A question about modeling.

It's not yet been released.

Ah I see, well to bad. Looking forward to it ^^

Yes. Would be good to have a little more info on this. I've downloaded the Havok plugins but without the Elemental converter and info it is a bit of a waste of time.

Aye I would prepare some models for import, but there is so little information about what is needed, BESIDES the converter ^^.

Texture format is PNG for the skins. The game does Not use bump mapping . The Dragonlance Team's modelers already have some awesome models just waiting to be imported from Blender into a format the game can see, we're just waiting on the plugins/converters from SD.

I noticed that png is used through the game, but it seems as these are somewhat hooked to perform some operations Im not grasping at the moment, since the .dds files are mainly identical except they feature an alpha channel. It is a bummer that the game does not use bumpmaps. But that might change as soon as we have access to model editing, of course only if the engine is able to handle it.

It is also interesting that some models do not need a texture location specified in their .xml and can´t be changed. At least we would have different skinned props .

Some are changable though.

Im looking forward to see what the DL team comes up with ^^

The png's can use alpha's too. I've noticed some applications will load these png's with the alpha in the actual layer transparency, and not as a channel, but it should save properly anyway.

I'm pretty sure the engine does support normalmaps actually.

edit: with some further research, it seems like materials and stuff are connected in some way with the model .hkb files, possibly comes in one package.

normalmaps, yes, bumpmaps, no. It's not that they just didn't add bumpmaps, the engine won't use them. When I many of the skin texture PNG,s there is a layer with transparentcy but you can't make part of the model ivisble with that I know of. I'd like to figure out how so I could make some "ghostly" see through units by masking out part of the displayed model/skin in game. Not sure if that's possible yet though.

Would make sense, some formats actually store material information, such as normals, or speculars in themselves. Would be neat!

Dont think it is possible YET.

Actually, I think the engine can do it, but stardock has chosen not to use normals or specular on the assets.

the water and some other things uses normalmapping to achieve effects, and having looked at the shader code responsible for handling related things, it looks like it does do per pixel lighting, and has references to normal and specular maps.

You are right on it not being possible yet, since we'll need the model tools to be able to setup materials, but at that point I would think it's fully possible.

Was reffering to it not being possible yet, due to the lack of the tools, rather than engine limitations ^^

Hence I agree with you.

Just keep in mind that graphically the engine does have limitations. I don't think a lack of bumpmaps is going to be the only texture deficiency we run into down the line.

What do you imagine we would be missing out on in the future?

I don't think there will be anything major missing out, not anything that anyone here would be needing anyway, the engine seems to support pretty standard features in terms of texturing and shader magic.

I haven't tested yet to be sure but I'm not sure if Alpha channels are "properly" supported. Just because you can put one in a PNG doesn't mean the game is going to see it. Last I check Bumpmaps were a "pretty standard feature" in just about every modern game and they aren't in. I consider bumpmapping to be pretty basic actually as it lets you do a lot with textures on a model and shows depth.

I'll know for sure after I try harder skins, like making a see through model to make a ghost, but I'm thinking there will be a lot of things we won't be able to do until we get the tools to put our own models and textures in place.

Normally I'd be able to place a "invisible" layer with an alpha channel or layer mask like what was possible modding "Freedom Force" skins back in the day but I don't think it will be easily possible in Elemental. I won't have more specific examples until I try though so maybe I'm being skeptical for no reason.

The game uses the alpha channel in the textures to show the raw model underneath. So if you create a texture with a lot of transparency you can then specify the RGB of the model to affect this. Good examples are the Golems.

I doubt bump-mapping will be turned on because it will interfere horribly with the model outlining feature.

Raven X, if you look at trees and other certain models, you'll notice they utilize alpha blending using the alpha map.

There's no question on if the engine can load png's with alphas, it can always load all the data from the textures, but after that it's a question on what the engine uses this information for.

but from what I've notice it seems to be able to do an okay amount of stuff, and it's defined in currently hidden materials, which will most likely reveal itself when we get the tools.



An example:

a dds texture, namely a dxt1, is a 1:6 compressed RGB texture, each channel in this texture could be used for different things, one for tinting, one for transparency, another for specularity.

bumpmapping/normalmapping would not interfere with the outlining in any way, they're just a way for the rendering to light up models per pixels rather than per vertex.

borderlands uses very shader defined materials, normalmaps and stuff, along with outlines in a way very similar to elemental and it does not break the game:

Yeah was also thinking Borderlands and I agree with you. There isn´t anything more I would add, besides we will see how the engine handles itself after we get a hold of the proper tools. Since the only thing we are able to do atm is to speculate what is possible :-/ and I hate that.