Author Topic: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop  (Read 266258 times)

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Offline Peardian

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #60 on: February 22, 2010, 07:53:00 am »
@Tropicon:
Looks nice! I'm not sure exactly how Ogre Battle 64 is as I only took a quick look at it, but I imagine you could crop some of the outermost green areas around the edge, at least if the chopped-off water is any indication. Also, you could probably afford to shrink it down to 1000x1000 or even 800x800 and still keep the necessary detail. From the mountains, it appears you're using the default light or a light you set up. It certainly makes the mountains stand out, and I like the look. I'd be curious to see what the map looks like with an ambient light put in. I'm guessing labels and such will come later. Not bad. :)

Here's a quick little lesson to cover something that I forgot to mention in the artsy rendering one.

17. Connect Object
As you know, VRML scenes in Cinema 4D are broken up into numerous objects, one for each material for each object and each moving part. This is fine for mapping, but can pose a problem when it comes to phong shading. Phong shading does not apply itself across separate objects, and oftentimes characters will be made of multiple pieces. This is especially apparent when a character has multiple textures to make up their face. One way to fix this would be to fuse the objects together using Connect, then placing the textures in their right place with polygon selections. However, this is very tedious and prone to errors. A much simpler way is to use a Connect Object.

The Connect Object's icon looks like a green sphere and a white sphere being stuck together, and can be found under the Array object button at the top, next to the Light category. It can also be found under Objects -> Modeling -> Connect Object. The way it works is simple. It is basically a null object that treats all of its children objects as parts of the same model, adding its own phong shading. The phong for the connected object is controlled from the attributes panel for the object, and by default will only follow breaks. If you want to control it, you can set the Phong Mode to Manual and give the object its own Phong tag. Setting the Phong Mode to any of the middle choices will make it pick a phong angle from the tags given to its children. Using a Connect Object is a good way to avoid unnecessary shading when dealing with Ambient Occlusion.

Unless I've forgotten something else, the next lesson will be the last. And of course, I'll be glad to answer any questions and help you with your WIP maps.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2010, 07:54:37 am by Peardian »
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Offline Trop

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #61 on: February 22, 2010, 08:32:55 am »
Yep, it turns out N~C creates identical shading to what the game does, although I would've liked a softer effect.  There's also way more map shown then you ever see in the game and I was originally going to make it even bigger at 4000x4000 but I think this will do.  Bugs include missing or discolored towns and there's supposed to be a cloud bank casting a shadow but I decided to leave that out permanently.  The marked version will come later, include all of the games maps, and I have no idea how I'm going to make it since I'm having the same problem with my Wizardry 8 map.

Offline Peardian

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #62 on: February 22, 2010, 08:57:09 am »
Yes, N~C (Quick Shading) ignores light objects and simply uses the default light. However, it doesn't affect the end render. If you want the mountains to be softer, you can try Phong shading. It's up to you how you want to make your map, but it would probably be better if you hid things like the sea cutting off at the bottom. Otherwise, it kinda ruins the magic of the terrain a bit.


Missing town? Miscolored town? Then it sounds like you still have some more work to do. :P
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Offline Trop

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #63 on: February 24, 2010, 09:26:36 am »
All finished!  Town colors, and missing roads, oops, all fixed.  Yes I left the over green border around the entire map.  But if you look at my Secret of Mana maps you'll see my thing is showing the viewer the map as it truly is rather then a pretty picture.  I posted a gallery for comparison and you can see just how much the designers cut off.  Overall 3D mapping has as about as many quirks and bugs as 2D mapping.  I'm glad I invested the energy to get over the initial road blocks.  Thanks Peardian, energy well spent.

Offline Peardian

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #64 on: February 25, 2010, 11:43:03 am »
Looks good. I'm guessing you decided to leave the mountains jagged instead of smooth, unless you haven't updated the map yet.

Anyway, here it is: the last lesson.


18. Reflective Objects
Sometimes, games will have models that appear to be reflective or shiny. Models like Metal Mario, Steelix, and the Fighting Polygon Team have textures that seem to move and distort around the model as if it was made of shiny metal. However, when you rip them, their textures will be frozen, looking exactly as it did in the moment you ripped it. This is fine if your map is going to be from the same angle, but it will cause a problem if you want to show the model from a different angle or plan to make an artsy render of it. The reason for all this is because the UV data for the model is moving around the object in the game according to the camera. Luckily, Cinema 4D has something similar.

The Environment channel basically creates an imaginary Sky object that is reflected off the object. It is intended to to be used in conjunction with the Reflection channel, filling in the gaps that aren't modeled in the scene. The Exclusive option of the Enviroment channel controls this, leaving out the reflected sky wherever a real reflection would fall. Unless you want to get extra artsy, disabling this option will create the N64 texturing you desire. However, there are limitations to this. Unlike the N64, where the "reflected" image is mapped based on the camera angle, the environment image will be put in a Spherical projection on the imaginary Sky, which is always angled up. This means that the image will be stretched around the circumpherence of the entire sphere, with the two edges being reflected exactly where the front is. You can try to work around this by changing the image's tiling inside the channel, but it is still sometimes noticeable. And since the textures ripped by the plugin are upsidedown, you'll have to flip it back upright before using it, or else your reflection will be upsidedown. When using the Environment channel, make sure to disable the Color channel to prevent unwanted blending.

Another method to achieve this effect gives you more control over the outcome, but requires more effort. The idea is to create a sphere around the object to act as the sky. This works by turning on the Reflection channel for the material (and disabling the color channel) to reflect the invisible sphere. To make the sphere's reflection give something close to the real thing, you can use the Flat projection and expand it a bit so that the texture fits the sphere. Then, use a Compositing tag to make the sky a compositing background only viewable in reflections. Finally, you can apply another CINEMA 4D tag, the Look at Camera tag, to ensure that the reflection stays based on the position of the camera. Neither of these results are perfect, so I recommend against using it in your maps unless you have to. Also, sometimes the environment channel is used to add a bit of Specular highlighting on an otherwise solid-color object, like Porygon2. If this is the case, you can just mess with Specular channel instead.



And that's it. That's the last lesson I can think of. Unless another issue arises or a question is asked, I'm turning the workshop over to be run by you all. Post your works in progress, ask questions, show off your work, and I'll be here to comment, critique, and help if you want me to. I'm no 3D artist, so more advanced questions about modeling in Cinema 4D are best left to online tutorials. I wish you all good luck in your work and look forward to seeing what you accomplish.

Edit: How fitting! This is the 64th reply.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2010, 11:49:22 am by Peardian »
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Offline Trop

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #65 on: February 25, 2010, 01:03:53 pm »
Ha! 64th.  And yes but I might go back and change them.  Something I'm curious about now; when I use the texture dumper in PJ64 it only starts dumping when I start moving.  Or when I change something on screen.  If I turn on the dumper it just sits there and does nothing until I make a change in game.  Is there a way around this?  And you're no 3D artist?!  Are you kidding?  You're every bit a 3D artist!  Don't sell yourself short.

Offline Peardian

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #66 on: February 25, 2010, 01:14:51 pm »
As I've said in the earlier lessons, the texture dumper only dumps images when they are first loaded into the Nintendo 64's memory. This means you have to turn it on before you reach the desired room. The textures it dumps when you start to move/change are only from the objects with changing textures or the ones being loaded on the edge of the screen.


And there's a difference between knowing how to work a modeling program with other people's models and creating new models. :P
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Offline Trop

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #67 on: February 25, 2010, 06:16:25 pm »
Thanks, and sorry for being such a pain.  Peardian, you must give yourself more credit.  Being able to manipulate these things at the level you do IS an artistic skill.  Just because some people can draw, or click, realistic looking things from scratch doesn't make them great artists.  In fact it doesn't make them artists at all, a computer could draw 100 perfect photo quality still life's.  It's your take on it that gives it its artistic merit and your renditions more then prove your artistic ability.  Huh, didn't mean to go off on a rant there.

Offline Trop

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #68 on: February 27, 2010, 05:40:20 pm »
I've got the next one up.  It's a little better then the last and I went with the softer light on the mountains.  I'm still having a few weird problems though.  The water is supposed to have a transparency and even with your techniques I can't get it to look the way it does in the game.  Also I don't quite know what to do about the little trees in the towns.  In the game they're black but I think that's an error of both PJ64 and 1964.  In C4D they're white.  I can't find a screen shot that has the little tree that wasn't made in an emu so I don't know who their supposed to really look.

Offline Peardian

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #69 on: February 27, 2010, 06:03:58 pm »
The game probably uses some tricks to get the water to look that way. I'm not sure what the water looks like, so I can't be more specific, but you might be able to find some methods to imitate it in one of the lessons. As for the trees, the only thing I can think of is finding a screenshot of the game from online somewhere (or a video if nobody has a picture) and steal the color there for the tree. If that all fails, just guess on the tree color.

I have some good news! Moo Moo Farm is up on the site now. Some might be glad to hear that I'm officially switching to JPG for these full course maps. The quality is set to 90%, and yet the sizes are still about a quarter of the original PNG size. You will barely be able to tell the difference. Because of this, the Moo Moo Farm map is only about 3 MB instead of 12 MB.

In other news, I tested some games. Here are the reports.

Extreme-G: So much UV damage as to be almost completely unusable, even though everything lines up fine. At best, you could use the models referenced to recreate your own versions of the vehicles. Not Mappable.
Extreme-G2: Same.Not Mappable.
F-Zero X: Very short range for swapping distance models, so mapping would be very tedious. There is UV damage on almost everything, but the full-size track pieces seem to be fine. Mappable.
Road Rash 64: Lots of funky stuff going on. Not Mappable.
San Francisco Rush: Has the same kind of thing seen in Banjo-Kazooie. The maps all move around relative to the camera, but always stay in the proper orientation/scale. Mappable.
Rush 2: The emulator will yell at you a lot during the menus, but it is otherwise just the same. Mappable.
San Francisco Rush 2049: Same as the first. Mappable.
« Last Edit: February 28, 2010, 08:04:43 pm by Peardian »
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Offline Trop

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #70 on: March 19, 2010, 06:34:05 pm »
Well I finished my first 3D map set.  38 maps total for Ogre Battle 64.  I learned a lot while fixing different kinds of errors.  Thanks again Peardian for opening up this whole new realm of mapping.  Things will never be the same.

Offline Peardian

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #71 on: March 20, 2010, 02:50:20 pm »
Congrats, Tropicon! That makes two completed mapsets.

In related news, I was able to come home for this weekend, allowing me to rip the next two tracks from Mario Kart 64. I hope to have Frappe Snowland and Choco Mountain finished in two weeks.

To inspire some activity, here is a bit of eyecandy.

[img width= height=]http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/3577/snowyoshi.png[/img]
« Last Edit: March 20, 2010, 02:51:28 pm by Peardian »
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Offline Trop

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #72 on: March 20, 2010, 07:01:47 pm »
Cute.  I still can't believe I made even one 3D map, I don't know where I'll go from here.  Working with C4D tempts you to forget mapping and just screwing around making art.  It's hard to resist.

Offline Peardian

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #73 on: March 29, 2010, 12:33:36 pm »
Yes, it is. (See: my avatar) :P


Just a small bit of slightly-related news, Ogre Battle 64 is now on Virtual Console! Looks like your maps came at a good time. ;)
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Offline Trop

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Re: Nintendo 64 Mapping Workshop
« Reply #74 on: March 30, 2010, 08:25:47 am »
Ha, and yeah, what were the chances.  My timing was perfect.