Archangel35757

I greatly dislike this chaulky, cartoony look... I was hoping for a more photo-real experience!

I thought they compiled a unique GLA for each cutscene animation, no? For example, the Alora and Jaden duel in Echo Base... I would think that it was all animated inside Softimage-- and then the Jaden and Alora animations were exported out as their own cutscene GLA and invoked by scripting, no?

@@AshuraDX -- are you applying an AO texture that is already baked into diffuse map while working in 3dsMax? You could also add the AO texture all by itself in the Diffuse Levels Map slot-- which is different than diffuse slot (if you use an Oren-Nayar-Blinn Shader. Then you can just assess the AO map inside Max before you combine it into diffuse map.

Can't cutscenes also involve NPC's that have their own GLA file? It's just scripting right?

I would rather you add a driver tag, no? It would be nice to have a few animations that play on the commander-- raise lid and lower lid, binocular search, maybe one death animation where he slumps over. Did you ever play Rebellion's WWII Sniper Elite? It had the best combat AI ever. Sometimes when a tank was blown up the wounded tank commander would open the cupola trying to escape but the flames would overcome him.

Spent a little time trying to model the Lacrimal Caruncles in the corners of her eyes. I'm not satisfied with them. But here's how they look now.

Seems to be bags or pouches.

I've done some research for this for my 3dsMax head rig controls. Eye and head movements are inter-related and complex... typically (when not staring) the eyes will lead the head as your eyes move to lock onto a new target-- as your eyes begin to reach their limit your head begins to rotate to compensate. In other sudden instances-- like a disturbance beyond your peripheral vision your head may turn rapidly with your eyes staying zeroed with respect to the head... and as the head approaches the look-at vector your eyes begin to lead the head. When you're searching within a very small cone you tend to search with your eyes. If the eye movement gets larger, you're more likely to turn your head in the direction you're looking. When you stare... you tend to keep your eyes zeroed and track with head movement. Then if your head/neck reaches a limit you'll continue to track with your eyes until your eyes hit their limit (this assumes you keep your body locked still). There's also something called Saccade movement of the eyes where they kind of randomly dart around in small increments about a constant look-at vector. I'm going from memory... since I don't have my notes.

Yeah... I have some specific ideas I'd like to chat with about.

When the materials are imported into 3dsMax and put to the material editor, I'm planning to rename the material to the diffuse texture name (e.g., "Kyle_torso" instead of "01 - Default" etc.). They can always be renamed by the artist later. When mesh objects are imported I plan to check for the XSICustomPSet .Game template (that holds the G2Skin data-- relative texture path...) then I plan to use that G2Skin info to rename the #map name to the relative path.

Sometimes it's nice to be able to ask a question-- and get a real-time response (if there is someone on the channel that can answer it)

I plan to create a trooper.gla file for both stormtroopers and rebel troopers and make it as a new NPC.

I agree with @@DT85 & @@minilogoguy18-- but there are specific unique requirements for modeling something for JK2/JK3... for example-- only 4 bones can influence a vertex, vertex limits per object, etc. These type of requirements should be found on jkhub tutorial site. The Raven SoF2 manuals include a lot of tutorials for making game assets that are applicable to the JK2/JK3 engine. For example: first person weapon view models, map objects, etc.

First and foremost-- anyone desiring to learn to create 3D models/animations should look to, and complete, all the respective tutorials that ship with their specific modeling software. Once they accomplish that... they will be smart enough to Google for really advanced tutorials. When someone asks for a general modeling tutorial... the response should be, "Have you completed all the related tutorials that came with your software?" If they ask what are the specific modeling requirements to make a model (map object, vehicle, character, creature, etc.) for Jedi Knight (Outcast or Academy) then those specific requirements should be in tutorials available on this site (or links to them if they are on a member's own webpage-- i.e., @@Psyk0Sith 's website).

@@DT85 The texture import code is almost finished... I just need to write the code to verify the texture does exist in the import folder (looking for extensions other than .PIC) -- and if so import the data from the SI_Texture2D template into the 3ds Max material. Then put the new 3dsMax material into the Material Editor (the code for putting it to the editor is done)... just stepping back to finish the SI_Texture2D stuff. I just exported a model that has specular and normal maps... only diffuse textures get exported to dotXSI (same as Raven's exported files)-- @@minilogoguy18, could you export one of your models (that has specular, etc. textures applied) to dotXSI 3.0-- just to confirm, and email it to me? For the importer I plan to search for related specular, normal maps etc. and import them as well as the diffuse. For example-- if the diffuse texture is named "Kyle_Torso.tga" then I will search for a specular ("Kyle_Torso_S") etc. and import them as well. Key strings for additional texture map searches (forced to lower case): diffuse is given the SI_Texture2D... specular suffix = "_s" normal suffix = "_n" Can anyone think of other suffixes I should search on? I realize this enforces a naming pattern-- but it will at least import the diffuse textures. My plan is to import the materials/textures as Standard Materials in 3ds Max-- the specular, normal, etc. textures will be added as additional maps in their respective map slots.

Yeah I don't recall seeing any .PIC files used either... (that's a Paintbrush file right?) I'm just planning to search for the texture name and do a compare on the extension-- to find anything other than pic and lastly if there is a PIC then use it.

What are the most common texture file formats used on models? .TGA, .PNG, .JPG, etc.??? I've noticed that many of the LOD meshes are using a .PIC image file-- @@DT85, @@minilogoguy18, @@Psyk0Sith, @@AshuraDX -- is this some sort of mip-mapping lower detail copy of the original .TGA texture? Reason I ask is that I'm trying to optimize the material import process... and would rather use the TGA (if present) instead of a .PIC file… Thoughts?

...by eating his spinach!

Yes... it will have all the necessary bones to drive fully-expressive facial expressions-- the 6 to 8 basic expressions... as well as be able to make custom facial animations for up-close cinematics. It will have a pose library where you can store custom facial poses. As for the lip-synch'ing... the visemes will cover 44+ English phonemes... I also plan to build expandability for adding additional language viseme sets (others will have to make foreign language visemes that can be added to library of languages). I plan to use PRAAT for the sound analysis/phoneme identification-- already created the code to read in the phoneme list. PRAAT supports scores of languages.

@@DT85 -- ah... it's an optical illusion. I was seeing the back of the hair and thinking it was wrapping around his neck-- which it is not.

...but that was before all of the source code was released, right? Is he aware that all of the source code is available now?

Looking good... the UV's for the hair around neck don't flow properly-- but I'm sure you know this.

Will this model allow the cupola to be open and have the commander be standing up thru it like this?

Almost finished writing the code to import materials/textures... will do a quick test of importing only materials/textures soon! Will post results...