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GOLF - Save the Princess!

polycounter lvl 10
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Grindy polycounter lvl 10
Most likely going for a mini-golf course under the theme Save the Princess. I think I have a nice solid idea to start with, just sketched it on paper and I can't wait to get started on this! :D

Good luck to everybody!

0vp4OWu.jpg

Replies

  • squalled90
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    squalled90 polycounter lvl 6
    This is looking really awesome! I really like how you have implemented your theme in here! Can't wait to see it more fleshed out!
  • LANKUS MAXIMUS
    Awesome idea and amazing concept! I'm looking forward to this one :)
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Still trying to block out the whole thing. The first part with the moat works fine but I'll have to rework the tower bit. The slope seems too steep as it is right now.

    I also think I'll modify the start of the course so jumping the moat is the player's second move.

    TSvivPX.png
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Slowly taking form. Hoping for a big push this weekend.

    I succeeded to get it in the hole in 5 strokes so far when I tested it!

    WCXRSyZ.jpg
  • LANKUS MAXIMUS
    Coming along nicely dude :)
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    awesome can wait to see how you polish this off!
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Trying to create very rough textures as I model the environment, to get a better idea of how it will look and to make sure that the plans I made for the textures actually work.

    Q7XBvpo.jpg
  • Grindy
  • bcarter
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    bcarter polycounter lvl 5
    Looking like a very interesting course so far, I love the new additions of the buildings, they really help fill out the course! Good luck to you too!
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the support guys! Here are some new shots. I just finished doing the exterior terrain and the "walkable" area outside. I still need to do the knights with their horses as well as the princess and the hero characters, the cheering little guys that will be sitting in the bleachers, make the wooden palissade that will delimit the playing area inside the castle and rework the towers.

    The environment itself is close to completion as far as modelling goes. I think I'll start on texturing right after this and I'll keep the knights/princess/hero for last, just in case I run out of time.

    2URLqjA.jpg
    FDL0bQ6.jpg
    dW7BfJD.jpg
    DX3FVaa.jpg
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Except for the characters, everything is modeled. Ready to get some texture work done now!

    pWRnHCC.jpg
    q1OHxpj.jpg
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Environment is in the engine, it works. Serious texture work incoming, I'll be able to just replace the files in the folders and everything should update accordingly now.

    On3AAl4.jpg

    Lightmaps leave me with strange straight lines on the trees, not sure how to fix this, if anyone knows...

    JHSgMHu.jpg

    Also I couldn't figure out how to export a colMesh. I followed the tutorials and I'm doing everything like I think it has to be done: using colMesh instead of default, but when in the engine it's the same as if I had used default. I ended up turning off the visibility option in static mesh's proprieties but the collision mesh is taken into account when I'm baking the lightmaps. Not sure how to fix that either.

    XFEeHM2.jpg
  • ufo.mesh
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    ufo.mesh polycounter lvl 13
    Amazing! So huge level!
  • JamesR
    Could those line be related to smoothing? Its a slightly complicated process, but if you are trying to smooth a 4 sided object at that point its going to take a dislike to it and do things like that.
  • EzMeow
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    EzMeow polycounter lvl 10
    I think the cut are due to UV cut, guess your using auto mapping UVs for the lightmap?
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks guys.

    JamesR: I'll try to play with the smoothing groups to see if it's what causes it.

    EzMeow: Yes, everything is set to auto mapping for the lightmap's UVs. I'll try to manually unwrap them in another channel.
  • Tobbo
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    Tobbo polycounter lvl 11
    Is the Lightmap Page ID set to -1 in each of the materials?
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Tobbo: Yes, I now have created another set of UVs on Map Channel 2 in 3ds Max and exported all my trees in a bunch, using LightmapPageID 2 in vForge. While I don't have a seem anymore, all my trees have the exact same lightmap information...

    muvakM5.jpg

    I get the same flag shadow repeated on all the trees which obviously is wrong. :/ I don't know much about lightmaps, this certainly is a learning experience.

    On the other hand, the collision mesh of the course doesn't cast shadows anymore! ^^
  • JamesR
    Did you go through the lighting calculation method, it does get rid of the blocky shadows. Then set the light to lightgrid in the material settings.
    Anyway, I'm interested in seeing the textures. I'm not sure if I don't just like the simple colours in mine. This seems pretty similar. So the transformation will be interesting.
  • EzMeow
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    EzMeow polycounter lvl 10
    Don't stack your UV in the lightmap UV, otherwise it's going to bake all lighting information stacked in the texture.
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    JamesR: Ryan told me about the possibility to use a lightgrid, however, I really want to get these lightmaps to work correctly... I have a hard time figuring out what I'm doing wrong though. If it all fails, I'll try your method.

    EzMeow: The UVs for one single tree are not stacked in the lightmap's UV channel, however I am exporting all the trees together. Could this be the cause? I can't imagine exporting each tree separately being the solution?

    Tobbo: I've set all my materials to use -1 for the LightmapPageID, still no luck.

    Started working on the textures today, I'll have an update on that front soon, in the meanwhile here's how I've tried to fix my trees so far... If someone spots my problem, I'd be super happy. As I said higher, I'm exporting all the trees in the scene at once, they are still independent meshes in Max though.

    ZXdhEFM.jpg
  • m4dcow
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    m4dcow interpolator
    Even though when you have one tree selected and there are no overlapping uvs in the lightmap channel, when you select a group of them there will be overlap.

    If you could imagine all of your trees as parts of one model, then UV the lightmap channel accordingly, and you shouldn't get repeating lightmap values.
  • JamesR
    So...Isn't the shadow being baked into one of the uv's and repeating itself.
    Try importing them into a new scene, no time of day options and just a dynamic light and see what happens. Leave it, calculate lightgrid, changeover for static, whatever.
    Its easy to create a new scene with no initial lighting setup.
    presumably you want a type of dynamic light where it only produces a shadow on that particular texture, so it has to be remapped.
    So you'd be cheating the texture space. Its not really the models. Like M4dcow says.
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    You're bang on the money m4dcow, it's all working fine now. :)
  • Grindy
  • Sharvo
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    Sharvo keyframe
    Really nice Grindy, did you create custom lightmaps? They are really sharp when i tried producing some in engine i get some jaggedy results. Any tips on this? As i too would like some shadows on my hole?

    Love the initial challenge of trying the one shot over the bridge or go for two :)
  • JamesR
  • Kel-Shaded
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    Kel-Shaded polycounter lvl 6
    Oh wow, Really nice job,
    Looking great
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Thank you for the kind words guys.

    Sharvo: To be honest I pretty much let the lightmap settings as they were on import. All my materials seem to have been imported with LightmapSizePageX and Y set to 512, I'm not even sure if this is fine for the contest, I'll need to clarify that at some point. Also the video quality may help hide the jaggedy shadows I too have in many places, but I guess we need to remember that this is mobile stuff and it's not gonna show as big as on our computer screens once it hits a mobile.
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    New update. First pass on all textures done. I've spent the day figuring out how to get vertex color and the new shaders I made to finally work, and with some help from Ryan it's all good now. I had to export everything again because the library I was using was returning me errors and I didn't know how to fix that. Then I struggled with lightmaps again, but now it works again! And I've got a river that moves! Wooh!

    It probably uses too much lightmaps right now but anyways, here's a screenshot and a video of how it is at this point.

    N3L1wxb.jpg

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzO0SgnuS7g"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzO0SgnuS7g[/ame]

    Next on my plate, polishing the textures some more and create the characters I planned for at the beginning.

    Always looking for crits..!
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Would anyone have an idea on how these two flags are considerably darker than the others in my scene?

    All flags were exported together, they all use the same materials and textures both in max and in the engine. I tried to move the one that's over the two that are problematic but the problem persists. Rebaking lightmaps doesn't help either as it's the actual flags being darker for some unknow reasons. I did ResetXForm all the flags in Max as well hoping it would fix it but it met no success either. There's also no vertex color involved with these.

    CM9FQFV.jpg
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    I know you were asking about vertex colors the other day does it happen to have black vertex colors?

    Regardless ping me on skype I can help you look at the issue!

    -Ryan
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Previously talked about flags are fixed now. Made a second pass on some textures. I still need to go over one or two but tomorrow I will start on the modelling of the princess, horses and knights.

    Here's a screenie with the most recent textures.

    7MYxMr9.jpg
  • Ewing
    Really starting to pop!

    I love the stone texture on the floor. I think it alludes to the "mini golf" side of everything while still feeling medieval. My one crit is that the horizontal flags on top of the towers look impossibly rigid. Are you planning to animate them or anything?

    All in all though, excellent build and really starting to look polished!
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    I really would like to animate the flags, I tried to get an understanding of how to rig it in max but I couldn't really figure it out and with the time remaining and the couple of things I still have to do on my plate it's probably not gonna happen. :(
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Added some dudes to the scene.

    2wsxzao.jpg

    Everything should be fine to make it on time!
  • Grindy
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    Grindy polycounter lvl 10
    Obligatory repost from the submission thread.

    First I'd like to thank everyone that helped me finish this project, there were many things I wasn't particularly at ease with when I started this competition and thanks to you all it has mostly been a smooth ride. This is why I try to take part in these challenges on here as often as possible, Polycount is a great community and everybody is trying to help one another. I also want to thank Ryan for his time and help throughout the competition.

    Now that it's over I'll be able to breathe a little bit. There are still things I'd have liked to be able to do to polish the level some more, but who wouldn't say that on an art forum, eh?

    Finally, I want to wish good luck to everybody in the competition. There are really wonderful projects in the submission thread and I'm sure a couple more will make their way there before the deadline. Very inspiring!

    ~~~

    Save the Princess!
    Grindy
    32 880 triangles

    Thread:
    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130291

    Beauty shots:
    vDqiiPl.png

    Ho0aIeN.png

    Wireframes:
    viMpuex.png

    uMDfCnF.png

    1ySpnOl.png

    Textures:
    oCjqxp0.png

    Gameplay:
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa0gOIkrOsg"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa0gOIkrOsg[/ame]
  • bcarter
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    bcarter polycounter lvl 5
    I love how this one turned out. The addition of the people really help to fill out the scene and I love all the village pieces. Good luck!
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