Something about (unit) art

[Lord Tirian]

The stalk is too bright for my taste and maybe some more tendrils could be added (the two current ones looked for me like a strange circle on the first glance). Also the contures are too sharp (its current form reminds me a bit of an airport control tower), I imagine fungals towers having a rather blurry and fuzzy surface (kind of hairy).

Okay, making it fuzzy is hard, because alpha channels behave weirdly - but I think I know how to keep track of them now - so my initial attempts at hairiness, a slightly updated colour scheme (I think it's too dark now...), more tendrils and a thinner bulb - but feedback please, I'm not too sure about it.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Wow, that looks much better!

The crown looks great now IMO. And the extra swirl in the tendrils make them seem more life-like.

One issue though... The model has a large file size. 100+ kb. AFAIK file size is an indicator of poly count (can this be seen somewhere in SceneViewer or NifSkope?), which slows down the game. The_Coyote managed to create a spore launcher, which also has many tubular structures, of only 23kb. he used hexagons for circles. Would it be possible to also reduce the poly count for your model?

I see for instance that (in the nif you attached earlier) the top of the stalk is a half sphere, which requires a lot of sides. Why not turn it into a flat top in hexagon form? From what I can judge from the SMAC fungal tower, that one in fact has a flat top as well!

 

[Lord Tirian]

I see for instance that (in the nif you attached earlier) the top of the stalk is a half sphere, which requires a lot of sides. Why not turn it into a flat top in hexagon form? From what I can judge from the SMAC fungal tower, that one in fact has a flat top as well!

Well, right now, it is huge - I get a lot of polys from the tentacles. But the sphere is out - I used it before because I messed up the order of the alpha channels in the nif. Now I sorted that out, I can try to be a bit more efficient!

EDIT: A quick test has shown that I can push the filesize to just below 100 kb and a polycount of 500-600 without any remarkable loss in quality. If I remove the tendrils, the filesize instantly drops to something 30ish kb... Perhaps I'm going to cut one (going from six to five shouldn't look much worse, I hope) - well I'm off to tinker with it a bit more.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Okay, making it fuzzy is hard, because alpha channels behave weirdly - but I think I know how to keep track of them now - so my initial attempts at hairiness, a slightly updated colour scheme (I think it's too dark now...), more tendrils and a thinner bulb - but feedback please, I'm not too sure about it.

Cheers, LT.

Looks much better now The top of the stalk is still a bit disturbing (it looks rather artificial if the stalk in different colour show up on the top again - the "umbrella" part of the mushroom appears then as a kind of seperated ring around it instead of being a part of one organism), but everything else...number of tendrils, fuzzyness, colour is fine for my taste

 

[Lord Tirian]

it looks rather artificial if the stalk in different colour show up on the top again - the "umbrella" part of the mushroom appears then as a kind of seperated ring around it instead of being a part of one organism

...well, the separated stalk is also visible in the original art:

Spoiler :

And in general, I like that, because otherwise, it looks like a giant mushroom! But I tried to integrate the stalk a bit more seamlessly into the top.

Anyway, I played around with the model a bit more, changed the texture from a 512x512 to a 256x256 one, cut one tentacle - and the size is now a bit more than 25 kB for the model, a bit more than 85 kB for the texture! And only a bit less than 500 polys!

The change of texture size, however, affected the fuzziness around the top a bit... if that's okay, I'll upload it - otherwise, feedback, guys!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

I love it! Would love to have a nif.

How many polys was the model you attached before btw? Can this be seen somewhere in SceneViewer or NifSkope?

 

[Lord Tirian]

Can this be seen somewhere in SceneViewer or NifSkope?

If you open it in SceneViewer, in the right column, it should list "faces" - that's your polycount. I don't remember what it was for the first model - but probably something ********, because I only looked at the face count in Blender - but exported it in a fashion that produces more counts.

Well, that's learning by try-and-error for you - the attached file, however, should be a bit more sane...!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Thanks!

I don't see any faces anywhere. I discovered a View/Performance Statistics menu however, and there it states 495 triangles and 342 vertices. Is 'poly count' the sum of those?

 

[Lord Tirian]

I don't see any faces anywhere. I discovered a View/Performance Statistics menu however, and there it states 495 triangles and 342 vertices. Is 'poly count' the sum of those?

Just the triangles.

(short explanation: face/polygon count denotes the number of little filled areas - usually, these polygons are triangles, hence the term in the scene viewer, though you can have different shapes in certain formats (Blender, for example, can have little quads); vertices are the little position dots, demarcating the corners of the faces - though neighbouring areas share their position dots, hence you get more faces than vertices)

Cheers, LT.

 

[The_Coyote]

@ Lord Tirian

great work with the fungal tower

 

[Lord Tirian]

@ Lord Tirian

great work with the fungal tower

Thanks!

It's, however, really messy to animate, even with your tutorial. Whenever I try to get the model into an existing nif with skeleton (and then rig it), the resulting nif seems to make the Civ4 engine unhappy, really unhappy (i.e. it crashes) - any off-hand idea why?

Cheers, LT.

 

[The_Coyote]

one quick idea, if you rig your unit in Blender and do not deactivate "Create SkinPartition" the unit is exported with a shader SkinPartition and you have to set the shader info (and this can causes crashes or at least grafical problems)

[best try to export without this option and test the result - you will need a non sahder version for maniac]

 

[Lord Tirian]

one quick idea, if you rig your unit in Blender and do not deactivate "Create SkinPartition" the unit is exported with a shader SkinPartition and you have to set the shader info (and this can causes crashes or at least grafical problems)

That was the reason! Thanks! Now it's alive! It moves! In-game! And I already finished a full set of (rough) animations!

Now I only have to find some fitting sounds and effects and tweak it a bit until I'm happy with it, but the most frustrating part is done!

And I have to stop cackling and shouting "Es leeeeeebt! It's aliiiive!"...

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

I've noticed that most Firaxis made unit have 800 triangles. If the Fungal Tower only has 500, perhaps this leaves room to expand on the tendril stuff? (At least if that wouldn't make all animations so far useless)

If more long tendrils take up too much polygons, perhaps a couple short ones could be added, consisting of two animation bones? They would constantly move up and down. (Or would that eat lots of graphical/processor memory?) It would even further transmit the idea of a living organism, and show that these tendrils grow longer and longer...

That was the reason! Thanks! Now it's alive! It moves! In-game! And I already finished a full set of (rough) animations!

Now I only have to find some fitting sounds and effects and tweak it a bit until I'm happy with it, but the most frustrating part is done!

Weeeee!
What animations does the unit all have? Perhaps I can help with ideas for sounds.
Is there anything fitting in this download?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=318342

 

[Lord Tirian]

It would even further transmit the idea of a living organism, and show that these tendrils grow longer and longer...

Even the longest animation is only ~2 seconds long, so there's not a lot of growing in there, unless you start working with different models (with the promotions art change, one could do larger towers for higher moral promotions).

What animations does the unit all have? Perhaps I can help with ideas for sounds.
Is there anything fitting in this download?

Well, it basically has idle animations (so far a subtle movement of the tentacles and slight twisting of the cap), a strike animation (lashing out with a tentacle), getting hit (looks more like twitching) and dying (slowly sinking into the ground) - but very much a work in progress, obviously!

And thanks for the sounds, they're positively icky, perhaps I can do something with them!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Even the longest animation is only ~2 seconds long, so there's not a lot of growing in there, unless you start working with different models (with the promotions art change, one could do larger towers for higher moral promotions).

I mean merely the presences of tentacles of different length would show the growth cycle of the fungal tower. I don't mean a tentacle itself growing.

Well, it basically has idle animations (so far a subtle movement of the tentacles and slight twisting of the cap), a strike animation (lashing out with a tentacle), getting hit (looks more like twitching) and dying (slowly sinking into the ground) - but very much a work in progress, obviously!

Sounds cool!

 

[Lord Tirian]

I mean merely the presences of tentacles of different length would show the growth cycle of the fungal tower. I don't mean a tentacle itself growing.

Ah, I see what you mean - but adding new tendrils and so on would, right now, mess up the animation I have... so no changes to the model for the time being - sorry, but I have to admit, that I need to take a break from working on the same model over and over again!

I have, however, finished the animations up the a point where I'm happy with them - and they have sounds and effects and all - I've attached it. In the zip is a txt-file, where I explained all the additions, so you can integrate it easily.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

I've put them in the game right away! Thanks for the animations!

I noticed a problem with the sound though.

First, in your provided XML all three new sounds pointed to the flamethrower sound. I changed this.

In-game however I get the attached error messages. Do you think there's a problem with the sound files themselves provided, or there is a problem in the kf files?? Did you test it succesfully in-game?

 

[Lord Tirian]

First, in your provided XML all three new sounds pointed to the flamethrower sound. I changed this.

Aaaahhh... too many folders, I'm juggling around!

Sorry, just delete the mp3's from the "sounds\units\" folder and replace them with the attached wavs, then it works! Was a problem with the sound files.

EDIT: Removed files, as they're downloaded now.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Thanks - they work now!