YR Total Conversion - Dominance

[Blade]

I'll post a blend of my work in progress RA2 upgrade center when I get home (and if I remember) that has more or less correct RA2 lighting and camera angles if that will help.

Out of interest, have you turned off all AA in blender or just background AA... I didn't believe it possible to do the latter and had to resort to some compositing jiggery pokery to achieve the same effect as turning off background AA under 3DSMax.

[pd]

You could look into Flyby's 3ds max script and get the light coords and angles.
(Is there any mirror for it other than the HDD in my cupboard?)

[Blade]

I forgot to upload the file, but I'm sure I will eventually. The blend I will upload has the camera and light coordinates based on that 3DS script BTW.

[mt.]

You could look into Flyby's 3ds max script and get the light coords and angles.
(Is there any mirror for it other than the HDD in my cupboard?)

I can not obtain 3dsmax due to several RL restrictions (and I am not talking about money, I do know the 'alternatives to purchasing'.)

I forgot to upload the file, but I'm sure I will eventually. The blend I will upload has the camera and light coordinates based on that 3DS script BTW.

This truly would be a godsend... I've long since given up on trial-and-error XP

Out of interest, have you turned off all AA in blender or just background AA... I didn't believe it possible to do the latter and had to resort to some compositing jiggery pokery to achieve the same effect as turning off background AA under 3DSMax.

I too, have searched long and hard for a solution for weeks.
At first I found some, but they required an editing per frame, which would take too long for all my animations.

Later, I found the best solution by pure chance: In the Rendering Buttons, choose "Key".
The effect of this is that the background is not considered at all; it is pitch black no matter what you set it to, and yes no AA messing up the model's sides.
Another side effect is that a really bright pixel or two appear by the edge to background, although this can easily be fixed in SHP Builder (for a 40 frame anim, it usually take only ~10 mins of this fixing).

[Blade]

Right, here we go. The camera is set so one square on the grid equals one tile in game (or there about, haven't done the math to prove that it is, but it looks close enough). The lighting is based upon the 3DS script with one or two alterations so it looked all right in blenders renderer.

To get the image to have AA, but not be AA to the background you'll have to get involved with the compositor. Basically what I have done (if you change the view to the compositor setting I created in this blend you will see) is set up a system that requires two render passes. The first does not use the compositor and generates a none AA image sequence with key alpha. The second uses AA with key alpha, but also uses the compositor to generate the final image. The compositor is set up to take a sequence of images (for the first pass) and replace the alpha channel from the second pass with that from the first pass (gives an AA image, but non AA transparency). It then composites this over a pure blue image that is the same size as the final render to make generating the .shp easier for RA2 and outputs to file.

[Renegade]

I haven't tested it, but as a casual blender-user myself, I am very pleased to see this

[mt.]

Is there any possibility, this could be explained in simple terms that someone with no experience with nodes or compositors could follow? Or will this require a full learning of these logics? XP

[Blade]

I wouldn't say I have fully learned the compositor logics by a long way, but doing a basic compositing tutorial couldn't hurt. The compositor can probably do other stuff like the contrast alterations that the rendering script did in 3DSMax to get closer to the RA2 look, but I never managed to get it to look right.

[mt.]

Compared to the last time I posted here, there has been significant progress. To my surprise I don't see a lot of mods posting progress threads here, but I shall continue as the feedback here (and particularly Blade's .blend file which caused the revamp) is invaluable.

First and foremost, based on your feedback about the lighting and buildups, I have revamped the graphics of every single structure.



All structure updates:
(every building is made in Blender by me, MT, except for some textures on the mech factory by IceDragon)

construction yard



powerplant



barracks



communications center




processor




mech factory (scrapped old wf design and tried again.)
Note: The texture on the door, and behind the door is by Icedragon, a modeller on the Dominance team. As usual the rest of the building stuff is by me, MT




command relay

Radar anim - takes too much space so just click here instead


plasma cannon (this concept by inzane krazy, the building stuff is all by me, MT though)




Ah, that is the revamp stuff. Started by you guys not liking the lighting and then Blade's Blend file (thanks). But wait- there's more.

AltomareXD, one of Dominance's Graphic artists, made some more graphics:

(comment about the flags and background image, ignore the map, ra2 country names, the sidebar, and other things: they will eventually be replaced as well.)


New BIK image! The BIK actually animations and shows the runes changing and switching.

IceDragon200, one of Dominance's 3d modellers, who is doing the mecha for the Kautine Empire has done some decent work too:
(that's right, they use mechs now. Those crappy tanks on page 1 are all gone)
KERA scout:



WIP - KERA Missile Mech

(ignore the cyan)

Okay, that is pretty much the bulk of our progress since last time.
Comments would be much appreciated, once again

[PartyzanPaulzy]

Big improvement since the last update, however some parts of CY looks like plastic...
or polished marble .

[Renegade]

Purrrrrrrrdy
* Renegade likes

One thing you should consider is leaving some uneven transparency at the edges of the foundation, so that it looks like the buildings and the ground actually interact with each other...right now, the buildings still look a little pasted on.

But the buildings themselves are 10 times better!

[Professor_Tesla]

Whoahyeah....It looks awesome...

[Whiteboy]

This looks extremely good. Makes me want to check to see if YR still runs on my computer again...

[mt.]

Thanks guys.

One thing you should consider is leaving some uneven transparency at the edges of the foundation, so that it looks like the buildings and the ground actually interact with each other...right now, the buildings still look a little pasted on.

Hmm. I am planning to do all the 3d work first, then learn some photoshop and blend each bases to the theaters, as well as adding dust and sand.

So your suggestion sounds good, it shall be done eventually then, like how the lighting got fixed.

[Electro]

Real words escape me, so I'll say this: MEGAWESOMETASTIC!