Minas Tirith Project || Part 2

#2481

Just a llittle update from me: I’ve been optimising models of the city. I’m keeping track of how much has been saved, and so far I’m on 1,18%. Not a lot yet, but I’ve only had five scenes. In three I’ve been able to save up to 20%!
I hope to reach 10% less polygons overall. It will take some time though… some models are so bad that it takes less time to redo them…

#2482

Maybe an easy way to save polycount ( and it might be a good time to do it, too ) is to replace the doors with more simple geometry, and use normal maps ? I’ve seen some insane details in the doors / gates.

#2483

Yeah indeed. I removed most those yesterday, along with some other insane stuff like fences with 10K tri’s, which can be done with just one plane with an alpha.
And I’ve encountered more crazy stuff that made me wonder what I was thinking back then :wink:

At the moment I’m on 5,43% less polygons so far. Some more specific stats:
2-gate - 42,30%
4-lf - 35,16%
5-lf - 19,26%
5-rf - 24,68%
6-lf - 21,98%
7-rb-01 - 31,79%
GH_exterior - 32,96%
Tower of Ecthellion - 36,61%

#2484

Flavien, a thought I’d like to hear your ideas about:
We’re now instancing buildings to save polies. This works quite well as we’ve seen.
How about using this same instancing for pillars? A lot of pillars are similar. One pillar might not have too many polies, say 600 tri’s max. But there are a LOT of pillars in almost every building.
For example the barracks, 19 full pillars of 616 tri’s, 10 half pillars of 464 tri’s, totalling 16344 tri’s. Using instancing, it would only take 1080 tri’s. Perhaps we’d like to have three or four differently mapped pillars to use for instances, but even then the difference would be huge.

However, I know that you’ve said that a lot of objects with a low polycount affect the performance badly (LOD and culling calculations wasn’t it?). So I’d like to hear how you think about this.

#2485

Hi

At the moment I am experimenting with HDR photography… so for a texture like this one, I have following workflow…

  • go out find a good image :slight_smile:
  • take at least 3 images with different lightning settings (bracketing/camera+stativ)
  • generate HDR image special software
  • prework with photo software
  • horizontal tiling with another special software
  • final work with photo software (horizontal + vertical tiling)

If everything works right the HDR image has much better contrast and colorflow as a normal photo

cheers !

#2486

You’d basically trade off memory savings against performance decrease. At 600 polys per object, I’d say it’s not worth the cost, so I’d advise to only do that as a last optimization. 16K triangles are only 1 MB of RAM.

#2487

Keep texture dept in mind as well…I don’t know how many pillars there are in total (16k in one building is cited) but each will need to be unwrapped (unless the modeller was thinking ahead and UV’d them while being built) and textures created.

Re textures- could use those building models we talked about for UV/texture some time soon PJanssen. thnx

#2488

I wanted to think about this a bit more before saying anything, but I can’t see why we couldn’t use it on some sections for extra visual contrast.

I’ve looked at HDR plugin - photomatix…It seems it works even without bracketing your shots so that would even be usable on existing texture pics in our collection.

Thanks for sharing your efforts Omniom!

#2489

Hi everybody, it’s been quite a while… XD

I’m still in Italy, btw I’ll stay here for 3 more weeks. Today I made some nice shots for texture work, most probably I’ll post some previews this evening.

@ Omniom:
those HDRs look quite impressive o.0

#2490

Hi Kope…will be watching for the pics!! :slight_smile:

Omniom- what HDR did you use on your examples?
thnx

#2491

Do you mean the bracketing ? it is -1/0/+1 = 3 different images

The software is: http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/ very easy freeware multiplatform

HDR rulez !

Here another example

Did you see the post from Ysaneya in the intern forum ? Very informativ and interesting :slight_smile:

Soon I have some free days then I will go and take images again.

Is something going on in the organisational part ?

@kope

I am looking forward to see some images too …you enjoy a long trip in Italy, heh !

#2492

Thanks Omniom!
Sorry I haven’t been in the team forum to see your messages…seemed so slow I only was checking CGT. :slight_smile:

Really appreciate your keeping active on the texure end…Your HDR’s are looking killer. :thumbsup:

I agree about your suggestion for a proper way to organize the textures.
I will talk to Pier about it and hope we can find a good solution. ASAP.
I find this one nice and have used it on shirowproject. It has nice search and categories.

*For now use the FTP I had previously setup for storgae and access of texture pics see the team forum for address and login info

Anyways.Re organization of the texture dept.-
I was hoping to do more actual texturing myself, but will mainly be overseeing the work and recruiting for the next while.

We still need more tiles done (info in the team forum )

Also I am getting a couple building models from PJanssen in a day or 2 to put in CGT texture forum for a challenge.

Hoping to get more help via that challenge.

Re texture sizes- Please do create all your textures at 2048 for now.
I’m not 100% sure if it’s what Kricketguy meant by going smaller, but I think we can also do some smaller tiles too. It would be at the same size as the 2048, but cropped for a smaller tile.
The downside to that method is it goes against the outline for texture quantity- It would mean greater quantity of small textures.

I think we can ballance this out though…For now to keep a high source file rez, anyone that does tiles, do them at 2048x2048 if at all possible!

Over and out !

#2493

As promised this morning i’m posting photo preview…
Although I encountered some problems while making photos (compact camera,typical italian narrow streets full of parked cars, strong sun) results aren’t bad.
I’d like to know which shots you among previews you like most. Obviously as soon as I’ll be able to connect by adsl I’ll upload hires pics.

#2494

double post due to connection problem… sorry

#2495

tripple post due to the connection error… very sorry

#2496

Kope,

Seens that you’re looking for feedback on your textures here’s what I think:

29 is very good for the higher up buildings such as the great hall interior, perhaps, because that marbel look is somewhat expenisive looking.
Because 35 (appears) to use such big slabs of stone, you could consider it for the main walls, though perhaps without so much vegetation.
The archway stone used in 9 and 4 would be good for the same purpose on MT.
17 would be useful for pillars on side-streets.
The iron metal bars used in 5 could also be modified for gates to small street homes or they could be used for barriers of 2nd floor small windows
Lastly, 30 & 38 would be good for the stone used in older buildings.

Those are just my thoughts, and you’d have to actually try it out before to see what it would really look like.

Excellent photos Kope, keep it up!

Sadroneru

#2497

Hello Kope

Nice images :slight_smile:

Everything like number 1,3,20, …looks promising for a set. I would go for it.

There are also some very nice single textures like 23,29,33

I dont know how you do your texture work or how experienced you are, so here just some common remarks. If you think this superfluos for you then please just ignore it. ( I am writing this based only on my meager experience and in condsideration of my camera settings)

  • To be sure to have good material take several shots, starting at medium zoom range and then zooming out ( max zoom gives heavy lense distortion, I usually dont work with those images anymore, even with lense correction software) It is pitty to realize later that you cant use your stuff because of e.g. very difficult tiling.

  • For example texture 9 I personally would not know what do to with it, object is to far, the angle to step, the resolution probably to weak at the corners.

  • textures 23,33 I would try to take the images as straight as possible from the beginning, safes you a lot of work later. Also some images at medium range just to be on the safe side.

  • e.g. texture 12 has full sun, shadow, graffity on it very difficult to make something out of it

I know that you guys have tricks up your sleeves I cant even dream of… so if this remarks are to low level for you just ignore it.

hope you enjoy your trip to Italy and you will take more images…and more…we re always eager to see more :slight_smile:

#2498

Kope- loving the shots you have here. There’s enough room ,so pload them all to the FTP when you are back. The ones that are not usable for texture can be useful for reference.

Omnion- good suggestions…not at all lo level. Doing some of these things you mention wherever possible will make our work a lot easier when preparing tiles/textures…

#2499

Guys, thanks for feedback. I posted only most distinguish photo previews. As for stone walls like 25,29,33 I got about 20 different shots :slight_smile:
As for quality of the photos… unfortunetly they’re only 6megapix.

@Omniom:
-previews I posted are raw-resized-crops of real photos
-Each time I’m out to take photos I make as many shots as possible.
-texture n9 photo… well, that stone gate is huge. I’d say 9-10 meters wide. Next time I’ll be there will take better shots
-very often italian streets are very narrow. There’s barely space to take photo with ‘wide’ angle compact camera. Some times parked vehicles are a problem too.
-tex n12 is an example of unique gate that I couldn’t take good photo of because of daytime/weather
-thanks for tips :wink:
-as you’re eager to see more… tomorrow (sunday) I’m having some free time in Milan so some photos will be taken… And on monday I’m going to Como one more time to make better shots of subjects I last posted here.

#2500

I can assure you, next to none of the building have any mapping done (unfortunately). For me personally the thinking ahead when it comes to mapping part was something I learned the hard way only recently…
For repetitive objects like pillars it’d mean having to map one and then cloning this to the correct position in the buildings.

Re textures- could use those building models we talked about for UV/texture some time soon PJanssen. thnx

I will send them tomorrow. If you haven’t received them by then, drop me a mail to remind me. Cursing is allowed. :stuck_out_tongue:
I think that Simons section (1-lf) would make a nice part to start. It’s a part next to the main road, with some more ‘suburb’ like small streets, so enough room to try out various textures.

@Omniom, Kope and sd: Great job on the texturing part, keep it going!
Kope, very nice photos, those will be useful I’m sure. Enjoy your vacation!

Just a little update on my situation:
I’ve been pretty much occupied with things other than MT lately. I hope to have some more time available in the coming month and a half to complete model optimisation and sort out some urgent organisation issues. I do have a lot of other things on my mind though, so it could be that I’m a bit slow in responding to questions or requests.
I have found a place to have my 5 month long internship (Grin, in Stockholm :)). This is good news for me, but perhaps less so for my available time for the project. I’ll probably start somewhere mid September and I’ll just have to see how things are going then.
Next to this I really hope that I’ll be able to make this my final year, meaning that I’ll have a lot of work to do.