KhorneWorldEaters; vocal ideas

[Chaplain261]

Yeah catwell the mod looks even more amazing day by day, can't wait to get my hands on the true World Eaters.

[Catwell]

update; ok i tried tessellation, but that looks even worse than without tessellation, so im stumped. some ones gotta know where the controls for model quality are. i tried the lod tools but the quality radius's are still the same if lod is set to high or low. eg it ill still simplify at the same distances from the camera...the hierophant also suffers from this so its a big issue.
ag here comes a thunder storm, better turn off the pc

[Falk]

Sorry if my answer is totally off as I'm just lurking around from time to time, but are you talking about the optimized versions of the models ? I mean the "low" and "mid" as in low, mid and high ?

Cuz' if my memory's right, for the Witchhunter mod we ditched the low and mid models.
And if my memory's still right, Relic did the same for DC, cuz' some models were really ugly as low rez models (like the Land Raider, hooray for triangular tracks ), and anyway when DC came out the original game was already 2 y.o. and the average computer could handle the high models (I can't remember if you have to copy/past the high version in the low and mid folder, or just leave those 2 empty).

If you mean that even the "high" version of your models are being "optimized" (more like, "worsimized" ), I have no idea , cuz' everything I've seen in this thread so far is pretty good .

[thudmeizer]

Holy Great Maker FALK HAS RETURNED!

[Catwell]

hi falk
ok heres the issue a little more defined. when you zoom in or out of a model, the detail on that model switches so if your zoomed out all the way the model is far simpler. and if you zoom in the model gets progressively more detailed. this works fine on small scale creatures. but on large scale creatures it becomes an issue, as when your zoomed all the way out you can still see a large creature as if you were close up to it. and in order to see the model correctly you have to zoom in so close your almost inside the models mesh.
there must be a setting that defines at what distances the engine does this optimization to a model somewhere

its affecting the bt's wings really badly there really angular in game. however in the oe there fine as the oe doesn't use the optimization.

[Jaguar-Lord]

in the camera_high.lua maybe ?

[Catwell]

hmm i had a look but i couldn't find anything in there that relates to this issue. theres a lot of stuff in there however so it could be named something cryptic, but going by the names im thinking it isn't. thanks anyway though, its somewhere i hadn't checked before

[Chaplain Crovus]

Best of luck boss! Id help if i knew anything hahaha, but you have my faith in you sir!

[Chaplain261]

Good luck man, I wish I knew more but I don't. I'm sure you'll figure it out though.

[Catwell]

hmm well im out of options atm, but the bt is in game, and really does alot of damage. it can eat through infantry units in seconds.

[AshaD]

Can you explain again what the problem is. I'm having a hard time realising what your saying.

[Sentinel]

From what I've gathered, the problem is that the Bloodthirster is losing detail because of it's size.
When zoomed out fully in DoW, your units lose detail, but you don't notice because they're far away, when you get closer, the details come back.
The problem with the Bloodthirster is that it's so big, that when the camera is zoomed out fully, you can still see the BT perfectly, but the detail is still being reduced.
To get it back, you literally have to zoom so close to him, that you go inside the model.

At least that's what I understand the problem to be anyway. I apologise if I'm way off.

[Catwell]

well ok, the dow engine simplifies the mesh of a model when its far away, as theres no need for it to be at full detail , as its far away and looks like a blurry silhouette. most games do this. the prob arises with big things, as when your fully zoomed out a guardsman is a blurry speck but a bt/hierophant/guo isnt a blurry speck in fact its probably taking up a large percentage of the screen. so when the dow engine simplify s the mesh ,ala uses less polygons to make the general shape, the model becomes jagged and distorted and overall less quality. with the guardsman you don't see this as its a bluury speck, with anything big you do see it and it affects the way it looks and its anims/weighting. so we need a way of switching off this optimization for these models in particular. or a way of controlling the radius distances from this model that control this optimization(and make it happen a lot further away)

edit, or what sentinal00 said above^^

and on a completly different topic, anyone know about fx camera shaking?

[Sentinel]

Have you talked to Winterdyne about the problem with the Bloodthirster? Having large titans I'm sure that he's come across the same problem. Maybe he found a way around it?

As for camera shaking, from what I've picked up around the place, this can be done through SCAR, without the need of an fx, but my understanding of this is.. eh.. limited..

[AshaD]

Speak to winterdyne his titans are huge and I think there in game already.

Edit: Ninja'd by Sent.

[Catwell]

hmm well ive looked at the titans in game , but they don't seem to suffer from it, and i think i know why. titans are blocky in design and quite solid, so i don't think a simplified mesh would even be noticeable on something thats angular. as a simplified cube is still a cube... i think this issue only affects heavily weighted organic structures, the areas that the bt suffers with it is the flesh/webbing between the wing fingers, and a bit on the spine. both of which are heavily weighted and are flexing all over the place. theres nothing like that on a titan so its prob why we haven't seen the issue. im thinking that its un fixable, so ill have to live with it...

[Winterdyne]

Catwell's right - organic models suffer worse, as hard edges generally are made with duplicate vertices and so don't get LOD'ed out (edge verts won't go). What he actually needs to find is a means of telling the LOD mechanism to NOT optimise his mesh - ie ensure that the high definition model is used in both medium and low-LOD cases too. My first port of call would be ensuring that the same model file is specified in all cases, and checking exporter settings in the DOW-Proprerties pane in max.

A second trick that *may* work is to cut and repaste the polys between the fingers on the wing to make a number of smaller surfaces (rather than the one large curved one). It'll be a bit less efficient in terms of face/vertex ratio, but it might be enough to throw the LODder off the scent. Obviously you'll also get a smoothing group issue along the fingers, but that shouldn't be that noticeable.

[Catwell]

hmm the strangest thing of all is that the lod tool isnt working, ive tried it 100 different ways. ive tried just lod-ing the ref file, to creating a vis file and hiding all meshes and lod-ing that, to lod-ing every single animation, and trying it with the tools set to high, medium and low in all these. the weirdest thing is when the bt is flying(it has no anims for this atm so it goes to the ref pose) the model displays correctly from any distance....
*scratches beard*

[Winterdyne]

So it's only degenerating when animated? Sounds like the engine is trying to LOD a skinned mesh (because it's skinned, not because it's complex). If it's not degenerating when still, sounds like you've actually got the LOD settings correct.

Try messing around with the force_skinned parameter on the ref. My warhound carries around 7.5k tris and didn't complain (when I imported it, Zany Reaper did report issues).

In your animation files, does the model (mesh data) exist? If so, try removing it entirely and just leave the bones / markers / helpers that you need. Basically weed out anything that might override settings in the ref.

[horusheretic]

not sure, but have you got force skinning set up correctly on your models? just a hunch but worth a try. im not quite sure what it properly does but the mention of skinning brings it to mind.

[Winterdyne]

Force skinning tells the engine to treat each vertex in a mesh as if it is weighted to the base transform for the mesh if it isn't weighted. Vertices that are already weighted are unaffected. As the engine treats skinned and unskinned meshes differently, you really shouldn't mix them within an entity, which is the reason for force_skinning to exist.

[Catwell]

ok, ive tried force skinning on everything, and ive tried removing the mesh from the animation files, but alas no change .dow is being stubborn, thanks for your help everyone who's posted on the subject, but im well and truly stumped. and its starting to become frustrating, so im going to switch to doing something else instead before i lose any more of my mind...
im thinking beastmen

[horusheretic]

could it be down to how graphic cards render the models? i know each type can work differently and has settings that can overide the settings dow has.

because i have an older pc and nvidia graphs card, i use the control panel it has to lower the quality of the models and such to play decent online games everyonce in a while.

[Catwell]

quick screeny

[Croaxleigh]

Looking great... glad to see the Keeper of Secrets and Great Unclean One in-game somewhere, since the 3-4 times that DoH has had someone working on Greater Daemons the modeller always disappears halfway through working on 'em. *laughs*

[fuggles]

eep! Don't say that Croaxleigh...

rofl, that's your BT axe again isn't it Catwell? Looking great as ever!

[Tankkiller99]

Awesome as always Catwell !!!!!!!!

One question though does the Great Unclean One and the Keeper of Secrets have any sync kills and any special sync kills?

(Can just imagine the Keeper picking an infantry unit up with its crab claw and then impaling it with either its sword or its other hand that also seems to be sharp like a blade and then tossing it aside)

[Khorney]

awesome stuff catwell!

is that great unclean one going to be up for grabs at some point? we're in dire need of daemons over here

[Catwell]

the keeper of secrets was my first ever attempt at animating for dow, she probably needs a new set of anims.

[Jaguar-Lord]

"we want BT, vote BT today !!"
just a glimpse of the BT axe on the screenshot id torture

[horusheretic]

we're in dire need of daemons over here

a lot of people are.

[Chaplain Crovus]

Daemons are always gonna be essential so long as there is a chaos army, which is why i especially love these Daemons! I love the forgeworld versions of each of the greater daemons!

[Ark]

Damn! My mind is full of possibilities for the bloodthirster!!

[Catwell]

oki id better update as i havent done so in a while;
atm im working on dread weaponry, as the dread needs some extra punch. atm it loses out to a defiler most of the time(ordepending on hit ratios etc). im also thinking about giving it a fast charge so it can rush into combat and catch up to fleeing tanks.
plus kwe needs ranged stuff, its a massive traffic jam of things trying to engage the enemy in melee some times. so 1 fix for this is troop placement and movement options( like teleportation, rhinos, jump troops,summoning etc),though only so many troops can fit around an enemy so thats only a partial fix(atm for example, you could have bloodletters in your army but they cant get into combat as a regular kwe csm group has engaged the enemy first, and the bls cant get through. but the bls are what you want to be engaging the enemy with as there nasty in melee, far nasty-er than reg kwecsm). the other is to make lower tier units more range worthy later on in game.
im going to give the dread a chainfist upgrade option, with a multimelta option also.

[thudmeizer]

Slap me with that blunt axe, big boy! Khorn-tastic news!

[the-tempest]

plus kwe needs ranged stuff

I assumed that the beastmen were just traitor guardsmen. Could they be the ranged troops you need? Maybe if they had heavy stubbers and tough stuff like that?

[Catwell]

well beastmen are beastmen, as in goat head-ed things.(there was even a space minotaur model released back in the first days of 40k) ironically i am giving them stubbers and heavy stubbers, well guessed im also thinking of doing some leaderlike things for em too, such as beastmen leaders and techmarines(in roc beastmen slaves are controlled by techmarines who can detonate the explosive collars around the slaves necks) however im not using bmslaves, im just using reg bm but id imagine that they still have techmarines as leaders.
im also tempted by bikes with heavy weapons

[XIXTheReaperXIX]

Bikes never seem to work well on DOW then just get there quick and die unless you did somthing with 100% accuracy on the move then they could be usable.


or maybe a titan sized bike? < ignore that

[fadeout]

Catwell.... Last I saw you were working on Noise Marines in the Harlequin mod.. TRAITOR!!!!!!

But what you have here looks absolutely fantastic, I'd get it even though I don't really like WE. And speaking of which, what's that KoS doing there?

[thudmeizer]

on Noise Marines in the Harlequin mod

ok.. anyone else see the contradiction here? Like Harlies would not eat them "noisies" sticking their trumpets up their arses. As for his Noise Marines -- gawd thats soo mid last year, bro.

[Lleman]

Sorry but after this and the burst of mad laughter i've had, i have to sidetrack this thread if only for a sec:

Like Harlies would not eat them "noisies" sticking their trumpets up their arses.

This would only please them immensely, my friend...

/me waves hand jedi-like
"Nothing has happened here."

[thudmeizer]

The reason the KoS was in the screenshot I guess then. Slaanesh always wants to get his/her/its/gender-non-specific-whatever's jollies.

[fadeout]

But it's going to be in the WE mod?

And yes, it's been a good long time. My old account even got pruned. Speaking of which, please don't let this mod die like the dozens of other chaos mods.

[Catwell]

hi everyone
news
the dread now has an upgrade to a chain fist in game, it still needs anims for this new weapon though. ive coloured the bt a bit so its not in grey scale and ive fx-ed alot of things.
the business has just fired up big time so it demands my attention plus all my creative energys, so im gonna have to put the kwe mod on hold for a few weeks whilst i focus on the business.

[IronWarrior42]

have new build for the internal but its still embedded as ive been sick the last couple weeks and i need to reorganize my hard drives again, do you want me to go ahead with extracting a standalone build based on what you gave me last (take probably a week, maybe less) or do you want me to update 3d stuffs again (which will add 2-5 days to however long it takes to "UN-embed" the current version)? sorry msn=no atm

@fadeout, not a chance in any of the nine hells

[thudmeizer]

@Catwell... IronWarrior.. Awesome news regardless.. soo utterly critical to get that logical AE build sorted with a decent guide of how the Khorne faction will focus its gameplay uniqueness. And I look so VERY much forward to adding Advanced AI to it to bring that much closer to completion.

[IronWarrior42]

@meizer-of-thud, need a reply to my pm when/if you get the chance hoss

[Catwell]

embedded? i dont know what you mean by that.
and yup both the 3d fx oe and ae assets need to be added to the build i sent you, to the extent i may have to just send you the entire mod again

[spartan_x]

awsome models

you are truly an artist catwell

I have a question: what will you do with the non KWE models?

(decimator + greater daemons)

since from what we see the mods for their factions seem to be dead

wouldn't it be a good idea to uppload them on the C2C thread
sometimes along the line??

[Perturabo]

Earlier in the project, there was a discussion about this..and it ended up that he may (probaby not since that is a incredible amount of work) do the 4 legions. or atleast include the GD's Somehow.