How YOU can make battles a lot bigger!

I admit, I should just have named this thread "Help needed: lods". But then nobody would read it and I'm seriously doubting there will be much responce to this anyway. Let's give it a try though. Maybe there do is someone out there who has enjoyed AoB, has some free time and feels like contributing.

What are lods?
Copies of the model (mesh) with less details that is shown when the player is further away. The first lod will still look very similar to the original model. The last lod is no more then a rough shape which doesn't even look human anymore. But because the last one is only shown when the unit is on the other side of the map the player won't notice. Needless to say that this will help the performance of your computer a lot. With a better performance we can have bigger battles.

Anyway, I was just thinking that it is a shame that nobody made any lods yet for the OSP uniforms that we all are using. It could increase the size of battles for all AoB mods easily! All we need are lods for 8 models, (The four infantry models, and the four officer models). I guess you could also do it by only making 1 infantry and 1 officer model and then retexturing them with the other 3 uniforms that are in every .dds file (the texture). All in all not much work that will give a lot of results. I would do it myself if I wasn't desperately limited in time.

If someone wants to give it a try:

Probably the easiest and fastest method:
with 3dsMAX: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,55605.msg2468086.html#msg2468086
--> you can get a 30 days trial of 3dsMAX

Alternatively you could do it manually with 3D wings (which is free and with the help of some youtube tutorials easy to learn).

Here are the original uniforms: http://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?id=1076
if these get lods we can copy them for almost all other uniforms.

You will need Open BRF to export the meshes (models) into obj. format:
Also check the lods in native to get an idea how the lods for the OSP uniforms should be.

If you need help: Check the forum for guides  on how to deal with Open BRF, 3dsMAX/3Dwings, etc. There is a lot of material out there.

Some more info on lods:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,67344.0.html
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,73305.msg1906038.html#msg1906038

This has past my mind a million times, for the biggest reason that the uniforms has such a great amount of polies. However, I am held back by the simple fact that... I can't make it look good enough. So I can't do it.
But this a really cool thread. If it geets more attention may I sticky it

I might give it a try myself if nobody responds but it won't be before mid-September that I have time again. Not that that guarantees succes as I have no idea how to handle 3dsMAX. And doing it manually with wings would just take a hell lot of time.

Oh, not sure if I mentioned this before: I've fixed the collars and legs of the current uniforms. So their neck doesn't pop out on the back anymore and the legs fit on the boots now. I'll make sure to share those as soon as I get a chance to get to my own PC again. (might take a while)

awww, I'll miss those strangly clipping libs sticking out of other weird parts of the body :/

What a Ironic, i already thought to this.
We can use the existing uniforms for lods. (never thought Mount&blade use lods)

And the neary units will be detailed. Some wool texture (i already posted something about this)
Thus, we only need to add wool to all uniforms and we will hit two birds with one stone.

If you guys could pull this of it would be awesome!

Pull what off? Making lods? Comon, it's not hard. What ever moron can do it. And making to uniforms more wooly ain't that hard either. But making it look really neat though is hard since the texture streches on some places.

Now seriously, I hate to be a ***** but don't overappriciate the stuff that's easy, you should instead pay more attention to what's hard.

bjorne. said:

Pull what off? Making lods? Comon, it's not hard. What ever moron can do it. And making to uniforms more wooly ain't that hard either. But making it look really neat though is hard since the texture streches on some places.

Now seriously, I hate to be a ***** but don't overappriciate the stuff that's easy, you should instead pay more attention to what's hard.

Click to expand...

Ok good to hear.

I know that making LODs are easy with 3dsMAX but I never knew it had a free trial. And I never put my mind to it. And making the uniforms woolly/cloth-like can be very hard, due to how the texture's made.

Venitius said:

And making the uniforms woolly/cloth-like can be very hard, due to how the texture's made.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I just said xD
Well, adding it wooly ain't hard. Making it not stretch weirly ain't. Since how it is how doesn't it matter if it streches since where it streches is the colour and bumps consistant.

So I donno...

bjorne. said:

Venitius said:

And making the uniforms woolly/cloth-like can be very hard, due to how the texture's made.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I just said xD
Well, adding it wooly ain't hard. Making it not stretch weirly ain't. Since how it is how doesn't it matter if it streches since where it streches is the colour and bumps consistant.

So I donno...

Click to expand...

Frankly the uniforms looks good, it's only the white band that blew.
If you put some wool on that, the whole uniform looks less plastic-like..

Yes but again, the uniforms aren't cut by front/sides/back/arms, instead it's cut only at the back and at the arms.

Venitius said:

Yes but again, the uniforms aren't cut by front/sides/back/arms, instead it's cut only at the back and at the arms.

Click to expand...

And? You put some wool on that piece very easy.
I got harder problems.

And can we get back on topic now?

We aren't off-topic. This means lods and we are talking about how to create more detail.

Quintillius, in order to get the texture good when having such details will I have to re-map the textures. And that ain't my largest priority right now.