Nifs for Lights from Lights, candles, etc. List

[nick_op]

I agree with Razorwing. Lofting is incredibly powerful.

[ShadowDancer]

Originally posted by Razorwing

Originally posted by ShadowDancer
I thought I would try some of the chandeliers next since most of them are similar. I spent some time playing with the textures so I wanted some opinions on how it looks. Its still in the process of being made, but I wanted to check out some of the textures to see how they were looking.

Not bad

I wonder if the rectangularness of the original model wasn't more to save on the facecount than a straight design decision though. I think there's a risk of it looking lowpoly with the current design - though rounding off the shape is of course not the only way of making it look more advanced.

I would suggest remaking the octagon and spindles with spline shapes. Splines have so many more advantages over meshes it's hard to count them. One advantage in particular is that splines are given mapping coordinates automatically. They're useless, or so one would think at first - but they can be manipulated easily with an uvw xform modifier. The mapping coordinates follow the shape of the spline in a way that makes it look both more advanced, and better.

It's tricky to explain but if you look at the underside of your octagon shape the metal texture flows in a single direction. In other words it looks like a single sheet of metal which one has cut holes in. With a spline you can instead make the mapping follow each segment perfectly so that it really looks like the octagon shape has been bent into a circle instead of cut out from a sheet. I think this would give your chandelier a better visual look. If you would like I can make a random shape in Max and post it up?

Please don't take it as critisizm by the way. It took me a long time - longer than it should have - to start using splines. Now that I have been for some time I very rarely create the beginnins of a mesh any other way. Heck, these days even when I want a cylinder my first instinct is to make a line spline instead of a cylinder primitive.

Actually, I am interested in seeing what you mean. Trust me, I am not taking it as criticism. As far as I am concerned, I have been doing remarkably well in learning this stuff since when I started making models here I had no experience at all other than changing textures in NifSkope. I have used splines someplace in pretty much all of the models I have done, but I honestly dont have much of a clue about lofting. I also am not sure what you mean about the texture flowing in one direction. The texture is set up as a box shape on the original box shape (although now that you mention it, I do see how it repeats the texture on each face) before bending. So I would be interested in seeing what you mean about this as well.

As for the design, I was pretty much just working from the image and hadn't gotten more than a rough shape when I decided to play with the textures. I thought it looked a little low poly too, which is part of the reason I wanted opinions. The other part being I wanted an opinion on how the texture looked as far as its...resolution I guess is the best word. I did notice that the ropes show up fairly well when you are near them, but its hard to see anything about the texture when distant from them.

I was also thinling about offsetting the ropes and the cross-braces (are these what you meant by spindles?) because the ropes actually clip the mesh for the candle-bowl-holder-wax-catcher (not sure what to call them) although that would also entail making the rope look like it was tied to the frame or something.

[nick_op]

This seems to cover the basics of lofting.

I'd recommend trying the lofting to see what Razorwing means about the texture. If you use the generate UV co-ords option in it I reckon it will make the texture seems like it flows around the piece better, as if it was one piece bent into shape rather than several pieces stuck together.

[Razorwing]

I don't use lofting very much personally. I've tried it out a few times but I could rarely get the shape to extrude in the direction or position I wanted it to. One case where I used it successfully (in that case it was the extrude along spline lofting) was when I made a curved ramp piece for the Velothi tileset. I don't think making a shape like that would have been possible any other way. First I made a polygon that had the outlines of the hallway, then I made a curved spline and connected it to the points I wanted the ramp to have, and then I extruded the poly along that spline. It was a mutha to texturemap it, but well worth it for me in the end imho.

This is an example of a model with planar mapping flowing in one direction. We can pretend it's a cylinder primitive I've bent in various ways when it's actually just the same spline with a planar uvw map modifier.

It doesn't look bad, but as you can see the texture is made out to look like a sheet of metal and so when you apply it plainly on a model like this it will look unnatural. Some might not notice it consciously, but there is something unsettling about it that gives them a strange feeling.

Textures on a spline on the other hand follow the shape naturally, something which is extremely difficult to achieve by mapping a model like that manually. Below I have drawn out a random spline and set it to have generated mapping coordinates. I gave it a radial (cylinder) shape and set it's thickness and sides to (in this case) random numbers.

The number of sides it should have depends on how large it will be in the game world; the closer the player sees it when he plays normally, the more sides it needs to have to avoid looking blocky. In the last step I added an uvw xform modifier and tweaked the mapping so it has a good aspect ratio. (Again, in this case the number I put in is arbitrary.)

[nick_op]

Nice one Razorwing, I didn't realise you could do that with splines. I just assumed by 'splines' you meant 'loft'.

[ShadowDancer]

Well, I have been playing a bit more with things and have been trying to retain a decent texture/material on the chandelier. Here are the latest shots that I would like some comments on. I have a mismatch of style in the cross braces for comparison. I personally like the box shape a little bit better, but I would like other opinions and suggestions.

I have also been trying to come up with a decent way to portray a visible knot in a rope....and I must say that short of actually making a "knot texture" or complex mesh with a regular rope texture, this seems to be fairly dificult to do. Does anyone have any ideas for simplifying this?