Possible to use models?

[fatihGG]

Hey guys,

 

Love DD, played since the game launched back on ps3.

 

I find some of the textures blurry in general, especially for the characters.
I know someone is already working on enhancing the textures for the environments, would be nice if someone would develop something alongside that for characters and creatures.

I could do a simple enhancement of the textures themselves, but would love to have access to the in game models so I can use them as a base for sculpting and baking down the normal maps.
Would take out some of the guess work when just working with 2d textures.

Thanks!

[fatihGG]

Looks like a mod modified to topic title, so I wont go into too much detail about apps that are being used and what not. If anyone wants some more detail, feel free to PM.

I managed to access some of the models. Almost there to get a base to start enhancing the models.

 

Some pieces of geometry seem to be missing UV data. So if I cant get some geometry with the UV's intact I would need to unwrap it myself and probably have a mismatch with the baked down normals (stretching/warping/etc.).

Apart from that another problem I foresee would be tangent basis that they use in DDDA versus what I bake with. Will result in broken normals and seams.
Tying in with the tangents basis issue, since I need to clean up the geometry manually it is very likely that the vertex normals of the in game model and the vertex normal of the model that I am modifying will be different.

So basically, before I will be doing any serious work on this, i'll do some quick tests to see how it ends up like in the game. if it is super broken and I cant find a fix, I will have to cancel this project.
If the end result is acceptable, the future might be a bit more bright! =]

 

 

[fatihGG]

To anyone that is interested. I started streaming myself working on the model on Twitch.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to hop over, or just check in to see the progress on this mod.

Thanks!

 

www.twitch.tv/fatihg_

[fatihGG]

Making some progress! =]

 

Got most of the model cleaned up. still need to fix some stuff (like the fingers).
Took me longer than I expected due to missing data (UV's) and trying to match them from multiple character models (My main character + Multiple pawns).

So unless there is a way to get them from the game files directly, later down the line, I probably will not work on this too much.
Will just do the male character and the female character and call this little project done.

Also my concerns about the tangent basis might not be too big an issue. Got the model in a moddeling package and applied their normal maps to the model and it seems to render just fine, or I just did not notice any major issues. So that's good.
Will still need to do some test just to be 100% sure.

Also normal maps from the game are a bit unconventional. They seem to be storing data in different channels of the image file, instead of just the Red and Green channel.
Got a work around and made a little photoshop action so it is easy to go back and forth from a DDDA normal map and a regular normal map.
http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma/mods/81/?

[fatihGG]

Will be doing some more streaming in a bit, for anyone that is interested.

Got the low poly pretty much done. Will need to do some clean up and then I'll start sculpting.

[Phnx]

Cool stuff. Are you also able to get the models back in the game yet? And what about animations? Could they also be altered? :)

[textitexto]

It's looking nice!

[fatihGG]

Thanks!

I doubt ill be able to modify the model or animations. What you see in that image is what I was able to reconstruct from the game itself.

I am only using it so I have a base for the HP I will be making. Should give me a bit more control instead of just modifying the textures themself.

edit--

 

Instead of having a normal version and a 'ripped' version, I am debating if it is worth to have a chubby and a ripped version instead. So the big guys dont just look like wide ripped dudes.

Not sure if it is possible though, and probably would look a bit awkward if the guys is 'skinny'. They dont actually blend between 2 normal maps as far as I can tell.
I think they are adding the ripped version on top of the normal one.

So we'll see how that goes.

Edited January 26, 2016 by bb0x

[fatihGG]

Initial test is a succes!

No obvious seams (except for at the back of the neck..)

No obvious shading errors.
I was right about the additive normal maps instead of blended normals as well, because of that I was able to figure out a method counter the effect of it adding and thus having better control over the final result.

Example:
Vanilla muscular version, notice the weird shading aretfacts, especially on the shoulders.


The test version I am working on. Notice how the shoulders, or anything that would be at a harsh angle really, still looks nice a smooth.



So basically what I am doing is I am baking 2 version of the high poly model. One is the model in the 'default' state and the other being the model in the 'Muscular' state.
After baking their normal maps, I subtract the data from the default normal map with that of the muscular normal map which mean the overlay normal map only stores the difference of the 2 maps.
So when they get combined again, you basically end up with the 'muscular' normal map.

Default:

 

Muscular:

 

Subtracted(actually used normals):

Anyway just happy got this all working without too much of a problem.
Tomorrow I'll test a chubby version as a base and see how that looks like when blending between the 2,

PS. 2048*2048 for just the head might be overkill....