Very nice work, this is an amazing document!!!
Thanks for pointing that out adam450, I’ll cross-check our sources and update the Doc if need be.
edit: cool, it was announced on BN. Thanks AD-Edge!
Having cross-checked the sources, I think I’ll stick with the cubemap information, unless someone else finds another article demonstrating a different method. I’m sticking with my current information because A): this article (http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2138.asp) has a date that it was clearly written, whereas this article (http://www.gametutorials.com/Articles/RealisticWater.htm) could have been written anytime between 2000 and 2005 and B): The reference I use is from http://www.gamedev.net/, a source I consider to be a bit stronger, and it specifically references a document produced by nVIDIA corporation itself on the topic (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cube_map_ogl_tutorial.html)
That’s not to say that your information is wrong, as there are probably multiple ways of doing things. If I get a chance, I may add some text that includes this method of reflections, since it seems quite viable.
Thank you for fact checking adam450!
wow thats pretty in depth. thanks for devoting so much of ur life to it, appreciate it. seriously, good job
Hi! Great Article with good examples/ pictures!
I have some questions as I’m a newbie to modeling:
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Texturing: regarding the over-shading you mentioned, in Fig. 10 are the shadows under the creatures arms and chin a result from painting or from a light source? Is there a good article on model texturing?
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Modeling for animation: I heard that the mesh has to fulfill some qequirements so that the skin doesn’t transform unnaturally when rigged/ animated. Can you explain/ show what is important when modeling for animation?
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Pixel Shading: How is the reaction/ attributes of the pixels towards light sources set up? With a separate painted grayscale map for the object?
Thanks again for your efforts in writing this article!
No prob, u worked hard on it. And its good to get stuff like this out there, everyone can benefit.
@betteflasche:
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In this case, it’s a result of painting. If you look at the texture itself (bottom right corner), you’ll notice that those places the artist deliberately darkened the texture. However, with normal mapping, generally the diffusion map will contain little to no lighting detail, and instead the normal map will determine that information in real time.
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I specifically kept the scope of this document on a more general level than this, but I think what you mean is where the artist adds additional geometry usually in the form of edgeloops) to joints to make sure when they stretch, they don’t distort the joint. If you want to explore how this works, check out my model here and play with the rig (probably on layer 2).
- I think you’re referring to the normal map here, which is actually full RGB. Originally, bump mapping was done with only a greyscale image.
For all of you native Spanish speakers, Vexelius has kindly translated the entire document to Spanish, and it is available here: http://www.juegodetalento.com/foro/index.php?topic=48.0
I got to say that Vexelius pulled of an awesome job too.
I’m not a Spaniard but translating all of that text must have taken some time.
- AniCator
It only took him a couple of days so he must have really worked hard!
I think your amazing dude…
Terry
Updated.
I have replaced all mention of game engine with graphics engine (more accurate).
Adjusted my conclusion to be less programmer-exclusive.
Added alternative method of reflection mentioned by adam450.
Added necessary citation.
This is really cool! I have been interested in gaming for a while now, and have wanted to make video games for as long as I can remember (and I am still a looong way from it). This really clears up some questions I had, specifically about pixel shaders. Thanks a lot!
Great thread ty for all your research. I’ve already linked it to several places for those who inquire more info. This will help many.
Considering adding a section for sculpting now that we have all of this 2.48 goodness.
This looks great, but i can’t pay attention while i read it it’s too hard not to skip around. Maybe this could be wikipedia’d or (maaaaaaaaaaybe) stickied, if a little neater. If only we could get everyone to read this 
(pretty much, I just mean put in the correct order, so table of contents is ‘chronological’)
Thanks Sammaron. It’s actually already stickied, but I hadn’t thought of converting it to Wikipedia. What exactly do you mean by neat? And also, what do you think caused you to jump about?
This is Perfect Dim!
I started reading and i couldn’t stop! This is very informing and you deserve a lot of created for writing it out and posting it. If u ever decided to publish a book someday ill be your first buyer! This did make me see the BIG reason for the pre-production and the concept art before a major project. Reading this taught me alot more about verticies then i even imagined was there! I do a bit of blender but i decided to slow down and learn the basics not to learn them but to better understand so that more complicated things wont be so hard to understand since i would know the fundamentals.
Thanks Again!
John
Hey Johney, sorry it took so long for me to see your post. I’ve been lurking about, but haven’t really been participating on BA so much recently.
Thank you for your kind words Johney. I can’t stress pre-production enough here, I think it’s something that a lot of people miss, especially when they’re new to games, but it’s incredibly important if you want any sort of success with your project.
I also admire your approach to learning. It is important to understand the fundamentals because it will help you a lot in the long run. Not a lot of people start at that place, and I think you’re really on the right track.
Good luck, and I’m glad to hear I’ve helped.
Quoting from the text:
“An interesting fact about textures is that they may not actually negatively affect the performance of the game in real-time, no matter how large (5) they are as long as all the textures in the visible scene do not exceed the random access memory of the computer that the game is played on. This is because in most engines, all of the textures are loaded in to the machine’s RAM before the level is initialized. There are exceptions to this however. Recently, as the explorable area within games grows because of technology, some engines are using a technique that loads textures into the game on-the-fly during game play as they are viewed, and drops unused ones from memory. In this case, texture size can certainly make an impact. Both the Dunia Engine by UbiSoft Montreal and the Gamebryo engine by Emergent use this method (Elder Scrolls). …”
Does this apply in blender (preloading all textures)? Does a 2048 x 2048 px texture run as fast real time as a 512 or even 256? Is it just a simple matter of taking longer to load a game? I noticed that all the textures in “Yo Frankie” are png’s, and are maybe 4-5 mb each. However, the game does run faster if I use small textures. If this is the case, at least in blender, why is there the obsession with tiny textures? This is very intriguing to me, as I have no plans to ever use anything but the blender GE. I’d really like some clarification on this, at least as far as the bLender GE is concerned.
And of course, excellent mini book. Bu that’s pretty obvious. Thanks for taking the time to put it together.