WARNING SKYRIM RELATED!!!!!! Coyote's Skyrim Mod Progress

[Don Coyote]

Ok. Secrets time. Yeah. Blizzard is using some pretty heavy trickery (multiple pieces of the model using the same UV/texture space). This is "last gen" thinking as hardware has gotten a lot better since WoW came out, and they target the middle of the market (or a technique for use on props in the scene that won't get interacted with much). Anyway, onward.

I think the trickery is kinda clever, and some of the models in SKyrim use it to a degree. I mean, why bother texturing both sides of a blade, when you can have it use the same map for both sides, as it could allow to you put more detail at a given amount of resolution. Buuuuuuuut, I think the extent that Blizz does it, or did it, as I have only been looking at textures from the original game and the first expansion mostly, is what is causing the issues, maybe.

Most 3d modeling packages will have UV tools, but there are some good free stand-alone alternatives.

Roadkill UV Layout will get you used to the basics of such programs (and it's free!): http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm

Headus UV is a step up from that in complexity & functionality, with licensees ranging from $100-300 (although you can get a good trail run on the free version).

There are a few others I'm forgetting. These are specialized viewers, not modelers. You can't change the Model Vertices, but you can manipulate UV layouts. Cut seems on your model in 3d space, and the program will attempt to flatten each "island" and lay it out in the 2d canvas according to some rules (pack tightly, or keep relative sale, that sort of thing)...

Coyote has stumbled on one of the keys of UV layout (a grid texture, used to visually see how much info-density a section of a model has.. this is used for various methods, the two most common being "make sure everything is in proportion to each other" by matching square sized, or when figuring out UV space for light and shadow maps (which don't have to be to scale.. the underside of a desk is nearly always going to be in shadow, so we scale that UV island way down to make room for detail elsewhere in the model)... and a few other techniques.

See if Roadkill will work for you to re-lay the UVs (you don't want overlapping UVs if you're painting a new texture). Then you would screenshot the new UV layout, and use this as a guide-layer to paint a new texture.

Thanks, I'll try them out in the next few days.

Have you gotten to Normal Maps yet? 

OH GODS!!! YES AND I FUCKING

Normal mapping actually fixed the majority of the errors in my big ass gem hammer.
Went from this


To this.

by creating my own normal map, which Blizz was kind enough to not have.

[Don Coyote]

And on another weapon. Which is what I do when I get tired of banging my head on something.
But I am getting the same kind of issues, also I am not sure but I think  it might be mirroring the light striking one side on both sides.

[Telarus]

Now you've found the reason we don't overlap UVs much. Lighting UV space cannot overlap or it fucks your lighting. Sometimes, a model will have separate UV channels for the Texture and the Lighting UVs.. I haven't dug into SKyrim's engine quite yet so I'm not sure how they have it setup.

[Don Coyote]

Now you've found the reason we don't overlap UVs much. Lighting UV space cannot overlap or it fucks your lighting. Sometimes, a model will have separate UV channels for the Texture and the Lighting UVs.. I haven't dug into SKyrim's engine quite yet so I'm not sure how they have it setup.

Let me se if I get this straight. Duplicating the UV maps might be part of the problem? Delving into this modeling and texture stuff for s/g is making me want to take some classes on this, while still staggering around half-blind.

[Telarus]

but I think  it might be mirroring the light striking one side on both sides.

That's what I was referencing. If the lighting-channel UVs (the engine combines a texture layer with a lighting layer to make a material) have islands that overlap each other (as it seems the WoW models often do) then you'll get that effect, where the light hitting one side also brightens the other side, because back in the 2d lighting channel, both mesh pieces are sitting "on top of each other" in UV space (overlap).

The problem is that the new engine is probably using the texture UV space for both texture layer and lighting layer. To fix this, you'd setup a new "UV channel" in a modeling program (textures are usually "Channel 0", lighting usually "Channel 1").

So in Channel 0, you can have overlapping UVs (as you want the same texture on both sides). In Channel 1 (lighting), you want NO Overlap.

Then, in the game, you can tell the engine which Channel to use for which.

This video is for Maya, but gets the idea across: www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?vid=959

[Don Coyote]

SO MUCH RAGE!!!!!!!!
I am now convinced that me getting two of the imported models to look nice was a fluke. I am sure it has something to do with normal maps I made, but at the same I think it is linked to their UV maps. I want to stab blender for not working the way I think it should, even when I follow tutorials. I want to kill for a GOOD CAD program. I don't want any of these 3d modeling programs.

[Don Coyote]

Changing gears from importing weapons to importing armor, which will get even more annoying as WoW armor is mostly just textures painted over the bodies.
However
HELMET FAIL!!!!!

As you can see I added a helmet, but...the head is gone.

And then I moved the helmet up to where it is visible, but still no head.


Something is missing telling Skyrim to render a head in the empty space and to mate the helmet to the body for movement. Jumping up and down doesn't move the helmet.

[Don Coyote]

I might have figured out something.
Bear with me while I show an evolution of an idea.

No normal map



Now with normal maps. Watch as I slowly clean up the pixelation.

The high shine is due to no alpha being set. I left it like that just to quickly run through an idea.








And this is where I stopped. I still need to make a environment mask map, but it seems a lot cleaner now.




Basically I blew up the diffuse map from 128x128 to 1024x1024 and painted most of the large colored areas with the same shade of red or black, then generated a new higher resolution normal map.

[Don Coyote]

And back to the Bulwark of Azzinoth AKA Big Ass Spiky Shield
It still has some lingering issues, but much improved.

[Don Coyote]

Rimefang's Claw


And who doesn't want to hit things with a blade made of lava?

[Don Coyote]

IT GLOWS!!!!!




The orange bleed between the edge and the lava is due to the weird way I had to port in the meshes. It is in fact three meshes. Two for the lava, both glow but one has a pulsing glow and the other a steady glow, and one for the edges. The UV mapping didn't originally follow how the polygons were arranged in the mesh properly so I am tweaking them slowly.
For my next trick I am thinking of adding particle effects to it, or maybe a flowing lava effect. The particle effect I know can be done; not sure about the animation.

[Don Coyote]

And now some fun with glow maps.

[Don Coyote]

My GF said this, "Do you think you have a big enough axe?"

[Telarus]

Mmmm, nice emmisives. The green might be a bit overblown, tho...

[Don Coyote]

Mmmm, nice emmisives. The green might be a bit overblown, tho...

It's weird, in most cases it's not as overblown. The glow is rather inconsistent on some of them. Like the highlights on the axe, Shadowmourne, in some places it looks washed out and grey, but in most it is vibrant blue.