Pillars for the Emperor

[MachineGoat]

Well it's actually just one pillar. I was bored last summer and I went and made a high poly pillar with imperial aquila on top and somehow forgot about the whole thing until last week. I dug the old model up cleaned it up a bit and then made a low poly for it, unwrapped both of those buggers and baked normals and ambient occlusion map for the heck of it. Anyways long story short: I "finished" this pillar yesterday evening. Currently there are no additional LODs nor do I know, if I can even get this in game anymore(it's been over two years since I last made a prop for Source engine).

Anyways here it is:


744 triangle polygons or tris, there are no faces on top or bottom.
One 512x512 normal map and one 512x512 color map, if you're wondering about the weird UV layout it's because I unwrapped one third and used the same texture space a couple of times more(color map is just AO multiplied on top of photosourced granite and that crappy aquila).

I'll try to get it finished and in game next week. Anyways best of luck with the mod, I've been waiting for a release for a couple of years now. But I know it's better to take your time and release something great than release something half-baked quickly.

[ChromeAngel]

Hello MachineGoat ,

Nice looking pillar there, i've wanted to  do fluted version of the Exterminatus column prop for a long time, but never got around to it.  If you need a hand with the unwrapping ZebraOnion from our IRC roiom (#rspecies2 on the quakenet network) volunteered to help.  If you want assistance with the normal map (the seam at top of the column looks a bit screwy) Mindblighter's your man.

If you can close the ends it would be nice, you never really now how these things are going to be used by the mappers and it will probably help with the collision hull.

[Typheron]

Groovy.

[MachineGoat]

Hello MachineGoat ,

Nice looking pillar there, i've wanted to  do fluted version of the Exterminatus column prop for a long time, but never got around to it.  If you need a hand with the unwrapping ZebraOnion from our IRC roiom (#rspecies2 on the quakenet network) volunteered to help.  If you want assistance with the normal map (the seam at top of the column looks a bit screwy) Mindblighter's your man.

If you can close the ends it would be nice, you never really now how these things are going to be used by the mappers and it will probably help with the collision hull.

The top and bottom parts were made of six "slices" in the photo I used as reference(it was some table top stuff with skulls and other details that I left out), so I reworked my UVs a bit and redid the color map partially to reflect this better. I also did a new normal bake and got some problems solved with that and apparently made a couple of new issues as well, but I don't think they're too serious(mostly those small lumpy parts on the very bottom and top parts).

I closed the ends as well and now the pillars are 764 tris each. I guess one LOD level with some simplifications should be enough.



I'll have to check out the IRC channel at some point. Thanks for pointing out problem areas.

[ChromeAngel]

ohh thanks for making those changes, it's looking even better now

[MachineGoat]

I had some extra time today, so I did the LOD model from the original. Luckily most of the UV information remained intact and I only had to do some minor fixes.



It's around 40% reduction. Next up is the hard part of getting this in game. 

[Typheron]

Just mail it to chrome, hes a masta at that kind fo thing

[zenarion]

Wow, the improvement is clearly visible.
I still think you could put some more work into the specular map.
I don't know how the PHONG shader works nowadays, but when i tried my hand at texturing for
Source, the spec map was handled as the alpha channel of the normalmap.
Now your stonework looks polished, shiny, and wet.
Break up that specular map a bit.

[MachineGoat]

zenarion: I had no specular map on those images, but thank you for the information on how it works in Source. I had read somewhere that some engines use normal maps alpha channel for spec, but I wasn't aware that Source was one of those engines.

I'll compile materials and see if I can make studiomdl work without crashing all the time this time around. 

Edit:
After a bit of fighting I managed to get it all to compile and come out in right size(256.5 units tall as for some reason or another studiomdl wants to add an extra 0.5 units no matter what I do) and with working materials. HLMV doesn't seem to be capable of showing normal maps on my computer, I read from Valve developer wiki that others have had similar problems with HLMV, so it could be just the program and not the normal map.



Next up is collecting all the relevant files and source files and pack them up in a nice and tidy zip.

[Typheron]

at the sides fo the image, keeping the roof up. should look familar

[MachineGoat]

Hey, that made my day. The damn things are working.