Hello world. It seems unlikely that I would be able to make a game before spring semester begins, so I was considering just experimenting with asset creation. My modelling skills are good, but I need (a lot) of practice texturing and normal mapping. The modeler’s section of the contributor’s handbook gives me a slight impression that a fancy new scene for JME to sashay around in is most desired. I haven’t yet done anything too complex to this effect, but I think I have enough time to dedicate to tackling the job.
Here’s a model I was tinkering with yesterday. It took about 2 hours to model and maybe 30 minutes for a rough coat of paint.
And here’s my first attempt at normal mapping. The asteroid in the front is a cube with 3 subdivision levels and the one in the back has 7 levels.
I don’t know what to make a scene of though… I was just going to make some random thing, but I can’t settle on an idea. Any suggestions?
Also, are only scenes desired? If a character model is wanted, the thing in the first picture is available (I call it the I-4 Model). Any suggestions for touch ups are welcome.
BTW: The modeler’s contributions page says ~5000 polys for characters. Is that referring to tris or quads?
@mifth Thanks, I was 78.52% sure it referred to tris since that is what JME uses. My character is a little high at 10,050 tris I was looking at the meter in Blender that says “polygons,” and afterward I realized it probably didn’t mean tris.
My recommendation would be to create a small asset pack with a consistent theme that you’d enjoy working with, be it for a space game, an urban game, medieval game and so on. Then make that available to the jME community as well as on BlendSwap (and other communities like the one mifth recommended) to ensure that you’ll get constructive feedback from a greater selection of experienced modelers.
And avoid trying to make animated assets if you’re new to that. It takes some time before you can contribute rigged & animated assets that won’t cause people headaches, heh.
Good idea. I suppose that way if I build half a scene and lose focus I can give what I have. I’ve done a little bit of animating, but mostly just path following and camera tracking. What I’m finding right now is that the grand daddy of all 3D modelling headaches comes from putting leaves on trees.
When I’m done, I think I’m going to go burn down some trees :-x
I put 8 leaves (5 original) onto a single texture and curled them a bit using a 4 poly plane to keep them from disappearing when you look at them on edge. I’ve been experimenting with the sapling addon in Blender to try and automate the process (using individual leaves). Here is the result:
It looks pretty good, but it has 17,262 tris. I managed to get the count that low by making the trunk twice. By that I mean the plugin allows you to add a tree curve object, and you add leaves by attaching them to branches and sub-branches. If you don’t add a second level of branches (makes it high poly), the leaves are attached directly to the main branches and it looks like complete crap, and as with any object you can’t mess with its properties after touching it in the 3D window.
Tl;dr - I had to make a complex tree with 2 levels of branches, add the leaves, delete the trunk and branches, and make a new trunk that was the exact same shape with no sub-branches.
Maybe if I make large enough foliage textures I could for-go the sub-branches and still have a nice puffy tree. Too bad jMonkey’s tree gen was never finished :-/ At any rate, it’s too Blender’s Sapling plugin is too convenient to give up on so soon.
I use a small free app that can generate trees. It’s called tree[d], and can make game usable trees with few polygons.
It also have a very convenient “render to image” feature that allow you to make billboards of your tree.
And it’s free http://www.frecle.net/index.php?show=treed.about
Only thing I don’t really like is that the trunks look a bit unnatural.
Also you can export your tree to obj and then further edit it in blender
Bump
Textures are twice as big as they need to be. Need to add chimney, door, windows, etc.
Modular Castle. Textures are not seamless enough. Too much change throughout the texture makes it look too fake.
The walls are normal mapped, which is cool. The Crenels aren’t attached very well and the wood floor just kind of changes into a stone texture without border.
This is a great learning experience for me, but it may take a while for me to contribute a new scene, lol. Little things like stretching the roof in the uv editor to make the roof tiles curve with the crooked eve of the cabin are among the many tricks I’m discovering. Also, it’s kind of funny that you can have a texture that is mapped to something that its material is not applied to. That can lead to a good half hour of troubleshooting.
Very nice artwork! Sorry I was unaware of this thread. I have started a similar thread a few days ago. My idea is that the programmers and asset makers on this forum (and perhaps other communities) share ideas, and that asset makers pick up ideas from the programmers and vice versa. So, good to know you are asset makers
You are doing a really good job here, respect. You’ll become a real craftsman in no time if you continue like this The models look nicely clean and properly done mesh- and texturing-wise.
I only seriously started learning Blender around May 2012. I’ve been on it like crack in my spare time though. Once you learn how to make that first cool thing, it’s hard to stop… or sleep… or eat ಠ/___\ಠ
In reviewing the supported features for the n^th time, I noticed we have steep parallax mapping! If I don’t know what a thing is, I guess I just ignore it, but I do know know! The chimney on this log cabin will definitely have to take advantage of that wrings hands with great relish. It may not be super efficient, but this is a showcase
I was looking at the meter in Blender that says “polygons,” and afterward I realized it probably didn’t mean tris.
