D.I.P.R.I.P. Mod for Half-Life 2 The Hedgehog shows its spikes! news

You took the words right out of my fingertips mr_greenfish.... I am guessing, due to the smoothness of the piping and spikes and the rest of the super detail, it would be around the 30 to 40 thousand, MINIMUM as those cylinders have a least 64 sides each or more... whooowa... I assume you will use a REDUCE POLY tool to slim this fat lady of a model??... but looking really good.... you have obviously spent a great deal of time and effort building this puppy.... well done... put her on a low poly diet quick...

mikejekelly, I like the way you quoted me, but then in your comment refferred to nothing on which I commented.

Anyway,

The smaller spikes, such as on the doors can be normal mapped, the topography isn't that drastic. The taller spikes can just have 5 sides (10 polygons each) or 6 depending (12 polygons each). Even with 50, that's only 500 polys on a 8000+ polycount.

Give me this model, I could give you a version under 8000 polys in a few hours, all normal mapped up.

Nice detail :O

looks kewl but the pc looks through the roof

cool got a mesh shot
+ lovin the detail ...eg lock at the back

Polygon overload! :D

Looks good.

Major polygon fun. The detail is AMAZING.

That's amazing.... :o

its called normal mapping
thats all its for and it will make a sweet one no dought

Hej guys its a hi poly model :) it can't be used ingame :). We use hipoly models for 3D concept and later for baking normal maps :).

A lot of this detail which is modeled with polygons can be put into normal map :). Low poly textured model will come forward in some time... that is our natural workflow.

Look for example at our Ratmobile model. Hipoly concept model had about 120K polygons but the lowpoly model is a bit more than 11K polygons. Ofcourse some of this detail will propably have to be dropped but in case of Ratmobile there wasn't a lot of stuff that we had to thow away.

This mod looks fantastic.

Remember guys, the high poly model may only be used to generate bumpmaps whilst a low poly is used in game!

I just watched a video on youtube about this mod. I just searched "hl2 mod" and got this puppy. Never heard of it before, then I checked this page and saw that they had posted these screenshots. Awesome! Heres the vid if anyone wants to check it out. I don't know how old it is.
<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JYZ1eMpsz3Q"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JYZ1eMpsz3Q" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

Youtube.com

That.

Rules.

Whoa, I want to drive that to work.

might look pretty but you cant possibly put that many polys into source for one vehicle, its a massive waste.

dont get me wrong they look really amazing, but just not practical. What is the polycount by the way?

woah, nice car, will look good for an cinimatic sequence or someting similar, but ingame, no go...

Way to much polies or ingame, except if you use it for normal mapping...

One more thing, this is a nice design, but remember that texturing it can be a big load, because a texture can make, or break the model.

awesome work there! Very nice

I find it quite comical that some people act as if they know the HL2 engine, i.e. "way over the poly limit" but in reality have no idea about it. Its quite obvious its for normal mapping. Poor, poor newbies. :)

lol @ M@ty, the majority of the ppl on here are not "Poor, poor newbies"

m@ty, it's not obvious that it was intended for normal mapping as it wasn't made clear in the news post. So I was just bringing the issue up so the people who look at it will know that this kind of detail will not be seen in-game. tbh it should have been stated in the news post that this is not a model intended for in-game.

considering the links lead to a page of shots including proper in-game screenshots, i'm surprised those werent shown here. a bit mis-leading methinks.

anyway honestly though, great work to the modeller, they've obviously spent a long time working on it.

"I find it quite comical that some people act as if they know the HL2 engine, i.e. "way over the poly limit" but in reality have no idea about it. Its quite obvious its for normal mapping. Poor, poor newbies."

I doubt it will work for normal mapping. The difference in topology is too extreme to achieve an effective illusion of mass through normal or bump mapping. For reference, look at normal mapped characters. The areas within their sillohettes look highly detailed while the sillohettes themselves look relatively boxy. The spikes on the car help to form the sillouhette of the car from any angle, and since normal mapping cannot change the sillouhette to an appreciable degree, normal mapping will not be able to acheive the desired effect of a car with spikes. The topology variances are just too extreme.

Think of it like this, do you think a modeler could model a cube and then project a normal map of 5000 poly model onto it and have it look like anything? No. I assume they'll have to drop most of the spikes.

I really find it quite comical that ppl who have no idea about any of this would cast dirisions. Poor, poor newbies.

Well given there are perhaps 100 spikes on the thing, there'es no reason why each spike can't be dropped to 3 or 4 polys each - making up a fraction of the 8-10k bugdet that Source would require. Really, the normal map will work - it will give the illusion of soft conical spikes when not in sillohette, while they still maintain a spiky feel in sillohette, which I think is the object of them as you say.

So yes, this will work fine for normal mapping. And I think it would be pretty obvious to anyone who has modded or is modding Source, that this is a model made for normal map. As one of the team said, it is a natural workflow in Source to first model a high poly version, and later reduce polys and apply the normal map + texture.

Maybe. I think I'd have to see it to believe it though!

More power to 'em if they can pull it off!

Also, if they think our PCs can handle it, a relief mapped version of this would absolutely concrete my faith in that technology. And it would keep its profile.

M@ty, I like the way that you cannot follow a linear argument. *smiley face?*

Your comment ridiculed ppl who thought that this model was "way over the poly limit" and stated that the model was for normal mapping.

My comment stated that I didn't think that it would work for normal mapping and that I thought it was over the poly limit (i.e., they would have to drop some spikes). It doesn't get much more relevant than that.

Can you guys tell me which program you use to make the normal map from the hi-poly model for the low poly one? As I have not been able to get NVidias one to work and falls over constantly.....

We use 3DSMAX for modeling and also for baking normal maps. Additionally i like to use NVidia plugin for photoshop to correct errors on normalmap.

Here is a nice tutorial for creating normalmaps in 3DSMax:

Poopinmymouth.com

Thank you very much... I usually make my own normal maps if I am able, using the old greyscale topographic bumpmap system then convert them, but this is much appreciated... thanks again...