New Torchlight 2 Models (Iron Sun)

[DarkTails]

Sigh...

I successfully unwrapped, even did the "snap to" stuff that stacks identical pieces together to make painting easier. I even fixed some wonky crap where the vertexes were moving slightly out of place by themselves (WTF?) Look how compact I made it!

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I started painting the map in Photoshop, going good.

When I tried to apply the material to the sword in 3DS Max so I can check my work... it won't let me :/

The texture loads in the Material Editor just fine, but the little button that applies it to the sword is greyed out. I can't drag and drop the material on to it as usual either. FML lol

Why can't stuff just work ._.

Time for another hiatus.

EDIT: Sweet googly moogly! 3DSMAX was just acting stupid ._. It works now!

[Cactuscat222]

Looking good. Definite improvement from the start of this thread.

I tried my hand at modelling some time ago, just using Wings3D. Had a good time, until I hit texturing... I just can't draw.

Though (because of this thread), I found out Autodesk gives out all of their student software for free and I've been viewing the free tutorials on digital-tutors; gonna be trying my hand again sometime. Might even be able to nab a tablet from my friend!

EDIT: Whoa, going through the TL2 Armor Contest news, I see they already have the base models for TL2 out. Thought you just got them out of space magic or something. Onwards! o.o

[DarkTails]

Space magic xD

I can't draw either but I can fudge my way through painting simple things like this sword. Just pick a set of brushes that matches whatever style you're going for and go at it

[Arkham]

I successfully unwrapped, even did the "snap to" stuff that stacks identical pieces together to make painting easier. I even fixed some wonky crap where the vertexes were moving slightly out of place by themselves (WTF?) Look how compact I made it!

Spoiler: show

You may want to reorganize the UV shells so they take up more of the space in the 0-1 range. That area will consist of the entire texture sheet, so leaving all that space blank means you just have a lot of texture going unused.
For an example of how one of Runic's weapons looks in terms of its textures/UVs, here's one of the cannons from TL2 (don't ask how I got this) displayed in Maya:

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[DarkTails]

Arrrrg I thought the whole point was to use as little of the space as possible

Making the shells bigger would definitely help when painting them

[Arkham]

Haha, nope, the point is to use as much of the 0 - 1 space as possible, with as few unused gaps, as little stretching, and as few seams as you can get away with.

[DarkTails]

Is it okay if I change the size of some of them though? Like, if I just enlarge these to take up the whole space, is that okay? I'm redoing it anyway, making it simpler to see what's what :]

[DarkTails]

Muahahahaha, textures ain't so hard anymore, even fixed the wonky geometry with the align tools to get rid of the ugly tiling effect on the handle.

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[DarkTails]

Finally got one done x_X

The texture looks kinda crappy/fuzzy at 512x512 in 3DSmax, I have it saved at 1400x1400 and it looks a lot sharper (the model below has the 1400x1400).

I made this from scratch, no using other people's textures or anything.

Full size: http://i49.tinypic.com/2ai3o1.jpg

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Texture:

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[Arkham]

Is it okay if I change the size of some of them though? Like, if I just enlarge these to take up the whole space, is that okay? I'm redoing it anyway, making it simpler to see what's what :]

It depends on what you're trying to do. If you were, say, modeling a high-poly character with normal mapping and so on, you'd probably want the shells to be scaled properly and not make a huge difference in size between them.

For this sort of thing, though, having differences in size between the shells is fine, and can even be a good idea (such as giving more texture space to areas of the model that are very definitely going to be seen prominently, like the blade, versus areas that are going to remain hidden most of the time, such as the hilt).

In terms of coverage, your texture space usage is a lot better now. But I might still suggest that the blade appears to have a very small proportion of the texture space, compared to its size on the model. The grip, by contrast (that's the dark part at the top of the texture, right?) is freaking huge, despite being a fairly small and non-prominent part that'll usually covered by the character's hand. That disparity is likely contributing to the fuzziness-at-512-res problem you mentioned.
You're making good progress so far, though!

One other thing you might want to try working on next, is learning how smooth and hard edges work -- different applications handle this feature differently, with Max it's called smoothing groups. In those hilt closeups: can you see how the faces on the end of the hilt are faceted, and (much more subtle) the faces on the top of the crossguard are as well? Learning about smoothing groups can let you get rid of hard edges where you don't want them, like those places, but keep them where you probably do want them -- like on the edges of the blade, or any hard corners or whatnot.

[DarkTails]

Ugh, I always remove smoothing because I thought it was one of those things that would screw something up when imported into Torchlight Had I known it wasn't a problem I would have definitely used smoothing on the ball ornament and hilt. (and I would have used it on the earlier axe models with curved edges) Time for more learnin'!

And what? Having the grip be so big causes the whole thing to be fuzzier when it's shrunk!? WHAT IS THAT I DON'T EVEN- Does the texture have to be 512 or can I stick with a larger size? (1024?)

Maybe I can just edit the UVW parameter thingy and shrink the grip's size, then copy/paste as needed in photoshop, hope it's as easy a fix as that!

Thanks folks for all the help, just bummed I don't have any way to repay you gais, I don't even have any more clay to sculpt something lol

[Arkham]

And what? Having the grip be so big causes the whole thing to be fuzzier when it's shrunk!? WHAT IS THAT I DON'T EVEN- Does the texture have to be 512 or can I stick with a larger size? (1024?)

It's not so much that the grip being big causes everything else to be fuzzier directly; it's more that a) the blade shell being so small causes the detail on the blade to look fuzzy, b) the hilt shell doesn't need to be that big, doesn't really get anything out of it since the detail can't really be seen anyway, especially when it's being gripped, and thus c) a lot of the space on that texture that is currently "spent" on something small would be better spent on something big.

Considering that most of the weapons in TL, and even apparently a lot of the weapons in TL2, aren't even 512x512 (I believe most of them are 256x256 or 256x512), making it bigger would not be recommended. I mean, yes, technically you can give it a 1024 texture and call it a day, and since it's just a mod it wouldn't be a big deal, but that's still kinda the lazy way out.

What you might try to do is learn how to lay out UVs for a rectangular texture. This can be a bit confusing, and ordinarily I think it's something you'd want to learn after you'd gotten comfortable with UVing, but you might try it out here if you're up for it.
Basically, instead of laying out the UVs in the "0 to 1" space, you lay it out in 0 to 1 on the U axis, and +1 to -1 on the V axis (this is if you want it vertical. If you wanted it to be a horizontally rectangular texture, you'd obviously do 0 to 1 on V, +1 to -1 on U). Essentially instead of fitting them within just the one middle square, they would take up two squares.
Then, once everything's nice and laid out, you grab all the shells, scale them by 50% in the longer direction, and then put them into the regular 0-1 space.
This sort of thing tends to work well for things that have very lengthy sections that can't be cut up cleanly or easily, like swords, or pillars, or tall buildings, or things like that. Something to consider.

[DarkTails]

Another quick project everyone probably does, a Claymore sword (anime)

Now with smoothing groups lol

[AppleShrapnel]

*gasp*

I wubs Claymore... do go on. :3

[DarkTails]

Donnnnneeeeee now just have to unwrap.

Anyone want to do the painting? I don't know how to get a polished metal effect without it looking dumb lol



Oh yeah, it has like 2 flat N-gons, I don't know if that's a problem considering it's not a flexible object

Nevermind, got rid of them easily :]

[Arkham]

Anyone want to do the painting? I don't know how to get a polished metal effect without it looking dumb lol

This isn't exactly a tutorial, but you might check out this progress gif of an axe done in a style that's kinda like Torchlight's. The steps they did on the axe-head in particular might be helpful.

[DarkTails]

I think they went:

Paint mottled base coat > Bevel > maybe highlight edges with light color > add the engraved pattern > add a scratched texture > mess with contrast

That's pretty cool, maybe painting highly reflective things would look weird in Torchlight anyway

I kinda want to redo the previous sword, looks more like stone than metal...

[DarkTails]

Not too shabby:

http://i49.tinypic.com/ixxkt0.jpg

[AppleShrapnel]

Nice... so when can we expect the armor? >.>

If I'm gonna hunt youma, I gotta do it right.

[DarkTails]

lolihateyou :p

I don't know how to make the skirt pieces flexible, so if someone can take care of that I'll make a set of Claymore armor. The Claymores have different bits of armor, so I was thinking of making sets of them.

Once you collect a full set you're granted a crazy skill that works like whoever's armor it is. For example, collecting all of Irene's gear would grant a skill (buff) that gives you insane attack speed until it runs out.

The swords would all be the same model, maybe I can put each different ability on each different sword and somehow only let the skill be useable once the whole set is worn.