MOD:WCU:Design and Standardization - Revision history

klauss: Added lots of guidelines for texturing in the new engine

2006-05-03T03:49:17Z

Added lots of guidelines for texturing in the new engine

chuck starchaser: /* How to: Textures & Style */

2006-04-14T19:47:44Z

‎How to: Textures & Style

chuck starchaser: /* How to: Textures & Style */

2006-04-14T19:39:27Z

‎How to: Textures & Style

chuck starchaser: /* How to: Textures & Style */

2006-04-14T19:36:01Z

‎How to: Textures & Style

chuck starchaser: /* How to: Models */

2006-04-14T19:04:03Z

‎How to: Models

chuck starchaser: /* How to: Models */

2006-04-14T19:03:11Z

‎How to: Models

chuck starchaser: /* How to: Models */

2006-04-14T19:02:43Z

‎How to: Models

chuck starchaser: /* How to: Models */

2006-04-14T19:02:12Z

‎How to: Models

chuck starchaser: /* How to: Models */

2006-04-14T19:01:01Z

‎How to: Models

chuck starchaser: /* How to: Models */

2006-04-14T18:59:25Z

‎How to: Models

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 How detailed should you make a model?
 This is all subjective, but usually you want to use as only as many polygons as absolutely needed, best guestimate would be around 3000-5000 polygons for the typical fighter model. Capital ships are made from multiple models each with the 3000-5000 polygons recommended limit.
@@ Line 31: / Line 33: @@
 Textures are the most important aspect of a model. Without a decent texture even some of the best models will look like crap. With WCU we are imposing a style limit on all ship, the style limit is there because we want all the ships to look like there is some logical design lineage, NO cartoonish ships, NO overly detailed ships. Below is an example of how the where the ships came from and what they should look like for WCU.
-All ships should have a SINLGE texture for all aspects of the ship.
+All ships should have a SINLGE texture for all aspects of the ship, except its cockpit view, which should use its own, separate texture (the cockpit viewed ingame, not the cockpit one might see from outside).
-Recommend Size for various ships.
+Recommend specifications for original texture files:
 *1024x1024 for smaller craft
 *2048x2048 for larger capital ships
-*All textures sould be 24bit or 32bit color and saved as either a PNG, Targa or TIFF format.
+*4096x4096 for special capital ships or stations (huge, or very important or often seen at close range)
 ''Note: Currently ATI video cards have a 2K (2048x2048) textures limit for all single textures, NVIDIA has a 4K (4096x4096) limit on single textures; do not let this limit you there are many things on the programing end that can alleviate the program, or you can just wait for the next gen cards.''
-(starchaser edit:)
+'' '''For developers''' - this is only a guideline for developers, artists should forget about the following remarks, and create good textures. Developers will then manipulate textures to make them fit within the hardware.''
-One thing to keep in mind, though, is that, while geometry processing keeps going up by leaps and bounds, texture processing in the videocard is limited by memory bandwidth, which is a HARD problem --i.e.: won't be solved any time soon. The days of "keep poly count low; do everything you can with the texture" are already gone and going away faster. With my videocard (NVidia 6600GT-based) I have no slowdown whatsoever looking at this model I made for my own mod, that is well over 100,000 tris, untextured. But looking at a 3000 tri model of the Demon *with* 1024 by 1024 textures already slows down the refresh a bit, and using 2k by 2k textures, refresh rate drops painfully.
+One thing to keep in mind, is that, while geometry processing keeps going up by leaps and bounds, texture processing in the videocard is limited by memory bandwidth, which is a HARD problem --i.e.: won't be solved any time soon. The days of "keep poly count low; do everything you can with the texture" are already gone and going away faster. With my videocard (NVidia 6600GT-based) I have no slowdown whatsoever looking at this model I made for my own mod, that is well over 100,000 tris, untextured. But looking at a 3000 tri model of the Demon *with* 1024 by 1024 textures already slows down the refresh a bit, and using 2k by 2k textures, refresh rate drops painfully.
 The following doesn't affect the guideline above, as a submission guideline. I'd even suggest higher rez originals.
@@ Line 54: / Line 85: @@
 # Possibly some low bit depth format for normal map, or 16-bit dU/dV map instead.
 ==How to: Color Themes==

@@ Line 49: / Line 49: @@
 As for textures in game-shipping form, we'll have to experiment with the following, but we'll likely find an optimal compromise between texture processing burden and quality along the lines of:
-##1) Using full rez (e.g.: 1k by 1k) but low color depth (16-bit) for the diffuse texture
+# Using full rez (e.g.: 1k by 1k) but low color depth (16-bit) for the diffuse texture
-##2) Using full color depth (24-bit) but half the rez (512 by 512) for the glow-map.
+# Using full color depth (24-bit) but half the rez (512 by 512) for the glow-map.
-##3) using full rez but grayscale (single channel, 8-bits) for the specular map
+# using full rez but grayscale (single channel, 8-bits) for the specular map
-##4) Possibly some low bit depth format for normal map, or 16-bit dU/dV map instead.
+# Possibly some low bit depth format for normal map, or 16-bit dU/dV map instead.
 (/starchaser edit:)

@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 *All textures sould be 24bit or 32bit color and saved as either a PNG, Targa or TIFF format.
 ''Note: Currently ATI video cards have a 2K (2048x2048) textures limit for all single textures, NVIDIA has a 4K (4096x4096) limit on single textures; do not let this limit you there are many things on the programing end that can alleviate the program, or you can just wait for the next gen cards.''
 One thing to keep in mind, though, is that, while geometry processing keeps going up by leaps and bounds, texture processing in the videocard is limited by memory bandwidth, which is a HARD problem --i.e.: won't be solved any time soon. The days of "keep poly count low; do everything you can with the texture" are already gone and going away faster. With my videocard (NVidia 6600GT-based) I have no slowdown whatsoever looking at this model I made for my own mod, that is well over 100,000 tris, untextured. But looking at a 3000 tri model of the Demon *with* 1024 by 1024 textures already slows down the refresh a bit, and using 2k by 2k textures, refresh rate drops painfully.
@@ Line 42: / Line 45: @@
 The following doesn't affect the guideline above, as a submission guideline. I'd even suggest higher rez originals.
-In terms of textures shipping with the game, though, first of all, we should never use .png. Always jpg, at 85% quality. The differences are *impossible* to see by naked eye, and the compression difference is like 10 to 1.
+In terms of textures shipping with the game, though, first of all, we should never use .png. Always jpg, at 85% quality. The differences are *impossible* to see by naked eye, and the compression difference is like 5 or 10 to 1.
 As for textures in game-shipping form, we'll have to experiment with the following, but we'll likely find an optimal compromise between texture processing burden and quality along the lines of:
@@ Line 50: / Line 53: @@
 ##3) using full rez but grayscale (single channel, 8-bits) for the specular map
 ##4) Possibly some low bit depth format for normal map, or 16-bit dU/dV map instead.
 ==How to: Color Themes==

@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 *All textures sould be 24bit or 32bit color and saved as either a PNG, Targa or TIFF format.
 ''Note: Currently ATI video cards have a 2K (2048x2048) textures limit for all single textures, NVIDIA has a 4K (4096x4096) limit on single textures; do not let this limit you there are many things on the programing end that can alleviate the program, or you can just wait for the next gen cards.''
 ==How to: Color Themes==

@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 This is all subjective, but usually you want to use as only as many polygons as absolutely needed, best guestimate would be around 3000-5000 polygons for the typical fighter model. Capital ships are made from multiple models each with the 3000-5000 polygons recommended limit.
 ''UV-unwrapping a model:''
 Goals: Efficient use of texture space. Texturing job -friendliness. Mipmpapping-friendliness.

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 The purpose of this page is to define a standardize look and feel for all Wing Commander Ships. As many of you know when Wing Commander was first released it used 2D pre-generated bitmaps to display the ships. These 2D images were made from much higher quality 3D models long sense lost by Origin. One of the goals for WCU is to recreate the lost models, and enhance existing models.
-==How to: Models==
+How to: Models
 [[HowTo:Model_Ships]]
@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 Just follow these guidelines in the VS wiki (they come from us, WCU, actually):
-[[http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/HowTo:UnwrapGeneral]]
+[[http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/HowTo:UnwrapGeneral|General guidelines for UV unwrapping]]
 ==How to: Textures & Style==