Art - nosnickid/punani-strike GitHub Wiki

Technical considerations

File formats

ds3d geometry (buildings, vehicles) are in wavefront obj format with two restrictions:

  1. All faces must be triangles.
  2. Normals must be precomputed

Performance

It's important that the models be VERY low poly. That means up to 100 faces for a building, and perhaps up to 1,000 faces for something like a vehicle. Textures are not needed.

If you can generate normal maps for high resolution details, those can be used. Make sure that they are tangent-space normal maps. Some details on how to do this in blender are here:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?125340-Bake-normal-map-from-(only)-a-high-poly-model http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Render/Bake

Scale and position

Buildings should have 0,0,0 coordinate be positioned at the back left corner of the building on the ground. Vehicles should have 0,0,0 coordinate be at the centre of gravity.

Artistic considerations

Consistent scale

1 unit should be equal to 1 metre.

Theme

Also, it's going to look silly if there are world war 2 tanks, and ultra modern buildings or australian army stuff in the north pole. So somebody needs to decide on a location/theme. Currently the city theme is to model somewhere like Beirut. Lots of boxy looking high rise buildings etc.

Consistency

I can't stress this enough. The important thing is that I can't be taking a bunch of random geometry and be fiddling with it myself. If I do that then I may as well do it all myself so the important thing is CONSISTENCY.

"Inspiration" heh heh heh

Here are some that I like, and the categories of items that are needed:

Buildings (civilian)

Good collection of civilian buildings: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=9233769fa3e4c1e098910a1fb0cdfbe8&prevstart=0

Buildings (military)

Military buildings, not seen many good ones: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=39b99027f9c34443bd01ed816a2ae1ee&prevstart=0

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=d7a189b91486cd2aefc41a4b1e30d0a5&prevstart=0 Radar towers: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=radar+towers&styp=m&scoring=t&btnG=Search&reps=2

Infrastructure / Misc

Electricity pylons: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=electricity+pylon&styp=m&scoring=t&btnG=Search

May need things like trees, lamp posts, whatever, depending on what theme you chose.

Vehicles (Military)

I quite like the look of IDF tanks/vehicles, but that decides the setting too much. And it's not really fair for me, whoever wants to take charge of art can decide for themselves since I'm not paying.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=e65bc84bbbd35a971b1cc3d9113e34f1&prevstart=0 http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=8045a9fb56bf9d0722757364507d1840&ct=mdrm&prevstart=0 http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=b2861a8768c29da3a0c51a90bcf963c3&ct=mdrm&prevstart=0 http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=23c9aa7d015479f742d9d3b552745e5f&ct=mdrm&prevstart=0 http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=b4319fd008d3a5199ba4d80b4353f258&ct=mdrm&prevstart=0

The original game there were, SAM sites, radar installations, troop carriers etc.

Aircraft

We probably need some chopper models too... Current comanche chopper is actually a recon heli so it would be more accurate to the game to have an attack heli such as an apache. Also, it would be cool to have enemy aircraft