Waldo

Yea I'm not surprised Kuma whipped one up

On a different blog it was mentioned that English is fairly common in Pakistan (British colonial days remnant). Also these aren't "as built" plans so don't match the real thing.

Dear god I didn't think of checking here...

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ ... revstart=0

Furyo I actually lit off Hammer the other day - like riding a bicycle!

I'm already thinking Easter Eggs. How about Abbott and Costello references linking to the town of Abbottabad? Abbott a baaaad boy?

LOL cs_mansion indeed

Yes a long time. Saw this article, immediately thought "Surely on mapcore..."

Plans to bin Laden's house...

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/05/ ... cca-house/

I gotta go back to Quake (one) for some of my favorites, specifically Threewave CTF with grappling hooks and the original TF.

Pipe up if you're going there. I'm there for a few talks and a ton of meetings...

Actually I'm ahead of you both :^) I tried "cold calling" Bioware and they instructed me to email their "contact@bioware.com" email, which I did a week ago - but no answer. I also have recently emailed the CD Projekt but no answer from them yet.

So posting here I wondered if anyone knew of any contacts.

I'm interested in finding out what the licensing options and costs are for this engine. Anyone know of specific connections with BioWare who deal with biz dev?

Found a cool addon for Max today called OgreMax. You can select an object and it will generate a cubemap centered on that object's origin - much easier than messing with cubes, materials, etc.

See http://www.ogremax.com/Documents/OgreMa ... ialog.html

If you can afford relatively large texture maps (such as 256x256) learn to bake occlusion maps onto your textures. There are numerous tutorials about this on game-artist.net =)

Ah good tip,thanks.

Minotauro thanks for the links. I've seen the last one but not the LPC contest - good thread. I was particularly impressed with low poly TF2 characters in the Low-poly Game Art sticky thread. I think they actually work well because of the underlying design elements for TF2 characters - shape (profile) and use of colors in particular.

My own target is a lower spec system. Think like a RuneScape (or a bit higher) level of game that is specifically aimed at older machines. What I don't want it to have some kind of old Q1 look to it, and it's been great to see a number of LP models in the various links that really are quite good.

Ah another set of low poly models I found a while back is a commercial package at http://frogames.net/shop/index.php?main ... ducts_id=4

Hmm... you know just talking about polygons doesn't actually add any and ruin the model. It's like dieting. Just looking at chocolate cake won't make you gain weight!

Cross post from Polycount...

I've been snuffling about the web lately looking for good examples of low poly models and wondering just what makes a good low poly model beyond just that it's low poly? Texture style seems really important for example. Crappy blurred out textures won't do. Should the textures be low color count for example, or not? Heavily emphasized shadow lines?

I thought the example at the link below was pretty nice....

http://www.angelfire.com/wa3/emilyogle/ ... rdesk.html

An exaggeration of features, very clear and distinct artwork. Also the render of it is actually lit very well. I suppose one take away there is that a good low poly model still looks good in a high res engine render.

The Arabic Pottery Shop at http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=55173 also is like that. Sharp textures but a well lit example I think.

I'm curious what thoughts are on this question. What I'm really wanting to make is something more like the Arabic Pottery Shop example (second link). Low poly but actually somewhat realistic looking.

(oops, don't copy and paste truncated URLs. Fixed)

Thx Arttu

I also did a bit of "RTFG" (G stands for Google) and found this package link in an Ogre3d forum...

http://www.atomlabs.org/asdn/mentalray/ ... _index.htm

Note that Firefox flags this as an "attack site". Not sure why but proceed with caution if you go. I've downloaded the plugin on that page and am trying it out.

Anyone know of a tutorial or info on how to generate a skybox image from a Maya (or 3ds Max or XSI) model? I've got a whopping big cityscale model that I need to use for generating a set of skybox images from different locations around the city. It's not in Source so I can't use the separate 3d skybox trick alas.

I'm working with some people on an educational MMO project right now, and one of the real issues is choosing an engine. It has to deal with huge spaces, but equally as important it has to run on "old" systems. If you're going to put a game into a school, you're going to have to aim at a lower system spec.

CryEngine (1) seems like it could have some potential, but the idea of building a whole MMO framework for it (persistent world, instancing, etc.) just sounds like a major (pain in the ass) undertaking. I'm curious if anyone's already done it before and even had some licensable tech.

Anyone know of any other MMOs being built on the CryEngine (FarCry 1 engine) platform? I'd heard about NCSofts Aion but no others.

I'm trying to import an animated character model into Maya that is in "FBX" format. I can import it fine, view animations, and even export it to the format I need it in (Collada) with no problems.

The problem is, he's too small. The engine (Multiverse) wants things in 1 unit = 1 mm format, whereas this guy is 1 unit = 1 meter (I think).

I've tried scaling him up in Maya, and the mesh scales fine, but not the skeleton. Actually it does look fine in Maya, but on export, the skeleton is not scaled up. The result is a proper sized mesh all "squinched" down onto a tiny skeleton. Amusing, but not what I want.

So! Any ideas how to rescale a rigged character model, skeleton and all? Polytrans? Some trick of Maya?

I was really suprised how long this story stayed out of the "mainstream" web.

Yes...do you have...questions...?

Just looking for impressions and such.

Anyone played with the Quake 4 SDK at all?

http://www.iddevnet.com/quake4/

Waldo, what's that engine/project you do that GUI for? Looks cool

Multiverse (see http://www.multiverse.net)

BTW one of the more realistic HUDs I've seen is here

What really sets the Metroid HUD apart though is that it is actually 3D. When you move your view left and right, the physical shape of the HUD around the edge of the screen offsets, just like it would if you were turning in a large suit yourself. In addition, the data on the HUD is 'projected' onto the glass of the armour using 3D.

When you try to achieve the same thing with a 2D system it stands out like a sore thumb and it's very hard to make it not look a bit shit. I don't think the very heavy HUD of Metroid (ie: it takes up a lot of screen room) can really work without the additional dynamic edge that the 3D brings in.

In short, the Metroid HUD looks genuinely great in-game because it moves and the 2D elements look like they're being projected, with mild distortion every now and then to boot. The same effect in static 2D would look poor, and a more minimalist style would be better.

Agreed, there are some good demo videos out there of it, and it's really a pretty cool display system. One at http://media.wii.ign.com/media/748/7485 ... 72588.html

Right now i'm just mocking things up in static 2d, but the UI has a lot of python scripting behind it, so future animation/action of the UI based on movement is quite doable. I'm mainly interested right now in basic functionality ideas of HUDs, which led me to the greater question about why you can't find a big gallery of huds out there on the web anywhere.