Custom Content Challenge: April 2013: Drow Stuff

[Legacy__six]

               4 bones per vertex is the limit I'm aware of. Beyond that if its not crashing the game, its fine bones-wise.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               This is up to 8 pages of comments and projects?  Making the poor "regular elves" look neglected...

I blame Salvatore for making people think drow were the "good" ones to hang out with. '>

Here's a compiled list of what's been talked about and shown here:

Draegloth - MerricksDad
Spider Swords - Shemsu-Heru
Female Drow Head - Shemsu-Heru
Driders, Webs, and Spider Decor - PLUSH HYENA of DOOM
Ridable Giant Lizard - Draygoth28
Ridable Giant Lizard 2 - Draygoth28
Drow Helmet - Draygoth28
Drow Matron Head - Shemsu-Heru
Drow Longbow - Shemsu-Heru
Drow Mercenary - MerricksDad
More Drow (and more pics)- MerricksDad
Drow Spider Idols - PLUSH HYENA of DOOM
Drow Scimitars - Shemsu-Heru
Drow Priestess - MerricksDad
Large Spider Shuriken - Shemsu-Heru
Drow Crossbow - Shemsu-Heru
Driders - Draygoth28
Drow Wizard - MerricksDad
Drow Archmage - MerricksDad
Drow Head - Shemsu-Heru
Baldur's Gate Drow Placeables - HinnishPastry
Drow Female Head - Shemsu-Heru
Snake Whips - Shemsu-Heru
More Drow - Draygoth28
               
               

               

                     Modifié par The Amethyst Dragon, 30 avril 2013 - 02:32 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               I do try to keep my bones to 4 bone/vert max. NWmax is pretty good at detecting those for me. They also stand out like sore thumbs in the ascii models. As I'd mentioned before, there were some comments years back that had said 14 bones was a limit per skin, but I'd already broken that with PC skin models into the mid to high twenties without any failures at all. Smooth as a baby bottom. I'm actually surprised that the draegloth even works with that many bones, being not a PC model, but it does work very well in game, minus that negative shadow spike.

Does anybody know what I mean with the negative shadow spike? Maybe this is just me and my POS graphics card? The spike runs off toward xy 0,0 almost every time. Sometimes it bends upward, and then back toward the model, as if the shadow is a geometry particle instead of shading mathematics. It stretches as if skin, because its attached to the skin. The shadow spike can pass through solid objects and other shadows. If it passes through shadows, it creates shadow erasure.

NWmax by default doesn't export shadow 0 or shadow 1 on skin mesh. I have not examined the export code, but it seems to me like if you exported with both trimesh and skin modifiers on the model, you could force skins to export other parameters. I've not tried it.

Has anybody attempted to export a skin + animesh combo? It should work as long as nwmax was modified to NOT export the skin modifier. You could get some interesting low poly animesh fx that way. Sorry off-topic idea.

I'm still going to split the draegloth in half and see if the splitting of bone count gets rid of that issue. Gotta find a good place to split him that is not obvious.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               

MerricksDad wrote...

Does anybody know what I mean with the negative shadow spike? Maybe this is just me and my POS graphics card? The spike runs off toward xy 0,0 almost every time. Sometimes it bends upward, and then back toward the model, as if the shadow is a geometry particle instead of shading mathematics. It stretches as if skin, because its attached to the skin. The shadow spike can pass through solid objects and other shadows. If it passes through shadows, it creates shadow erasure.

Yeah, everyone who's modded NWN character models for a while enough gets used to the shadows being messy as heck. See above post for my (flawed and lazy yet surprisingly effective) workaround. There's a good example of it with my Wight model for Q if I recall. I use totally separate geometry for the shadows to the actually rendered model.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _six, 29 avril 2013 - 04:26 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_NWN_baba yaga]

               yup and i can only second the advice by _six to just use a very simple mesh for shadows. This advice goes for anything not only npc´s.

And this bugged shadow line you mention i had several times, never figured out what was the technical error in the mesh so i just turned off shadow and created a simple geometry, linked it to the errorass and tried to avoid to think about it any further....'>

And guys your stuff is amazing and i cant wait to see it in the my toole set '>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par NWN_baba yaga, 29 avril 2013 - 04:41 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               Shadow issue fixed! As suspected, just a skin bone count issue. Nothing having to do with shadows at all. He's now made of 3 skins and has a complex working shadow. Just delete the skin in nwmax and export again (give or take some texture tweaking and setting render=1 on all model parts) to use a normal block-model look. The only things that differ are the hair and the face length.

Sending in my 9 drow and 1 draegloth as we "speak". But I wish I had more time to do more before this one was over '>

Everything we've all made for this CCC is excellent! I can't wait until the drow tilesets that are being worked on are finished so I can run rampantly through them with all these goodies!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Draygoth28]

               Just sent in the 4 female Drow, 4 male Drow, male and female Drider, and both lizard mounts. The helmet will not make it, sorry.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Ssythilac]

               I don`t want to be anxious but... I cannot wait to introduce all of this wonderful content in my underdark module!

So, we have a release date or something?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_NWN_baba yaga]

               heh whats up with the drow stuff guys? Been over since 2 weeks and no download yet... i really want to use all the great content you produced!!!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Ssythilac]

               me too!! '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               I don't even think the previous challenge is packaged yet is it?

Anybody who wants my drow and heaven/hell stuff can get it on its project page at http://social.biowar...ect/8803/#files

I too can't wait to see the rest in action!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mecheon]

               Isn't packaged either, which is sad because I have a hankering something fierce for those Shedu
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shemsu-Heru]

               @Mechon: You can download my Shedim  "Here

@MerricksDad: At the moment other people can't download your file; You have to allow ypur files to any visit, if you wish to share it with everybody....
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               My apologies, folks.  Been battling illness and other "real life" distractions at my house.

Drow Stuff is now available.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               @Shemsu-Heru, thanks I'll look into that. I thought it was already completely open... bla

@TAD, thanks a ton, but don't let us push you around so easy '>

EDIT: Oh I see, the files have to be specifically told they can be downloaded by everybody on the manage files tab, but are set to default of nobody can see them but me.... again, bla
               
               

               

                     Modifié par MerricksDad, 16 mai 2013 - 06:36 .