BallisticNG - Screenshots (large images)

[Xpand]

I don't understand the question.
That image was taken in game. I hope that answers your question.

[aybe]

Yes, that answers the question ! (I was asking if you made those lights by programming or by using a 3D software)

[Xpand]

The lighting was made by BnG's lightmapper. A gorgeous piece of work by bigsnake considering how it works.

[bigsnake]

(I was asking if you made those lights by programming or by using a 3D software)

The lights are done programmatically, I have a tool that calculates and bakes light into the vertex colors on the meshes

[aybe]

Oh okay, nice !

I've just posted the last thing I wanted to do : getting everything to load, so now I'm going to look at getting the repository up for you guys !

By the way, if there's something I can help for in your projects, let me know

[bigsnake]

Going to be working on the remainder of the main 8 tracks for the game over the next few days. Here's Harpstone at what I'd say is about 75% completion.

[Hybrid Divide]

Very very cool!

[aybe]

We feel like at home with these screenshots

[bigsnake]

Started working on Omega Harbour, most of it is still pretty basic at the moment but the general feel is there:

[Fredbob396]

I dig the aesthetic you've got going there. Also that skybox looks kind of familiar. I swear I've seen it in a Counter Strike map or something.

[Sausehuhn]

I agree, the aesthetics really bring back memories. It’s funny how popping polygons and pixelated textures make the game feel very close to the PS1 titles already. The PS1 also always rendered gradients with transparency uncommonly. Kind of noisy. Could fit well here as well. Then all what’s left to do is is bring back the jittering polygons

I could imagine some more geometry (ventilation, stairways, bridges, antennas, smaller buildings etc) and texture variety on some parts. Some more complexity should not get in the way of PS1-aesthetics, I image. As long as there’s enough room for imagination (which is given by the low-res textures anyway). But hey, that’s just personal preference. The whole thing already feels like what Wip4out may have become if the PS1 was still around. So I don’t want to sound nit-picky. Keep up the good work, seriously

[Xpand]

New remade track:


Some of you will remember this track as the one shown in SSGX's first post!
Unfortunately imageshack deleted everything so here's the original layout I still had in my hard drive and some pics of its gmax model:
Attachment 10203
Attachment 10204
http://i.imgur.com/ashAjJB.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vYM03hD.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/7xLSbYq.jpg
https://embed.gyazo.com/5fc946dfa75a...dd3a278382.png

[Wanzer]

Decided to try my hand at Blender and make a ship for BNG.
With no prior experience it was going even ok until I realised the model has 13k tris.
Technically, I think I could go down to 5k with no big loss in quality but it would require some singing and dancing around topology.

Those colors are not texture but materials, at this point I am not sure, should I read texturing tutorials and finish it or just scrap it and do again in lowpoly.

[Xpand]

Btw just as a reference, all BallisticNG ship are under 300 triangles.

[Wanzer]

I have to say, lowpoly is an art, nothing but big respect to anyone who can master it.
Not sure what I'll make with this model but I'd like to try and make a new one, somewhere closer to those specs you gave me.

@Xpand
Are there limits on models for BNG apart from it must be 1 mesh, 1 material, one texture?
I know that model must be exported as triangles but not sure I noticed a specific option in Blender.
What would happen if model wasnt exported as triangles or had more materials on it?

[Xpand]

It has to be exported as triangles, one mesh, one material, one texture.
If not BallisticNG either returns an exception error and imports nothing, or just crashes, I can't remember. But in any case the code for importing .obj files only works with triangles because there's no ngon-to-triangle conversion algorithm in it.
Since .obj files group polygons like this:

vi,vti,vni - vertex index, vertex UV index and vertex normal index respectively, i=1....n

f v1/vt1/vn1 v2/vt2/vn2 v3/vt3/vn3 etc...

a Triangle looks like this:
f v1/vt1/vn1 v2/vt2/vn2 v3/vt3/vn3

a Quad looks like
f v1/vt1/vn1 v2/vt2/vn2 v3/vt3/vn3 v4/vt4/vn4

So since the importer only looks for triangles, it only looks for the string formatted like this:
f v1/vt1/vn1 v2/vt2/vn2 v3/vt3/vn3

Which depending on the way the program looks for strings may lead to the last vertex of the quad being ignored, or the program crashing from memory overflow since it gets one more vertex than it allocates memory for (4 instead of 3)

I'm not sure what blender options you have, but vertex normals and vertex texture coordinates need to be exported as well.

[Wanzer]

So, previously when I tried to import this ship, it would never appear, now I removed all the materials, found modifier "triangulate" and mapped some quick texture on it.
And this time it actually appeared.
I took it for a spin and I am absolutely sure I need to finish it, even if for BNG specs lowpoly would be better, this thing needs to be finished.
It looks like a murder machine on track and I even come up with unique gimmick so it will require special approach to handle.
Your post been a great help thanks Xpand, I am off to learning how to map a good texture.

One thing, I just started with Blender and 3D in general, "vertex normals" are like direction which shows which way mesh facing, right?
Shouldnt they be exported automatically like inherited quality of a mesh or I do need to do something to export them specifically?
Another thing, "vertex texture coordinates" are created when I unwrap UV map and place polygons on it, did I understood that right?

[Xpand]

Yes. And Vertex normals and Vertex UVs should be exported by default BUT there is an option to disable them, when the game doesn't use that data, which cuts down the .obj file size quite a bit, which was important back in the day when that file format was invented in the 1990's.
Also I think there's an option to export triangulated obj files without having to do anything to the mesh in blender.


Vertex normals are an extension to polygon normals. Mathematically you only need one normal per polygon to define the direction of that polygon, but with the advent of gouraud shading you started needing one normal per vertex in each polygon, which enables smooth light shading since each vertex normal is sort of an average of the polygon normals that surround that vertex, as opposite to one normal per polygon used in flat shading. Normals are important to lighting calculations so that you know the intensity of the light being reflected by that surface. It's calculated through the dot product between the surface (polygon or vertex) normal and the light's direction.

In this image the light is coming from the right. If you draw the normals for the flat shaded cylinder you'll get single vectors coming from the middle of the quads (or anywhere on the quads for that matter), perpendicular to the quad. And you see, as you move to the left the dot product between the light's direction and the quad normals goes closer and closer to 0, lowering the intensity of the light reflected to the camera.
In the Gouraud shading's case you'd draw vectors coming from each vertex in a direction which is the average of the two normals of each quad at the side of the vertex, and the amount of light reflected is interpolated from one vertex to the next, pixel by pixel. For example if one vertex reflected 50% of the light and the vertex to the left reflected 30%, at the middle of the quad that separates the two the light intensity would be 40%.

[Wanzer]

Thanks for explanation and you are also correct, there is an option to export as obj and triangulate faces.
Well, I am off to learn how to make proper UV map.