Phong for aliens

[Makrontt le nécron]

This is something wanted to post since a long time:
A pack that add phong shading and bumpmapping to several aliens (alien grunt, mortar synth, big momma, Ichthyosaur and houndeye).

It was by looking the differences between HL2 vorts and EP2 ones that I thought: "damn without changing the level of detail of the model, just adding phong and normalmap make them look way better". So I decided to "improve" some of the aliens creatures we have here.

I mainly release them to know what people think of them. Are they to shiny? Does the normalmaps are fine? I thinks so, but I want to know what over people thinks of them.
I upload some pics here to give you an idea (maybe I should have made a with phong/no phong comparison picture), but please try them in-game or take a look with the model viewer before giving your opinion, it's hard to judge it with only screenshots.

So we have:

- alien grunt


Don't be surprised, its armor is fully black, not textured, it's just using one pixel of the base texture. It's because it was a bit special, I just couldn't make it work like any texture. It has something to do with the model, but I don't know how to change that.
I would like to know, do you think it would be better with glowing eyes (the vort have glowing eyes)?

-bullsquid



-gargantua



-gonarch (I like this name more than big momma )



-houndeye



- Ichthyosaur



-mortarSynth


I tried to add some details to the normalmap for this one.

- and the alien gibs (a small detail but it make them looks better)


NOTES: -You need a DX9 card to see phong shading.
-Don't forgot to make a save of your files
-If you don't know what "phong" is, check here:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Phong
-I use some custom skins, but didn't included them
-I also made this for some other models (APC, tau cannon, some playermodels...). I don't know if someone is interested.

DOWNLOAD:
http://files.filefront.com/phonged+mode ... einfo.html

[fug4life]

Very good, and there was me thinking we already had phong on the agrunts. guess it was assassins and stalkers.

Great Job!

[Supahchikin]

One word: PLASTIC

[Tono-Tako]

fix the bigmomma and the bullsquid and it'll be ok

[Blues]

I think the agrunts and mortarsynths are really well done (though the black armor could need a higher value for the phongexponent, but it might also only be looking like this because of the texture issues, don't know).
The others, especially gonarch and bullsquid need some adjustments i think.

But it's a great idea you had there

[Barnz]

Sexy. How do you create a phong map?

[Shana]

Have tested them ingame and they all look fine, including the bullsquid with the default oc texture, but like blues said, the black parts of the agrunt should be turned down a bit, the flesh parts looks good, gives it a cool "organic" look.
And glowing eyes could look cool, just try it out and see how it looks

[Blues]

I'll download these to see if i can do anything about the armor and then let you know

Actually i think the armor should reflect a little more like polished metal or a brilliant finish, not so... matt. but as you said, makrontt, the uv map could cause some problems there :\


Edit: Makrontt, W0rf0x, would you two please have a look at this and tell me what you think? Or at least somebody... Took me about 5 or ten minutes to slowly change it to this and keep looking at it in game. I need some opinions of others, because I'm not really satisfied

agrunt_chrome.vmt

Code: Select all

"VertexLitGeneric"
{
	"$baseTexture" "models/agrunt/agrunt_chrome"
	"$bumpmap" "models/agrunt/agrunt_chrome_normal"

	"$envmap" "env_cubemap"
//	"$envmaptint" "[.05 .05 .05]"
	"$envmaptint" "[.015 .015 .015]"
	"$envmapcontrast" "4"

	"$model" 1

	"$surfaceprop" "metal"

	"$phong"     "1"
	"$phongexponent" "190"
	"$phongboost"   "8"
//	"$phongfresnelranges" "[.4 0.8 1]"
	"$phongfresnelranges" "[.4 0.8 1]"

	// Rim lighting parameters
	"$rimlight" "1"												// To enable rim lighting (requires phong)
	"$rimlightexponent" "200"										// Exponent for phong component of rim lighting	
	"$rimlightboost" "0.1"	
}

[Makrontt le nécron]

Code: Select all

"VertexLitGeneric"
{
	"$baseTexture" "models/agrunt/agrunt_chrome"
	"$bumpmap" "models/agrunt/agrunt_chrome_normal"

	"$envmap" "env_cubemap"
//	"$envmaptint" "[.05 .05 .05]"
	"$envmaptint" "[.015 .015 .015]"
	"$envmapcontrast" "4"

	"$model" 1

	"$surfaceprop" "metal"

	"$phong"     "1"
	"$phongexponent" "190"
	"$phongboost"   "8"
//	"$phongfresnelranges" "[.4 0.8 1]"
	"$phongfresnelranges" "[.4 0.8 1]"

	// Rim lighting parameters
	"$rimlight" "1"												// To enable rim lighting (requires phong)
	"$rimlightexponent" "200"										// Exponent for phong component of rim lighting	
	"$rimlightboost" "0.1"	
}

For the phong it looks better, but the rimlightboost is way too small, you can hardly notice the rimlight like this. I think 0.5 is enouth.
Here is the alien grunt with glowing eyes, and I it doesn't really looks good, due to the fact it use the same material as the eye.
(I wish I knew how to modify a model UV map)

[Blues]

Thank you.

I don't know, i didn't really like the rimlight, so i turned it down... it seemed too blurry and too grey to me (like the phong which was also blurrier in your vmt), but actually i have to admit that i don't really know what rim light thing does.

What did you do to make the eyes shine like that? And why are you talking about the uv map? Oo

[fug4life]

eye's n nose look good imo, keep it

[fug4life]

Alien controller could use a make over, I know its not really supported by oc, but if ya bored, nihilanth too.


Cough, snarks!

cockroaches....

[Tono-Tako]

awesome job, really good

[Shana]

The glowing eyes look cool, and yes, alien controller textures could really need polishing, they use default hls textures atm.

Also blues, heres explained how to get textures glowing, i also used that article when i made my animated selfillum halo texture.
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/%24selfillum

[Makrontt le nécron]

I already took a look at other monsters (like the controller) and I can tell you it's useless to add shaders if the base texture and models are low definition.
Any chance someone convert this to source?

http://www.fpsbanana.com/skins/47812