Project Reality Forums

Nice work Alex! The mesh is pretty well optimized now, still a few things here and there you could do but nothing major or worth worrying about and you will probably spot them when you UV and can fix them then

Main thing that needs work now is the smoothing on some bits, like the gun slits, arrestor hook slits, landing gear flaps and the like. Some can be fixed or at least made better with just fixing the smoothing groups but the best way to do this tbh is with a HP normal bake as we've talked about for the gun slits, but tbh, I think it may be worth doing the entire fuselage, possibly the wings too with a HP model to control the smoothing, and will help things like the nose, canopy, intakes etc but will be quite a bit of work. TBH I would do a simplifed HP model, removing things like the landing gear flap holes etc and just having the HP pass straight over them like they weren't there, then when it comes to baking the normal to them the normal will be what you need and LP model will do the work for them being flaps
Your HP model for the gun slits etc would still need some work tbh as the edges are too small still to really help and you don't want things like the supports for the intakes etc messing up the normals for that. It also will be easier to bake all the fuselage with a HP bake than just trying to do the front bit as then you will have to try and fade off the HP normal around where you wanted it so there wasn't a straight finish which would take some PS work, although nothing major but still, better to do it all in HP.
Also FYI, smoothing groups will need to be radically changed to support a HP model baked normal, depending on how the UVs are done.

For now thou I wouldn't worry about the HP models and I would just move on to the UVing stage, possibly also fixing up the smoothing groups too. Once the UVs are done then it is probably best to look into doing a HP model as then you can more easily test it with doing a few bakes and see how its turning out as you go. Also it means that you could possibly look at skipping the HP baking for now and possibly doing that later on, with getting the model in for basic texturing, exporting and coding while doing the HP models.

Pretty busy these days so not sure how much I will be able to help you with this from now on but will try where I can still, good luck

salutcestbooby wrote:With this cool new asset could we see in the future a french 4k map with super etendard and/or mirage jets ?

Unfourtantley the Super Etendard was retired from active service with the French Air Force on 12 July 2016 so only "historical maps" (ie, French maps based in the past") could use it really.

The French do still use the Mirage 2k which we do have (came from AIX with the Mirage III), just needs to be properly exported with the fixes I did for the Mirage III applied to it and would need a new skin, but the biggest issue is us missing a French 4km map for it to fly on.

Any news on this model?



D.J.

Will work on it in June.Been busy with exams.

Good!



D.J.

Hello!
The jet has different parts, so should i UV them separately or all together?
Thanks!

Hey Anant! Nice to see your back on this!

Ideally, you want to keep each moving part separate to make things as easy as possible for the exporter, as exporters can screw up when it comes to detaching moving parts from the main mesh, sometimes detaching the wrong bits, missing some bits etc, and in doing so they have to re-setup the pivot points of each component etc.
But at the same time, you want to UV everything onto the same UV sheet, with the possible exception of a few parts, bits that will use transparent textures etc you will want to UV onto their own sheet to reduce texture memory etc.

There is no straightforward way to go about this, and at the end of the day, it is the method that works best for you while also getting a good end result.

If you do choose to bundle everything up, I would suggest first you make little helper objects on the location of every moving objects pivot point, with its old rotation settings, and name them correspondingly to the object pivot it is representing. Then also I would give each moving part their own Material ID so they can be easily selected and detached later on, also making notes of what component uses what MAT ID.

Another option, and generally what I do and providing all your objects haven't had their pivots scaled in the scene (by scaling the object itself, rather than its verts/faces etc and if so, you can reset xform etc on them if they have), then you can UV them all separately in non-normalised mode and get them all at the same scale (what I would recommend doing when UVing any object, even if all the components are part of one mesh when UVing). Then once you've UVed all the objects, you can then use a MultiObjectUnwrap script (use this script with care, you must set your UVs before saving etc and make lots of backups along the way, as this tool combines all the objects into one while UVing, then separates them after UVing, once you press set, and if you restart max 1/2 way though, it can't separate them, although there are ways to fix it, with keeping your most recent UVs if you have a recent backup, but this doesn't always work) to pack all your sub-objects together into one (or more) sheets. This is what I did for packing my Type 21 Frigate UVs and here is a quick timelapse test video I made showing the packing process after all the components were UVed (doesn't show the entire pack but you get the idea): Hope that helps

Welcome back!

I usually attach al the objects to my main model, and then uv that. Do keep in mind that the glass part (canopy) should be on a separate sheet. Also, using different max materials like Rhino sugested is a good way to know later on which parts belong to which object.

Good luck,



D.J.

MAT_IDs assigned!

like this right??
42 Low poly objects in total.




Thanks guys!

So If i attach everything to the a single model and then UV it and then would i have to separate it all together?
some parts are hollow with a lid over it, so can't attach it like the landing gear's hollow inside and the door that goes over it.

Ye, although don't forget to save all the pivot locations for the moving parts with helpers:


And yes, when it comes to exporting the moving parts (ingame) will need to be separated out to their own objects again, in order to be able to move.

And to be clear by attaching I mean by using the "Attach" button, just so multiple objects become part of the same object. I do not mean welding them together with welding their verts or w/e as in doing so, will just make it harder to separate and will also require you to delete faces etc you need for the moving object.

Also again to be clear, it isn't just glass that you should UV to its own sheet, you also want to UV any faces that will require transparent textures (for the holes your air brakes for example?) to their own sheet to have the most optimised texture setup possible. For example here is my Transparency/Alpha sheet for my Frigate and only has things on it that are transparent:





Note both the _c.dds and _b.dds are saved in DXT5 with the _c.dds texture having the transparency map in its alpha, and the _b.dds having the spec map in its alpha.

However, for my main Frigate texture sheet, the _c.dds is saved in DXT1, since it doesn't need a transparency map, saving 5.5mbs of memory, in contrast to if the transparent textures were on the same sheet and the entire sheet needed a transparency map just for the odd things that did. (textures still very WIP)


And the _b.dds is saved in DXT5 with the spec in its alpha (textures still very WIP):


Hope that helps

Many pivot point setups are not intended to give the right animation during rotation of the object, as i don't know how effectively set it for the flaps, landing gears and air brakes.



So should i still save the pivots as is with small cylinders?

Thanks!

If your pivots are not correctly setup then there isn't any point fixing them and saving them at this point, overall it will be quicker to do that when it comes to exporting. But any that are correct, still worth saving their locations.

Also a quick example of setting up the pivot correctly, well somewhat, for w/e reason it wasn't 100% right here, would take a little trial and error to get it totally right but you get the idea.

Perfect work !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TO [R-DEV]Rhino:Almost finished the UVW mapping of the 3P model except the air brakes and cockpit glass.Did exactly as you said.For the moment the texal density is different on every part.There are some parts which have not been UVWed correctly which lie deep inside the cockpit and inside of the exhaust, intakes and some places where a player isn't going to look much like inner sides of the flaps, etc.
Sent you a max file.

UVW sheet is a mess right now!

Thanks!

Sorry been busy (with PUBGs, as well as r/l stuff ). Will try and take a look "Soon (tm)"

Right umm, taking a look at this now and ye, tbh I would start your UVW again from scratch as it is a pretty big mess right now with everything at different pixel ratios and many things messed up etc, would take more work to fix up your current UVs to be in the correct proportions to each other, let alone fixing all the other errors, than just to start again...




Taking my Frigate as an example again, if you look at it with the checker map on it you can see that everything is at roughly the same pixel ratio, other than the odd part that will hardly be seen or w/e.






Can you send me your latest scene before you merged all the objects together and started UVW mapping etc and I'll start you off and show you how I would go about UVing this

File sent.

Thanks!

Right sorry for taking so long to look at this, been super busy.

First of all I'm just documenting most of the changes I'm making, you don't need to make these changes yourself Anant, just keep these points in mind for any future work

Anyways firstly looking at your mesh there is still a little optimizing that can be done before starting with the UVs:




Bit of a smoothing issue where the wing joins the fuselage:



Now the only real way to fix this without spending loads of tris or using a HP normal map, is to have the wing slightly unwelded at the front, and have the fuselage not have those extra verts/edges for connecting onto the wing's curve and instead just have it simplifed to just have the front vert and edges, with a tiny bit of face going inside the wings connection, which wont use much extra UV space at all (most likley wouldn't be used by anything either way) and saves a few tris too. Just need to ensure the wing verts that aren't welded up, are slightly on the inside of the fuselage too:





Also while doing this I noticed your wings aren't totally lined up (note the right view)? I've fixed this up at the fuselage connection but not checked the rest of the wing, but ye, should try and keep everything totally symmetrical.



I also made the leading edge of the trail thin smooth and without screwing up the SGs for the sides or back too




As I've said in the past for this:

'[R-DEV wrote:Rhino;2155415']Also the hardpoints should NOT be welded onto the wings as firstly, there is no chance of them zfighting, since their bottom face is so far away, they don't waste any UV space which could be used by other things since the hole they make in the wings UV is too small to be used by anything else, they screw up the wings smoothing, waste tris and it just makes making the LODs etc much harder, with them also needing to be totally removed in the later LODs which would also expose the UV hole under them which would just be its shadow on the later LOD which is fine. As you can see on the J-10 for example, the hardpoints are just floating mesh on the wing:



Which are then totally removed in its later LODs, just leaving the shadow under them:

With the holes removed the smoothing is much better and fewer tris too:





Don't need all these edges inside the front landing gear hole:



Same goes for the doors (after its been fixed)


Found quite a few hidden faces in the cockpit:


And with the seat etc not welded to the floor, you're wasting quite a bit of UV space here:



On the Exocet hardpoint there you don't need these edges:



Fixed up a load of other issues, smoothing groups and optimized the main fuselage mesh down to 3k tris now but still quite a bit to do that will do later before I do the base UVs for this for you.

Thank you very much!
Didn't realize,reduction of some of those tris at the bottom.Yeah i might have misunderstood that hardpoint part.
Many thanks for doing the base UVs.

Right fixed up the 3rd person cockpit, took some remodelling to fully get it optimized well but now no huge hidden faces and welded up fully etc:


I also made the cockpit glass verts fully align up with the support outside verts, before some were and some weren't. (before: http://i.imgur.com/eqnypK5.jpg)




Speaking of the cockpit, one thing you should start working on while this is happening and I really should have thought of this earlier is making the First Person Cockpit model, which is arguably one of the most important parts of a jet model, since it is what is seen most of the time.

Only really decent cockpit ref I have, of the non-modernised version, is this one:


But there is also this manual I found, it is in French and can't seem to download it from the site without paying but still can view it online for free and has decent info/pics on the cockpit as well as other stuff: Manuel Pilote Super Etendard - Tome 1


You can also go a little crazy on the tri count of a 1p model, up to 10k tris is fine but wouldn't go much over that without good reason, also don't forget to include parts of the 3p model that you can see from out of the canopy (wings, possibly the nose etc) and can use the 3p model/textures for them, although maybe a little smoothed out / higher poly in places they might need to be but keep their old UVs but wouldn't worry about that part for now until they are UVed etc, just focus on the interior



Anyways back to the 3p model, next your slits for the cannon under the intakes really aren't working well right now, a bunch of smoothing errors and not really the right shape:


As per the refs it is much more rounded where yours is much boxier, although I know you planned to smooth things out with HP normals, the LP shape could still be much better:



New slits I've done for the cannons, smoothing isn't perfect but will do fine and can be fixed with HP smoothing




And also redid your LP Cannons since yours had lots of sides (88tris), double these ones which have the same number of sides as the slits ( :


Anyways that's all for now, if you could look into starting the 1p model that would be awesome!

Read the entire thread today. I can't wait to see it in action, exceptional!!