Can I ask for your expertize?

[jb3]

Right. I knew you would love the wheel. :lmao: And the label. After all, they first invented the wheel, it's the same for me.

Ibsen, you're kidding right? You do model. Or not?

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Nope, never modelled.

[Koniption]

Originally posted by jb3
KP, wow! I can't express how helpful you are! Greatly appreciated.

That is what I am here for. You're welcome!

You say Blender is the way to go. Oh crap... I just love Max! Can't re-program. I think I will use Max, then save and finish in Blender.

It is fine to model in Max and then import into Blender to "finish" things. Just bear in mind, if you ever decided to try an animated model, you'll need to do all the animating stuff in Blender. The animation setup scenes in Max, can't be imported into Blender...

Anyway, yesterday I made my first Oblivion object in Max, UVed it and exported. I cooked up a primitive dds texture. Then I used NifSkope and exported to Oblivion. Voila! Don't laugh, don't laugh. I had to start with something simple. Here is my wagon wheel, simply for testing purposes. :lol: :O

Whoa, that was fast. And you did a good job, too!

KP, I will follow your post carefully, but I have 2 more questions:

1. As I can still "walk through" the object in Oblivion, do you know of a good tutorial to create Collision Object? I tried messing up in NifSkope, but I'd ideally do that in... well, I'dd say Max, but Blender will do. (Edit: Scratch that. Found it.)

Well, I'll answer anyway:

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Blender/Collision

For your wheel's shape, you'll want to use "mopp" collision ("polyheder", or "triangle", as it is known in Blender ) for a nonanimated, static wheel. If you want your wheel to be animated, or havoked like clutter... you'll need to use "convex shape" collision. However, you can also use convex shape collision on a nonanimated, static wheel.

I go into much more detail in this thread, in helping someone else get proper, and low-poly collision to work (please do read this thread, it has a lot of related info that I condensed together, in regards to making and exporting collision):

Nifskope.

2. What are the "poly budgets" these days? The wheel I made was 1500 facets approx. Can Oblivion handle more complex objects? As I browsed in CS, I've noticed even very small yet complex objects of, say, 15k facets. How high-poly can we go?

I think the wheel mesh can potentially be lower poly than that, and still look good. Different Oblivion items (clutter vs building vs creatures/races vs etc) usually have a general range of polies they can be. Even I get confused at times, what is acceptable.

What I try to do, is look at my mesh in wireframe mode and see which areas have vertices that line up in a straight line, I then take the vertices in the middle of that line, and weld them to one of the two vertices that are on the end of that line. This usually works, with no visual loss of quality seen.

When you think about it, a line is a line, as long as it has two ending "dots" or vertices on either side of it. The middleman vertices in the middle of that line are just extra fluff, and can be gotten rid of, all the while keeping the same line that you need.

Buildings and creatures/races typically get the most polycount range. Up to 20,000 polies is what I consider ok, personally, though more polies can be used, especially for buildings.

Clutter should definitely be much lower poly, usually no more than 2000 to 3000 polies, though I think I've gone higher before.

The absolutely main thing, besides keeping the visual mesh within acceptable poly limits, is to make sure your collision mesh is as low poly as possible, while still mostly form-fitting on the visual mesh. You also want to use the correct collision type, for some coll. types hurt performance in the game, if used wrong...

Example - never use "mopp" collision on animated or havoked clutter items - very bad things happen. But it's perfectly ok to use "mopp" collision on statics and things that are not animated or havoked.

P.S. Unfortunately Elderscrolls wiki site is down.

It's back up now. I just checked.

Koniption

[jb3]

Originally posted by Ibsen's Ghost
Nope, never modelled.

Huh?? :pop: :eek: I think some time ago I read in the Forums that you worked on BM animals. Weren't these the models?

My peek modelling times were approx. 5-7 years ago. That was when NURBs just got introduced. By the way, did NURBs got popular? Or do you still mostly use a spline modelling method?

@KP: You have no idea how much I appreciate all your input and advise. I have much on my plate now. So I will come back with questions, if I have any afterwards.

A few quick comments:

• I was able to apply a low-poly collision mesh on my wheel. (lol I still harass the same wheel, the one with the label ). Exported it to Oblivion, it works. I used Cylinder shape. I read something like 100-200, well upto 300 polys for the collision mesh. I mean in general, for more complex models. Not for the wheel. The wheel's one got maybe 20-30 or something like that.
  
• I used Blender to apply the collision mesh, although I see that Max 2010 has exactly the same functionality. Perhaps I need to downgrade. Too bad NifTools were not released for versions 2010+
  
• Yes, NifSkope seems to handle some options nicely. I've noticed the Block called 'bhkRigidBody'. I will need to learn about adjusting the collision types and features.
  
• OK, 20,000 polys. Wow, that's actually a lot. Thief had a limit of roughly 1,000 and if you went higher than that, you risked that the engine would crash.
  
• This one is actually very intriguing and a good example. I was able to find an object within BM collection, which I believe was done by simply shrinking 12 statues and applying them on the cube. Must have been a quick job (see the screenie). Yet, the object has a crazy amount of polys. It appears twice in CS: Static/BMChessboard3 and MiscItems/BMdrChessboard. They use the same model, which is: chessboard3.nif. Look below how many polys it has got. And it's Clutter. So how does 20,000 polys limit apply here? According to CS, the object (the Static version) was used 6 times within the esm, so they are in game somewhere.
  
• Deeza mentioned that textures were difficult, but I find a correct UV unwrap to be as difficult as preparing a correct texture. Or do you know any quick ways to do that? I used UV Unwrap stack modifier.
  

Thanks again.

[Koniption]

Originally posted by jb3
[snip]
A few quick comments:

• I was able to apply a low-poly collision mesh on my wheel. (lol I still harass the same wheel, the one with the label ). Exported it to Oblivion, it works. I used Cylinder shape. I read something like 100-200, well upto 300 polys for the collision mesh. I mean in general, for more complex models. Not for the wheel. The wheel's one got maybe 20-30 or something like that.

More complex models can have more triangle polys than 300 polys. You can use up to two to three times that amount. Now, I do have one model, the Dres Scuttler ship interior, that i think uses about 4000 polys overall for all the interior room collision. I only used that many polys in my collision mesh, because 1) the mesh was an interior and therefore in an interior cell (interior cells are not at game intensive as the exterior world, unless you make a huge continous dungeon that does not use loading doors), 2) the ship interior itself was large, so I needed more polys to cover it. However, only statics should only ever use so many polys, and only under certain circumstances, like mentioned above, I think.

This one is actually very intriguing and a good example. I was able to find an object within BM collection, which I believe was done by simply shrinking 12 statues and applying them on the cube. Must have been a quick job (see the screenie). Yet, the object has a crazy amount of polys. It appears twice in CS: Static/BMChessboard3 and MiscItems/BMdrChessboard. They use the same model, which is: chessboard3.nif. Look below how many polys it has got. And it's Clutter. So how does 20,000 polys limit apply here? According to CS, the object (the Static version) was used 6 times within the esm, so they are in game somewhere.

That chessboard's "statue" pieces should not be used in the game, AT ALL!! It's a crash-fest waiting to happen. I need to tell Ibsen this. Thanks for telling me.

Deeza mentioned that textures were difficult, but I find a correct UV unwrap to be as difficult as preparing a correct texture. Or do you know any quick ways to do that? I used UV Unwrap stack modifier.

Here's how I go about it:

I go to "Edit Mode" for my mesh I want to unwrap.

I then go to "Mesh" --> UV Unwrap --> ....

...and I usually choose one of 5 options:

* Unwrap (often a "seam" needs to be marked to unwrap mesh properly. First, select the line of vertices on your mesh that will be the line that you want to unwrap the mesh along. Then, go to "Meshes" --> "Edges" --> "Mark Seam". You'll see your line of vertices turn into an orange line on the mesh. Lastly, do the "Unwrap" option.)

* Cylinder from View (good to unwrap cylinder shapes. Be sure to use this option to texture your cylinders, BEFORE you start to bend, twist, or extrude those cylinders, else Blender might not make a perfect unwrap. A perfect cylinder unwrap, means the cylinder looks like it has been unwrapped from a single straight up/down seam, all the while the left/right edges of the unwrapped cylinder are stretched perfectly to either end of the texture image's boundaries (within "bounds", so to speak). This is good to get a seamless texture for cylinders, if you use a seamless/tiled texture to begin with.

* Project from View (good for that odd face or polygon. To use, align the face or polygon to your view, as you'd like it to appear on the image texture)

* Project from View Bounds (same as "Project from View", except the polys selected will unfold onto the image texture fully stretched to the boundaries of that image texture. This is good, too, for seamless/tiled textures. If you use this on a cylinder instead of "Cylinder from View", and if your cylinder is 6 faces around or more, you can easily get a mirrored, yet seamless, texture on either side of the cylinder. Just make sure the cylinder is straight up & down, with three sides facing you as equally as possible <if it is 6 faces around>)

* Unwrap "Smart Projections" (this tries to automatically and neatly, unwrap the mesh according to what it thinks will look or be best. Not always is accurate, but I've found it useful in the past)

Lastly, a good way to get a seamless sphere texture, is to UVmap half of that sphere (delete the other half, first), using "Project from View"/Bound", or "Sphere from View"...then duplicate that half, rotate it 180 degrees so that it becomes the other half of the sphere, then weld the seams together.

Koniption

[jb3]

Originally posted by Koniption
That chessboard's "statue" pieces should not be used in the game, AT ALL!! It's a crash-fest waiting to happen. I need to tell Ibsen this. Thanks for telling me.

Cheers. Glad I could be of help.

Ibsen, your input is needed, man.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Sorry folks. I saw lots of blending and modelling stuff and I figured it would be like asking a house cleaner with Down's Syndrome how to negotiate peace with Afghan warlords...

(apologies for any political incorrectness)

Okay, so was the chessboard the only issue here? I can have it removed...although I would like to have some sort of a replacement, perhaps in the form of a simple board and to maybe then add a couple of small pawn figures as a replacement. Failing that, there is a dice model and cards, I think....which serve the same purpose inside interiors.

[jb3]

KP, are you hot to do that? It would actually be a good warm-up for my rusty and poor modelling skills. You know, I'm kinda fed up with my wheel. No, no, it's a beautiful wheel and all that. :lmao:

So in short, KP, you won't be angry if I sort of "claim" it and correct the chessboard?

[Koniption]

Originally posted by jb3
KP, are you hot to do that? It would actually be a good warm-up for my rusty and poor modelling skills. You know, I'm kinda fed up with my wheel. No, no, it's a beautiful wheel and all that. :lmao:

So in short, KP, you won't be angry if I sort of "claim" it and correct the chessboard?

Hi jb3,

By all means, go ahead and correct the chessboard pieces!!

But don't turn the statue pieces into what chessboard pieces look like in RL...either severely decimate the statues to below 1000 polys each (give or take a few hundred), or turn them into some other appropriate fantasy object.

Koniption

[morcroft]

Of course if you're feeling brave you could have a go at hi-to-lo rez texture baking, as used by Shadowgame for all his excellent work. I've had a go at it in Blender and once you get the hang of it it's quite easy. The idea is to make a low-poly model that fits around the high-poly mesh then "bake" ambient occlusion (self-shadowing), texture and normal maps to make the low-rez model look high rez.