Lost Gecko's projects

[Lost Gecko 481]

31 minutes ago, R3V0 said:

Yay ! Welcome ! 

Thanks! I don't switch red and green so it could be worse but I often have trouble with nuances like here, everything was just greyish to me... Fortunately @Ronyx69 saves the day for us both

18 minutes ago, Lee Towers said:

Hope it's clear, the marked bits are what I assume the colour you're going for, all the other parts have a dark green-ish hue.

Crystal clear, thank you very much! I will correct that.

[Lost Gecko 481]

Finally done with the Kraskovo Church! Converted from the 3d Warehouse and it took me longer than expected: even for an almost-good-to-go model I ended up remaking almost everything from scratch...

I got the same bleeding problem with the illumination as for the previous church, I hope I'll find a way to fix it.

[Lost Gecko 481]

Me: I have 10.000 projects in progress, I really should get some done before starting anything else.

Inner me:

[Ronyx69 2,413]

Welcome to the ∞WIP club.

That's a crazy looking ship, how big is it going to be ingame?

[R3V0 909]

2 hours ago, Lost_gecko said:

Me: I have 10.000 projects in progress, I really should get some done before starting anything else.

Inner me:

WANT

[Lost Gecko 481]

9 minutes ago, Ronyx69 said:

Welcome to the ∞WIP club.

That's a crazy looking ship, how big is it going to be ingame?

Wikipedia says the hull is 56.7m and the total length 69.2m with a height of 62.5m so if done correctly it should be about the same  (for info it's the HMS Victory that still exists today).

11 minutes ago, R3V0 said:

WANT

It will probably take some time but I'll do my best!

It might be good to point out that it's primarily intended as a (floating) unique building. In addition to being quite a strange sight, having this thing as a functional vehicle would mean that sails would put even more strain on the tris count/texture space/my sanity

[Lost Gecko 481]

I'm really enjoying the modelling of this ship so far. The model currently stands at 4500 tris and will probably hit the 7000 or more once fully detailed, which is less than I would have thought. However the LOD will be another story so I'm not looking forward to making it...

[Lost Gecko 481]

These last couple of days have been dedicated to emptying a bit my WIP folder and to update existing assets.

- Third half-timbered medieval house: 2 growable versions (commercial and residential) in one pack, and 2 RICO versions but separately. Ideally I wanted to only have 1 pack with the growables already RICO-compatibles but apparently now the mod converts growables instead of creating a RICO version with the growable still available. As I wanted people to have the possibility to have both I released them separately but I haven't been able to bundle the 2 RICO versions together (I don't know if it's possible because in that case there are 2 identical .xml file names in the same folder). Having 3 identical assets is less than ideal, is there a solution (other than just having the growables and let people add a local RICO version)?

 

- Pack of 3 cast stone/concrete bollards: cube - sphere - cylinder. I had already made a sphere one but now the textures fit (and I might make more street furnitures with the same texture in the future).

 

- Update of the Medieval Market hall. Mesh optimization (1500 to 900 tris, it was bad...), roof rework to get rid of (almost all) the ugly lines between the faces and new LOD with baked textures.

before:

after:

 

- A pic of the HMS Victory, there isn't much progress but I might as well...

[Lost Gecko 481]

As per usual, I'm unable to stay focused so while I'm making progress on other projects I've started this modern appartment building. High density level 4 seems reasonable (what do you think?). I might make variations of it such as another brick colour and wooden planks as well as a 2 storey-lower level 3 one.

I've been working on my texture work lately, mainly on creating textures from scratch with bevels and all that ( @Ronyx69's texturing work has greatly helped with that!). For example the window frames are made that way when previously I would have used some photographs... Will be handy for the HMS Victory as well

[barcasam7 185]

Love the look of this, it will inspire me to finish mine! 

[Lost Gecko 481]

14 hours ago, barcasam7 said:

Love the look of this, it will inspire me to finish mine! 

Thanks! Go ahead, yours looks great!

Done! It's not especially supposed to work in apartment complexes, it was easier to feature the variations that way but I guess it kinda works... Maybe a bit too small for that though. I'll try to finish some ongoing projects now.

[bsquiklehausen 190]

Looking great! Any chance we could get a version without a green roof for our slightly less nice parts of town?

[Avanya 2,605]

Looks nice!  I'd love a non-grass roof too if you're up for it. ^^

[Darf 1,439]

If you make the glass surface of the diffuse darker it will look a bit more realistic. For the rest great job!

[Lost Gecko 481]

1 hour ago, Darf said:

If you make the glass surface of the diffuse darker it will look a bit more realistic. For the rest great job!

I totally agree, I figured it out a bit late so I didn't have the courage to change it... I'll ultimately update them but I don't want to deal with the asset editor for the same 4 assets all over again because I really don't enjoy the multiple file renamings, crashes and loading times...

@bsquiklehausen and @Avanya I will totally do a bitumen roof variant! I chose for a green roof because I would like to start buiding an "ecocity" of some sort so it's probably not the last of "green" buildings but I'll make regular variants when applicable  It will probably be out in the upcoming week!

[Judazzz 1,936]

I really like those apartments (they fit pretty much any theme), but unfortunately the scaling seems to be a bit off: when placed next to one of Feindbild's L1 Brooklyn residential homes (which seem to be on par with the vast majority of assets as far as floor height goes), the lower buildings in your set are just a tad taller, despite the fact that it has 2 or 3 floors (not sure) more. Now older buildings often have higher ceiling, so a bit of difference is fine, but unfortunately the difference currently is too much - for my liking at least.

Great-looking buildings nonetheless, though 

[Lost Gecko 481]

21 hours ago, Judazzz said:

I really like those apartments (they fit pretty much any theme), but unfortunately the scaling seems to be a bit off: when placed next to one of Feindbild's L1 Brooklyn residential homes (which seem to be on par with the vast majority of assets), your lower building is just a tad taller, despite the fact that it has 3 floors more. Now older buildings often have higher ceiling, so a bit of difference is fine, but unfortunately the difference currently is too much - for my liking at least.

Great-looking buildings nonetheless, though 

Thanks Judazzz, I understand where you're coming from, I haven't really taken the time to compare them to existing buildings but the floors are 3m heigh which I think is average... Here is an inspiration picture and as you said yourself older buildings like the one on the right of the picture often have way taller ceilings... Here is another Feindbild's building (I learn a lot from reverse engineering ) and the floor height is roughly 3m as well  EDIT: @Judazzz I wasn't clear enough with the fact that this building is clearly on the low end in terms of ceiling height, as it's 3m between floors so 2.6/2.7m of ceiling, which is probably barely enough but still ok. I will go with at least 20cm more in the future but I'll keep it one as it is, I hope you don't mind too much  Thank you for rising the issue!

[Lost Gecko 481]

So the asset editor has been crashing at every attempt to import the bitumen version of the apartments. Crashes aren't rare but have never been so systematic, they'll be released as soon as it works...

In the meantime I'm back at trees and I think there's an issue with the leaves' shading that I heard might have something to do with vertex normals: the leaves seem completely flat. I don't know what I should do... provided there really is a problem. Any idea?

[Ronyx69 2,413]

Normals tell which way the vertex is facing - so which way the light will come from.

By default this is just perpendicular to the face, which is why it looks flat, because it really is flat.

By editing individual normals you can change the way lighting appears on it.

So for example you could take the vertices of the leaves closest to the midde of the tree, and point them down, so the inside of the tree looks darker than the outer parts.

I'm not sure how you do this in blender, but in 3ds max there's an edit normals modifier, and you can just select a vertex normal and move it around.

[Avanya 2,605]

In Blender is under Modifiers and then Normal Edit. I've only played around with it a tiny bit, so I don't have any good tips on how to get it to look nice. But some experimenting should get you there.

[Lost Gecko 481]

@Ronyx69 @Avanya Thank you both, I'll try all that stuff out!

EDIT: It works as intended but now I'm unable to get colour variations to work properly... It worked fine a while ago when I edited some existing trees and I'm using templates with colour variations but it doesn't work...

That being said, this is the first tree of a generic set of bushes and small trees which will use a template with variations. Nothing fancy, just super generic to cover areas such as highway sides or rural hedges. I am aiming for 500 tris max/tree.

And yes, it's the same branch as on MrMaison's Shady Tree, there aren't many ready-to-use branch textures around

[Avanya 2,605]

Looks nice! And definately sounds like some useful sizes you've got planned! I often find myself having few choices of small trees or good bushes (can only use the shady bush so many places).

[Lost Gecko 481]

14 hours ago, Avanya said:

Looks nice! And definately sounds like some useful sizes you've got planned! I often find myself having few choices of small trees or good bushes (can only use the shady bush so many places).

Thanks! The bushes will be quite similar to the shady bush in terms of textures but more variation should follow (hopefully...)!

Still can't get colour variation to work though...

[Lost Gecko 481]

Trees are a lot of fun to make! Fewer files, no LOD, quick UV mapping, no crash in asset editor... Still a fair number of variations to make but 3 variants already give an overview of where I'm going with this: relatively low-poly, relative diversity of size and colour, fine from medium distance. (ofc those on the right are MrMaison's maple trees)

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Any chance you may be interested in doing a Tilia/Linden tree? I'd be eternally grateful. 

"Unter den Linden" ... the main boulevard in Berlin.

[Lost Gecko 481]

8 hours ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Any chance you may be interested in doing a Tilia/Linden tree? I'd be eternally grateful. 

"Unter den Linden" ... the main boulevard in Berlin.

Interested? Certainly! There are tons of trees I would be interested in making, and this one is on my list. The question is: what is the likelihood to see it anytime soon considering I'm always all over the place with my projects? Well, it's higher on my priority list now, Ill see what I can do

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Yay for higher priority!  thanks either way, your stuff is awesome

[Judazzz 1,936]

On 3/7/2017 at 8:17 PM, Lost_Gecko said:

Thanks Judazzz, I understand where you're coming from, I haven't really taken the time to compare them to existing buildings but the floors are 3m heigh which I think is average... Here is an inspiration picture and as you said yourself older buildings like the one on the right of the picture often have way taller ceilings... Here is another Feindbild's building (I learn a lot from reverse engineering ) and the floor height is roughly 3m as well  EDIT: @Judazzz I wasn't clear enough with the fact that this building is clearly on the low end in terms of ceiling height, as it's 3m between floors so 2.6/2.7m of ceiling, which is probably barely enough but still ok. I will go with at least 20cm more in the future but I'll keep it one as it is, I hope you don't mind too much  Thank you for rising the issue!

No worries man, it looks great no matter the ceiling height.
Besides that, that picture pretty much blew my 'criticism' clean out of the water

[Lost Gecko 481]

@bsquiklehausen @Avanya Bitumen roof version of the modern apartments released at last! It took a bloody long time to avoid crashes... Now with darker windows.

I've made YET another bollard (on request): from Cork, Ireland

Now back to trees... And things.

[Avanya 2,605]

Yay! And that bollard looks so nice too! Not sure where I'd use it, but I think I might just have to find somewhere