Shader / graphics woes

Unity Engine
,
1

I know graphics aren’t my strong suit (heck it may not be my castaway rags :slight_smile: ), but I may cry…

I finally get something nice rendering in Cheetah 3D, and then I try importing into Unity, and nothing… I’ve tried Baking a texture (not nearly as nice an effect), nothing! The d@mned model just keeps sitting there, looking exactly the way it did a moment ago!!!

I’ll add some pictures. Can anyone help the graphically challenged? :frowning:

Thanks,

Galen

255665--9200--$screen_shot_2010_01_27_at_43600_pm_590.png
255665--9201--$nice_sm_ship_render_413.png

2

What shader are you using? There isn’t any lighting on that model.

3

Shaders don’t transfer between 3D apps, and you’re certainly not going to get raytraced reflections on an iPhone anyway. :wink: You need to build materials in Unity.

–Eric

4

I’ve been trying to use Parallax Specular (does that work on iphone?)

Thanks,

Galen

5

Nope, sorry, no pixels shaders of any kind.

–Eric

6

AARrrrggg!

I’m ok, I’m ok…

ok, so… is there a good source for learning how to make graphics look nice on an iphone (ideally for the completely stupid - to use an analogy, if this were golf, my handicap is the club and ball !!!). Do you know how long I’ve been picking at that one model, trying to make something look presentable!! I’m getting better at modelling (in my humble opinion), gods help me I’m even doing some passible animation (at times), but graphics…

Every time I look at the Penelope example from Unity I leave a new dent in my desk (head prints are reallly hard to remove BTW) :x

If I sacrifice one more chicken to the pagan gods of GPU the PETA people are going to be on me like white on rice!

Any pointers (articles, books (I have 3 already!), or magic potions) you can spare would be greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,

Galen

(PS. I am trying to use GIMP → Cheetah 3D → 3D Coat … God love the tools people for trying to make me productive :wink: )

7

generally, you bake all effects into your texture

8

For Realmaze3D, I made a system that bakes lighting and shadows into vertex colors. It’s all static however…once a level is computed, nothing changes aside from the camera moving around; there are no actual lights or anything. Probably the best thing you can do is have nice-looking textures.

–Eric

9

Assuming that i haven’t the foggiest how to make such a system, at this point… just for arguments sake :wink: … which tool would I use to create the light map? Cheetah? GIMP? other?

Thanks,

Galen

10

Javascript, mostly. :slight_smile: I did vertex coloring of the models in Blender though. Apparently Cheetah doesn’t do vertex colors unfortunately.

–Eric

11

I think you’ve possibly jumped in at the deep end… You should work through all the example projects to see how materials and objects are usually made :slight_smile:

12

but cheetah offers lightmap baking

13

Ok, so what does handle vertex colors? 3D Coat has a “microvertex” painting option, is that the trick for me? I used per pixel option last time, apparently not the right option.

Thanks all for your feedback, for the record and i’m not confused about how materials and objects are made, just textures that look good :wink: While i’m not feeling up to creating high poly models and doing the retopology like a pro, I do ok with low poly simple models (lately that is - my first little space ship weighed in at a whopping 5800+ polys!! but we’re feeling much better now :wink: )

Cheers,

Galen

14

I think pretty much all the other options do this. I use Blender for it, and it’s free, of course. The downside is that there is no direct way to paint in the alpha channel. Fortunately, somebody on this forum solved that problem for us. Let me know if you’re interested in that alpha channel thing, but Blender does RGB colors without any scripting necessary.

15

5800 poly is just about 3000 more than you want …

on the iphone you have a poly budget of 10k - 14k unless you are going with 3GS exclusively

16

No kidding!! I’m surprised it works at all. At higher levels it’s possible to have more than a dozen of those on screen at a time. Surprisingly, there have been no performance issues with the game. (I tested using a 2nd gen ipod) All responses have been positive (at least from a performance perspective).

I dun busted the poly budget, and got away clean from all accounts.

Galen

17

Ah ha! getting closer… I think :slight_smile:

Still can’t generate a lightmap (blender scares me :wink: ) but… here’s where I got with baking and some back and forth between 3D coat and Cheetah 3D:

256683--9236--$screen_shot_2010_01_29_at_30158_pm_954.png