Sword of Moonlight > Projects, demos, and games Information

Map piece tinkering ("AA" worthy)

(1/6) > >>

Verdite:
Welcome to the map piece tinkering thread.

I put this under projects as it's a joint effort between Holy and I.
Holy at the helm with ideas and scrutiny, and myself bearing the monotony of conversions*, modifications, etc. :coffee:

So rather than bounce emails back and forth about tinkering with the map models in order to achieve map pieces that'll work with the new AA system, I've opened this thread to hopefully improve workflow and discussion. I'm expecting him to make edits to this (top) posts when I've missed something, and to the Required modifications section. I don't mind editing in his ideas for convenience.

I'll place a :smug: beside my posts in the ideas section.

EDITED: I guess I am :saint: then. *The "monotony of conversions" should cease to be a thing before the end of 2016, if I meet all of my goals for the year.

Project summary
Verdite says: :smug:
Modification of the original SOM pieces is required in order to achieve an accurate representation of the new AA system (and show it off.)

Required modifications
Holy answers RFC: :saint:
Eliminate all ("AA"-related) cracks for tiles that obviously mate with one another. Details in Replies.

Ideas and brainstorming
 :smug: 12/01/16
Uniform separate step model to apply to models of same height. Same will apply for all map pieces in other sets.

:saint:
I cannot grasp what this image is demonstrating (it's a little small for me to be honest) but I am automatically against tiles that bury themselves into the ground like potatoes or carrots. I am not especially crazy about SOM's original stock artwork, but it is very sacrosanct, if only because it represents From's original product. I honestly do not think we should invest too much into it right now. It will not produce the best showcases for SOM. I want to get defects out, but after that, I'd rather you focus on your own artwork, or help with the project to port KF2 to SOM. It's high time for SOM to make an impression on outsiders, one way or another.

17/1/16 :smug:
The image depicts a 'foot' model to go below map pieces in order to create steps. The extrusion of the roof edges is required, else there will be an unsightly gap.
Absolutely agree, I hope we can get this project done and dusted soon. I'd like to work on finishing up Moratheia after this. Hopefully with a new x2mdl in the pipeline to give me a boost.

17/1/18 :saint:
I'm not good at imagining these things. There won't be a new x2anything, you'll just save/export to DAE and the player/editors will automatically do any necessary conversion/caching, probably even without stop/restarting the running programs. Just remember, if you make new tiles for the original sets, they must have proper icons, that are easy to make sense about.


Public and joint effort files
17/01/16
Set 1 ready for AA testing. Not yet stepped.
Set 1 msm files.

12/01/16
Pristine, converted parts 0-78 are available to review here.
File is saved as an .mqo. This will require Metasequoia, or MetasequoiaLE to view.
Please make sure you place the Texture folder into your Metaseq directory, then merge it with the existing Texture folder.

Holey Moley:
Here is my advice about the "AA" cracks (if you want to do other changes you can pursue that, but this is the most pressing issue as far as I am concerned)

First it's refreshing to have a thread here. I've been feeling very irrelevant lately...

SOM_MAP can show you where cracks will appear. There are NEW buttons that have upright triangles on them, that when pressed show where the vertices are. Of course you can see this in your modeling software, but it's probably easier to compare tiles side-by-side in SOM_MAP.

Usually the cracks appear between two tiles, because their vertices do not match. But in some tiles there are like intra-tile cracks, caused by the tile's own vertices not matching. Without do_aa this doesn't yield cracks because you can think of the edges meeting in a T junction.

You see in this T, if the top crossbar of the T doesn't have a vertex in the middle, where the itersection is, then it will crack.

Two places where cracks are likely to appear:

Consider stoop tiles. I want to call them steps, but they are steps for giants, or terraces if anything. They just form a zigzag each one being placed usually 1/2 meter higher than the previous. These will always crack. I'm not sure what logistics are required to prevent cracking, but it seems like just adding extra cuts to their walls at every 1/2 meter interval would do the trick.

I think we would benefit from developing some standard measurements, but ultimately it depends on the tile sets.


Second place cracks may appear:

What a crack is, is a place in the model where you can see through its veneer. It's okay for this to happen if there is part of the model that lies behind an open section such as this.

Consider for example a teacup. The handle of the cup doesn't have to mate with the cup, in terms of vertices and edges. It can simply disappear into the cup. Or be lined up perfectly with the exterior of the cup. It will not crack because the cup part is behind the handle.

A crack appears when there is nothing visibly backing the parts that do not mate exactly. The reason for the cracks is the vertices are always moving slightly, and so a visible seam will open up, unless every vertex is matched. If the vertex moves, and there is no matching vertex, its only a problem if that opens up a view to "the void"; or the empty space inside of 3D models, or a view into the backdrop, or a compartment that should not be visible.


EDITED: I also want to add. That some tiles may have protrusions, like little windowsills or shelves. I'm not sure what to call them. Fluting. Anyway, I don't know how From's artists modeled these. But I reckon it's more than likely that they don't have anything behind them. In that case, it's probably better to make these parts separate from the wall behind them, because otherwise they introduce complicating vertices along the edge of the wall. So if you have a wall like this:

-------
A
====
B
-------

And A and B are separate in the model. My advice is to break the ==== part out, and make A and B one piece (a single quadrangle) and just have ==== sit over that piece. It's probably not a problem if ==== doesn't run into the outer edges of the tile, but I do not know what is better practice to be honest.

PS: Please do not try to fix the black parts of the textures that manifest as holes. I want to fix those myself so I can ensure that the procedure is mathematically sound, since this is not as simple as it seems, because it isn't merely pure-black parts that form holes, and neither is it any pixel where one of the color components is pure-black (basically it's any one where all components are between 0 and 7, and so care must be taken to select the correct replacement color, with respect to adjacent pixels)

[To be honest I haven't even decided. It's very tempting to say only pure-black is a hole, and repair the fallout from that decision instead. It isn't merely tempting. I realize that this is probably what I will decide to do. The only reason I hesitate at all is it will break all of the non-tile model textures, and will be a breaking change from classic SOM. But the second problem doesn't concern me so much, because that's a dead end regardless.]

Verdite:
Checked over the whole of set 1, and amended 3 major offenders. The worst offender was 0030, which had to be rebuilt from scratch along with pixel perfect UV replication.
Files up for testing in the Public and joint effort files section, to make sure we're 100% on the same page.
I'll step up set 1 after checking over set 2 on my next bout.

Cheers,
:smug:

Holey Moley:
There will definitely be growing pains around the AA technology.

Ultimately it might make sense to automatically insert the extra cuts in the polygons when generating MPX files. Still internally the models must be free of cracks. And I don't want to automate this unlessuntil we get to a point where per-vertex-lighting is never to be used again.

I was thinking about this while waking up today. There are a few different ways to approach the MSM files. I'll leave it up to you to decide what is easiest.

Strikeout: I thought there were more, but I realized one wouldn't work. So there's probably only two approaches.

The trouble is for detached pieces of a model, unless the triangles dig into each other, there is always the theoretical possibility of a a visible crack if you can line the view up so you are looking perfectly along the separation between the parts so that the perspective is cancelled out...

And having the triangles dig into one another is an option, but I worry it will cause Z-buffer artifacts, and will not produce lines that are as clean as they'd otherwise be. That is because the Z-buffer will determine the formation of the line--not Z-fighting, which is a separate kind of artifact. I don't have enough experience with this to say one way or another.



That said, the simplest way I could think of to do the terraces, would be to make the walls separate from the floors, and extend the edges of the walls until they touch the bottom of the steps on one side, and the top of the eave on the other side. This would introduce no new polygons, but might result in UV-mapping issues since the part of the texture below the wall might bleed into it. And since the wall is separate, in theory if you can get the view lined up directly along the wall, there's a small chance of seeing between the wall and the floor.

EDITED: I tried to think of another way, but I couldn't, other than cutting every 1/2 meters along the side as already suggested. That introduces more polygons, but x2msm does the same more or less. It may be more work to balance all of the new UVs unless your modeling software is very good at that, or is able to manage vertices without UVs (which is something I do not know if DAE can natively support or not.)

PS: I will try to setup a test project to try these new tiles out today or tomorrow. I kind of hoped you'd just understand what the problem is and work on it until all the cracks go away in the player. But I'm curious to see, if only because always working alone takes its toll on me. Reviewing others' work makes me feel like I'm in some kind of company.

Holey Moley:
Update

I setup a test project. I can see at least one place where you've altered a tile. What you've done is in accordance with what I described as "the simplest way" in the above post. However you only did the alteration on the top. The bottom half of the wall remains. To do the bottom in the same way part of the wall will be hidden behind the step portion, and the triangles cannot be cut...

I don't like hidden sections of polygons, but if you want to do it this way that is fine in this case, as it is a difficult one. Polygons could be added so the part that would be hidden could be minimized, but I worry how it might affect vertex-based lighting to have skinnier sections like that.

The other approach described is likely to yield more even vertex-based lighting, since it would simply carve the walls up into regular grids. What to do is up to you.


PS: I don't know how x2msm's splitting algorithm works. The only way I know to avoid it for certain is to make the polygons small enough that it will not try to split them further. As it splits it may introduce new vertices. So if the splits are regular, then they should be mirrored in the other tiles, but I won't be surprised if this becomes a complicating factor.

PPS: About half of your tiles I looked at no longer match the rotation of their icons/originals. They will have to be spun around at some point. Please don't lose faith.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page