GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[monkeyface]

At first I thought of PMing an knowledgeable SoftImage user about this, but then I realized it could be nice for other people who get this problem to know the solution.

I'm working solely in Softimage now and it's going great, but I tried to export the map into Goldeneye, and it's really really small. It's in 1:1000 scale or something. It's not really a big deal to upsize everything when exporting, but I'm afraid it could screw something up, geometry or texture wise. And it's easier to work in a smaller scale in the editor.

[Entropy Soldier]

hmmm...when you import into the editor (using the "file > new" function), the smaller the scale number, the bigger the map is. For instance, when i model in hammer, i make my maps on a fairly small scale, and import them into the editor under 0.68, but a scale of 0.8 would make the doors too small to fit through.


If you don't mind my inquiry, where can i get a copy of SoftImage?

[monkeyface]

That's the thing, I'm not very sure about the scale of things, at all. We need some standards with SoftImage I think. For some reason, the exported files from Hammer were very exact.

Here's the download:

http://www.softimage.com/products/modtool/getmod.aspx

Don't get 7.5, as you can't export .obj files from it. I'm not sure, they may have updated the 6. version so you can't export from that as well, I downloaded my version a year ago or so.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Does XSI use a grid like Hammer and most other modelers have? I know GE 1.0 scale is 64x64 in Hammer and DeleD.

Edit: Wrong, see my next post below.

Last edited by Dragonsbrethren on Tue Jun 16, 2009 4:25 am; edited 2 times in total

[monkeyface]

Yes, it has, and I used that as a guideline. In vain it seems. I tried to upsize it with the editor (0.02 scale) and then it was the right size, approximately. But I still couldn't convert the tris to floor clipping. I could turn individual tris into clipping tiles, but you wouldn't be able to place objects on them. Also, at first the map was upside down. This is really getting to me...

[radorn]

Here are my two cents.

GE at 1.0 scale uses metric centimeters as units.
However your editor of choice works, just setup it in a way that lets you control how many units the stuff you draw measures and model stuff in centimeters.
For reference, door's like Facility's (and others) are 100~110 units wide and 240 units high (1x2,40 meters). This is a bit wider than most normal doors, but if you really look at GE's doors, they ARE wider than normal, so you don't crash into the thresholds too often trying to pass through.
(more here: http://www.shootersforever.com/forums_message_boards/viewtopic.php?t=3653 )

And now a question:
So far I have only used sketchup, and it doesn't have a grid.
It uses a system of real units instead. You select the units you want to model in and model away. You trace a line in a given direction and you can type the lenght, so you can know exactly what you are going to get as far as measures are concerned.
I'm quite lost in this grid talk. What I don't get is why there's a need to set a grid size since units are what matter. What's this grid thing? some sort of scale multipler/divider? And how do you know the actual size of things while you are modeling them, anyway? It seems like you have to draw guessing the size of things and then try to set the scale in GE until things fall into place...
It's not a criticism, it's just that I don't understand it, it seems too fuzzy and full of uncertainty to me.
If someone wants to explain it to me, do it either here or by PM

[Dragonsbrethren]

I'm not the best at explaining this kind of stuff, but I'll give it a shot: The grid is simply a collection of units, which doubles in size with each increase (1x1, 2x2, 4x4, 8x8, etc.). One unit is the same one pixel on a texture (ignoring the fact that textures can be scaled). The units have no real world measurement equivalent by default, as you said the devs chose to use units as centimeters. The program they used may have even worked in centimeters, but I know units are more common with everything I've tried. Most games default to having a 64x64 grid, but of course you can chose (and need) to use a larger/small one for certain elements. The grid is just a guideline, and an easy way to make sure everything is lining up correctly. Usually the geometry is set to snap to the grid, to make this even easier.

Now, one thing that confused me was that you say doors are about 100 units wide, while it's been my experience that they are 128 units wide. It turns out this was a simple error on my part, I assumed the setup editor was exporting stages at 1.0 scale, when it actually exports them at whatever scale they really use. I've been using Facility as my basis, so everything's a bit bigger than it should be (a 64x64 grid will import to GE at 1.2064800262 scale). This means that GE's stages at 1.0 scale don't really line up all that well on any of the "normal" grid sizes, you can see this by exporting a PD stage.

---

monkeyface, I suppose the best thing to do would be to get a PD stage imported and use that as a basis.

[radorn]

I know units are units and not centimeters or inches or meters or anything that correlates to real world measurement units per se, unless you use them as if they were so.

My concept of GE's units scale being centimeters comes from comparing similar architecture from different levels (like, for example, doors from facility and archives, which seem to have similar dimensions when viewed IN GAME), counting how many units they are in the level models and apply the level scale to them.

I found out the scaled measurements for Facility's and Archives' doors were similar: about 100x240 (after rounding them up, of course). I then took a measuring tape, and compared that to my house's doors and how big they seemed to be compared to what ingame doors looked like.
My doors are about 70cm wide, but look a tad narrower than GE's, so I resolved that GE's engine units must be centimeters.

I guess, given the development process followed by the GE team, in which the levels were modeled before the engine was even started, the modeler just built away and then they had to add the map scaling function to the engine to make the apparent level size consistent across all levels.

Could someone, please, measure, for example, PD's multiplayer Felicity's doors to see how many units wide and high they are to veryfy this? I can't run the editor, as it crashes my computer.

Now, the grid thing, as I understand from your explanation, is just a visual guideline that groups units, like in milimetered paper for precission drawings?
My question is, if the grid is just a visual guideline, you still need to know how many units long to draw things, right? what difference does it make using a 1x1 or a 64x64 grid? what measures 100 in a 1x1 grid will also measure 100 in a 64x64 grid, right?
I ask this because I'm puzzled by your affirmation about "using a 64x64 grid and import at 1.0 scale". If that was the only info I had, I would still not know of many of these 64x64 blocks a door had to be, if that's how you use a grid at all... Because I'm sincerely clueless...

[Dragonsbrethren]

Well, I've mentioned elsewhere that at 64x64 a door is two units wide and about four tall (I originally had this in my post, but stripped it out because I didn't think it was what you wanted to know). I chose 64x64 instead of 128x128 because the floor and ceiling heights work on this grid; they don't on a larger one (of course they do work on a smaller one, like 32x32). I suppose it's just a bit of bias (which I assume monkeyface has as well) from working with Half-Life and Hammer in the past, where the default grid is 64x64 and walls are usually about five 64x64 grid units tall, very similar to what Facility uses.

Amusingly, I simply measure my maps in "square Bonds" - If a door needs to be 2 units wide on a 64x64 grid to move through comfortably, then Bond should be estimated to be about that wide. I then just model everything in proportion to have I want it to appear compared to Bond, if I want a wall support to be half his width I'll model it at 64 wide, for example. Honestly though, getting the scale just right has always been an issue for me in any game I've worked with, and I really can't tell how things will work out until I walk around in-game.

Doors in Felicity are 106 units wide and 212 units tall.

[monkeyface]

I'm trying out sketchup now. So, how do I make sure that when I export, objects and the player will be in scale with the rest of the map?

[radorn]

OK, DB, I finally understand the grid thing.
I prefer the pure-unit, gridless approach better, though, because I'm a precission paranoid bastard xD, but I guess it's just a matter of taste .
So, doors are 2 "blocks" wide in your method... that was the info I was missing to make sense of this 64x64 grid method.

Thanks for the info about the doors in felicity, they seem to confirm my GE calculations, but I may have goofed in the height and mix up the unscaled value with the scaled one. If you could confirm GE's Facility unscaled door height...

monkeyface, I don't really recommend you to use sketchup over XSI or DeleD if you are good with them.
I like Sketchup's editing methods a lot, but it has it's quirks and it's not really well suited for GE editing (read the SU thread I linked)
My dream editor would be a modified SU to address a few aspects of it to make it more suitable for low poly stuff for old games.
I plan to get to grips with XSI or other tools (once I have a working PC) and get my SU stuff into them.
Maybe I could still use SU for initial modeling, because I like it's modeling paradigm, and then refine things in another editor, but that's double work.
Also, SU material management is strange, and color shading will look different in other editors (GE included) than what it looks inside SU. In the case of OBJ exporting, you'd have to delete all KD statements from the material file and re-color things in another editor.
If you really want to use SU, you should read the thread I linked before.

You need a PRO licence if you want to export to non-sketchup formats. You can use whatever units you feel comfortable with in your model as long as you select CENTIMETERS as the export unit in the export dialog. Of course this will cause SU to scale thing and it could result in something to be deformed in an undesired way, so it's better you work with centimeters from the start and export as centimeters.

Use the template I put up there as it has all the original textures already imported and a sample "room" for reference.

I may have to get involved in the SU community and bug them to either make a modified edition of SU that follows the requirements I need or add special modes into the normal edition.

Finally, if I were to use XSI or other gridbased editors, I'd go for a 1x1 grid and interpret them as centimeters or a 100x100 grid (if the editor allows) and interpret the blocks as meters, having 2 decimal positions of subprecission. But of course, I haven't tried this and have no idea how easy or hard would things turn out to be with such a setup.

Last edited by radorn on Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:21 am; edited 1 time in total

[Dragonsbrethren]

Heh, I prefer the larger grids because I'm a precision paranoid bastard, I always worry that I'll make a wall one unit smaller or something when I work with the smaller grids--I don't even want to think about using 1x1!

By the way, dD Defection's doors are 100x200, at least the smaller ones leading to the roof, I didn't check them all.

[radorn]

Dragonsbrethren wrote:

Heh, I prefer the larger grids because I'm a precision paranoid bastard, I always worry that I'll make a wall one unit smaller or something when I work with the smaller grids--I don't even want to think about using 1x1! By the way, dD Defection's doors are 100x200, at least the smaller ones leading to the roof, I didn't check them all.

mmm, don't hammer, deled and xsi have any other cues for distance calculation than the grid block delimiters?
In SU you can type in distances and also use references from other drawn points so your draw tool will snap to that position.
I don't know how to explain it, you'd have to try it yourself and experiment with it. SU can offer total precission in that sense... it's a pity other aspects of it don't make it suitable as a final production tool as far as GE is concerned.