, I admit).

Instead, I went for a rather new approach for me: I restricted myself to a greyscale texture and tinted it with the teamcolour, with some fully teamcoloured spots and wings.

I've got one texture that doesn't look too bad - I'd say that the wing portion is as good as finished, but it needs more details for the main body (also, there are various exhausts, I need to find out how to attach the FF engine glows to it).

I also attached a screenshot, can you guys give some early feedback? Don't forget that the green tint is due to the Atreides colour, so other houses would have other tints.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Deliverator]

Looks great mate! Very nice.

The two tone team colour idea is a good one. It might look a bit ugly with some of the team colours I suppose, but hopefully more will look good than bad...

I guess the engine glows are an Attachable effect, so just a question of positioning the nodes and then having the right data in the dummy ATTACHABLES node. May be wrong.

What are you thoughts on weapon effects?

 

[keldath]

really nice texture lord tirian,

a weapon effect of some yellow beam busts can be nice


by the way - i think i can fix the lines of the grid that something appear on the spice.

 

[Lord Tirian]

The two tone team colour idea is a good one. It might look a bit ugly with some of the team colours I suppose, but hopefully more will look good than bad...

I tested it a bit more... and fiddled around a bit, made the main teamcolour spots a bit larger and tweaked the tint a bit. I think I'm fairly happy with the look it has, it only looks a bit ugly for the Bene Gesserit, their yellow starts looking "dirty", the rest (see screenshot) seems to be fine - though you might want to play around with it a bit more, perhaps you can improve it a bit further - I assume I'm a bit conservative with the teamcolour tone on the main body. I also included a 512x512 version of the texture for you to fiddle with (beware: if you scale it down to 256, run a sharpen filter or something, otherwise the detail will get totally lost).

I guess the engine glows are an Attachable effect, so just a question of positioning the nodes and then having the right data in the dummy ATTACHABLES node. May be wrong.

Was right! Note: I had a little trouble, because of the animation, so I added a new node as a "base node", all the engine effects are attached to that node (and use normal x/y/z coordinates, no rotation or stuff and move with the body), so if you add weapon effect nodes, I suggest adding them to the same node as well.

What are you thoughts on weapon effects?

For the basic thopter, I think a normal machine gun might be okay - shouldn't start too fancy. Also, I think most units should stay away from energy weapon effects anyway, because I associate that with "lasgun".

EDIT: By the way, it runs on 1621 polygons now. Still a fairly heavy whopper... but every bit counts, no? The wing structure (including disc) has 750 polys, meaning combined with other Civ4-complexity models (which have an average of ~700ish, IIRC), one should get the equivalent of about two units. If thopters are all single unit models, it's still slimmer than a triple unit of navy seals or so, should be totally fine for most PCs.

Cheers, LT.

 

[The_J]

Niiiice unit .

I think, the crossing from the feathers to the wings could be a bit more organic, but that's a minor thing .

 

[Deliverator]

The thopters look excellent. Great work and thank you LT.

I'll do the finalizing and add the weapon effects - I think I've got away with never doing that before so it'll be good to learn. For a single mesh unit I think 1621 polys is totally fine. Three vanilla warriors is about 2400 polys so for single units its only when the number gets above that I'd be concerned.

Meanwhile, I've been doing some Worm Rider tests - most of the remaining work is to come up with appropriate animations. Also, I think I'll actually texture on the worm rings rather than just rely on the shape of the mesh.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Meanwhile, I've been doing some Worm Rider tests - most of the remaining work is to come up with appropriate animations. Also, I think I'll actually texture on the worm rings rather than just rely on the shape of the mesh.

This looks... impressive! Almost too cool for just transporting people!

For some reason it gives me the image of a lone daring Fremen, riding a worm, crushing through a wall into a city, shooting lightning (well, worm-signs) and everything.

Cheers, LT.