User talk:Geyser

Clean slate here, marking my change of status. I'm still an admin, and I'll be making a few contributions (mostly Edition brainstorming and todo). But you no longer should feel like you need my permission to carry out more or less radical initiatives. You're all big boys (as in grown-up boys with jobs), so there's no reason why you couldn't weigh the pros and cons of an initiative on your own. You just need to think of it for a while, not as the designer but as an implementer and an end-user; you have to try and take some distance with respect to every kick-ass idea of yours if you want to see what it's "actually" worth (good old cartesian doubt, sorta); experimenting with a bunch of pages in your user space is always a good idea if you're not sure whether your idea is somehow evil (you always have to ask yourself that before you embrace something tempting, right?). And if "it's not EZ being OC", then, heck, try not to be OC for a change, chances are that it will be easier... --geyser 03:19, 24 March 2008 (CET)

As for me, well, I'll try to maintain a minimal presence here, but I have an awful lot to deal with IRL. Truth is, I'll be lucky as hell to make it at all; I hold out hope that my dedication to Oni has not yet brought me to a point of no return, but either way these are going to be a very tough few months. Take care. --geyser 03:19, 24 March 2008 (CET)

Best wishes; I will miss your constant harassment on the wiki! In your absence, I promise I'll try to ask myself, What would geyser bitch about say?, before making an edit. --Iritscen 15:05, 24 March 2008 (CET)

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3D Models

I'm making some progress with Griffin (after him come the other key models like Muro). I've radically increased the detail in his face and made it much more accurate (going by my reference), and there's only 50%-60% more vertices in his face so far (around 700, I think). Would you like to see some pics? I would welcome comments on what you like/don't like.

I have a few concerns, though:

1. I can't test for a performance hit when the model is in-game because I can't import it. How are we progressing on the OBJ/Collada import front? Also, if that's not near to being finished, can I just import the head, since that's all that's different?
2. This new facial structure warrants a new facial TXMP, not just so we can increase the texture resolution, but because the old one simply won't fit anymore. I might be able to provide it myself, but my early attempt was not great. If we had an artist ready to paint onto my finished product, I could focus just on modeling and stop worrying about painting, which is not my specialty.
3. If there is a performance hit, can the high-res model can be an added character, an alternate Griffin for use only in cutscenes? He's not going to be that high-res anyway -- I'm only adding polygons when they're absolutely necessary -- but just in case, I'm wondering.
4. Why does Oni perform so choppily anyway? It doesn't make any sense to me. We're using PCs (Macs are PCs too, in this usage) that are way more advanced than the ones that Oni was developed for, yet scenarios with large numbers of characters still hose the computer. Are faster PCs running Oni more smoothly, or is there no improvement, due to something in the way the game is coded?

Whenever you have the time to respond. Thanks. --Iritscen 16:19, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

Screenshots or OBJ are equally welcome. I'm looking forward to see just what kind of new content we're talking about. As far as painting goes, don't try to secure 2D artists aforehand. Just deliver the model and you'll get that kind of feedback, too.

You can import the head very easily. Just export it on its own and then do as if it was a DeLorean. Note that the mesh won't look all that different in Oni anyway. Plain Gouraud-shaded, pretty much the kind of thing you see in whatever editor you're using.

I expect no performance hit if we're really talking about 50% extra triangles. Of course, if your Mac is already sluggish, there could be performance issues, but those of us with high-end PCs probably won't notice. A cutscene-only char is always an option.

Oni can run smooth as butter with 20 chars on-screen (extreme OTA) or it can lag with original single-player situations. That depends a lot on the hardware and drivers. And Macs have always had rock-bottom GFX hardware and drivers, sorry ^_^

geyser 20:47, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

That's actually not true, Macs often have fine graphics cards (not top-of-the-line, but decent ones). I didn't realize that Windows users weren't having problems, so that makes me think that the real problem for us Mac users is that we're running PPC code on our Intel processors. It's all getting emulated or whatever by Rosetta, so there's some real performance hits there. Durn.

"just what kind of new content we're talking about" -- you'll find out when I post the screenshots... ^_^ I hope you like it, you seemed cool with the small changes I made in the test OBJ I posted to the forum a little while back. Oh well... you can tell me when I post some pics.

P.S.: Re your comment on "50% extra triangles", I was talking about vertices. I am measuring my model in vertices, not triangles, so I can watch that 2048 vertex limit you told me about. That limit *is* just for each body part, right? As long as that's the case, I'm not planning to go anywhere near that limit. But my point here is that the head is around 700 vertices, not triangles. I can post the current stats when I post pics, and you can let me know if there's too many polygons. --Iritscen 21:55, 31 March 2008 (CEST)

Okay, don't hurt me for uploading this to the wiki. Free Photobucket accounts limit pic size to 1024x768 and I had nowhere else to go. Also, this sort of comparison can be done on the final model and replace this in-progress model comparison, and then be used as part of our showcase of what's new in the Edition. Anyway, here. Read the image's Talk page for my comments. --Iritscen 15:37, 1 April 2008 (CEST)

Jumping in... geyser, you mentioned that we can import Griffin's head. I looked at TRBSgriffin_body_high.oni and can see the 19 references to M3GM for the body parts... that's as far as I can get. For the Delorean, it was a simple matter of replacing the original M3GMcar960.oni with the Delorean OBJ. But for the characters, I cannot find the individual body part files.

So... if you have time, can you explain the process of replacing Griffin's head.

Many thanks,

EdT

Yes, inquiring minds want to know. --Iritscen 15:35, 2 April 2008 (CEST)

I sorta expected inquiring minds to "do as if it was a DeLorean". That's just what I said, didn't I?

Just import Griffin's head as M3GMcar960 and then obj_create 960 in Chapter 4. Easy, right?

If you want something more advanced, either wait for OniSplit to import Collada or use OUP.

Ed, there are actually as many sets of 19 links-to-M3GM as there are levels of detail (TRCM).

As you know, the head is the 9th link from the end, and you can link to any local M3GM there.

So what you can do (if you're really desperate to view the new Griffin in-game) is this:

• get Iritscen to release his recent WIP version (he has only shown screenshots here so far)
• isolate Griffin's head and center it around the supposed articulation with the neck (joint)
• import it into level0_Final as M3GMaramaki or something and rebuild level0_Final.dat
• open level0_Final.dat and look up the local ID of M3GMaramaki (that's how you'll link to it)
• find the TRGA of Griffin's extra-high LOD and make it use M3GMaramaki as the head

Keep in mind that the new mesh will look ugly without a new texture or adjusted UVs.

geyser 22:51, 3 April 2008 (CEST)

Thanks for the response (but no response to my actual modeling? I wanted your opinion). I don't think either of us realized how literally you meant "do as if it was a DeLorean", i.e., "use the Car960 object". And you're right that the model will look ugly as-is. The old TXMP wouldn't fit it now, and the UVs and normals are probably completely messed up ATM. I think at this point I'll make a mock-up of a TXMP and try importing it myself as a car960, just to make sure it's coming out all right when rendered in Oni's engine. Then we'll worry about providing a real face TXMP and following the instructions above as to making a new M3GM. Thanks for the info. --Iritscen 16:48, 4 April 2008 (CEST)

Thanks, geyser, I'll give it try.

Iritscen: There is a slight resemblance :-) http://www.projectbag.com/ghost/aramaki.html --EdT

The resemblance is even stronger when you look at the TV series version of Aramaki, specifically his hair. Compare it to Lorraine's art. I do think that Griffin's goatee is a lot cooler, though, and I think he could take Aramaki in a fight any time. :-) --Iritscen 18:31, 4 April 2008 (CEST)