Temple of Nod(autocad)

[[B]Veyron]

Hi everyone.  Little over a week ago I started on my first project for here.  The idea was to scale this structure to what I had seen in the GDI cut scenes in Tiberian Dawn where the Medium tank is blown up and some bodies strewn across the floor as you can see. 

So what I did was import the med tank and the Nod technician and drew boxes around the characters so I knew what areas they would take up in proportion to the building.

I ended up with this design.  Any input would be great.  This is still beginners for me.

[TK0104]

Nice!

 

I was planning on making a map with a Temple in it but the mesh I used was too high quality and for 3d printing so I couldn't import it in UDK

 

Keep up the good work!

[[B]Veyron]

Updated pic here. (nevermind the other geometry laying around - it's a messy workstation I know but somehow I work with it)

since last picture I updated the ribs to be rounded as they originally are.  added in separate objects for the windows.  for the nuke silo I changed it from a cylinder to a cone shape and then cut off the top of the cone and resized it ( I think it might be a tad big).  added the concrete floor outside.  added in the spikes on the silo. 

 

There are somethings I want to save on geometry for like the indents on the 6 scorpion legs and the small V's that connect with the 2 small doorways (I will come back to this for another edit I am having difficulty creating these pieces).  At this point I feel I'm ready to do the interior which I don't know how to do this but I think Maya might help in that direction.

and if you're wondering how I made this it was a series of overlapping 3d geometry and subtracting or adding or union of these geometrical pieces. 

Edited February 23, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[[B]Veyron]

[TK0104]

Looking Good!

 

Make sure it's not too high detailed so we can import it in UDK

[Arch-nemesis]

nice

Edited February 24, 2017 by Arch-nemesis

[[B]Veyron]

some work done for the interior. It's not perfect but on some level imo it does represent the Temple. 

[[B]Veyron]

here's another.  tech for reference he is standing almost In the middle of the landing.  there's some fixings still to do.

Edited March 2, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[TK0104]

Keep up the good work!

[Madkill40]

And then windows, windows everywhere! Scripted windows! Which crack and snap upon damage hurtings but resurface upon building repair. So many scripted window break animations among other such destructive gfx.  

[sterps]

Looking good so far.

I think on the outside, the curved part needs to angle out more like in the reference picture (see attached image).

I also think the missile silo at the back needs to be a bit shorter and wider, check out this tiberian dawn video as reference:

 

In terms of in game function (people in game said to post here), the Advanced Communication Centre and Temple of Nod (shrine of Nod) in Renegade control beacon purchases, as they gained you access to the Ion cannon/nuclear missiles. When these were destroyed, the player is no longer able to purchase Ion/Nuke beacons.
I think it's function in Renegade X should be the same.

If people deem that too harsh, than a price increase similar to that of the APC  when the Weapons factory/Airstrip is destroyed.
 

 

 

[sterps]

Also if you need more inspiration of what to do on the inside, this video from the 1:09 mark briefly shows what the first floor is like:

 

here's some more that show sections of the glass panes (well where they should be)

 

Front and front door in detail

 

You could also use a little of the content from Renegade as help to do the temple interior.

I wouldn't make it too big though, as it needs to be practical in multiplayer, you probably just want the foyer inside, with the communications hub towards the back, and the missile silo at the very back. You could also animate a missile launching out when a beacon is deployed.

http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Temple_of_Nod_(Renegade)

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/cnc/images/4/4a/CNCR_Temple_of_Nod_Destroyed_Hallway.png/revision/latest?cb=20080414202637

 

 

 

 

 

[[FF]VincentValentine]

GOOD MEN. I Wait your job. Gods helping your. Garanty 100%

[[B]Veyron]

Did a re-do of the Temple and done differently than how I did the last one.  Still done in CAD2016 exported as FBX and setup some options with it. 
still somethings to do but I wanted to test the size and overall look and feel of it in testmode.  Comments welcome I know I've already gotta push the archways up a bit and do some 3D work but overall I'm happy are you? LMK!

[[B]Veyron]

also the geometry seems a bit weird it's like everything that's supposed to be circular becomes a hexagon like shape. so some geometry sticks out in odd places

[[B]Veyron]

Instead I started off as simple lines and then did a series of connect the dots.  then extruded to a certain length and that's pretty much it.  did some simple math for distances, angles, etc ALSO I did no scaling inside UDK I simply used the med tank exported as FBX file format imported into AUTOCAD and scaled the structure around that.  Imported from maya into UDK and that is the scale you see.  it's still based off the main pictures you see but the length and pretty much everything was guess work.

[j0g32]

Nice work!

Hmm... I don't see where you are having problems with geometry?

The only thing could be that currently the mesh/material does not support proper lightmaps (?).

Instead there is only vertex-based shadering, meaning that only points (vertices) of your geometry can be used to simulate shadows. This yields these "stretchmarks", especially around the doors and arches where you have more vertices / higher polygon density compared to the rest...

Probably once you unwrap the UV coordinates properly (for texture and lightmap channels separately) these weird shadows should disappear.

I am not expert though ^^

[[B]Veyron]

one more shot.  I've since pushed up the archways(flying buchess?) added the scorpion jaws(floor) re-did the spikes of the silo, I may redo the indents on the archways because they look like flaccid penises but until I figure out how to use lines a bit more precisely like that in the photographs I'll keep them. 

Still to do.

textures/doorways/interior first entrance/interior/interior texture/Collison(?)/Kismets(?)/animation for launch of Nuclear missile/scripted windows which madkill previously noted/spike décor/ future development I want to add extra floors with an accessible elevator (check GDI cutscenes for lower level interiors of Temple)
 

However this current model is here to stay, will be moving forward.  also... this thing is enormous

Edited May 4, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[DoctorAnubis]

This looks amazing, could potentially be used in a game mode where GDI has to infiltrate and destroy the temple to win by completing objectives.

[Luhrian]

Looking really forward to add it in a map, I already have a plan for it

Idea: Add the Holocron from Kane from CNC-Paradise, if @DoctorAnubis don't have any problems with it.

[TK0104]

1 hour ago, Luhrian said:

Looking really forward to add it in a map, I already have a plan for it

Idea: Add the Holocron from Kane from CNC-Paradise, if @DoctorAnubis don't have any problems with it.

I was thinking more of the Kane holocron of Renegade Campaign.

 

Or maybe some good Nod Propaganda with Kane (final cutscene TibSun Nod Story)

 

[Henk]

@Veyron The reason your mesh looks that way is because the topology is done wrong. There's probably a lot of N-gons, those are polygons with more than 4 edges. Try to use 4 edged polygons, called quads. the front of those arcs/legs are probably just 1 face/polygon, with over 10 vertices right? try connecting those vertices so it's made up of quads instead of n-gons.

You can also try to model it in another way, by starting of with a cube and extruding and scaling it, and repeat that until you have that shape, that way you are sure you get quads. Something like this guy does in this video at 17 sec. but he temple arcs are more complex.

When you use quads you will also get the best results when smoothing your mesh.

[[B]Veyron]

here's a cad look at it.  the indents on the archways were done by making a chain of connecting arcs then laid out on a 3D solid and extruded sliced and so on

[Henk]

need to see some dots and lines, aka vertices and edges.

[[B]Veyron]

is this ok @Henk ? this seemed to be the part I struggled with most.  Done by drawing a series of connecting arcs, laid out on a 3D solid so I could extrude it and remove it from the rest of the shape.  then pushed said shape into archways and subtracted some distance.  you can see how thin that little bit is maybe now I should make the arches a bit longer?

Edited May 5, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[Henk]

Those edges look realy smooth, how much verts does UDK say that model has?

I think AutoCAD isn't really suited to model for games, because of the amount of detail, most game models arent as detailed.

But what I mean with n-gons vs quads, is that you now have 1 plane with a lot of verts, what you need is something more like this:

 

[[B]Veyron]

16322 verts, 31400 tris.
another thing is I haven't unioned all the solids yet so each little piece isn't really "connected" instead it's just a bunch unwelded steel sitting on each other.  and by the looks of it on UDK I'm starting to see what you mean but if I weld it all together it looks like I can eliminate some of the triangles and so on

Edited May 5, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[[B]Veyron]

Here's a snippet of the interior.  The way I did the interior ribcage is drew arcs equivalent to the inside arc outline and sweeped some radius with said arc.  I kept the width/radius the same in the exterior ribcage parts.  enlarged the middle beam, made the pillars by combining two cones together until a similar shape appeared to the pillars you see in the interior shot ( is it posted?) but due to space constraints I was able to fit only 3 compared to 5.   The exterior doors I kept to the basic shape with no indents/details (bottom).

On the other note Could someone aid in textures? I'm basically monkeying around here what do you think?

Also there's 4 columns here because one columns fits in the main doorway and the second columns fits in the back wall so only four columns show due to the construction of the building's ribcage.  Also no spike ring yet but I've tried using  actual mesh to setup the pillars and got a horrific amount of verts.  Fortunately(?) it's topping just over 14k verts and 27k tris but I haven't unioned some of the geometry which will eliminate triangles and vertices.

Also it looks funky but it's pretty much just all floating geometry nothing's really connected and so thus looks all glitchy in my perspective.  I'm assuming when I union some parts and form entire structures as compared to individual parts just leaning on one another and texture it, it should look quite nice.  imo.

Edited May 11, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[[B]Veyron]

the first pic shows the interior ribs.  basically the most upper is cylindrical with a sphere joint at the corner so they both connect "Properly"? the lower arcs is a rectangle sweeped along a curve with cylindrical pieces the same width at the top and bottom of the rectangle piece so as to appear round-like.  the pillars are a tad big to accompany the size of the rectangular arcs with which the spike display will be set upon.

Second pic shows the indoor cubby and the main doorway into the interior.  as you can see I guess I forgot to place it but the 5th column would be in that first entrance wall and the 6th would be in the furthest wall just sticking out maybe halfway or so.

Thoughts>?

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[j0g32]

Looking good!

[Madkill40]

The scorpian collumns are nicely included and the shape is spot-on.

The building is mostly stain-glass windows on the surface so want to have a go at including window frames for these windows to sit in? Allowing the ToN to have destructible windows would be a niche thing.

Looking forward to seeing this fully textured.

[CoreDefender]

On 3/18/2017 at 9:49 PM, sterps said:

In terms of in game function (people in game said to post here), the Advanced Communication Centre and Temple of Nod (shrine of Nod) in Renegade control beacon purchases, as they gained you access to the Ion cannon/nuclear missiles. When these were destroyed, the player is no longer able to purchase Ion/Nuke beacons.
I think it's function in Renegade X should be the same.

I agree it's function should be exactly the same as it was in C&C Renegade.

Here's an example of a map that had the Temple of Nod and Advanced Communications Center, along with GDI/Nod Helipads for purchasing air vehicles:

 

[j0g32]

Alternatively, or in addition to that, it spawns 1 (free) beacon, which every team member can pick up - like the "orb" in unreal tournament 3, which could be used to instantly capture nodes in warfare mode. There was only 1 orb per team available, but it would respawn, if it was dropped/lost.

The idea here would be that as long as if the team coordinates well (and defends the temple/adv. comm-centre), they can pull of ions/nukes regardless of their income, e.g. when refinery and silos are lost. When the nuke beacon is lost (player killed), it takes e.g. 2 minutes to regenerate in the temple.

Players could still buy beacons for 1000, though.

Just an idea.

[[B]Veyron]

Snippet of what I've been doing.  Done some more work to the Temple but right now I'm slapping on the textures just to see what it looks like.but if this turns out to be successful  I'll keep everything as is.

this is in maya btw but you can expect what it will look like.  take a  look at everything in this picture and try feeling it and tell me what you think.
the window texture was done in ms paint  I guess photoshop I'll have to tweak the transparency? in maya I can but it didn't seem to work on testing.  neither did any of the textures because of the method I am doing which is applying the textures directly to numerous faces.

Edited May 16, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[[B]Veyron]

also.  I've been finding that if I save and export my model zoomed in from different distances it renders differently and I have more verts for instance the one in this photo has 40k verts.   but if I zoom out and save/export my model loses verts and loses detail.  what should I do?

[[B]Veyron]

another 2 maya shots but once again the details.  and I am applying the textures (png) directly onto the faces.  and you can see what I did to the interior.  no spike display yet.****

colors are spot on.  could make the exterior ribs darker make the spikes steel and concrete floor

Edited May 16, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[Luhrian]

Insane, I want to see that ingame

Keep it up

[j0g32]

Well done, it already feels like a temple !

Dont worry about materials/textures too much, you can do that in UDK.

But you might want to unwrap the surfaces in maya for this later

Good luck!

[[B]Veyron]

I'd like to have that same effect for transparency in the windows.  I'd use photoshop for this right?

[j0g32]

1 hour ago, Veyron said:

I'd like to have that same effect for transparency in the windows.  I'd use photoshop for this right?

If you want your stained glass to be (partly) transparent only through the glass parts - and opaque at the metal connections - you could use a black&white opacity mask, and plug this into the corresponding channel in the UDK material editor.

This mask could be stored in your alpha channel of your glass texture.

So in this sense, it is of course possible to generate the masks in PS

[[B]Veyron]

@j0g32 I only ask because I don't have access to photoshop (weird eh? access to CAD but no PS..)  so paint and autodesk sketchbook express is the only for me.

[[B]Veyron]

close up of the temple.  This model I used and rendered came up to 13k verts and 24k tris. Notice how the geometry begins to stick out at random places due to the nature of the geometry used. 

Also I am getting that smudge marks on my archways from those high vert points? how can I solve that issue? also will redo the windows the sizing I chose stretched it out as you can see but you get an idea of what it will look like in game.  Also going to redo the front texture.

What kind of model is acceptable here? lower/higher verts? higher verts will be more smoother with little to no geometry sticking out

This was textured in maya and then everything imported over

Edited May 17, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[[B]Veyron]

I am thinking of making versions of this if it's possible.  Starting with the static mesh for display and then move onto a production building for nukes and at the end of it I was thinking of the nuke silo(in-accessible atm) and the other floors (IE: netrunners, mutant lab) and ability to launch a missile.

[Schmitzenbergh]

Looking good

One nitpicky thing that you really need to fix in the future: the aspect ration of the Nod logo and mirrored Nod logos (Front of temple and side windows). They are a little bit weird now. But continue on, I'm loving it!™ 

 

[j0g32]

@Veyron

Have a look at gimp - I think it's a good free alternative for photoshop:

https://www.gimp.org/

You can edit color and alpha channels separately, as well as use masks for different layers.

 

As for poly count, you may want to check other buildings in RenX of similar detail / smoothness, to get a rough  idea of the polies. I cant give you any reasonable number right of the bat.

Also note that usually, interior and exterior are seperate meshes.

 

Btw. Looks great !

Keep it up!

[TK0104]

18 minutes ago, j0g32 said:

@Veyron

Have a look at gimp - I think it's a good free alternative for photoshop:

https://www.gimp.org/

You can edit color and alpha channels separately, as well as use masks for different layers.

 

As for poly count, you may want to check other buildings in RenX of similar detail / smoothness, to get a rough  idea of the polies. I cant give you any reasonable number right of the bat.

Also note that usually, interior and exterior are seperate meshes.

 

Btw. Looks great !

Keep it up!

Yeah I use GIMP most of the time fod mapping aswell (if I need an edited texture)

[[B]Veyron]

Field shot.  Just for show (this model I at 25k verts and 38k tris?)  this one I forgot to texture some stuffWalls flying shot.  just for show.

inside starting night map. w/ mammy

here's a sneak peek of what is behind the back wall.  a bunch of unused geometry! but for the future I had in mind of this area one can access and walk around in and visually see the missile.

size comparison with all the other buildings on walls.  right smack in the middle of air.

xmountain shot.

 

at this point I haven't gone through GIMP yet but I re-did the stained glass looks better imo.  but I am still getting the stretch marks I am using the same method for texturing as before however..

Edited May 18, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[[B]Veyron]

some up close texture shots.  Side, Front, Back, Windows. And there is a window sill just on the outside you can kinda see it.

As for separate meshes how can I connect the two together when I need to? and I'm unsure as to how I'm going to do such a thing because of the method/process I chose to take on such a project.

Edited May 18, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[[B]Veyron]

It looks primitive imo in comparison to the other buildings on how they're made? but i'm not going to tweak this much further in regards to the formal shape of the building but I'll continue on with it.  I'll be happy to post the static mesh as it is and people can mess around with it or w/e. 

Edited May 18, 2017 by [B]Veyron

[Madkill40]

If this was a woman I would actually daterape it. That's how sexy this is. Oh man.

 

It does seem a little bit on the large side compared to the other buildings... I do wonder if in the UDK all the grey/black textures on the Temple are in their own texture_group? So it would be possible to switch the grey/black texture of your Temple to textures which currently exist in the SDK without ruining those beautiful red windows.