Hi guys. I have a question for the good people here about rendering ships for a videogame.
For some time now a few associates and I have been developing a capital ship combat simulation. IA’ve fleshed out the design and we have a working 2D prototype.
Now is the time to begin fleshing out the game with art. I.E. the really fun part
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But thatA’s where my question comes in. What I want are beautifully rendered ships. (what producer wouldnA’t?) I donA’t know much about art but I know what I want. What I want are ships that are rendered to look like filmed models. I.e Star Trek and Star Wars 4, 5, and 6. NOT like the 3d rendered B5 vessels. To me the B5 ships never looked good. They look like they were rendered for a video game and thatA’s exactly what I donA’t want.
I donA’t know what has to be done. Is it lighting? The geometry of the model? The skin? Or all of the above?
It seems that with modern games normal textures and skins are outdated. nowadays it seems that you have a color-map (only colors, no shadows no nothing), normal-map (adds the depth), specular map (for shininess) and an alpha-map.
So my main question is this. What do we have to do to render our vessels to look like movie model props and not 3d generated game models? Is there a tutorial floating around (i cant find one but then again I donA’t really know what IA’m looking for) or do any of you guys have any tips and experience youA’d like to share?
I certainly hope my question was specific enough. If not, I apologize. I may be able to supply further information if I know what you need.
Thanks in advance.
Charles
Posts
Though you might want to contact these guys and see where they are with the game engine they are developing. It is supposed to be able to do real-time radiosity lighting to a degree. It might be a step in the direction you are wanting.
Geomerics - Lighting
A very good, but time consuming, way to get this effect is by using high polygon renders as textures. The problem with this technique is that the result will not be made to look good in game. A game texture has to have a number of differences from a photograph. for instance, it is important for have lots of contrast and strength, so that the little details are visible from far away. A cg render will not necessarily have this. And sometimes cg/photo textures simply look too good for the level of geometry detail, so it only served to make your models look more segmented.
Lighting is very commonly dismissed in games as not important. This is getting better nowadays, which is good, but lighting is just so important. Look at screenshots from Empire at war, vs Star Trek Armada. Armada's models are actually on par with eaw's, despite being 8 years older, and you'll see the difference lighting makes. good lighting is hard to code, complex to render in game, and often hard to set up, but it makes all the difference.
Another important thing is effects. It seems trivial, but if every bright light source has a lens flare, there is a bloom for every highlight, and you have some great nebula maps, it will transform the graphics. Look at the game Star Wraith. The models/textures are dos game quality, but all the effects give it a very pretty look.
Dawn of war is the sum of all of this. It has lighting, effects, and great textures. Beyond that, the things that make 3d renders look like photos are animalising, which is extremely hard for computers to render, and things like depth of field, which you donAât really need in a game.
It sounds like i was right to think it was lighting more than anything from what i’m finding. Or at least lighting is a good portion. i know we cant make the ships look like Coolhands work (that would be so great…) but we’ll do our very best. Hopefully we’ll be able to squeeze every bit of rendering capability out of Ogre that we can and, thankfully, we’ll only be rendering a handful of vessels at a time.
Thanks for the info guys. I do appreciate it and if anyone else has any ideas or thoughts to offer I’d be grateful.
i have another question id like to throw out there (and thanks a hell of a lot for the support so far.)
would this be the proper formula for model building with a next gen engine?
1. unlimited poly model used to--->
2. burn normal map
3. skin
4. bells and whistles (specular and alpha maps)
i'm relearning everything coming from lower end 3d renderers where things were simple so you really have no idea what kind of help this is to me