HL2- Player Models

#1

Hey there, Im currently working on multiple characer models for HalfLife 2.

So that when it comes out at the end of this month i will be able to jump straight in with my custom Character.

But with modeling and rigging and the like i dont know where to start,
What considerations do you think have to be taken in thought… eg. size of the model, and the detail of the face for facial animation.
And rigging… what the heck is interpulator bones? the whole rigging thing doesnt make sense?

As im not familar with the way game engines operate has anyone got any ideas how we should go about making models to be used in this engine!

Theres probally no tuts out, and sketchy details about it all, but anyone from valve or has any insite to this able to fill me in, or write a short paper.

(p.s. iv seen all the movies for HL2 …so ive seen alyx in XSI, and and the model viewer and everything, so intelligent answer please, not GO WATCH THE MOVIES, because they dont make sense)

Red

#2

The only tip I can give you is to wait until HL2 is out, then check out the way they did it. Otherwise you’ll end up modeling stuff and then it turns out that you did it wrong.

You can model the body though. Gabe Newell said in an interview that the polycount of a regular character is around 5000.

#3

Don’t forget hl2 supports normal mapping (polybump), so you will need a high res version (a few 100k polys) of your model to derive them from and apply them on the lower res. not sure which one to model first though.

#4

No Doom3 is the one with normal mapping on characters as far as i know … hl2 chars are not normal mapped

#5

Every new game supports normal mapping for the most part. HL2 is right there with the rest of them.

#6

ok my bad :slight_smile:

#7

5000 poly’s is a lot you know… a standart 3d card can render about 100,000 poly’s in-game with a reasonable FPS(about 40 or maybe less) so if you use up 5000 for a character there won’t be much left for otherthings.

#8

recently there was yet another interview with valve where there was stated that normal mapping will only be used for level geometry, not characters. confusing … :smiley:

best bet is to wait until that game comes out. what’s the deal with being the first to release custom content anyway?

#9

Originally posted by Mussi
5000 poly’s is a lot you know… a standart 3d card can render about 100,000 poly’s in-game with a reasonable FPS(about 40 or maybe less) so if you use up 5000 for a character there won’t be much left for otherthings.

Valve has stated that many of their character models range from 5000-7000 a piece so obviously technology has increased these days. The key to good performance in HL2 is a good LOD system and computer performance flexibility.

#10

no matter how good your LOD engine is, it is just not possible to render more then 100,000 poly’s in-game with a high fps(60-90). there are to much calculations that have to be made, the physics are outstanding but eat your cpu power(they maybe some option to set this lower) and then we have the bullet holes… a lot of calculations have to be made to get them right on the walls and objects and that eats your cpu to, then we have a lot more calculations to do which eats it more but thats not all, cuz the 3d card has to do his thing to and this results in a low fps

#11

a mid level card can do 30 million ploys a second these days. that means about 500,000 a frame for 60 fps
a high end card can do quite a bit more

#12

thats theoretical 30 mil… they dont actually do that many. otherwise right now i could do 8 million poly models in Z if i wanted no problem :wink: which i cant… you know how much ram you would need?

right now at the moment you cant do 500k @60fps. not even on some benchmark demos, or games… not even close.

last few geforce/ati cards have focused more on pixel shading techniques and such rather than raw poly pushing power.

#13

I agree with you whisper :), and there are some other things that have to be doen to like textures, lights and much more

#14

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