Graphical Quibbles...

[Lord Tirian]

I think a Gate would work for the Dimensional Gate, but for the Psi Gate it would look too technical. The Psi Gate is using Psi after all, not some advanced physics.

Huh, IIRC, it came with the same tech in SMAC as the bulk matter transmitter, no? Considering the secret project video (Mirian about detached souls) and some note I vaguely remember, that the ascent to transcendence was also sort of "transmitted" by the Psi Gates, I always assumed that it was some sort of Psi/Tech-hybridisation - using some sort of teleportation device to transmit your body, while the psionic part tethered your consciousness to your body during the transmission - whereas the secret project represented some sort of large scale psi-less teleporter - mostly used for transporting large amounts of lifeless matter.

For the record, in the past we have stumbled upon some building which, with some modifications, would work perfectly for a Dimensional Gate. It was from EE2 IIRC.

For a highly technical gate, this is definitely a great choice! I'd like to see that! :

Cheers, LT.

 

[GeoModder]

GeoModder, do you still have it or know where to find it somewhere?

I'll let you know once my desktop computer has a graphics card installed again. I downloaded it some months ago, so if I had it prior before I had a restore made and later on tried reverting to a restore point to fix my graphics card problem, it should still be on the harddrive.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Eh, creativity is a weird thing, so I ended up finishing my gate - but since it's probably not that fitting, I put it out for other people to use. For the current Planetfall Psi Gate... I took the model and replaced the floating ball with a glowing orb of light - I hope it's what Maniac had in mind with the glow!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

I think your own Psionic Gate model looks good.
I'll use it for the Dimensional Gate now. If that one gets another model, I'll move the graphic to the Psi Gate, and move the current Psi Gate graphic to another Planet-related building - some share the same graphic now IIRC.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I'll use it for the Dimensional Gate now. If that one gets another model, I'll move the graphic to the Psi Gate, and move the current Psi Gate graphic to another Planet-related building - some share the same graphic now IIRC.

Ah, cool. Here's a little something, that kept me busy the last two days - too bad I didn't finish it in time for the patch today, but I tried to recreate the Subspace Generator. The big shot from the side has similarities with the original shot (sans mountains), but as it was the only view, I had to improvise a bit - using the arched theme of the progenitors as well as the green glow from the victory film.

All around, I'm pretty happy how it turned out, though I don't like the beige colours (but I tried to keep to the original picture).

Also: Flavour-wise - how do the humans win using the Beacon?

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Thanks!
I recently had the idea to change the Dimensional Gate into a national building of which you can build five. The Subspace Generator would then require 5 Gates, and would be the final step to victory.

In this case you'd never actually see the Subspace Generator graphics in-game, so I think I'll use this graphics for both the Dimensional Gate and Subspace Generator.

I can then move the current Gate graphics around as mentioned before.

Also: Flavour-wise - how do the humans win using the Beacon?

The Subspace Generator creates a wormgate. The Progenitors use it to call home and summon a fleet. Humans can use it to start an era of galactic expansion. Or they could open tiny temporary wormholes above the capitals of their opponents and send through a planet buster. There would not yet be a defense against a generator of such power, so the first to complete a subspace generator calls the shots.

Of course that's just fluff to justify adding a hi-tech non-Transcendence victory condition for everyone.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Humans can use it to start an era of galactic expansion.

Sure, just flavour - the gameplay is solid and nice and much better than the original Transcendence victory (build a big wonder and win? Laaaaame - at least from the gameplay perspective, from the flavour, it's awesome!) I like this idea a lot! It's basically humans going to becoming Stargate-builders - and becoming independent of a single planet, meaning humanity is wouldn't even go extinct in the case of a global cataclysm. I like that positive spin on it a lot more than seeing it as weaponised system - of course, it's just personal preference. I can only assume that Miriam would use it slightly differently!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Oh, I don't like to double-post... but with just an edit, Maniac would probably overlook this post... so:

1) Actual graphics quibble (after all, that was the point of the thread, originally! ): Could asioasioasio's wide citybar be included in Planetfall? Most names - of units and base names alike - are a bit longer than in plain CivIV, hence the issue crops up way more often - including this would make stuff look neater.

2) Since the material supplies still have an untextured model, I whipped up a new one - it's just a quick thing, an unity pod on treads - it's not animated, but it will be animated once I have an idea what to put inside the pod (then the activation animation would be opening the pod, a bit like a clamshell), screenshot and model attached, used fScale = 0.75; fInterfaceScale = 1.5 (should be close to the size of the current unity pods).

3) Flamethrowers are everywhere in the early game! Which is cool, because they're a cool unit... but I thought a bit of variety couldn't hurt, so I replaced the yellow stripes with teamcolour-stripes - see screenshot and attachment (just a couple of replacement files to overwrite the original model/texture).

Cheers, LT.

 

[Keeper_GFA]

Haha, I love #2. #3 is great too.

Related to #1, is there a reason why I'm restricted to 15 characters or less for new city names? I assume it's not just me.

 

[Maniac]

1)

I'll check it out.

2)

Thanks!
May I make some suggestions though?
Would it be possible to add a driver cabin? The pod could be partially resting on its roof. I also don't think the pod in the unit graphics per se needs to be of the same size as the pod improvement.

3)

Cool thanks! I always felt those yellow stripes made the flamethrower look a little too clean, civilian and civilized for my tastes. They look better now IMO.

Related to #1, is there a reason why I'm restricted to 15 characters or less for new city names? I assume it's not just me.

Is this a Planetfall thing or a vanilla Civ4 thing?

 

[Pfeffersack]

Is this a Planetfall thing or a vanilla Civ4 thing?

Also the case in unmodded Civ4.


@ Lord Tirian

Cool ( ) new flame throwers!

 

[Maniac]

2) Since the material supplies still have an untextured model, I whipped up a new one - it's just a quick thing, an unity pod on treads - it's not animated, but it will be animated once I have an idea what to put inside the pod (then the activation animation would be opening the pod, a bit like a clamshell), screenshot and model attached, used fScale = 0.75; fInterfaceScale = 1.5 (should be close to the size of the current unity pods).

Idea for an animation both for the unity pod improvement and supply pod unit: two little flashing red lights, positioned as you can see on supply_sm.pcx

 

[Maniac]

I have some bad news.

Since Lord Tirian told me how I can see how much triangles a model has, I had a look at how many polygons the graphics currently in Planetfall use. And I discovered a lot of the graphics have much more polygons than I'd expect from glancing at the wireframe of the model. This includes ALL of woodelf's graphics.

If I understand correctly from previous cases, a model can be converted to a nif in an inefficient manner which creates lots of triangles. But when converted right, the nif can have much less triangles without any loss of quality at all.

The good news is that if these models were processed correctly, Planetfall would probably run much smoother, less lag when scrolling over the map etc. So I'm wondering if it's possible to process the existing nifs to reduce their polygon count. Or is that impossible without the source file before it got converted to nif?
I realize fixing old stuff is probably much more boring than creating models for new stuff, but doing it would improve Planetfall a lot.

Lord Tirian (or anyone else), interested in taking a look at what can be done?

These are the things that stood out to me during my review of the files in the Pak0.fpk:

Some stuff I put between brackets because at first glance their # of triangles seems to match the model's complexity. But because they were made by the same author who made extremely high polygon models, I assume my first glance could be wrong, and their poly count could be significantly reduced as well.

Stuff from woodelf:

Buildings:

Academy
(Alpha Prime)
Atmospheric Processor
Hologram Theatre
Sea Base/Pressure Dome
Sea Wall (currently found in the 'test facility' folder)
Temple of Planet
Biology Lab
Arrival Era Headquarters/Landing Pods: the legs are complex, but 10000+ polygons???
Cloning Vats
(Energy Bank)
Fission/Unity Reactor (same stuff in both folders)
Maintenance Bay
Network Node

This list is not complete. There are a couple other simple buildings as well, with still a higher than expected poly count. But because the model is so simple the poly count still only is 100 or so. Eg the rec commons, rec tanks...

Citysets:

caretakers_cityset.nif
spartans_cityset.nif
believers_cityset.nif

Improvements:

(Field Lab)
Landworked
(Tidal Harness)

Units:

(Foil)
(Needlejet)
Rover (a model by keldath which uses woodelf's rover as base)
Unity Rover (in the 'Tank' folder)
Transport Foil
Unity Foil

Stuff from other creators, or the creators are unknown to me because GeoModder found the model

Buildings:

- Aerospace Complex: As far as I can tell, this model may have a normal amount of triangles for how detailed it is, but I don't think it *needs* to be as detailed. For instance there are lots of half-spheres made of many sides (=faces?). At the scale these buildings are displayed in-game, these spheres could be made of much less faces and you wouldn't notice the difference.
- Antimatter Reactor: Scene Viewer crashes when I try to open this one. Can someone tell me how much triangles this one has?
- (Energy Nexus)
- Nuclear Reactor
- (Observation Bay)
- (Subsea Trunkline)
- Supercollider

Improvements:

- Solar Collector: Scene Viewer crashes when I try to open this one. Can someone tell me how much triangles this one has?
- Unity Pod

Resources

- Alien Artifact: 5000+ polygons! By The_Reckoning.

Units

- Sea Colony Pod: The_Reckoning
- Unity Supplies: The_Reckoning
- Supply Crawler: err, don't remember the author - could be The_Reckoning as well

Planetfall also includes a couple buildings which AFAIK come from Empire Earth 2. They have many triangles, but they are also more detailed than the average civ4 building, so perhaps that poly count is normal. Still judging from The_Coyote's unit conversion it seems possible to seriously reduce polycount with hardly any negative effect on the looks. Perhaps the same is possible with these buildings? For instance it's pointless to keep those small windows in the Military Academy. Might as well remove them and add some black rectangles for windows to the dds texture instead. The models are:

- hydroplant.nif
- Skunkworks
- Assembly Hall
- Military Academy

 

[Lord Tirian]

If I understand correctly from previous cases, a model can be converted to a nif in an inefficient manner which creates lots of triangles. But when converted right, the nif can have much less triangles without any loss of quality at all.

Not quite - you need to look out whether it's a TriShape or a TriStrips in Nifskope.

TriShapes (which the majority of Firaxis models use) have less polygons, but they are less efficiently rendered. TriStrips (these seem to be the culprit for the high poly models in Planetfall) have a lot more polygons, but are faster to render per polygon (for example if both had the same number of polys, the Strips one would be better) - however, if the difference is massive, then the Shapes will win out - simply because the Strips have so many more polygons, that even increased efficiency doesn't help (I don't exactly know where the cut-off point is, though I'm pretty sure that stuff with several 1000s of polygons is definitely bad).

However, looking through Planetfall's models now, a lot of models not only suffer from that problem, but they are also overly complex. There is a lot that can be achieved with texture alone instead of actual modelling (especially on a CivIV-scale). Also, several of them also have extraneous sides (like at the bottom and so forth) - the Alien artefact is a prime example - it's a great model you could probably put in a film - for the map, it's overkill.

For the conversion from Strips to Shapes: That's relatively easy, one can do that in Nifskope (right-click on the model, Mesh>Triangulate) - but it doesn't work all the time. And for cutting of polygons and actual trimming, one has to go to Blender (or 3DSMax, I guess, but I don't have/use that). And there's definitely stuff to be done, I guess.

I'd like to help with that, but it's a lot - and some seem to be fiddly and not just straightforward conversions (some textures are also weirdly mapped), meaning some are close to from-scratch recreations - so don't expect miracles. And, I have to admit, some models simply don't appeal to me - there are some I'd like to redesign from scratch at some point. Anyway, I'll see what I can do, and perhaps somebody else will also help out (though most graphics guys around seem to have found their own mod they're dedicated to, like Deliverator to Dune, SeZ to FfH and so forth).

On another note (that's why I actually went into the thread in the first place!) - I tried to tweak the material supplies, and simply attaching a driver cabin didn't look good, so I decided to create a basic industrial vehicle first (and with crates instead of the pod, it could work as the initial supply unit) - what do you think, Maniac? (see attached screenshot)

Cheers, LT.

 

[The_Coyote]

unfortunally it´s exactly like Lord Tirian posted - if there are no parts which can be removed easily from the model it will be hard (sometimes removing doubles in Blender does wonders). Also the transformation can be done easlily

Also in most case it´s almost faster to create a new model instead of trying to fix the old one (and the first is for a modeller also the bigger fun - btw i started with a kind of scout rover - no idea if it will be ever finished - and really nice transport vehicles Lord Tirian) even sometimes part can be used (as i did to create the seaformer)

considering the Strips / Shape problem, after today seeing this: http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2274 i´m mo longer sure that there can be found a border that easy - i thought something about 20 - 40% more poly is the tolerance area, but now, how shall we know if civs displays this degenaret polys ... - so i think i will use my old borders until we will know more.

And than there is also the difference between shader (up to 18 bones per partition) and non shader (4 bones per partition, atm skin partition can´t be created) models and number of objects to drawn (i think i saw something like that the number of partitions is the number of objects needed to draw the model - but i´m absolutly unsure here [no partition could mean 18 objects following this logic]) which shall have an impact

 

[Maniac]

Not quite - you need to look out whether it's a TriShape or a TriStrips in Nifskope.

Wow, that's a relief. Then the situation is not as bad as I thought.
Still, following The_Coyote's rule of thumb, even if many of the models had a third less polygons, they would still have way more than one would expect.

And, I have to admit, some models simply don't appeal to me - there are some I'd like to redesign from scratch at some point.

Feel free to redesign to your heart's content. There are some models I don't really like either. Re buildings for instance, in some cases GeoModder just used whatever was available in the downloads database. Also I feel buildings sometimes don't match with the faction's cityset style and colours. Though in that case giving the same models a different texture for each faction is probably enough.

For the record, if I had to assign priority to some stuff to fix or redesign, I'd suggest the following:

- spartans_cityset.nif
- believers_cityset.nif

These are displayed most often of the models in the list, so making these models more efficient or making more efficient models, would free most graphical memory.

- Alien Artifact
- Sea Colony Pod

These still need textures anyway, and unlike the polygon record holder the HQs/Landing Pods for instance, these two still appear in the later game when there's plenty of other stuff to be displayed on the screen, so they're more likely to slow down the game.

Deliverator to Dune

Yeah, he creates cool stuff. I was thinking I could use his sandstorm to represent the Great Dunes. Now just figure out what special effect the Great Dunes landmark could give...

On another note (that's why I actually went into the thread in the first place!) - I tried to tweak the material supplies, and simply attaching a driver cabin didn't look good, so I decided to create a basic industrial vehicle first (and with crates instead of the pod, it could work as the initial supply unit) - what do you think, Maniac? (see attached screenshot)

I like it very much! Crates on the back sounds good for the initial Supply Pod.

An idea for the Material Supplies unit: perhaps there a landing pod graphic could lie sideways on the back instead of crates? Those units can be used to hurry one of the early Unity Bay secret projects, so it seems fitting.

 

[Lord Tirian]

An idea for the Material Supplies unit: perhaps there a landing pod graphic could lie sideways on the back instead of crates? Those units can be used to hurry one of the early Unity Bay secret projects, so it seems fitting.

I finished the supply pod with crates, but I'm still working on the material supplies. The problem is that the headquarter/landing pod graphic is a polygon monster! I tried to cut it down... but had no success so far - I'm afraid I need to do it from scratch - but I'm confident that I can produce a less heavy model. On the upside, this should also yield a slimmer HQ graphics together with the material supplies - it will just take a bit more time.

But I finished something I started before that - I added the flashing lights to the unity pod. And also converted it to TriShapes, so it went down to 344 polygons, which sounds pretty acceptable. It's attached, should work, I tested it in-game and it looked fine.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Okay, finished with the revision of the landing pods/HQs - though I haven't put a pod on a crawler yet - because that would require me to come up with a bottom of a pod first... can't be bothered with that right now, I'm just happy to have the HQs finished!

My model used the monument picture from SMAC as original, so the legs are thinner than the current model, as I tried to stay close to the picture. And oh, the screenshot is with the university model, the coloured stripe and banner of other factions is more visible on the other models, as they don't have colours almost identical to the rest of the hull.

They're a bit heavier than I hoped - the HQ has 1352 polygons. I could only get lower by making the legs ugly. But 1352 polygons isn't that bad, considering that they're unique buildings that only exist during the early game - so I hope it can pass. It's still better than the 10000+ polygons before, I guess.

As always, stuff is attached; use fScale = 2.25 and fInterfaceScale = 0.72, or it will look tiny.

Cheers, LT.

 

[The_Coyote]

- spartans_cityset.nif

gave it a try, no idea how fitting it is [the cityset nif is already game ready (18 buildings, used the existing nif as base) - in the other nif are all buildings i made (24) - perhaps you can use them or a better cityset is created with them]

 

[Maniac]

Weeeee! Thanks for all the graphics guys!

I'll ask GeoModder if he can enable the new 24-building cityset.

Lord Tirian, where did you get those faction icons without scanlines from? Do you also have those for the SMAX factions?