Planet Postmoderna Blog

I did not get to do too much project work this weekend as I was at a church retreat with my daughter. It was a really great break. I volunteered along with many others from church to work the camp’s kitchen and serve the 200 or so Jr HS and Sr HS Students. It was exhausting but fun at the same time and I know the students had a blast. It was a really nice break from the stresses of life and a nice distraction from this project. I also made some new friends and that in itself is a reward on top of the reward of just being able to serve these kids and help make their retreat memorable.

Now, let’s recap on some of the work that we did the previous week.

Ion created some new textures for the toolshed, a structure in-world created from pod parts and resources gathered from the surrounding area. We modified some of the shaded texture areas which created a little more realism. Notice the brightness under the roof of the first image below. We both agreed; that needed to be fixed.

Original Toolshed Textures

Now look at the following image and take note of the differences. Notice the interior roof and some of the other shaded areas.

Toolshed Texture Revamp

We updated the textures for the grain and fertilizer bags. Ion created an alternate texture for the grain and a lighter version of the fertilizer sack. The original was a darker green. The newer version was a tad bright so I toned it down with a trick Ion taught me. In Photoshop, I made a copy of the image and used a special blend option called satin. I played around a little with the transparency settings to get the texture to just the right tone. The final image is what your see below. I also kept the original texture for use in shaded areas.

New Sack Textures

Last but not least, we put in some foliage using the built-in SpeedTree demo that comes with the Mutiverse World Editor. To use it, I created a zone for a forest within the Multiverse World Editor and populated it with trees, grass and roses (those came with the demo). If we want to create more custom foilage (which we will someday), we will need to get a license from SpeedTree. That initially will be around $1600. After the project goes live, we pay the additional $7-10,000. I know it is steep but for it does, I think it is worth it. Right now, the demo objects will work just fine for the purposes of the Planet Postmoderna demo.

Farm Construction Zone with Trees

What excites me about this is the difference the trees and grass make to the scene. It adds a new dimension to what was a seemly flat landscape. Oh, okay, I lied. It is more than a few trees.

Well today was a monumental day for model testing. We have a complexed two-sided model called the Foreman’s Shed. This workman’s shed is found in many places on the planet where construction is being planned and is usually surrounded by crates, tools and other objects. An avatar could walk into it but would find it rather cramped. Besides, the structure is designed to be as its name, a shed.

Foreman's Shed

The shed is constructed from various parts and resources from the pods and the surrounding area. The ribs are metal and the canvas is from pod parachute material. The doors and the handle are from pod equipment and the wood is from the nearby area.

Foreman's Shed Other Side

Although the pictures don’t reflect the trees and shrubs in the zone right now, they do exist.

The original model concept was done by one of our early team members, Matic Mirnic, a teen Blender artist from Slovenia. He had a part in many of the models and concept used in Base Camp. He was the original artist for the domes.

Jitse “Ion” Akse, our artist from Holland, is also a very talented Blender user as well as master of many other 3D and digital tools. He created the texture that is now the final for the shed model and even added its missing internal mesh. I didn’t realize it was missing until I ran my initial tests only to find that the interior was invisible.

After taking the model and creating the needed collision volumes, I made the specular texture from the Ion’s base texture and layered his normal maps for added depth.

Now when you look at the model in the Multiverse World Browser, you can see the shine on the door and bumpiness of the raised surfaces of the paint, canvas, etc. I can only imagine what this will look like using CryEngine2 within Entropia.

We have been plugging away and now producing some new additions to Postmoderna’s Base Camp.

One of our newest team members Jitse “Ion” Akse, created a few new models for the Base Camp POI in our Entropia Partner Planet Demo of Planet Postmoderna. We decided too to have a little fun with the screenshots from the Multiverse Prototype and dressed up the images using ComicLife. Testee-bub is my testing avatar.

Ion created the new models using Blender and I took the diffuse texture and made the spec and normal maps from it. Being that the model was made in Blender the units of measurement are pretty small. I had to scale up the model before I could create the collision volumes for it. After that exported the model to Collada format and converted it into a Multiverse mesh.

After playing around with it a bit more, we got this.

We also worked on a portable reactor model. This one was a little tricky with the color balance and normals but I think we got it where it needs to be. The neat thing about a project like this is, you are always bound to get feedback and that is a good thing. We then can always make changes based on that feedback.

The reactor is a portable power source for the field.

Up and coming is the foreman’s shed. This structure will be placed in areas where construction is planned. It is built from parts from the equipment pods, pod parachute material and resources from the nearby land.

One of Jitse’s Poser Models, is showcasing the concept for us in this shot. Maybe we should name her.

I have to say that it took me a horrible 2.5 hours to get this one right. I was hoping to reproduce the process I used with the Fort Ash Domes with the Comm Tower. I actually created the collision volumes and rebaked the textures with no trouble. It was after that and trying to figure out the proper axis alignment for the model so in Multiverse, the model would point up. It took me several tries to finally figure out that I could have just looked at the axis arrangement of the Dome model. Duh!

Blender has a totally different configuration than 3dsMax (used as the tool of choice in most of the Multiverse documentation), etc. I had to make sure that the model was positioned with the Y axis up and the X to the right. This way up was really up in Multiverse.

After that it was a matter of tweaking the textures in Photoshop, producing the Normal map in XNormal from the height-map image I created, and then using the Multiverse Conversion tool to transform the model into what Multiverse uses. After that? I had to move the files onto my server and rebuild the assets file manifest. This creates the patch file that tells you World Browser what is updated and what to download. I am sure I have left out some steps I am forgetting but it still took me two and a half hours.

I am sure professionals in the industry would laugh at the length of time for my one-object workflow but hey, I’m learning! I figure by the time I have all the main Base Camp objects moved into Multiverse, I’ll be a real “professional amateur.” All kidding aside though, I am learning a lot. I am rather proud of what I have learned so far and without any formal 3D Modeling Training. Of course all also got a lot of input and help over the last year from team members.

Comm Tower in the Distance

As you can see the Comm Tower is positioned behind the Domes. It is one of the many structures that the Heavy Lifters were able to bring to the surface before the space-tear collapsed in on one of them and destroyed it and any chance of bringing anymore intact structures to the planet.

The Comm Tower Up Close

You can see the effect of the texturing of the metal which is really a semi-glossed formed material, pocked with nicks and dents. The visual effects created from the textures not only helps portray the material it is constructed of but it also reminds us of the torture the tower endured from being put up.

I have to say I wanted to jump for joy. I followed the instructions given to me by demi over at the Multiverse forums. It took me awhile to digest his instructions but I finally got it. Not his fault. It was all me.

I was working on some modeling in Blender yesterday and figured out some issues. I will pass these on to you so maybe it help you get the collision you want.

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This was a small victory for me and for this project because now I can properly convey how this process works to anyone else on the project that might create or be working with model using Blender.

Here’s an overview of what I did.

I took the dome model and created individual boxes or rectangles and placed them in the location of each segment of wall in the dome. You can see the collision volumes in red.

Collision Volumes

Each individual object was named mvcv_obb_ as seen below. The “mvcv” stands for “Multiverse Collision Volume” and the “obb” is the designator for a bounding area box. In this example the object was called mvcv_obb_Tube_01_08.

Collision Volume Naming

Now after that I had to embed a small dummy object for each collision volume within the area inside or near that volume. This one was called Tube_01_08. It was just a tiny box (See below). The purpose is to give the collision volume a fixed object to reference back to. I tried originally to create the volumes and reference them back to the dome object but that didn’t work. As Demi shared, this was the only way to make it work using Blender.

Collision Volume Dummy

Collision Volume Naming

Now after each was placed and named, the whole object (the dome, the dummy objects and the collision volumes) were exported from Blender using the Collada 1.4 export tool.

All Volumes in Place

Colloda Export

After that, I had to run the resulting *.dae file through the multiverse conversion tool per the Multiverse documentation. The conversion created a mesh object, the physics object and the material file. I modified the material file to match the template file I am using (another discussion). The physics file had to be edited to remove the “mvcv_obb_” reference. It is not automatically removed as would be the case when converting via the Collada export tool using 3dsMax. I made that change using my favorite text editor, Notepad++. (See below)

Renaming of Physics references

Now, after a process of moving the files over to my server and booting up Multiverse, I was pleasantly surprised to see the collision volumes on the model. I used a little trick available in the Multiverse World Browser designed to view the volumes in development (CTRL-H).

Collision Volumes Visible

The Volumes invisible

Of course, I had to run into the building from all angles to make sure the collision volumes worked and yes, they did! Bust open the champaign! I was pleased that I could stand in the dome and out of the upcoming weather too (which I just imagined was coming).

Out of the weather

Again, I want to thank Demi for all his help. Now that this model is done, I can start porting the rest of the initial work done by our team of volunteers into the Postmoderna Project Demo.