Sapphire Wand

veirdo

Hexen Weapons Pack.

UPDATE 24.07.2014: Current version 0.444
In this pack:

HUD Spiked Gauntlets and punch FX



HUD Sapphire Wand with projectile and hit FX




HUD Frostshards with projectile and hit FX




World Weapon Frostshards


Iced Death FX


World Weapon Arc Of Death


HUD Arc Of Death and Lightning FX




World Weapon Bloodscourge


HUD Bloodscourge with projectile and explosion FX




Items:
Crystal Vial


Quartz Flask


Blue, Green and Combined Mana


Flechette item and effects for all three classes





Flame Mask item


Decor:
Wall Torch


Twined Torch


Addon is here

Tested in Doomsday 1.14.5 stable

Next
Fighter class weapons. Timon's Axe

WIP Section

Vermil

Hmmm, something with either that model or models in general appears to crash the latest unstable build with a seg violation, seemingly randomly when you fire it.

That said, the model looks nice (though obviously by it'self, it sticks out a bit due to the different art style; brigher and more colourful rather than dark and gritty) though it could do with some more polies in the staff part.

Why seemingly no smooth pulling back animation?

veirdo

Thank you for feedback, Vermil. I'll try to fix all art style and animation problems soon. B-)

I don't know what's wrong with the model, but I have the same Segmentation Violation error, even if I change the model with the good and tested one (Bloodscourge for example), or started other class, where the model dosn't present.
But if you install this pack with Wand.pk3 the problem will gone. I don't know why, because in this pack only some decor models and reflection masks. I tried to remove decor models from this pack, but the Segmentation error appears again. I don't see the link at all :-/

And there is no problem with this model in older version of Doomsday engine (1.8.6)

DaniJ

Your model definitions include references to a "Common/Softshiny.png" shiny skin which isn't included in Wand.pk3. This does however reveal that missing shiny skins aren't tolerated at present (a bug).

veirdo

Ok, I removed broken links in *.ded file, and Segmentation Violation Error appeared again. But in compilation the model work well, without any errors. All links updated in the topic.

About smooth pullback animation.
For now all animation made by engine itself, I just swap original sprite sequence by 3d model sequence. Now I dig in Heretic resource pack and dengine wiki to learn how to override or add animation to HUD weapon states.

DaniJ

Testing your model in the latest unstable build 570 I get no crash and it seems to be working correctly.

Nice work on the model, it looks just like the sprite. Have you considered making the crystal partially translucent so that the player can see the back faces of the crystal's facets?

veirdo

Finally I solved most tricky problem to get animation from Houdini Apprentice (non commercial) to md2 format. There are no fbx export in non commercial version of Houdini.
In short, the pipeline looks like: Houdini (export obj + animated point cache as mdd) => Blender 2.4.9 (Import obj, connect animated mdd, export md2) => Misfit Model 3D (to edit animation clips) => md2tool (final clean up and optimization).
I already achieve smooth animation between states and now tweaking animation itself.
2 DaniJ: I split the Crystal model into two parts to make upper part semi-transparent. I think it looks good and I will upload new model after finishing animation work.

DaniJ

I've just been testing the latest version of your wand model (dated 24.07.2012) and for some reason it is crashing release builds of Doomsday but not debug builds. The (bug) hunt is on!

veirdo

I add animation to model, but can't fully compensate stepped pullback/release animation made by id/raven engine.
For now I want to stop work on this model and switch to the next. Anyway I always listen a reasonable comments to improve it or fix a bug.
All links updated in the topic

Milten

Tested your 03.08 version with the newest unstable 578 (1.9.9) and it crashes often with a segmentation violation.
The Doomsday.out didn't give any valuable information though.

Beside that I have to say great work on that model.

DaniJ

We are currently looking into the cause of that crash. It appears to be an issue specific to the release builds for the Windows platform produced by the autobuilder. In a version of the same release I built manually on my dev system there is no crash and the add-on works as expected.

Milten

That is a bit odd.
Well, I made a bit of testing and I found out something else.
If I play the common Hexen, in the first map, the game will definitely crash with the model activated.
Though if I play Hexen with the Addon, it seems to work just fine. I haven't had a crash in the first map at least. Maybe just coincidence.

veirdo

I have to model some new stuff for sapphire wand: missile, smoke(ray) and puff fx. But now I can't finish my work because of segmentation violation error. I just can't test models in game. Looking forward for a stable build of doomsday engine.
Here is a beta version of new models.

Vermil

I used an older version of Doomsday to test the model with this time because indeed, a crash 18 odd seconds after starting a game with the model makes it difficult to test.

The missile looks good. I've wished in the past that some more of the missiles in the games (obviously such an approach wouldn't work with all missiles) would be done in such a way.

Though the missile is a lighter shade of blue than the sprite missile. Also by making the trail full bright where as it originally wasn’t, you've changed the game play balance slightly (I'm thinking of DM play here). EDIT; ok the trail being full bright may be due the version of Dday I used to test the model, that you may have used a model flag added since that version.

There is also a narrow hole in the model where the bottom of the gem doesn't go into the rest of the wand fully.

veirdo

After adding fx to wand model, the game ceased to crash in current stable build 1.9.8-1. So I make some changes and update link in topic.
About missile: in original Hexen game it hardly noticeable because it has the same size and color as a trail. In jHexen I make it bright to link with bright shards in puff fx.
The trail I leave a dark color as the original.
About wand model: actually there IS a huge hole between gem and handle. To make model fit the sprite it has been severely distorted. But you should not see the hole from HUD camera. Maybe you give me a screenshot there the problem is?

Also I can't make a puff model to work with "Transparent" settings to fade it out on last frame. It just ignore it and stays fullbright in any cases. The Glow fx in wand model with the same settings works pretty well.

UPD. You can download updated file from topic, there I fix a hole, I think.

rmladenov

Good work! This model works perfectly. It does not seem to cause faults, everything works perfectly!

Vermil

Well, by hole, I meant there is a narrow horizontal gap between the back of the gem and the wand that we can see through.

Also, a little nitpick about the missile explosion, can you start the ring off at a slightly larger scale; I think the ring starts of a bit small compared to the missiles size.

That said, I'm not sure about the new missile explosion fx you've added to the latest version (that you snunk in with your hole fix). They make the explosion seem too busy and that they have gravity seems at odds with the main missile explosion which doesn't. I also don't think the balls part of the new fx fit at all.

veirdo

This is normal for explosion to have some parts more heavy, and more affected by gravity, than others. Explosion looks "busy" because it grows up and stopped, then switched off without fading. I cannot solve this yet. There a two ways: make fx by particles or model_particles. They can correctly fade in and out, but there are some issues. For particles I can't make them birth with random rotate angle. The model_particles have great possibilities but cannot lock one of their axis to camera (like model flags "alignyaw" and "alignpitch"). I'm not very happy with wand explosion fx, but for now it is time to switch to the next model. Maybe later I'll return to improve it, then my skill with definition sintax grew up.
There are some small fixes in model updated in topic.

Besli

Superb work, and very close to the original/sprites!
Thank you!

Gordon

i will dl your wand and see but if you have a certain flag set then it will look heavy i think it's a variable.

Edit: just tested and it looks ok except for the seg violation i will see if it's anything to do with the DED but most likely it's the model it's self causing this

veirdo

One new model: frostshards item. Small part of the forthcoming frostshards pack.

Bloax

That looks great, but the sapphire is too bright, while the metal thingy seems a bit too dark.

Gordon

it's fine but i do agree the metal needs to be darker

veirdo

Bloax wrote:

metal thingy seems a bit too dark

Gordon wrote:

the metal needs to be darker

You two have such polar views on metal parts )
But one thing I agree with you: for now metal doesn't look like metal. There need to be bright specular reflection on polished parts, but I can't achieve it in color texture only. There are already full brightness in thees texture areas. Sector lighting make it look darker. The reflection texture can add to model more "metal" look, but without mask, reflections walk around all the model and what looks very weird. I don't want specular reflections in holes and caves, nor in the shadowed areas.
Reflection masks doesn't support for models, only for flats :-/

DaniJ

One option would be to separate the metal parts into another submodel. This way your specular highlight would only apply to the "metal bits" submodel and wouldn't affect the rest of it.

I do agree however that a mask would be particularly helpful for models.

veirdo

Even though I had promised myself not to touch model, I tried to add specular highlight to it. Although I do not like such methods, polycount raises by 1.5 times. New model updated in topic.

DaniJ

I'm curious, why must the polycount increase in the process?

veirdo

Because I need two pieces of geometry one over another instead of one with shine mask. I don't want to shine all metal parts.

Vermil

Personally, I'd tone the shine down on the underneath metal, otherwise this ‘specular highlight’ thingy (I'm not a model maker) looks great

That said, I notice that the metal now actually moves as it's alive, when you fire it; why? I admit that I'm not fond of that myself.

DaniJ

veirdo wrote:

Because I need two pieces of geometry one over another instead of one with shine mask. I don't want to shine all metal parts.

Thanks for the image, that explains it all.

Vermil wrote:

That said, I notice that the metal now actually moves as it's alive, when you fire it; why? I admit that I'm not fond of that myself.

I'm not sure but I think you might be objecting to the phenomenon known as "vertex swimming", which, is inherent in the design of the MD2 model format (vertex coordinates are quantized).

veirdo

Vermil is right. The wand IS alive
The wand's metal "wings" slightly move out during attack state.
If you check original Raven sprites you'll see it