Fur Test (wookies and more) image - Rise of the Mandalorians mod for Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
The Empire has fallen and a New Republic is born out of the conflict. But in the ashes of civil war, yet another life stirs...
Fur Test (wookies and more)
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Description
Alright, so this is NOT A FINISHED PRODUCT. This screenshot is more a proof of concept for an approach I'm taking towards building units that have fur. I was hoping to get some feedback on the look to see whether the technique is something worth refining, or if I should just drop it all and give up now.
If this technique works, then not only can it be used for Wookies in RotM but I plan to use it for Brutes in my Halo mod and other things as needed.
Please leave feedback in the comments.
I'm afraid that with the current state of DirectX9 shaders in alamo you won't be able to achieve the effect you desire. Especially if you consider your artstyle. You hand paint it all, so I would stick to a more simple approach. I would look at other stylised games that feature furred animals. Blizzard's HotS, Dota2, some older games. I'm sure you'll find something.
So that's one vote for "just give up now". Lol
I'm kidding. I appreciate the feedback! What you're seeing is in the ALO viewer so is pretty close to in-game rendering. I assume you were aware of that but I was curious if there was anything specific you didn't like or if it was just a general doesn't feel right, reaction?
I think it's mostly the combination of blurred and noisy areas. The fur strands are trying to sharpen the overall look, but the translucent shader is doing the opposite. Especially on the mesh's edge.
Another game that came to my mind is Galaxy of Heroes.
EDIT: Plus the size of the size of fur itself is off. looks too large.
Yeah the transparency shader in this game is garbage, unfortunately. It really makes the textures applied to it look like trash.
Galaxy of heroes has two different versions of Chewbacca now. The Clone Wars version is a mesh with flat texture applied. The newer "Veteran Smuggler" version actually does attempt to make fur but even that game uses far better shaders than what EaW is capable of supporting. Unfortunately, my attempts to improve the alpha shader all end the same: working shader not compatible in ALO engine...
What shader features are you using that aren't supported by the ALO engine? Are there limits besides having to use DX9?
DX9, shader model 2.
For example, I made a shader which supported diffuse texture, normal mapping, teamcolors, and alpha transparency. The shader works in the map editor but doesn't work in-game.
The map editor renders a bit different than in-game... Unfortunately I don't know enough about Open GL to WHY it isn't working, just that it doesn't. I've checked with an Open GL linter and such too, just in case... It always checks out ok.
this Texture makes your Wookies kinda chewie ...........
as someone with no knowledge of how to model or texture I kinda like it
Pros pls roast me in the comments below as I am a noob
No need. Comment is self-roasting.
I think it looks good, though I can't say I recall too well what the vanilla wookies looked like close up so some of the improvement is undoubtedly lost on me.
In any case I certainly see nothing wrong with it, looks very good and semi-realistic particularly in the lighter areas.
Stock wookies were just a blocky model with flat texture. No attempt at actual fur was made.
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Tough to say really.
It certainly doesn't look as good up close as your other work.
And from farther away I think it's pretty hard to notice.
Maybe it looks different with a side-by-side comparison of with/without the 'fuzzy' effect?
I had to really dig for this old screenshot... This is what Wookies currently look like:
Moddb.com
It's better than the vanilla model but I just thought it fell short overall. That's a point of reference though anyway.
Personally I think the old wookies already looks pretty good and also fits the motif of the rest of the mod. But that's just the opinion of one lone prole. :P
I agree. Extra work for a tiny detail that will mostly go unnoticed in a Rts with an outdated engine? I think your "old" wookie is more than enough :)
But if you still want to try and improve fur just go trial and error, thats the way.
Love it!
I'm torn... I do see what you're trying to achieve, but the shader doesn't really support it. In the end it looks more like a ghosting effect, than furry.
Tough, really. But I'd really like to know how it looks from a little further away, or even in motion, because EaW has a tendency to look better in motion. Mostly because you don't really notice the shortcomings that much.
So fun fact here that I hadn't considered before... The alpha shader in this game doesn't Z sort properly. So anytime chewbacca walks through grass or trees (anything also using the alpha shader) both object begin to flicker as they fight for position in the scene.
So... In the end, my idea fails because bad shaders. Hooray.
I could theoretically try to correct this by editing the shaders but I know that writing things into the Z buffer (fixing their position in the depth of the scene) is supposed to be used very sparingly because it's memory intensive. I don't know if that principle is still true in modern computing but then, this is an old game engine.
Well, if it doesn't work correctly anyway, I guess my opinion doesn't matter much anymore, but I was torn as well.
For what it's worth, it might be a good idea to look at the Wookies in the animated Clone Wars show for the way they did fur. I'm not the biggest fan of the animated stuff overall, but the Wookies looked alright. Just don't look at Rebels, they're apparently awful there.
I continuesly praise you for trying to make this game perform new gymnastics but I feel like this is not going to work out, reasons:
The amount of layers (atleast 4+) you need to make the fur not look "tagged on" like it does now would require an amount of polies you'd probably not be comfortable with, given your usual low-poly preference.
The level of detail mismatches the level of detail in the rest of the game. I'm 100% guilty of doing this with my own models, but I'll point it out here anyway: The fur is a level of detail so small, that even though it's nice, since this level of detail is missing on many of the other units it might look a little out of place. I feel this mod's great strength is the unified art-style, and throwing in different levels of detail (like this micro-detailing) really throws the rest off-balance. It gets people asking "Why fur on wookies but 6 sided engines and gunbarrels?".
When this came up I immediately thought one of the biggest innovators in this game should pitch in, Empremi, and I was pleased to see the very first comment was indeed, Enpremi's. He's already pitched in, and I would also recommend looking at how other games with similar art-styles do fur, there's plenty to choose from.
Of course, this may be one failed attempt at greatness when the next will yield amazing results, so if you want to make this work don't be discouraged by negative comments, there surely exists a combination of techniques that makes this look great, but I don't think it is the current version. So feel free to keep trying, sometimes you have to try something 50 times and fail only to succeed at attempt 51.
That's great feedback, thank you!
I know all too well the principle of getting your one success after 50+ failures... Modding is a slog, though a rewarding and enjoyable one.
Looking good.
I mean it looks way better than the original so even if it looks less than your other work, i don't mind it. Improvement is still improvement