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[Rat_Herder]

Please feel free to be creative with any of the props. We are no way trying to constrict you to a specific design. The thumbnails are mostly just to give a starting point, or a basic idea of the prop we are looking for.

Maybe you should emphasize on this here: http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/unity

Not all, but most creations look very much like the sketch(most turrets for example).

You are completely right. It was originally in the style guide text, but must have been lost in the several revisions. Thanks for the heads up.

[Da_BoS]

No worries, really, if we feel like it needs one, we have some procedural options. Honestly, sometimes no normal map is perfectly fine, if not preferable depending on the context.

Really cause I haven't mastered Normal mapping just yet and my rocks look better without them at the moment, just getting the hang of it. Would it be OK to upload my rocks with just the image textures I use without a Normal Map, they could be up a lot quicker (if u like the look of them of course) than next weekend cud get them up by Wednesday then. I use a bit of normal on the texture as well as colour to create the desired effect. Check out for last pic upload (sum rocks are in Unity) in Rock WIP

Go for it or wait for the Normal mapping?

I've about 40-50 sculpted with the rock texture images I've photographed ready to be applied only take a few days maybe before Wednesday. My problem with Blender is the subdivide for the Tri-count is approx 300 and then with the next subdivide jumps to 700 tris approx and I'm not sure how to set the tris unfortunately to approx 500 so my rocks range from 300 or 700 and some of the larger boulders are 3K lol (I know to much but I was experimenting and learning Blender)

[BrentOGara]

I've about 40-50 sculpted with the rock texture images I've photographed ready to be applied only take a few days maybe before Wednesday. My problem with Blender is the subdivide for the Tri-count is approx 300 and then with the next subdivide jumps to 700 tris approx and I'm not sure how to set the tris unfortunately to approx 500 so my rocks range from 300 or 700 and some of the larger boulders are 3K lol (I know to much but I was experimenting and learning Blender)

In Blender subdivide at least doubles your tri count... or more than double, depending on the options.

Once you get the shape of the rock where you want it, and if your high poly mesh is manifold (all edges connect to exactly two polygons, and possibly some other requirements I'm not clear on) you can use "Decimate" to reduce the polycount quite quickly. Simply add the Decimate modifier and choose a ratio that is the percentage of polygons you want to keep (ie: ratio .1 is 10% of polygons kept, which is a 90% reduction from the original). This (usually) makes a very good looking mesh with most of the original shapes from the high poly mesh.

If your mesh is not manifold Decimate will say so, and will not work. You can use "Select>Non Manifold" (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M) in edit mode and Blender will show you which edges are causing the trouble, usually they are connected to 0 faces (delete them!), 1 face (connect them to something!), or 3+ faces (delete the faces you don't need... an edge with more than 2 faces is usually an ERROR).

If you can't make the mesh manifold, you can always use the Remesh modifier to reduce the polycount. Remesh basically tries to build a 3D shell of quads that matches the shape of your mesh, but (usually) using fewer polygons... it's not pretty, but for organic lumpy shapes it works really well. An "octree" of 6 and a "scale" of .2 (try both 'sharp' and 'smooth' settings) is a good place to start to get a mesh with far fewer faces and a very similar shape.

Any way you reduce the polycount, you can use a copy of the original high poly mesh to bake the normal maps from, thereby preserving much of the original detail even on the lower polycount mesh.

The third way of reducing polycount in Blender is to use "Snap During Transform" and "Shrinkwrap" to hand build a new, low-poly mesh that follows the shape of your high poly version... do not waste your time doing this ...unless you life/job/relationship depends on it! There are a few Addons like BSurfaces that can make retopologizing (the fancy word for "same shape different polygons) by hand a bit easier, but none of them are fast

[Da_BoS]

Thanks for that appreciate it, it'll definitely help.

[Boredom]

Hi,

I've got a few questions, if you don't mind my asking:


1. What the best way to submit my Lab Equipment asset (as shown here and here). Altogether as one asset, or should I separate them in any particular way?

2. Is .obj fine? The folder is called FBX and I'm a little OCD about putting an .obj in there, although it's my personal format of choice.

[Prime8brain]

I have a question about the texturing of the blast doors.
Should they look very worn, decayed with lots of rust or more the new type?
The doors on the sketch look pretty fresh.

Cheers

[invaderZim]

Just a quick one, will you guys be supporting poly shading? I cant really find much about it on Unity so I assummmme its a no, but no harm in asking.

We use this technique at work to drastically cut down on the amount of textures we use. For instance, we have a wood texture, its on the model in a few different places, but its getting a tad repetitive with it all being one colour. We can adjust the colour to the polygon behind it which the texture then takes the value. As a result, we can jitter up the colours however we like and have lots of variations from 1 texture.

Another example would be, if we cut in a load of detail to a rock, and we want to darken the texture to give it a gloomier feel in the crevice, rather than having to paint a unique texture for it, we can simply add a darker colour to the polygons and done!

Of course there are downsides to it, to get the texture to best use the poly variation would require it to be in greyscale, but that then kinda desaturates the game. Which is annoying, however when we still have textures with their own colour values, its great to be able to darken and lighten parts of the textures to give emphasis or variation, and if we're careful by only adjusting the colour values by a few clicks, it doesn't ruin the textures!

Gone on a bit of a waffle there but what do you guys think?

[Gizmo]

...

Does this require semi-transparent textures (to allow bleed through), or are you describing vertex shading?

[invaderZim]

It seems i'm describing vertex shading after a quick google bash! Hah, picked up bad habits from work calling it something else for no reason. And no, the textures do not need to be transparent, it manipulates the colour of the texture from the vextex colouring.

[skywalger]

I wanted to ask one more thing...I used 2 materials for my door (http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.c ... =29&t=3122). One for windows (transparent glass) and one for metal. Is it ok or should I assign everything to single material? I am asking because of your words in ReadMe

Unless otherwise noted, please limit material assignment to (1) per asset.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to you all

[cw8]

About materials, do we submit them with layers or the entire thing merged into a single layer?

[Da_BoS]

OK the normals have been done and the subdivide goes well also and was having a bit of an armature deformation problem which BrentOGara has just helped with (thankyou), sorry for the delay just about got the hang of Blender now so I'll have them finished for the end of the week.

I was watching the upload to Unity video and my question was this; is it necessary to have or create a website, is it essential criteria for uploading my rock pack?

[d-Koy]

No worries, really, if we feel like it needs one, we have some procedural options. Honestly, sometimes no normal map is perfectly fine, if not preferable depending on the context.

Really cause I haven't mastered Normal mapping just yet and my rocks look better without them at the moment, just getting the hang of it. Would it be OK to upload my rocks with just the image textures I use without a Normal Map, they could be up a lot quicker (if u like the look of them of course) than next weekend cud get them up by Wednesday then. I use a bit of normal on the texture as well as colour to create the desired effect. Check out for last pic upload (sum rocks are in Unity) in Rock WIP

Go for it or wait for the Normal mapping?

I've about 40-50 sculpted with the rock texture images I've photographed ready to be applied only take a few days maybe before Wednesday. My problem with Blender is the subdivide for the Tri-count is approx 300 and then with the next subdivide jumps to 700 tris approx and I'm not sure how to set the tris unfortunately to approx 500 so my rocks range from 300 or 700 and some of the larger boulders are 3K lol (I know to much but I was experimenting and learning Blender)

Wow, that's a lot of rocks!
Feel free to wait to upload if you prefer. The procedural normal mapping is done based on the diffuse, it's not beautiful or without flaws, but it passes as acceptable. But if you prefer to do yourself and want to wait, then I say go for it. As far as the tris go, lower is better without question, but shouldn't be sought after to the extent that the quality is degraded. Find the sweet spot where a balance is struck.

[d-Koy]

Hi,

I've got a few questions, if you don't mind my asking:


1. What the best way to submit my Lab Equipment asset (as shown here and here). Altogether as one asset, or should I separate them in any particular way?

2. Is .obj fine? The folder is called FBX and I'm a little OCD about putting an .obj in there, although it's my personal format of choice.

Typically, I would keep the desk as one mesh and the accessories as another. if the accessories are very low poly and using the same textures, they can and should be a single mesh for performance reasons. This allows us to use the desk a few times in any given scene without the same accessories arranged the same way showing up on every one. They can be joined together in Unity as a Prefab (and this way other Prefabs can be made using a different arrangement with the same desk).

fbx is typical it seems for unity, though i believe obj is also supported.
fbx is nice in that it can maintain additional info like sub-object naming, material and texture assignments, etc. but that doesn't really need to be embedded for this particular application.

[d-Koy]

In Blender subdivide at least doubles your tri count... or more than double, depending on the options...

... a bit easier, but none of them are fast

Way to step in there BrentOGara, thanks for the hand! I am no Blender pro so I shall bask in your knowledge and assume you are true and correct in everything that you say It sounds sound to me. Similar approaches I would make in 3DSM

Thanks!

[d-Koy]

I have a question about the texturing of the blast doors.
Should they look very worn, decayed with lots of rust or more the new type?
The doors on the sketch look pretty fresh.

Cheers

Short answer... Not new, for sure.

Long answer... we will need doors to have a variety of states of decay actually. These doors will be used in several facilities; some of which have long been abandoned and fallen victim to nature's reclamation while others have been modestly maintained by devoted patrons or inhabitants. So in the least they should be dirty, at most rusted through or busted open by invasive plant life or animals. Use you best judgement and imagination and surprise us.

[d-Koy]

Just a quick one, will you guys be supporting poly shading? I cant really find much about it on Unity so I assummmme its a no, but no harm in asking.

We use this technique at work to drastically cut down on the amount of textures we use. For instance, we have a wood texture, its on the model in a few different places, but its getting a tad repetitive with it all being one colour. We can adjust the colour to the polygon behind it which the texture then takes the value. As a result, we can jitter up the colours however we like and have lots of variations from 1 texture.

Another example would be, if we cut in a load of detail to a rock, and we want to darken the texture to give it a gloomier feel in the crevice, rather than having to paint a unique texture for it, we can simply add a darker colour to the polygons and done!

Of course there are downsides to it, to get the texture to best use the poly variation would require it to be in greyscale, but that then kinda desaturates the game. Which is annoying, however when we still have textures with their own colour values, its great to be able to darken and lighten parts of the textures to give emphasis or variation, and if we're careful by only adjusting the colour values by a few clicks, it doesn't ruin the textures!

Gone on a bit of a waffle there but what do you guys think?

Interesting question, but no, we are not currently using this sort of technique as the nature of this title has not yet demanded that level of variety thus far. We have used various techniques to achieve similar results to what you describe, but even those have not yet been full utilized at this point in our production cycle.

So, while I am intrigued with your proposal and always open to new ways of doing something, I am not familiar with how Unity might handle such a strategy. Let's keep it simple for now, and when the need arises, I will pluck this from my (often faulty) memory and do a little research.

Thanks for asking.

[d-Koy]

It seems i'm describing vertex shading after a quick google bash! Hah, picked up bad habits from work calling it something else for no reason. And no, the textures do not need to be transparent, it manipulates the colour of the texture from the vextex colouring.

Ah, yes, I see now. We have used the same technique for lerping multiple materials on meshes in engine via vertex painting (though mobile platforms seem to hate hate hate it!) We haven't explored this yet with Unity and are not yet familiar with the costs associated with it.

But thanks again.

[d-Koy]

I wanted to ask one more thing...I used 2 materials for my door (http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.c ... =29&t=3122). One for windows (transparent glass) and one for metal. Is it ok or should I assign everything to single material? I am asking because of your words in ReadMe

Unless otherwise noted, please limit material assignment to (1) per asset.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to you all

I am in the New Year spirit and I say go for it!

For things like doors, which are often dynamic anyway, I am less concerned with material assignments, so 2 materials is fine here. What I really want to avoid is, for an example, a desk set with 9 materials on it. If I were to use it several times in a scene, those nine materials add up very quickly as separate draw calls for each and every instance and they cant be batched. Then my engineers ask me what the five fingers said to the face...

But thanks for asking, it's fine.

[d-Koy]

About materials, do we submit them with layers or the entire thing merged into a single layer?

Please submit with the texture flattened into a lossless format... we like .tga

If your texture has some opportunities to make good variations and the layered file would be helpful in that effort, feel free to include a "Source" folder in your package with the zipped up .psd.

Thanks for asking.