Metasequoia modeler tutorials and Keynote translated plugins

[airflamesred]

Well, I got meta 3 to display bump and save a normal map out. It seems abit buggy, and crashed, but thereis hope. Curiously I loaded my skip model but couldn't get the bump to show so maybe the mqo has changed.

[HwitVlf]

It would be great if bump mapping were implemented in Metasequoia. Have you tried loading your skip in Meta 3 and re-saving? That may "convert" it if there has been an MQO format change.

[airflamesred]

Good idea John, I'll try that abd let you know.

[airflamesred]

I messed a bit with this. The skip loads and texture loads but the bump loads very pixalated and wrong - nor can I paint on it - ie the bump slider won't show on the colour sub panel. If I load the noise bump (that comes with meta, under bump) its fine. Is seems you have to paint from scratch?

On a more serious note Google chrome won't let me access this site for fear of malware but IE is fine.

[HwitVlf]

Odd, sounds like it still has some bugs to work out, but at least its a good step in the right direction.

[airflamesred]

Yeah, well I'm not swapping versions yet.
Came across this tut for head modeling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JiuZpb...HyEDIyDcTA
Brilliant and quick. In fact I knocked up the attached image in about half an hour. If you're using meta its best to do just one side and mirror.
It struck me that most heads would have the same topology so instead of starting new every time, why not make a generic mesh and add morphs. So, for example, 'wide mouth', big nose' or racial features. It's a theory at the moment and I'm not sure about the practicalities when using reference images.

[HwitVlf]

Not bad at all. Added the link to the Meta tutorial section in the top post. How many polygons does your head have?

[HwitVlf]

Added a link to "modeling Resources" for the New York Metropolitan Museum's site. It could be useful for modeling reference and has some high resolution pictures for texturing. ‎  Search filters let you narrow down region, era, material etc. to match your needs. ‎ 

When you view an artifact's picture in "full screen", there is an icon in the lower right corner to download a high-res picture of the item.

[airflamesred]

Good idea that John. I keep forgetting to look at how many polys -- in the region of 2k I guess.

Found this plugin from MASH (pipe), replicate along a path. I assumed it would be like pipe (all the geometry in the same vertex group) but you need to have the object to be replicated, as say obj1 and then draw the spline in obj2. Select obj1 in the panel and from the create drop down click on the funny writing. There's a spin and scale option as well

[HwitVlf]

I did some research recently to find the average polygon count for game models and it seems the industry norm is around 10 to 15 thousand polys for a player character an 7 thousand for enemies. That's on mid-grade PC hardware with a standard rat-in-a-maze type linear area. Larger open gameplay areas can use about the same but have 2-4 LOD layers (level of detail). The cap is considerably lower for consoles (360 etc) and way lower for handhelds/phones. Of course other processing like shadows/textures make a huge difference so that's just a ballpark. Anyways, 2K for your head seems like its reasonable even for gaming.

Did a quick translation for the Copypath plugin. It goes in "Plugins/Object" and shows up at the bottom of the (who would have guessed) "Object" menu in Metasequoia. I think it could be good for making pine trees by using "taper+rotate" and copying a branch layer up a line where the trunk goes.