[Static Model] Generic Garage [WIP]

[Amok@ndy]

seems like your lod1 and up are using a different material and uvw's

[Rhino]

doesn't look like lods to me andy, the way it changes isn't right and the mesh doesn't appear to change either...

Check your materials, make sure they are all correct for a staticmesh.

[Psyrus]

Ok well I'm now officially stumped. I went back and corrected all the UV maps that were messed up when I did the optimizations, and this means that the editor throws no errors about texture coordinate range out of bounds...

However... when I put it on my static-test map, it doesn't show up at all. I'm 100% certain I'm using the correct version of the map because I deleted all old statics off it and put the chinese house back in, plus one of the newly exported/coded garages... but it doesn't appear there. I've double checked that it's included in the objects_client/server.zip of the map... and it's just kinda blowing my mind right now.

Could someone *please* have a look, this little project should've been finished a month ago but these little niggling problems are driving me UP THE WALL


Zipped static object (Garage)

Edit: Oh and it works fine in the level editor... I can see it, go to soldier view, shoot the static and everything... but when I load into BF2PR it's not there.

[Rhino]

Had a quick look, there isn't anything that I can see that would stop it loading ingame. 95% chance of something wrong with your packing as to why its not loading, most likely something as simple as a spelling mistake or wrong dir or w/e. Best thing to do is start the packing process again from scratch.

The static itself thou needs quite a bit of work tbh and the LODs and COLs (other than col1) need reworking too. Way too many LOD steps for such an object also, you shouldn't need that many to have some good steps.

Don't have time to do a full review but you need to rework many of the textures and UVs is the main thing, mesh for the most part is ok for lod0.

[Psyrus]

The static itself thou needs quite a bit of work tbh and the LODs and COLs (other than col1) need reworking too. Way too many LOD steps for such an object also, you shouldn't need that many to have some good steps.

I was just following the tutorial I'm really curious what's wrong with the COLs as well

Don't have time to do a full review but you need to rework many of the textures and UVs is the main thing, mesh for the most part is ok for lod0.

I'm actually super confused by this... hopefully at some point someone can show me what I did wrong, because as it stands now I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The only glaring thing that I can see being contentious is the roof, but I thought it came off alright.

Anyway, here's the 3ds stuff relating to it, if someone wants to tell me what to fix I'll be super happy to do that, but I can't see how to 'rework' the textures at this point as it has ended up looking pretty much like what I envisioned.
https://rapidshare.com/files/1046838524 ... upload.rar
Thanks anyway though Rhino, I realize you're busy on much more important stuff!

[Rhino]

Ye I used 6 lods on my shed which I said in the tut, was quite a lot and probably could have done with less but the main difference as to why your garage doesn't need 6 lods is no interior and far fewer details.

looking at col0 again its actually ok, although could be improved a little but not much.

col2 could be quite a bit more optimized, don't need things like a window glass mat in it etc and its got some missing faces, like on the ramp.

col3 is also ok (didn't look at it before ) but you should loose the roof bevel bit, bots don't need to know about that


On the textures the roof is one of the things that would just about pass
The worst bit is the corner bits, there tiling is really off, detail or some other texture is tiled loads of times over and doesn't look good, nor helping performance.
There is also something not quite right with your wood texture, cold be the scaling or possible stretching, not sure.
The ramp needs to really be reworked. Texture is not being tiled enough at all and very pixelated, Should find a better texture. conc_tile.dds or conctile_big.dds would most likely be a better bet.

Also on the inside of door frames etc it looks like the wrong materials are assigned and bad UVs too, although ye, the UVing tut I made years ago isn't very good at all. Since then I've totally changed the way I UV too although more complicated, but means no stretching and other stuff like that but its pretty complicated and can't really quickly say how its done etc and naturally, don't have time right now to type up another tutorial

But ye hopefully someone else can give you a bit more feedback on this

[Psyrus]

Ye I used 6 lods on my shed which I said in the tut, was quite a lot and probably could have done with less but the main difference as to why your garage doesn't need 6 lods is no interior and far fewer details.

Fair enough... I could probably quite easily go down to 3-4 without dramas.

looking at col0 again its actually ok, although could be improved a little but not much.

col2 could be quite a bit more optimized, don't need things like a window glass mat in it etc and its got some missing faces, like on the ramp.

col3 is also ok (didn't look at it before ) but you should loose the roof bevel bit, bots don't need to know about that

Phew!

On the textures the roof is one of the things that would just about pass
The worst bit is the corner bits, there tiling is really off, detail or some other texture is tiled loads of times over and doesn't look good, nor helping performance.
There is also something not quite right with your wood texture, cold be the scaling or possible stretching, not sure.
The ramp needs to really be reworked. Texture is not being tiled enough at all and very pixelated, Should find a better texture. conc_tile.dds or conctile_big.dds would most likely be a better bet.

Oh I didn't know that texture tiling would impact performance

The wood slats on the main building have given me dramas from the start, I kinda figured this was as good as I could get it, but I'll have a look this week if there's anything else I can do to improve it. Texturing this thing has been an absolute nightmare... totally sapped any modeling joy that once existed hah

Also on the inside of door frames etc it looks like the wrong materials are assigned and bad UVs too, although ye, the UVing tut I made years ago isn't very good at all.

Ah I can definitely fix up the door frames. I actually did them really in a rush because I wanted to just be done with it the other day, and I guess I overlooked a few things.

Since then I've totally changed the way I UV too although more complicated, but means no stretching and other stuff like that but its pretty complicated and can't really quickly say how its done etc and naturally, don't have time right now to type up another tutorial
But ye hopefully someone else can give you a bit more feedback on this

Thanks for the above! I've clearly got a very looooong way to go....

[Psyrus]

Question!

How much impact does UV tiling make? The texture is already loaded into memory... it is being rendered more times for sure, but my question is:

What level of tiling is acceptable to reduce visual stretching?

Example:


Is this UV map around the building stretching over about 8x2 tiled textures acceptable? It could of course be reduced by horizontally flipping every second building face and overlaying them on each other, but it would make it much harder to work with in the future.

TL: DR, is the above picture acceptable? If not, what is?

[Rhino]

Ye that should be acceptable, just never go over 15 tiles in BF2 as objects over that will have buggy UVs at the end.

To get an idea of how much tiling affects performance, best thing to do is make a level and then in the detail texture settings, try increasing the detail texture tiling and see how much it affects performance, you will be surprised how much it dose.

So ye, try not to over tile anything

[ballard_44]

You can increase how much 'tiling' the static uses by editing the .tweak file so you don't get buggy UVs.

GeometryTemplate.maxTextureRepeat 16

16 is the 'standard' used by most statics. There are a few DICE statics that go higher.

Not sure if 32, 64, 128 are the next mandatory progressions or if you can have, for example, 27.

[Rhino]

ballard_44;1685223']You can increase how much 'tiling' the static uses by editing the .tweak file so you don't get buggy UVs.

GeometryTemplate.maxTextureRepeat 16

16 is the 'standard' used by most statics. There are a few DICE statics that go higher.

Not sure if 32, 64, 128 are the next mandatory progressions or if you can have, for example, 27.

I've actually tried that, tried it when making Bastion as UVing a detail texture that was being UVed to 1 tile = 24m, over a 800m stretch of runway would have been over 33 tiles so ye that looked to be the simple solution, but while I can't remember the exact problem, I do recall the UVs being screwed up as a result, something like the UVs over 16 tiles where fine, but UVs under where totally screwed up or something like that, I can't quire remember.

As such the simplest solution was just to brake up the UVs so that each section was under 16 tiles.


But the fact of the matter is, if a static is going over 16 tiles its either very, very large (like Bastion), or there is something horribly wrong.

[AFsoccer]

Sorry but when I try to test my collision meshes (decal) by shooting the garage, it plays no effects and simply throws this error over and over again...

Ignored Warning[GameLogic] : Object 556_45_r, created by user , last modified by user , are using material index 3556 that does not exist in the material manager.
[GameLogic] : Material 3556 does not exist.

Got it working! Also fixed the material issue (it was with the 5.56 bullets, not my garage)

I get the same error Psyrus. What did you do to fix it?

[Rhino]

I get the same error Psyrus. What did you do to fix it?

your pr_edit materials must be screwed up for some reason.

Extracting the common_server_patch2.zip from your pr folder into your pr_edit/common/ folder should fix it.

[AFsoccer]

Worked great. I'm not sure how I missed that zip when unzipping everything, but it looks like everything is shooting just fine now in editor. Thanks Rhino.

[Psyrus]

Less LODS (3-4)
[Y] COL2 Fix (optimize)
[Y] COL3 fix (remove roof bevel
[Y] Wall Stretching
[Y] Corners Overtiled
[Y] Door frames (??)
[Y] Ramp Tiling ++
------------
[Y] Garage door top wood panel
[Y] Window middle under line
[Y] Reduce stretching on door handle
[Y] More dirt on top of door handle

Went through and addressed each issue that I understood from Rhino.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~rodchinn/p ... 1-11-1.rar

Hopefully it's getting close to completion, but I suspect not . The texturing is definitely the biggest PITA ever... It's not hard exactly but trying to make do with existing textures can make it a challenging endeavour. I hope I can master it and contribute some decent statics.

I started (like a couple of hours mocking up) an apartment building but realized I should finish this 100% before getting ahead of myself and being distracted by multiple projects @ once.

[Psyrus]

Lightmapping test question!



Everything's ready to go, but I wanted to see if there was something I could do to correct this issue. Basically you can see two black spots in the image on the 256 lightmap size exported garage... Is that a case of just using the tutorial's lightmap settings or is there something fundamentally amiss on the model? I checked it in 3dsmax and I can't tell what would cause it

[Rhino]

only thing to fix that is custom LM UVs, here is a tut on it although has a few things wrong like you need to UV in channel 9, not channel 5 etc: BF2 Statics Advanced Lightmap Tutorial

[Psyrus]

Rhino;1704817']only thing to fix that is custom LM UVs, here is a tut on it although has a few things wrong like you need to UV in channel 9, not channel 5 etc: BF2 Statics Advanced Lightmap Tutorial

Thanks once again Rhino. I used that link as well as a bit of ingenuity to not have to redo it all manually. It has worked out rather well and I'm happy with the final results.

I kept it to 128 samples but 256 for lod0 certainly does look better... but 128 is bearable.

The included samples (after lots of testing):

lod0 - 128
lod1 - 128
lod2 - 64
lod3 - 32

I assume I should message Plyem since this static was made for him, or should I just post the link to the .rar in this thread?

[H.sta]

just PM it to him

[Psyrus]

just PM it to him

Thanks, will do. I'm so glad it's finally over...

It has taken wayyy too long