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Outerra Tech Demo download. Help with graphics driver issues

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Author Topic: Images from ME-DEM project  (Read 55098 times)

Redrobes

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« Reply #15 on: May 08, 2011, 06:56:30 am »

Well, especially since this is the Outerra forums and the app supports buildings and vector data, the main thing I think people could do is pick up bits of the world and make some of the buildings. Kicking about somewhere is the Minas Tirith Project so that might exist. But loads of other things need to be done. The two towers, Hobbiton, Bree, Rivendell etc.

Would be nice to recreate that scene where they are in the boat going down Anduin and pass the granite kings at Argonath.

On the MeDem forums we should put together a list of models that can be had so far and have another list of 'would like' models. I don't think it matters too much at this stage what format they need to be in. I am guessing sketchup would be the app of choice but a OBJ or MAX or something might be just as good.

Jak_o_Shadows

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« Reply #16 on: May 08, 2011, 05:59:11 pm »

I'd be quite happy to throw myself at 3D modelling some stuff. I'm not too good without solid references, and i'm fairly hopeless at people (so i guess that means the statues as well :P)
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monks

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« Reply #17 on: May 09, 2011, 07:48:18 am »

Guys, feel free to build some models!- they can be shared around the forum here can't they. I've got a lot of fantasy role playing material detailing site maps of towns, buildings, fortresses, castles, etc. There's some refs in those, but you can find refs of buildings on the net. Sketchup already has a bank of models. You might find something in the boards of the Minas Tirith project, dunno.
 I reckon Sketchup would be best- but I'm speaking from a layman's point of view. That's the app I'd use- and in fact if I wasn't so tied up with the terrain I'd dive right in there and build some too.
 You could go two ways really. Build re-usable buildings that will occur a lot. Or build from site maps- and re-use the individual models for other areas. There's lots of stuff knocking around on the net. There is a Minas Tirith model but it's nowhere near the detail of the one they built in Minas Tirith project. I think that's pretty much dead anyway and they didn't want to share their assets unfortunately.
 One of the models I'd love to see is Carn Dum- I built the surrounding site for it a few years ago. You can see it here:
http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/Quad_02_CarnDum/gallery.htm

 It just needs the fortress. But feel free to build whatever you like.
 If you register on ME-DEM we can talk about it there, but I'm happy to hang here too.


 I tried a new workflow using real terrain data. I think the mountains look fine now when viewed from orbit..

http://www.skindustry.net/medem/files/Phase2/Terrain_1.0/NASARun/2011/Screens/AlpsView.png

 The need a fair bit of work though because the valleys don'tt naturally fall into the surrounding terrain. I can do that in something like Leveller manually. I've pretty much been doing that anyway with the old method, so it's not actually any more work.
 The Alps tend to fall away in height to the south, so I'd have to apply to some height offsetting in that area to beef up the mountains around Isengard.
 We could also extend this idea to hills too as we have distribution maps for those. We might even be able to extend it to every part of the model synthesising the real world terrain with the underlying surface. I've got an idea that uses watersheds- build the terrain via watersheds. That would create the most believable river systems.

monks
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C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #18 on: May 09, 2011, 12:41:22 pm »

I've actually been wanting to do some of that (making structures).  I need to for my world anyway, some of which have ME-analogs.  If I can ever get Lightwave working again, I can export in a variety of formats.  I have ZBrush as well, so I can make some awesome details for normal mapping, creating higher quality textures/models :)  But until I can get this Lightwave issue resolved, I'm stuck :(
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Redrobes

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« Reply #19 on: May 09, 2011, 12:52:20 pm »

I think just some basic shapes and textures would be fine. Normal maps are quite specialized for terrain mapping. We have found that there is a certain amount of quantity required as well as quality and you can get bogged down doing just a few buildings really well when there is a whole town to complete.

Also, whats the matter with your lightwave ? And I use a little app called 3D to 3D which can change a lot of formats about. Meshlab can do several more and Blender has a moderately big list too. Sketchup files are just zipped up Collada files which I know blender can deal with. Rename dot SKU to dot zip. Unzip and import the dot DAE file into Blender with Collada option and then you can export it from there. Don't know if it supports more than the shape tho. I export LWO then with 3dto3d to OBJ and thats my native format. I think sketchup can import OBJ but not sure as I am not all that familiar with it.

So whats Outerra's preferred model object format ?

Links:
http://www.bebits.com/app/1717
tho my version is a little older at V3.5

C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #20 on: May 09, 2011, 02:23:29 pm »

Quote
Also, whats the matter with your lightwave ?

I'm not quite sure yet.  It's not exactly a Lightwave problem, per se, but something computer-related, possibly to the OpenGL drivers on the graphics card, or a missing or corrupted Windows file.  Unfortunately, the error logs are not giving me ANY details.  I've rolled back my video drivers (several different iterations dating back almost a year), including those I've used before, but so far none of that has fixed the issue.  Sometime Wednesday afternoon I'm going to try another fix and see if that works.

The good thing about Zbrush is that you can take an extremely low resolution model and give it high resolution displacement with almost no impact, even with small normal maps.  In some of the stuff I've seen, models with even as little as 500 polygons can appear to have 10k with Zbrush-created normals :).  Makes painting UV maps much easier as well, as you can paint directly on the model and save the UVs out when finished.

As I eagerly await the Outerra demo, I was building a "mountain villa" for my own personal use, before Lightwave stopped working :).  I even have a perfect spot located already. :lol: The villa will feature a museum of some of my favorite artwork from various fantasy/scifi authors, as well as some of my own.  I'll add some other cool things into it as new features are released.  Guess I'll also need to figure out which cool vehicle I want to build so I can drive it around :).  Maybe a formula 1 or NASCAR vehicle, after seeing the banked roads video.
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What we think, we become -- Buddha
There is no spoon -- Neo, The Matrix
The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Carl Sagan
Outerra is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Me :)
- Yes, I'm still around ... just been busy with other projects ;)

Redrobes

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« Reply #21 on: May 09, 2011, 02:50:15 pm »

Your welcome to download and try out my graphics system tester for ViewingDale but its similarly OpenGL based and uses many of the same calls and suffers similar problems. It checks off the driver and some of the calls. Well just thought it might possibly help out - you never know.

http://www.viewing.ltd.uk/cgi-bin/viewingdale.pl?category=test_app

C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #22 on: May 09, 2011, 02:58:17 pm »

Ahh thanks.  Well that tells me my problem isn't OpenGL (other OpenGL programs seem to run fine ... I was originally thinking one of the OpenGL links within Lightwave was corrupted, but even a clean reinstall didn't fix it ... this pretty much settles that it's not an OpenGL or graphics driver issue.

Sorry to derail this topic :).  I'll dig a little deeper tomorrow and Wednesday to see if I can't get this working again.  A Lightwave guru buddy of mine gave me a few avenues to pursue (including the OpenGL possibility), so I'll be trying those fixes soon enough.
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What we think, we become -- Buddha
There is no spoon -- Neo, The Matrix
The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Carl Sagan
Outerra is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Me :)
- Yes, I'm still around ... just been busy with other projects ;)

monks

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« Reply #23 on: May 10, 2011, 08:21:04 am »

Bummer about lightwave cshawn- especially as your building project sounds like it was was going so well. That must be very frustrating.


Yes, I don't think you need to create a masterpiece, lots of low detail buildings would be better than one
 highly detailed building.

 Do you folks have a preference- I mean any burning desires to build a specific building or place from Tolkien? :)
 I've got pdfs of the role playing material and a complete hard copy collection.
This is the cloest we got to a model of Carn Dum:
 http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/renders/CarnDum_Seer.png

 http://www.me-dem.me.uk/galleries/renders/CarnDum_Ortho.png

 The model is just a displacement of the terrain- it's not actual models, but you can see the site laid out clearly
from that.
 Ok, I'll upload some pdfs of the stuff I'm talking about- the site maps, etc. Just let me know if you fancy building anything specific.
 
monks
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C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #24 on: May 10, 2011, 01:42:28 pm »

Hmm, getting the walls modeled would be a relatively easy task.  Individual buildings and/or other structures could be instanced relatively easily based on just a few models.

If I can get Lightwave working tomorrow, maybe I can work something on the walls (quick hack job, nothing fancy yet).

Since you guys seem to be experts in Tolkienese (:D) any idea on the height of the walls?

*Edit* and, um, perhaps we should take further discussion over onto your forums, instead of cluttering up Cameni's thread  :lol:
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What we think, we become -- Buddha
There is no spoon -- Neo, The Matrix
The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Carl Sagan
Outerra is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Me :)
- Yes, I'm still around ... just been busy with other projects ;)

Tottel

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« Reply #25 on: May 10, 2011, 03:19:40 pm »

I can think of a few locations that would be relatively easy to begin with (compared to the rest of Middle-Earth):

The Shire, since it's mainly landscape, with the buildings dug in the terrain.
Isengard (before Saruman got corrupted): A ring-wall, a single tower and a green environment. :)

Well, "easy" combined with 'cool'. :)
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C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #26 on: May 10, 2011, 05:04:10 pm »

Now that I'm thinking about it, I have two of the statues of the Argonath from my collector's edition LoTR :).  I can probably do a Zbrush sculpt on it, redo the topography on the base mesh, and then export it out as an obj file.  The only problem with Zbrush is that it's UV's are unorthodox, so modifying them after the model is done would be problematic in Photoshop.  That part doesn't bother me personally, but if you wanted to personally change something, it would be a headache.  I'll have to experiment with some of my UV Unwrapper tools to see if I can convert the Zbrush ones to something more user-friendly.

Anyone know what the one on the left is holding in his right hand?  The right one is holding a sword.  It's been WAY too long since I've read the books, and memory escapes me.
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What we think, we become -- Buddha
There is no spoon -- Neo, The Matrix
The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Carl Sagan
Outerra is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Me :)
- Yes, I'm still around ... just been busy with other projects ;)

monks

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« Reply #27 on: May 10, 2011, 05:56:13 pm »

"Each of the two figures was shown wearing a crown and a helm, with an axe in its right hand and its left hand raised in a gesture of defiance to the enemies of Gondor."

 It's been a while for me too  :)
 Peeps can register on the ME-DEM forums. You need to let me know though if you have or are trying to. We had a problem sometime ago with people having to wait- I'm not the webmaster. Not sure if it's still the same 'setup'. ;)

 We can start a new thread over there.
 I'm in the middle of uploading a lot of useful info. Should be up later.


monks
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C. Shawn Smith

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« Reply #28 on: May 10, 2011, 06:15:08 pm »

All righty.  I'll try to get registered tonight or tomorrow.  Not sure if I can contribute these models, but I will do what I can :).  Hopefully whatever I can contribute will translate directly into my personal world, and make everyone happy :)

Except for the Argonath ... I think the Tolkiens would have a problem with that :D  At least my "Dagan" area on my world will invoke the same sense of awe though ;)  (Inside information)
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What we think, we become -- Buddha
There is no spoon -- Neo, The Matrix
The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Carl Sagan
Outerra is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. -- Me :)
- Yes, I'm still around ... just been busy with other projects ;)

monks

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« Reply #29 on: May 10, 2011, 06:18:57 pm »

cshawn, model something that will translate. May as well kill 2 birds with one stone!
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