3D People of Daggerfall

[MasonFace]

I've been wanting to get into clay sculpting. My wife bought a 10 pound box of clay and some sculpting tools for Christmas and I've been meaning to crack it open and start doing something with it, but I never got around to it.

Since I've tried and failed about 5 times now to get into Blender and learn it, I decided if I wanted to make models I should use a physical medium then use photogrammetry to digitize it. I was going to use Meshroom to scan it into a 3D model, then rig and animate in Blender. Maybe you should give that a try, jman0war?

Daggerfall is a low poly world and I image low poly 3d characters and enemies could work nicely.

I had mentioned quite some time ago about the possibility of dynamically generating the LOD groups on startup based on mod settings. For performance reasons, we would want lower poly/resolution 3D models for characters to be used at a distance, but by building the LOD groups based on a user's preference, we could structure it so that the lowest polycount model is used as the highest quality, and transitions into a billboard sprite at a distance and no mid or high poly models are ever loaded into memory.

I really think we can make this suit darn near everyone's taste, and I intend to pursue this once the models are ready for integration.

[jman0war]

I've been wanting to get into clay sculpting. My wife bought a 10 pound box of clay and some sculpting tools for Christmas and I've been meaning to crack it open and start doing something with it, but I never got around to it.

Since I've tried and failed about 5 times now to get into Blender and learn it, I decided if I wanted to make models I should use a physical medium then use photogrammetry to digitize it. I was going to use Meshroom to scan it into a 3D model, then rig and animate in Blender. Maybe you should give that a try, jman0war?

If you have clay and tools you just need one little push.
Look at your nearest large universities for life drawing/figure drawing evening classes.
They may have Open Sessions so you can just walk in and pay. (well maybe after we get a vaccine)
If it's a Uni, they might already have sculpture stands you can use, like this : https://theokeefestudio.com/wp-content/ ... /class.jpg
For standing figures you'll need to make a wire armature.
Alternatively look on youtube for Ecorche Figure.
I have this one from a DVD i bought like, 15 or 20 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvVBQedl_Ec
But the quality is poor.

I had mentioned quite some time ago about the possibility of dynamically generating the LOD groups on startup based on mod settings. For performance reasons, we would want lower poly/resolution 3D models for characters to be used at a distance, but by building the LOD groups based on a user's preference, we could structure it so that the lowest polycount model is used as the highest quality, and transitions into a billboard sprite at a distance and no mid or high poly models are ever loaded into memory.

I really think we can make this suit darn near everyone's taste, and I intend to pursue this once the models are ready for integration.

That sounds really great and ambitious, but wouldn't we need both low poly and high poly models for every creature?

[MasonFace]

That sounds really great and ambitious, but wouldn't we need both low poly and high poly models for every creature?

That's part of the ordinary workflow for 3D games. You would sculpt/model in the highest polycount and create one or more lower polycount models.

I'm not 100%, but since Hrafni is sculpting, he will have to retopologize the mesh to clean it up and simplify it for game use. My understanding is that retopology is a pretty tedious process, but once it's done, the decimate modifier should be able to get acceptable results for nearly any reduced polycount versions of the mesh without too much additional work. I hope I'm not wrong about that.

I've also looked at a Unity Asset called Automatic LOD which can generate custom LODs at user defined % of original polygons at run-time. If used, this could make the mod have a very long load time while it computes the LODs when DFU starts up, so it would probably be best to have the LOD versions of the meshes baked instead.

[Hrafnyx]

That sounds really great and ambitious, but wouldn't we need both low poly and high poly models for every creature?

That's part of the ordinary workflow for 3D games. You would sculpt/model in the highest polycount and create one or more lower polycount models.

I'm not 100%, but since Hrafni is sculpting, he will have to retopologize the mesh to clean it up and simplify it for game use. My understanding is that retopology is a pretty tedious process, but once it's done, the decimate modifier should be able to get acceptable results for nearly any reduced polycount versions of the mesh without too much additional work. I hope I'm not wrong about that.

I've also looked at a Unity Asset called Automatic LOD which can generate custom LODs at user defined % of original polygons at run-time. If used, this could make the mod have a very long load time while it computes the LODs when DFU starts up, so it would probably be best to have the LOD versions of the meshes baked instead.

Decimate modifier in Blender works not as great as I want. Same with Automatic LOD in Unity. Both tools do the work, but they are not perfect. Perhaps I'll model LODs 50% manually.

I've already made a retopology model for the body. It is 3638 faces or 7120 tris.

[miyalys]

Great work! In some of the more recent versions of modded DFU I've seen videos of, I really think the models stood out the most, in a bad way, so it would be wonderful if in the future it was possible to replace them with 3D.

[Hrafnyx]

And another WIP video. Next is texture painting and then I can finally strart modeling clothes.

[jman0war]

Really nice.
Interesting to watch.
When you create those faces and then move those verts, is there a setting to restrict their movement to the surface of the other mesh?

[Hrafnyx]

Really nice.
Interesting to watch.
When you create those faces and then move those verts, is there a setting to restrict their movement to the surface of the other mesh?

Do you mean Shrinkwrap modifier? Yes, I used it in this video.

[jman0war]

Shrinkwrap modifer to create those new meshes i guess, but then spent time to arrange the verts optimally.
But it looked like when moving those verts individually they were locked to the geometry below?
They wouldn't depress though the other mesh and clip through.
There must a setting for that.
I must say Blender looks a heck of a lot better than i remember it, like 13 years ago.

[Hrafnyx]

WIP. Texture painting


Started modeling clothes now