RTJP Updates! (Pre-2017)

TheIdiot's new mod set on Isla Nublar

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machf
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Re: RTJP Updates! Last: September 4th, 2015

Post by machf »

TheIdiot wrote: And what palms are you talking about? The tall, white ones outside the VC, or the browner ones in the jungle? The white ones are from the original game, the "Cuban Palms", just re-textured, and the other ones are from TC~Isle, also re-textured.
In this picture:
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Look at the palm tree between the bridge and the small fence, near the bottom center, slightly to the right... that's the one.
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Re: RTJP Updates! Last: September 4th, 2015

Post by TheIdiot »

machf wrote:
TheIdiot wrote: And what palms are you talking about? The tall, white ones outside the VC, or the browner ones in the jungle? The white ones are from the original game, the "Cuban Palms", just re-textured, and the other ones are from TC~Isle, also re-textured.
In this picture:
Image

Look at the palm tree between the bridge and the small fence, near the bottom center, slightly to the right... that's the one.
Ah, okay, gotcha. Not too much I can do there unfortunately, unless I remake the model from scratch. If I try to edit it in Max, the shading will get all messed up. Unless there's a way to fix that problem, which I haven't found (tried exploding the mesh, breaking it into separate pieces manually, cloning, mirroring, redoing the UV maps). The texture shape wasn't changed either, just increased in size to 512x256 I believe. :cry:
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by Draconisaurus »

Great updates, TI! Really like the dino behavior events - reminds me of some stuff I did in JPDS. I hope it's noticable ingame if you're not looking for it.

About that palm - it looks to me like it was already imported into Max and back; for some reason models not originally from Tres brought through TPM into Max will become exploded into individual faces. Shading in Trespasser works through which vertices are welded to each other. Each group of vert-connected faces acts as a shading group (it's best not to use Max's shading groups for Tres models; to be safe I recall giving them all the same shading group (unconnected faces to not shade as if in the same group even if they are)). So the recommendation here would be to import the trees into Max, give all faces the same shading group, weld ALL vertices together with a single click (select all verts and click Weld or something (it has a threashold value, make it very low (too low won't be processed)) (the small scale of Tres models in Max means you may need to temporarily scale the model up for this process, then scale it back down (otherwise vertices not meant to be connected will be welded, resulting in poly loss etc.); can be tricky but once you know how it's easy). Then, individually select faces, one pseudo-smooth-group at a time, and click "Detach" (for example, select the entire cylinder of the stalk and click "Detach".. though that one should already be fixed after the initial weld). It sounds complex but it is actually pretty simple - just time-consuming. :) Also, you should not need to redo any UV whatsoever.
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by TheIdiot »

Great updates, TI! Really like the dino behavior events - reminds me of some stuff I did in JPDS. I hope it's noticable ingame if you're not looking for it.
Some of the bigger events will likely be obvious (for example, the tyrannosaurus comes running into a herd of parasaurs and they will run away to another location), though I likely won't script EVERY dinosaur this way. :wink:
About that palm
Geez, quite the process just to fix a tree! :P Maybe I'll go back an re-export the palm from TC~Isle before doing that just to see if it was a bad export or something, because I don't recall them looking poorly shaded in Isle (that's where they're from, I only changed the textures).
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by Draconisaurus »

Yeah I recall that model originally being fine.. You may have accidentally used .3ds as an export format - pretty sure that would cause this error.
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by TheIdiot »

Draconisaurus wrote:Yeah I recall that model originally being fine.. You may have accidentally used .3ds as an export format - pretty sure that would cause this error.
It seems not. I looked at the palms in TC~Isle and they have the same shading - guess they were always that way, and it may have been my textures or lighting or something that made it more apparent. It isn't really obvious when playing either level, so I'll pass on that for now. That will be something that I'll patch up much later if it continues to be a very noticeable issue.
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by Draconisaurus »

Srsly? Sounds like something to fix sometime for all future fanmods... I wonder why that happened.
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by TheIdiot »

Draconisaurus wrote:Srsly? Sounds like something to fix sometime for all future fanmods... I wonder why that happened.
Beats me, but that does sound like a good idea. Interestingly enough, only the living TC palms are like that - the dead ones are smooth.
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by Draconisaurus »

Interesting... I recall discovering in test~zone that TC palms originally had different textures (at least). Perhaps they were taken from the level, redone, and put back in, with the result we now notice..
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by TheIdiot »

Draconisaurus wrote:Interesting... I recall discovering in test~zone that TC palms originally had different textures (at least). Perhaps they were taken from the level, redone, and put back in, with the result we now notice..
Yeah, maybe, I never thought of that - the old ones DO have lower poly leaves, too, so that might be it. :? I'm actually using the test~zone palms in HD~Beach alongside the originals - they look great, even with the old textures, so it might not be that.
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by TheIdiot »

Just a small update here, nothing major, but I'm going to be on leave from Trespassing for a little while. Won't be too long but I've got a very busy schedule upcoming in the next month or so (packing up for a move, helping with family stuff), meaning I don't have time to work much on anything gamey for the time being. Hopefully I'll be back really soon (don't expect to be gone more than three weeks) but at the moment I'm going to have to take a temporary leave. Who knows, I might even sneak some RTJP into this month and have some cool new stuff when I return!

FEAR NOT, though! I'm not disappearing and none of my eleven million mods are stopping - just taking a short break. See everyone again soon! 8)
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by Shep »

Oh great, now only me and draco will be on here for the month.
Oh, a Raptor got 'em!

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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by Draconisaurus »

:( Yeah what Shep said lol. Well have a good time! Maybe pop in every once in a while to see how things are going... :nerd:
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by TheIdiot »

Shep wrote:Oh great, now only me and draco will be on here for the month.
:( Yeah what Shep said lol. Well have a good time! Maybe pop in every once in a while to see how things are going... :nerd:
No worries, I'm still lurking around. :P

I got a couple of free minutes yesterday and had all of today off so I did a bit of RTJP work. Nothing too significant, though I did a bit of texture editing, replacing some general ones (wood, plaster, metal) with high-res and bump-mapped versions. Looks good so far, and I've finally figured out how to get nice specular maps too so shiny objects are actually shiny. I also finally finished replacing almost all of the frequently used foley sounds (ex. collisions with metal, wood, vegetation, water) with new versions for a brand new audio experience, which sounds great and is very refreshing after nearly 20 years of the same sound effects. Still have a long way to go for ambient, music, voice and dinosaur sounds, but it's about a third of the way done! :D

Also made some water-related objects to help detail ponds and such - a simple lilypad object, water bamboo, and a flat 2D plane object that acts like underwater algae for some extra detail (as well as extra concealment for the amphibious baryonyx). Will probably do some quick underwater flora too for use in deeper pools and the ocean.

Image

Additionally, I started making a bunch of new foliage just for the heck of it because I'm sort of bored of the old TC~Isle and Tres stuff :? . Not sure if all or any of this will show up in RTJP, but I really like the way it looks so far. Made a small test area for what I've done so far and I think I may have achieved Nirvana as far as Trespasser's detail and graphics go 8) :

Image

I think most of the bigger objects like trees, elephant ear plants and bamboo could work in RTJP, but the bushes were purely created to make the most realistically dense jungle scene, so without them being crowded together they might not look as good. It would be impossible to detail all of RTJP's Isla Nublar like this as I would very quickly hit an FPS wall.
However, I'm contemplating replacing my Beach HD foliage with this new stuff as it takes up much more area per plant (one bush covers the same area as 3 smaller plants) and makes for a much more realistic looking jungle scene, thus saving me a LOT of time and producing a much nicer and more detailed scene with roughly the same old perhaps slightly less polycount. While some of the plants are relatively high-poly, they make up for this by taking up a lot of area and being light on the physics objects.
What do you guys think? Want to see all or some of this stuff in RTJP? Or just stick with what I have so far and save roughly four more hours of plant work?
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Re: RTJP Updates!

Post by TrespasserGuy »

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Wow, that looks gorgeous. The detail in this image makes Trespasser look like a game from the mid 2000's rather than the late 90's.

Personally, I think you should just stick with the foliage you have. It's up to you, but that's my opinion, TI.
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