So, it’s the new modeler here. Are we in need of replacing the organelles which are currently just sprites, or focus on new types of organelles instead? Both may be in need, but which one is more urgent?
We’re probably not going to switch to models from sprites for a while, as sprites are really fast to render, and they look the same in the top-down camera angle that we have. However, here are a few things I can think of:
- Nucleus model. We actually have a bunch of nucleus models at the moment, but all of them don’t work for various reasons. We have a sketch drawn by atrox in the current version, but it doesn’t look very professional. If you do decide to work on this, the best idea would be to create a unit sphere in blender, texture it, and render with one sun light directly above to create a uniform shadow. Then I can just take your rendered square and put it on the nucleus. This post and the two beneath it have more information.
- You can try creating a new flagellum model since the old one doesn’t really fit with the new graphics and a lot of people seem to dislike it. This is the harder of the four as it involves adding a skeleton and doing some anything, which might be hard to export to ogre. Again, if you choose this one, you will have to bake all of your cycles/mudbox textures to an image and UV unwrap the flagella since things like SSS, volumetric shaders, and other cycles stuff don’t translate well into Ogre. For transparency, you can use the alpha channel of your texture.
- You could try modeling a toxin emitter if you want. Basically, it should be a spherical organelle that has an animation that causes a small sphere to “bud off” and move away in a straight line. When the smaller sphere touches the membrane we can spawn a compound cloud at that location and return back to the static model. Not sure how you would do that though. Metaballs would look the nicest, but I’m not sure if it’s possible to import metaballs into Ogre. You should try Googling that if you want to give it a try. Alternatively, you can try your own interpretation of how agent secretors should work.
- Finally, you can model a couple bacteria species for when we implement them into the game. There should be multiple species (hopefully with distinctively different shapes and colors so that the player can easily tell them apart). While this is arguably the most important modeling you can do, it will be a while until bacteria actually make it into the game and people see your work.
These are the 4 I can think of at the moment. Choose whichever you feel most comfortable and inspired to work on, and ask anyone if you have questions/comments/concerns.
Nice to have you join the team! Hope you have a lot of fun.
I had hoped we could come to a consensus on my art style thread, albeit i left no input of my own. I agree that in the game’s current state that sprites are the way to go, and i am up to the challenge of creating new organelles (even redoing the ones I’ve already made). I’ll just make each organelle with different art styles, and we can decide which one we like best so our team can agree on a uniform style. I encourage our other artists to try their hand at different art styles too.
1 Like
Ive been working on a flagella model and I need to get some info, Which of these two movements seem best? I am posting this here for a comparison and to see which is better by opinion.
Type 1 "Standing Wave"
Rough Type 2 "'Sine' Wave"
2 Likes
Ok, here are my first two renders, both Mitochondria. Take your pick, or take neither, I’m going to try out different styles and color schemes later this week. Also, these are usable png files, you can just copy and paste them into Ogre.
1 Like
Also I just realized the red emission shader I had on when I rendered these seems to have bled out onto the alpha channel. This was completely unintentional, but it might make for a cool effect in game, If I need to scrub it just let me know, maybe a red cloud around our mitochondria isn’t everyone’s cup of tea
It’s not a bad model at all, but I’m pretty sure mitochondria are a bit more asymmetrical than that :0
Perhaps you could try to go for a more asymmetrical thing?
After a bit of work and messing around in Blender, I have been able to make a Flagellum that actually wiggles (mostly) like a flagellum should, A few suggestions went by to make it faster and wavier, so I think they ultimately made it look better, What do you think?
2 Likes
The model itself looks pretty good, though the animation is a tad jerky. Not sure whether or not that’s the gif/video capture or if that’s actually how it looks. Can you actually create a video by pressing the key to the right of render (whatever its called) inside of blender? It might be a good idea to slow it down for the video so that we can see the mesh better.
Sure, here’s it in rendered form so that you can see the model move, I (honestly) think it may be a bit too fast though, So I may edit that in the whole thing : )
1 Like
still a wee jerky, maybe adding some more frames or subsurface scattering it might help
You mean subdivision surface? I don’t think that will make it more smooth. Adding more bones might, but that will make the game run even slower.
It’s kind of hard to see how the model is without seeing it in he game. @ThreeCubed can you export it to the ogre format and switch it with the current one (the animation needs to be called move to not crash the game). No need to worry about the material now.
I was able to export them to Ogre but I am having some issues involving them working in the game, What do you mean by calling the animation “Move”? Also which flagella do I replace? Flagella or flagellum? Replacing flagellum does this: http://puu.sh/qWQkr/fd3bf540e9.jpg
Hey guys, I’ve been working on new organelles lately, here are my latest renders:
Blue Mitochondria:
Green Mitochondria:
Pink Mitochondria:
Purple Mitochondria:
Chloroplast 1:
Chloroplast 2:
And finally the Nucleus, with an Endoplasmic Reticulum:
The white versions are 512 pngs that can be saved right from here and implemented in game. The Nucleus is 1k. They have alpha channels and as images they avoid the hassle of exporting displacement and specularity maps into Ogre, and are more performance friendly than meshes.
3 Likes
I like the first and second mitochondria the best. Definitely the second chloroplast.
I’m not really sure as to whether the images should be so transparent. It gives a more realistic feel, but it’s really different from what we have now, which makes it hard for me to assess how exactly they will look in the game. I guess the best way would be to just try them and see how the cells look. If you have time could you Photoshop them into an existing cell membrane to see how it would look int game?
Finally, the nucleus model looks pretty good, but I’m not sure how well it would fit in with the transparent design. Shouldn’t it at least have a transparent nucleus with some spaghetti chromatin inside?
tl;dr: model look fantastic, but I’m not sure how well they would look in game.
I’ll work on the nucleus, but I made the organelles transparent because I wanted to shift to a new art style. In my opinion, the best style would be colorful and transparent, as it feels realistic whilst still remaining aesthetically pleasing. I hope we as a team can agree on a style so our organelles don’t conflict with each other as they do now.
I’ll see if i can shop these organelles into the membrane, but I do feel that they look far better than the ones I initially made that we’re currently using.
1 Like
I for one agree with this new style.
Ok, here’s mah nucleus. I tried to limit the transparency, since it is the largest and likely thickest organelle. It does have transparency though, and I think it looks pretty nice.
Again, white one has the alpha channel, others are just renders.
1 Like
I like this new transparency style, and I also really like the transparent nucleus, but I don’t know if it’s just me but the chromatin looks like lightning. If others feel like this too could you try it maybe with a dark blue or a dark purple?