Synaesthesia

Fast forward a few months: I've been working on a new modeling image for my company's website. This is all in UE4, still a work-in-progress but getting closer to being done. You can see the progress images here: http://imgur.com/xJZkxgH,kY97Ulu,aP7k468,WJrBlUf,zX1KPGC,5IOMYDg,NLfAT1R,w3FacSZ,ZUSrO2b,ZcHuwEA,ARKKXyO,cVFvf1Q,8wDJlhc#12

In all fairness, RenX's dead servers have more to do with RenX's management history being a complete debacle rather than dead servers being intrinsic to UDK games

>Currently what we do is model something, then texture it, but with a newer engine, we'd have to model a high polygon model before making a low polygon model to bake the details out into a normal map, then we've got to paint the diffuse and create the specular. It adds extra steps on that would undoubtable slow things down on the art side of things. I feel that if you (in general) as an artist truly enjoy the work you're doing, developing art for a new engine is not going to be a problem. It's not hard to do these days, either. You can make high-end models without high-poly baking. There's a lot of methods you can use to create AAA art that don't require the ridiculous timeframes

>All in all your making a lot of calls while properly having no experience with any of the stuff that you are talking about. Some of us work in the industry and don't appreciate silly pissing contests about whose mod is better than whose. Your mod is neat. Good job on it. Please stop posting here only with the intention of trolling. >I've actually written a thesis for my Masters degree in Games Design To second this, my degree is a bachelor of fine arts in game art and design.

It's not just the Barracks. It's basically every structure I see in that image. A power plant should logically be larger than a church, and most certainly should be taller than a tree.

Those trees are way too large compared to those military structures.

If you want that style of cliff, it's possible to get it by actually sculpting out the major details in zBrush/Mudbox. Or by utilizing a displacement map with a sufficiently dense (think 1k) mesh for that segment of cliffs. Leave the pebbly look for the bottom of the cliffs because of the way that rocks tend to accumulate on the bottom of a cliff face due to rockslides. Here's some RL examples of how rock formations should look: Notice the exposed rock has banding in it from different types of rock and mineral deposits. Also notice the pebbly rocks are collected at the bottom. This ridge face has no pebbly deposits at the bottom, but it does have a steep angle and a lot of detail you could model in with a displacement map to get the major features. Another issue is that your cliffs aren't randomized enough. The pebbly structures aren't lending themselves well to variations in height. It looks as though they're just piled up without any indication of seismic activity in the past. If none of this matters, that's cool. What you have will work. But I think that you could really push this to the next level by utilizing some design cues from nature. Speaking of that, many of the snow terrain environments in TS were based in Scandinavia - one mission was in Hammerfest, Norway, and another was just outside of Stockholm in Sweden. Plus there was a mission in Midtjylland in the middle part of Denmark. Don't hesitate to use terrain ideas from those environments. You can see what I based my Fjord level off: Not exactly Hammerfest, but it's close enough for Renegade purposes.

I'm definitely not a fan of that approach here. They look less like cliffs and more like oversized stone pebbles that a giant placed against the walls. I don't think the RenX "style" is going to translate over very well without SSAO, normals, specularity, etc. Even then, it doesn't look as good as it would if it were based on actual cliffs found in nature. It's not bad, but I think you could do a lot better.

In the future, it's better to render out wireframe shots instead of taking screenshots of your viewport. As far as critique goes, here's what I see immediately. The missile launcher shouldn't be cut up with that many polygons. A box can be made with 12 triangles, or 6 quad faces. You have far too many there and they're not being utilized to add detail to the object. The same goes with the attachment to the missile launcher. You can keep the profile but remove the edge loops in the center of it. This also applies to the cannon or anyplace else that the polygons you've added aren't giving definition to the model in any discernible way. I understand that you're trying to make a sci-fi version of a Bradley IFV, but if you want to start doing that I'd recommend using a tutorial on how to model properly before you attempt to do anything that doesn't have reference material. I've attached some links that will illustrate what I mean: http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/3D-Studio-Max-Modeling-a-Tank/41646

Worry less about numerical values for the textures and focus entirely on how to make them look better. Especially consider using UVW Unwrap to manually stitch together the UV shells of the mountains so there's no seams. You have a good start but it could easily be substantially better looking with a bit of work. I can do some paint-overs for your images if you want to see what I mean.

I can't critique it without the references you used and some wireframe shots.

You might find it better to post more than "X sucks" and explain why you think that way.

It's pretty awful looking TBH

The word for that genre is actually called trance, and it was a rather popular song in 2000.

No, he's referring to the first design I came up with back in 2002. I can't remember what it was called, but it was extremely basic Nevermind, I found my old video that DJLaptop put together: http://www.fileplanet.com/117610/download/Red-Alert-Renegade-Mod-Video

IIRC, the earliest versions of the project had team-colored vehicles. This was 2002, though, so I don't think anyone would even have the project files for that anymore. I've long since lost that stuff.

A guy by the name of nikki6ixx made that image.

It's okay to not want a discussion on a subject. It's another to participate in that discussion, encourage that discussion, and then call for it to be stopped entirely because it's not going the direction that you want it to. What motivations do you expect to glean from us? No one here worked on RA:FPS. You would have to ask Zunnie for that information, and he doesn't post here.

Arguing "I like it, so you can't argue with the fact that I like it" doesn't further a conversation. Your personal preferences aren't being debated. I don't care about what you enjoy playing - what I care about is what can be objectively measured. There is something wrong with APB that has destroyed its player base from the heights it experienced in 2004-2007 and nothing has changed that. Also, for what it's worth: you brought up APB and chatted with us about it. Even if you didn't, someone would because RA:FPS is difficult to discuss without bringing APB into it.

By "semi-active community" are you referring to the minuscule amount of people who play? Because it averages, at most, 1-2 players per week IIRC. That isn't much of a community by any objective standard. The best thing you can do for APB is to criticize it and offer suggestions for it to improve. To do otherwise is condemning it to its continued existence on dwindling life support.

I disagree completely. Compared to many other free endeavors that are currently available, APB looks incredibly dated. From an artist's perspective, the textures lack detail, the models aren't accurate to the source material, and as a game designer: the gameplay isn't fun. There's varying levels of quality, of course. But it's definitely not high quality, or even moderate. It's medium-low quality and this is objectively comparing it to anything else that exists within its class. It's dead because it isn't enjoyable. One could also argue that it's dead because it looks old, but that's merely a contributing factor.

By solid, do you mean "solidly dead"? Because it's pretty dead. There's a lot of reasons for that I'm sure anyone here would love to elaborate on.

On a second inspection, it appears I'm misreading these posts. Using the UV Unwrap modifier is a superior choice for adjusting UVs. UVW Mapping is a modifier that sees more use as a quick layout tool.

There is no simple answer for this issue. Buildings are large objects and will require a lot of texel density to look good compared to tiling terrain textures or anything else in the environment they're in. As a general rule, I avoid giving buildings their own per-face (AKA unwrapped) texture. A specific texture designed only for one building is generally a waste of texture memory. What you'd add in that texture could be done with a tiling texture when you cut up the geometry to match the texture. This is how textures for Tiberium are created right now: This allows for higher texel density with lower texture memory being used at a cost of rendering more polygons. It's generally a better tradeoff to make.