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PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 9:43 am 
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Do extra textures create lag??? Of course they do... Why? Because that's all the more infomation your graphics card has to render. Now BigDogge, you may not see the lag in your tests, but you're probably running a computer that's 10x faster than was ever dreamed at the conception of this game, aren't you? Take those same trucks and tracks, put them on an old P2 with a 16bit VooDoo 3 and I bet you'll see a big difference. Hell, even with my 2.0 Ghz I find my game bogging down sometimes. Just some food for thought...


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 4:09 pm 
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I'm testing on a 333mhz pent-2/ 32 meg tnt2 card and a 1ghz pent-3 with a voodoo-5 card. Drive2survive did his tests on a 133 mhz pentium.

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PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 5:36 pm 
Glow Ball
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I haven't given this topic much thought for quite a while

http://forum.mtm2.com/viewtopic.php?t=1212
http://cownap.com/~mtmg/verttalk.html

Once upon a time, I was of the mind that verticies were the only thing that mattered. And by and large they are. However, I came across situations in which performance hits could not be attributed to verticies because there were none in view nor were there any in the vicinity and in fact there were none even in the track. This led to some mathematical silliness such as sixteen large textures on a truck would be a meg and sixteen trucks would max out a card and then factoring in the track and so on and so forth. But things needn't be so complicated. For example, if the number of textures in a track, including the trucks, exceeds the capacity of the graphics card, then the processor and card must cycle textures in and out of memory as the demand arises, and in extreme cases will force the game to pause while they work. It makes no difference if they are on a truck or a model or painted onto the terrain. Also, if a race can start without error, then just sitting at a start line is really no indicator because you're not asking the game to do anything except render a very still image - unless of course the animation tops out the graphics capacity while it just sits there. And in the case of the L&O truck, I believe it's the blinking that causes the largest problem - we traveled that road before. We should unblink it to see the difference it makes. Anyway, this swapping of textures in and out of memory is experienced as "chugging" in the game. Whereas, excessive numbers of verticies will be seen as "stuttering". Note, however, these terms are used loosely as there can be overlap, and depending on the situation one can counterfeit the other. But in each case, the quality of the performance hit is very distinct once you've seen it. A further complication is that the game puts limits on the number of textures (and verticies) it will handle. Again, it matters not if it's track truck or what not. This, I think, is why faster computers with larger graphics cards cannot completely over come "some" performance hits. And the type of card and the render modes all have an impact. Like Drive2surive said, he could not crash the game with a too many vertex error when using 3dfx.

Anyway, I raised the question of texture counts in order to introduce the notion of texture conservation, and the possibility of establishing an acceptable standard when it comes to the total number <u>a body</u> should ideally use. I've seen trucks with as many as high twenties and low thirties 256x256ers. For my own work, I've never went above three. From the discussion so far, I get the impression that five 256x256ers is not considered too many.

Now, if we can get this much attention to the standard shading topic we'll be in good shape before moving on to the next chapters in truck painting.


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 8:55 pm 
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Phineus wrote:
filling-in and shading. If I use layers, I can paint away and put in lights and the like without too much difficulty, but the actual filling-in runs into those lines. I'm not being dense or anything, but for the sake of explanation and clarity, what's the ideal time to paint over those lines? As for how, I assume you just select outside the wire frame and invert the selection and fill? Another possibility, I guess would be to do the same thing, then promote to layer - that would allow you to see the wireframe over top of the base paint, and it could then be deleted afterward (I think I'm answering my own questions as I work things through). Anyway... the real puzzler, for me, is the shading and even the body lines. I look at D2S' Falcon, or even something as basic as Rep Fan's <a href="http://mtm2.com/~trucks/P2004/thepizzageekbyrepfan.jpg">pizza geek</a> and everything just seems to be in the right place and in the right proportions. Is this an artistic thing or is there some sort of formula that prescribes measurements and amounts? After all, this is a basic coat of paint. And yet, I've had problems with it. Even recently. If you use too many colors, the odds are high the truck won't look right in the game. So, like, what's the secret?


Well. With mine I selected a colour out of PSP's palette box, just moused over until the 'current colour' shown looked right for the body colour, in this case a strong red. Save that somewhere (draw a spot on the background of a texture or save into the picker boxes like RF) and collect some lighter and darker shades based off that colour - you can keep mousing in the palette, or do it more analytically with an RGB adjust. They have to be close from one shade to the next, but make them distinct enough so that you can tell one from the next (as displayed on your monitor) without needing to check the RGB values. Otherwise much eyestrain will ensue.

The first colour I pick is intended to be the midtone colour I will use on the truck, although sometimes I will decide one of my other shades makes a 'better' colour. I dunno how many different shades I'd use all up... two or three in each direction is probably enough for the body paint, but I pick a lot of additional lighter and darker colours for detailing ridges, joins and highlights.

<center>Image Image Image</center>

For example, that Falcon uses only three different shades of red for the main part of the body. There's a bright red for the hood, roof and upper parts of the sides, a darker red for the lower parts of the sides, and a shade that goes in between. There's a whole bunch of other colours for the highlights and shadows, but in general I'd pick three or four main colours that are fairly close together for the base paint. You can use more if you want to make the blending smoother, but remember you have to keep track of them all - I prefer to just pick a (rather arbirtrary) line along the side where I think the tone would change if a light were shining from directly above, and say 'everything above will be this colour and everything below will be this slightly different colour'. Then I tend to find a much darker colour for lines and joins and stuff, and build up a small selection of colours around it (which might go all the way to bridging the gap back to my base colours). The highlighting I probably tend to build up by getting successively lighter shades of the base colour up to the constrast that I want, and pick out the edges that catch the light. Use brighter colours for smaller, sharper highlights to make them stand out. The highlighting is probably overkill, but it depends whether you want to emphasise (or give the impression of) raised details on the model.

As I said, I built my model with an accent on following the natural lines of the vehicle, so the wireframe of the face structure basically laid out the pattern for me. I just filled in gaps with my three base colours, so where the middle colour fits between the upper and lower mostly just follows a line formed of the faces going around the model. And the rubber strip along the sides, and the ridges and even the door lines, are all following lines I formed in the faces. In your case you haven't got a full wireframe like that, but the faces define the shape of the model (obviously) so it still has surfaces you can identify as upper (lighter), and side/lower (darker). For me a good start would be to fill in the hood and other upper surfaces with a lighter colour, and do the sides in one or two slightly darker colour(s), then flare up the wheel arches and the like. How many colours you use and and how dark you go depends on how much curvature you want to show on the side, by comparison the falcon is fairly rounded while RF's pizza geek has straighter lines and is more slab-sided. Also check the patterning used on the stockers to create depth on the sides.

All that said, if I'm doing a complex paint job I usually prefer to just leave the shading on the base paint layer - I don't shade the painted design on top. It makes a demanding job less difficult, and is usually better for clarity anyway, and it seems to be what the stock paint does as well which is good a reason as any other.

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 6:04 pm 
Glow Ball
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And you guys do this for every single truck, huh?

<center><img src="http://mtm2.com/~forum/images/post2940m.gif" width="515"></center>

For reference --> wireframe/post2940k.gif

Okay, barring the few misalignments, and the awful colors, what are you guys doing for windows? I think after that we begin entering the realm of the artistic as opposed to the merely techinical... in which case I have a long way to go. Oh, and I don't know if this will be the place for painting over photos or whether that should be a topic on it's own, on another day. But all in all, so far so good.


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 6:10 pm 
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For windows I either use a stock MTM 2 truck's (If that's the body I'm using), or outline using a photo, fill in with the MTM 2 "Window Grey(tm)" and use the airbrush to shade a little. For smaller windows (like an extra cab window), I'll do flat black since most real life monsters do that.


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 6:36 pm 
Glow Ball
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Yeah, in the past I've always just grabbed a stock window. My sample test truck is based off the stock overkill, I think, but I have a couple customs up my sleeve and was hoping for something more general.

I've also tried things like selecting the window area (eg bottom left in the above image) then contract the selection, fill with a dark color, then contract another pixel or two and fill with stock grey, but the edges always look too pixely so I always scrap it.

The air brush sounds interesting but I've never used it.


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 9:16 pm 
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Dunno what PSP you're using, but there is a "Feather" option in the selection tools in PSP 7. What I do occasionally is use the freehand selection with the feather on (on 1 or 2 pixels) to create a shape, then when you fill it in with a color it is automatically anti-aliased. I use this for tons of graphics beyond windows.


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