[Sarah Bishop]

That's great, take your time!!!

I have a new idea once again:

Maybe you know the phenonemon the game engine produces, when you walk onto a hillside, that is at an angle that is too vertical for walking on, but not vertical enough to make you fall. Effect is, that the player slides down that hill at increased speed. Well, I said to myself, let's make use of that and turned on Blender. I made a simple plane set it at a certain angle and placed it ingame. As I stepped on it, I slided down at a high speed on a perfect straight line.

Now what I will make is large roots/ vines, that wind down from trees or floating rocks onto a level that is much lower. I will take away the collision of those roots and place an invisible collision on top of it, with plane surface and just as much collision to the sides, that the player won't fall off. There you go, you can slide down on a root from tree top to ground watching the jungle to your sides passing by. Maybe I can lead those roots through tunnels, waterfalls and so on...


TheDaywalker :rock:

[Emma Parkinson]

That's great, take your time!!!

I have a new idea once again:

Maybe you know the phenonemon the game engine produces, when you walk onto a hillside, that is at an angle that is to vertical for walking on, but not vertical enough to make you fall. Effect is, that the player slides down that hill at increased speed. Well, I said to myself, let's make use of that and turned on Blender. I made a simple plane set it at a certain angle and placed it ingame. As I stepped on it, I slided down at a high speed on a perfect straight line.

Now what I will make is large roots/ vines, that wind down from trees or floating rocks onto a level that is much lower. I will take away the collision of those roots and place an invisible collision on top of it, with plane surface and just as much collision to the sides, that the player won't fall off. There you go, you can slide down on a root from tree top to ground watching the jungle to your sides passing by. Maybe I can lead those roots through tunnels, waterfalls and so on...


TheDaywalker :rock:

Haha that sounds like a pretty neat idea but I think if you add collision walls to the sides where you will turn the player will get stuck (stuck as in stop not necessarily "help I am stuck and cant get out.")

Could be worth a shot though, it might be kinda fun if it works.

[Chica Cheve]

If my calculations are correct, I won't even need the collision to the sides. In theory, the player should take the direct way on a straight line. When I tip the plane slightly to one side, he should slide down with a tendency to the lowered side. Maybe I can make use of that too and be able to let the player fall off at a certain point of the root, landing in a pool of water or something. As water can only be faked on a level above sea level, it would have to be a faked mesh as an activator that has a script to make sure player don't looses health when landing. Or maybe, a script that checks, if player is standing on the root and in moment he looses contact he gains "slow fall" for some seconds. I'm sure our "scripting-guys" can figure something out for this!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

[Robyn Howlett]

If my calculations are correct, I won't even need the collision to the sides. In theory, the player should take the direct way on a straight line. When I tip the plane slightly to one side, he should slide down with a tendency to the lowered side. Maybe I can make use of that too and be able to let the player fall off at a certain point of the root, landing in a pool of water or something. As water can only be faked on a level above sea level, it would have to be a faked mesh as an activator that has a script to make sure player don't looses health when landing. Or maybe, a script that checks, if player is standing on the root and in moment he looses contact he gains "slow fall" for some seconds. I'm sure our "scripting-guys" can figure something out for this!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Speaking of water, thats another asset we need that I forgot on the list. A while back I was talking to Phijama about water and waterfall models for this project before it was even a project. Phijama has a nice water model and I was going to work on a texture for a waterfall and he had offered to help with doing animations and junk ( I don't do animations.) Perhaps I can see if he is still willing to do that.

[Sian Ennis]

Animating water with animated textures is absolutely easy, even I could do that, lol!!! What would be awesome was if somebody could make us some particle waterfalls with max 4-5. If not, I will model some waterfalls in 3D and animate them. I'm sick of that plane vanilla waterfalls. I learned from the Gothic modders how to make better looking waterfalls!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

[sexy zara]

Animating water with animated textures is absolutely easy, even I could do that, lol!!! What would be awesome was if somebody could make us some particle waterfalls with max 4-5. If not, I will model some waterfalls in 3D and animate them. I'm sick of that plane vanilla waterfalls. I learned from the Gothic modders how to make better looking waterfalls!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Well I hate doing animations of any sort, it just seems like such tedious work. :brokencomputer:

Anyway, I have a really nice waterfall photo that is perfect for a texture, just needs some tweaking. I can make a diffuse, normal/bump, and a reflection/environment map for it if you wanna do the animation.

As for particles, I cant do those, I think only the official NIF plugin for max 4 and 5 is able to export particles and i dont really have much experience with them anyway. I think mireneye has been playing around with particles and has max 5 though, maybe he can help with that.

[Siobhan Wallis-McRobert]

Waterfall's texture will be moving so fast that you won't see any details at all, so a detailed texture is wasted time and fps. I'll just make some low resolution texture in photosop (max. 512-1024), some simple blue and white colors with some motion blur on vertical axis.


TheDaywalker!!! :rock:

[+++CAZZY]

Waterfall's texture will be moving so fast that you won't see any details at all, so a detailed texture is wasted time and fps. I'll just make some low resolution texture in photosop (max. 512-1024), some simple blue and white colors with some motion blur on vertical axis.


TheDaywalker!!! :rock:

Alright, well lets see what you can come up with.

Some really nice waterfall reference for yah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L8845utZI4&feature=related

[Sabrina Schwarz]

Something similar to that in a realisting looking way can only be done with particles. I can make meshes that rebuild the structure of a waterfall in 3D instead of taking a simpe plane mesh. I could also add some morph animation to that mesh, but you can hardly see those ingame. Tested latter one already for my mod "Faery Realms" (water inside the bowl, not the falls!!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsHYHriLghw

EDIT: The sliding-down-a-root thing works as I thought!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

[Fluffer]

In the previous thread I saw someone was working on the Na'Vi race. I was wondering if anyone had any news on that. Also, it would be cool if we could actually make the Na'Vi 10 feet tall. The only issues I see are whether or not they would fit through places, and I am not sure if weapons scale to the character size or otherwise a longsword might look like a dagger lol. I also hope the Na'Vi are playable when this is all finished.

Also, I had an idea for a possible future quest. Maybe the Imperials will have discovered the passage to pandora and want to mine the crap out of it kind of like the movie, but more fitting in this game.

[Marilú]

The race is in progress, male head version 01 is done and Westly is already working on the textures for head and body. I yet took a first glimpse and they look great as usual!!! I will make a female version soon, some different hairstyles for both and maybe a few custom weapons. This all will take some time as all of us have plenty of work with the environment yet!!!

I don't think such a large size would work with the game very good. You will get a lot of problems when moving through interiors, picking up items from the ground (especially in 3rd person), fighting could become difficult, because you don't reach the collision of smaller opponents or creatures correctly and so on.

Quests??? - I guess we don't even think of it at the moment, do we?! There will be some tasks for the player to do while exploring the environment, but no dialogues and such yet. Can't say if any member of the actual team is a fan of writing dialogues though? Me is not!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

[Zoe Ratcliffe]

Quests??? - I guess we don't even think of it at the moment, do we?! There will be some tasks for the player to do while exploring the environment, but no dialogues and such yet. Can't say if any member of the actual team is a fan of writing dialogues though? Me is not!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

Well I am sure the mod would be more attractive to people with quests. However like you said, we have a lot of work to do to bring the environment to life and I personally think that we shouldn't be worrying about quests at this point. The idea that I had intended to bring with this mod is a beautiful environment to explore and hopefully get some nice screenshots from. Maybe some time down the road (when the environment is done) we can discuss a potential quest. I don't do quests, scripting or any of that stuff though so it wouldn't be me doing it.



On to an update, I got a bit of progress on the tree today, its starting to come together.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/AnOldFriend/LargeTree02.png

Going to add more plant life growing on the tree and possibly some vines hanging off and wrapping around it. Like I said in my last update post, the tree(s) will have its (their) own small ecosystem(s).

[Smokey]

I was going to post this before you had actually started on the heads, but nevermind.
I wanted to just make sure of some statistics in the heads of the na'vi.
-They have taller heads than humans (because they are taller so that just makes it fit)
-They have cat noses
-cat like ears
-stripes (make sure you check where if you don't know)
-large eyes (cat like)

Those were basically the only things I wanted to point out, just to make sure that you knew (although I think you do know)

Good job so far, the trees and stuff look great! Keep it up.

EDIT: Oh yeah, is the na'vi going to have it's own faction?

[Eire Charlotta]

On to an update, I got a bit of progress on the tree today, its starting to come together.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/AnOldFriend/LargeTree02.png

Can you add somehing for scale? Just for comparison.

[Adrian Powers]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/AnOldFriend/LargeTree02.png

This looks great. I'd like it to have such trees on my tropical island in Arkngchend R3LOADED

[Zualett]

@AOF: Exellent work man, I can really feel the jungle yet!!! I should send you my UV mapped root meshes, so you can give the an equal look!!!

EDIT: Got another idea: I made a plant with large hanging down fruits, somewhat like beans. Those fruits are hollow from inside and when they fall down, the hull can easily be cut, so you can make an entry and windows and stuff. There is a place enough for a small living section inside those fruits.

http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/865/conceptplant01.jpg


TheDaywalker :rock:

[GPMG]

Can you add somehing for scale? Just for comparison.

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/2796/lgtreescale.png

I rendered it a bit larger so its easier to see the biped rig I used. This is more or less the scale I will be going for I think.

I changed the texture for the bark in that render, I think that it will be the final.....maybe. I think this texture is more accurate to the sort of bark you might find in a tropical rainforest....I hope, I am no expert.

@AOF: Exellent work man, I can really feel the jungle yet!!! I should send you my UV mapped root meshes, so you can give the an equal look!!!

EDIT: Got another idea: I made a plant with large hanging down fruits, somewhat like beans. Those fruits are hollow from inside and when they fall down, the hull can easily be cut, so you can make an entry and windows and stuff. There is a place enough for a small living section inside those fruits.

http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/865/conceptplant01.jpg


TheDaywalker

The tree is still not done but thanks. By the time I am done with this tree I hope that it will give an impression of what I hope for the entire environment to look like.

If you wanna send them i can texture them and maybe add some plant life and junk to them. I may even be able to use them as part of this tree.



The pod domicile is an interesting idea. However I think you should make a separate interior model to be placed in an interior cell. I think this mod is going to be quite resource demanding already.

[Tiff Clark]

@AOF: We gotta test out the final scale, because ingame you have view distance and you might not even be able to see the tree top from ground. I will send you a bunch of my models during next days. I won't make an interior model of that fruit plant house, cause it is not ment to have doors or anything like that. I thought the player may just walk inside from the outside. Whole things wont be that big!!!

Concerning the decorating elements it would be good to have them as single items, so that we can use them at various places. I'll make mine single items too.


TheDaywalker :rock:

[Lyd]

@AOF: We gotta test out the final scale, because ingame you have view distance and you might not even be able to see the tree top from ground. I will send you a bunch of my models during next days. I won't make an interior model of that fruit plant house, cause it is not ment to have doors or anything like that. I thought the player may just walk inside from the outside. Whole things wont be that big!!!

Concerning the decorating elements it would be good to have them as single items, so that we can use them at various places. I'll make mine single items too.


TheDaywalker :rock:

The hight of the tree will probably not be any larger then cantons in Vivec. I don't think there will be problems with the view distance, besides I am sure this environment will be best viewed with MGE.

If you mean the moss I have hanging from the branches, they are not module, they are specific to the way the branches bend. The moss wraps over the top of the branch it is on connecting to polygons on the other side and are shaped accordingly. I do have plans to make single plain/polygon versions of the hanging moss that can be placed on different objects though. Some plant life on the tree will be module or will be easy enough to make module however.

[kevin ball]

@AOF: We gotta test out the final scale, because ingame you have view distance and you might not even be able to see the tree top from ground.
....
TheDaywalker :rock:

In Morrowind's view, it will look behind the fog which is OK for Morrowind's foggy atmosphere at the end. With MGE it will look OK. I don't think that would be a problem at the end.

Never compromise for technical difficulties please. Please. I hate to see that.

[Rob Davidson]

The race is in progress, male head version 01 is done and Westly is already working on the textures for head and body. I yet took a first glimpse and they look great as usual!!! I will make a female version soon, some different hairstyles for both and maybe a few custom weapons. This all will take some time as all of us have plenty of work with the environment yet!!!

I don't think such a large size would work with the game very good. You will get a lot of problems when moving through interiors, picking up items from the ground (especially in 3rd person), fighting could become difficult, because you don't reach the collision of smaller opponents or creatures correctly and so on.

Quests??? - I guess we don't even think of it at the moment, do we?! There will be some tasks for the player to do while exploring the environment, but no dialogues and such yet. Can't say if any member of the actual team is a fan of writing dialogues though? Me is not!!!


TheDaywalker :rock:

I am glad to hear Westly is in on making the race. He does good work from what I've seen. I figured that it would cause problems making them that tall, so maybe just as tall as we can get away with without any issues. Oh, and I was thinking it might be good to have some clothing made like loincloths and stuff like in the movie. Oh, and one interesting thing I noticed about their bows in the movie was that toward the ends and the curves of the bow it had a woven frame between 2 strands of wood. I think all the custom weapon's you'll need would be a bow and a dagger. That is all they used for weapons.

What would be awesome is if we could find a way to switch the bow to be used as a blunt weapon at will like in the movie where they would smack enemies around like it was a staff.

I know I might be getting a little ahead of everything but I just wanted to put an idea out there for some layout for the Na'Vi's skills:

They primarily use bows but can use daggers as a backup, they are unarmored, very good at acrobatics, they are sneaky, and also they know how to treat ailments with what is around them so maybe some skill in alchemy.

One person on forumplanet brought up a good point, they are basically a Khajiit-Bosmer Highbred

I was also thinking that maybe they could have a command creature power since they can control beasts that they link their thingy in their hair to. Oh, and that reminds me, Custom hair models would be good instead of recycling other ones because it would be nice to work in the link thing in their hair if possible.

Sorry that I am no help in actually making anything. My skills are limited to altering things in the CS, and that is mainly stats, setting values, and all the easy stuff. I once tried scripting but it didn't work out. I will just be another resident cheermeister ......... GO TEAM :clap:

oh, and the morrowind fog wouldn't be that bad as it was foggy in the movie and it is in actual rain forests. Personally My morrowind playing computer can't even run MGE because it hasn't been able to get a windows update in half a year after my grandpa gave it to my family, and we have dialup at 31 kbps :facepalm: , And no, I am not some 12 year old, I just got out of high school and am saving for college and I am at the mercy of the Parents crappy internet........Anyway

[Amie Mccubbing]

...
Personally My morrowind playing computer can't even run MGE because it hasn't been able to get a windows update in half a year after my grandpa gave it to my family, and we have dialup at 31 kbps :facepalm: , And no, I am not some 12 year old, I just got out of high school and am saving for college and I am at the mercy of the Parents crappy internet........Anyway

You wouldn't believe what is possible with dialup. Ever heard of download managers?

100MB of directx update will took 9.5 hours with 3 kb/s. One night would be enough.

[Sara Lee]

I'm not sure who is finishing the footstep model at this point, so I'll post here.

The animation looks pretty good now, it's something I can definitely work with. Out of curiosity though, how difficult would it be to slow down the pulsating speed to about 50% of what it is now? Or would doing so make it a bit too "jerky" looking?

There are two other things that are preventing it from working exactly as needed right now. The alpha isn't working, it is mostly a big black plain. There also needs to be no collision. I'm not sure at this point if the collision problems I'm having are caused by these meshes or by the lights I'm fiddling with. But the lights shouldn't have any collision (though I have fewer problems here if I don't place them.) And usually an item placed dynamically in the world doesn't have collision until it is disabled/enabled...but I'm having issues with the collision piling up. So I'd like confirmation from one of you modelers that the mesh is not my problem.

[Eileen Müller]

You wouldn't believe what is possible with dialup. Ever heard of download managers?

100MB of directx update will took 9.5 hours with 3 kb/s. One night would be enough.

My dialup likes disconnect at random intervals and also will disconnect if you leave it alone too long even if something is being downloaded. I once waited 3 hours for a download, hit 98%, and then lost the connection. I have a laptop with WiFi and a memory stick so I can go to the local coffee joint and download any mods, I don't think it is possible to transfer windows updates as each OS has a license of it's own.

oh, and I remember before someone was asking about the riding position on a banshee. They were ridden basically on their necks in front of their main wings. also, they didn't so much sit as crouch while on them. Maybe work the sneaking posture into a riding position. They crouched on their feet so they could move independently of their steed to aim their bow. maybe you could use W,A,S,D to steer the steed and use the mouse to look around while in perma-sneak posture and maybe have a quest to hunt something while airborne. We would just need to figure out a way to control the vertical movement besides the mouse if we want independent view control.

[Dina Boudreau]

My dialup likes disconnect at random intervals and also will disconnect if you leave it alone too long even if something is being downloaded. I once waited 3 hours for a download, hit 98%, and then lost the connection. I have a laptop with WiFi and a memory stick so I can go to the local coffee joint and download any mods, I don't think it is possible to transfer windows updates as each OS has a license of it's own.

oh, and I remember before someone was asking about the riding position on a banshee. They were ridden basically on their necks in front of their main wings. also, they didn't so much sit as crouch while on them. Maybe work the sneaking posture into a riding position. They crouched on their feet so they could move independently of their steed to aim their bow. maybe you could use W,A,S,D to steer the steed and use the mouse to look around while in perma-sneak posture and maybe have a quest to hunt something while airborne. We would just need to figure out a way to control the vertical movement besides the mouse if we want independent view control.

With a download manager, after disconnecting at 98%, you can reconnect and resume from there. Not all download links will let you to resume, but stuff you need will likely let you to resume. Microsoft's stuff are all direct links. For MGE all you need is .net, vc and directx.

I like http://www.headlightsw.com, but using http://www.speedbit.com/, http://www.orbitdownloader.com/ is free. I recommend http://www.amazesoft.com/en/download.htm.

And you can download OS updates separately.

Here is a download manager for Windows updates.
http://www.windowsupdatesdownloader.com/

--------------------------------------

For flying, I have this crazy idea, I told it a couple of times. MGE is almost a separate game right now. When you are not in the morrowind rendering area, (let's say 2 cells up in the air), I say stopping Morrowind's control updates, and do all flying in some sort of preview mode where it is all MGE doing the rendering. I know MGE can let us *view*/preview the island without need for Morrowind. That way we can fly over Vvardenfell at full speed. When descent to Morrowind area one update from previous position to new entering position, teleport the player from leaving position. Map can be updated in a temporary solution. The transitions can be done seamless. An external force can keep us from lowering at certain height. So we can only limit the loadings for landing maneuvers.