Because Umbra Gaming is just starting out and Fyrestone is our first game, I'm not quite sure on a few of the conventions of the trade.
I have multiple people working on models for our project (they're friends just doing it to help out), but I do intend on running it like it was a business and this is a major project with deadlines, etc.
How do I make sure that our modellers (who are using different programs) model in the same scale? I don't want one person to model a creature and have it's scale as 1.0 in jME be HUGE and another to model something where it's scale in jME is 1.0 and it's really small, so basically I need a standard.
What can I tell my modellers to do to make sure the scale of all creatures stays uniform, so I don't have to code in what looks "normal" for every single model?
Have them be consistent. As long as they are consistent you can go ahead and apply scaling to their entire sets of models. Choose one artist's work to standardize on, and after each artist is finished his portion, he can either load up the standard model (a human-sized model or whatnot - note the same file used by all) or load it up with the rest of the game and adjust his own model from there.
I'd suggest this because I'm not familiar with the units each modeling program (I usually use Blender). In addition, you shouldn't have to do any adjustment in the code - simply adjust the models. So, all of your models should be proper size when you import them. The only time I plan on doing any scaling (past global stuff applied to all) is if I want creatures/environment to grow/shrink.
Pyrrhus said:
Have them be consistent. As long as they are consistent you can go ahead and apply scaling to their entire sets of models. Choose one artist's work to standardize on, and after each artist is finished his portion, he can either load up the standard model (a human-sized model or whatnot - note the same file used by all) or load it up with the rest of the game and adjust his own model from there.
I'd suggest this because I'm not familiar with the units each modeling program (I usually use Blender). In addition, you shouldn't have to do any adjustment in the code - simply adjust the models. So, all of your models should be proper size when you import them. The only time I plan on doing any scaling (past global stuff applied to all) is if I want creatures/environment to grow/shrink.
That's exactly my point--I want it all to look the same when it's imported. I have one person using 3DS Max and another using Blender, so I don't know how to tell them what is what...
Why not just ask them to model in a standard unit like meter. Maybe provide a model with correct scale as reference. Also make sure that the unit scale don't change on export.
why not normalize the model after loading it? i'm doing it in hhexen, and imho it's the easiest way to solve the problem.
tom said:
Why not just ask them to model in a standard unit like meter. Maybe provide a model with correct scale as reference. Also make sure that the unit scale don't change on export.
Because I didn't know they could do that, that's why I'm asking :) So is there a grid or something that shows meters? Can they just create a block that's a meter tall to work with, or something?
HamsterofDeath said:
why not normalize the model after loading it? i'm doing it in hhexen, and imho it's the easiest way to solve the problem.
Not quite sure what you mean by 'normalize' the model. Remember, I'm a programmer (and a newbie to 3D programming) so I know very few tricks of the trade and absolutely nothing about modelling.
I would also love to know the answer to this as I started hitting this issue as I started doing my models in Blender (…I'm both the programmer and modeller…heh…). It would be preferable to have one scale setting in the code that applies to all models.
Trussel. One thing I would definitely do is get both your modelers to standardize on one tool, i.e. Blender or 3DS…but not both. This would make any standardization you do a bit easier. Usually, these modeling tools do have grids that you use as a reference for scale…so you could tell them that every grid tick is 1 meter (…or whatever…). Once that scale to grid is established, you should be able to apply a scale in the code that will work.
…my two coppers 
I often use a little human model I made ( with the size of an average man in the game world) which I import when I'm gonna model something. So that I can get the impression of scale and such.
It's not always that easy to know how big for example a barrel should be in meters or any other units, instead I find it better to compare with a human model.
I want them to use whatever tool they feel most comfortable with. Is there a "scale" function which will scale their model to be bigger or smaller in the program, that way I don't have to scale it in the game?
Then I could just send the models all to one person who can compare it to a good model and then they can just scale it so everything is normal.
All modelers should be able to scale the models. In Blender, it's the "s" key.
Okay, then. It shouldn't be a problem if my modellers are able to scale stuff. Then I can just get a model that's too big or to small to be adjusted so it's normal.