ZEQ2 Lite

Friday, August 14, 2015

Zeth wrote :

I don't know I just know a lot of people who use the metarial editor always adjust smoothing properties to give the cel-shade a more blended look

See, that's the problem. You don't know much of ANYTHING about the techniques you are using. You're basically just trying to copy/paste a project together without any technical knowledge.

If you actually read my above breakdowns of inking techniques, you'd know PRECISELY why the above worked. Start reading my technical breakdowns and responding intelligently based on them.

by the way Zeth are you guys still working on putting ZEQ on unity??

Who is "you guys"? The forums, blog, and moddb entry have all stated that development [you]never even began[/you]. We simply didn't get any applicants.

why not just download the stylisedrendering demo and use its celshade then just adjust to your liking? after all that's what its there for, to learn Smile

That's a fairly dated demo using largely 2003 tech. Very, very little to learn from it.

yeah I'm not the best when it comes to cel-shading but my entire project is made from the ground up besides the models that is, though Super Mega Ultra Mega Hyper Xtreme (times two) model is mostly mine, but every blueprint in there is all me baby

oh I never saw the posts :/ that's to bad I'm still hopeful though, And for the demo I was mainly suggesting that if he likes the look of the cel-shading that he could just simply pick up a few key points from within the blueprint not to learn from the entire demo. No need to be a hater, we are all just one big happy family.

Friday, August 14, 2015

And Wh1t34Gl3(SAS), no. lloyd no I don't want it to be "realistically" rendered, as it doesn't fit the rest of the art style of the characters and world. I want it stylized similarly to a well done digital painting, and not just another generic "Cel-Shaded Game" like every other game that uses some form of Cartoon/Ink styled rendering...

It sounds like you just want your own shading band then. You could use the EXACT image you provided as long as you have a proper shader to take it in.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Zeth wrote :

And Wh1t34Gl3(SAS), no. lloyd no I don't want it to be "realistically" rendered, as it doesn't fit the rest of the art style of the characters and world. I want it stylized similarly to a well done digital painting, and not just another generic "Cel-Shaded Game" like every other game that uses some form of Cartoon/Ink styled rendering...

It sounds like you just want your own shading band then. You could use the EXACT image you provided as long as you have a proper shader to take it in.

Basically, I just haven't found a method yet that would properly utilize it in the material editor the way I want.

I'll admit though, I still find myself relying heavily on tutorials and example materials when it comes to making post-process effects or any sort of advance material operation, and only have a limited understanding of what some of the nodes being used are doing for the overall opperation...

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Subdivision/Tessellation does not produce quality.

Alone, they are just an overload of details, but with the edits coming with them, they can improve the model's quality (level of details).

An old medium poly model with such edits can be as good as a new semi-high poly one. ZEQ2(/-Lite) models don't need to be replaced, but just have a little refresh on some parts.

Very instructive lessons about cel-shading and outlines by the way.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

The most that would need to be done with the ZEQ2-Lite models is increase the poly count slightly as a side effect of physically modeling in additional details, such as modeling the creases or wrinkles in the clothing, adding additional modeled detail to the muscles in the arms, particularly the forearms, smoothing out some of the box-ier shaped parts, such as the fingers, which for most of the Lite models are very box-shaped, exc..

Just adding subdivisions alone is not what I think they are suggesting, but rather overhauling the models themselves, so they just needed to better clarify their meaning instead of overly simplifying it to "make them higher poly".

And the higher quality ZEQ2 models (what was it, 6th gen, or 7th? I can't remember, but ZEQ2-Lite's meshes were 4th or 5th I think....), I don't think they all were ever made available on the SVN, or if they were, then I must have overlooked them... I think I recall them being on an FTP server separate from the SVN, but I can't remember the info off hand, and have changed computers several times since I last looked at it, so I don't have it bookmarked anymore... Been so busy with real life, I never thought to even ask you for the info again...

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Yeah, this is pretty much what I meant, but you gave much more details. *intense laughter*

ZEQ2(/-Lite) models are ones of the rare kind being the most faithful to the anime, it's a shame to put them in the trash..

Monday, August 17, 2015

Tried a different method of Cel-Shading, this one's actually working with the outlines at least, not exactly perfect, but much closer, and does utilize a cel-band texture properly now at least.

Just need to find a way to clean up the edges of the individual bands as they're applied somehow so they're not so dissolved/noisey looking, but rather solidly divided up...

Monday, August 17, 2015

Fixed some bugs with AI death animations mostly being ignored, AI should now play it correctly.

Fixed AI rotation on death, they shouldn't land at weird floating angles on the ground anymore.

Fixed issue with the Lock-On system where after releasing it the player would sometimes be stuck in a weird view angle on the roll axis.

Corrected the Outline system to no longer render from through non-depth passed geometry. Might be useful for "sensing energy" later (Since a mini-map doesn't make sense for anything except as a Dragon Radar) if I can find a way to dynamically use it instead of it being statically present, but I'll worry about that later. In the mean time, at least I know how to generate the effect itself.

I think the next system I'm planning on working on (because for the moment, I'm sick of tinkering with the Cel/Outline rendering) will be the condition based technique system for utilizing various Ki attacks based on distance to the enemy, Lock-On status, current powerlevel, boosting status(Including Kaioken), current transformation state, and health.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Will you make the same advanced renders as ZEQ2-Lite ? I mean, colorless textures with shader bands giving colors.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Wh1t34Gl3(SAS) wrote : Will you make the same advanced renders as ZEQ2-Lite ? I mean, colorless textures with shader bands giving colors.

I would like to be able to, but I'm not currently aware of a way to do that.

The current method I'm using in particular wouldn't even work under that, as it's a globalized post process effect utilizing the custom depth pass on objects which are currently set to true for custom depth. Basically, it uses the one gray-scale cel-band and applies it to any "opted in" objects in the level indiscriminately(likewise with the outlines), meaning I can't do the different colors/material groups separately, it's all or nothing.

So like I said, I would like to change it so that I can, but presently I'm not sure how or even "if" it would be possible to do so.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Mmh.. I would be surprised it isn't possible on these engines. An alternative would be study the glsl code of ZEQ2-Lite and try to adapt it to the newer versions on UE4.

But I think you have other priorities before going into that..

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Added version of Goku's mesh with only the wrist bands, so I can now correctly have just the Wristbands for a specific mesh. Previously was using a Masked texture which was likely less efficient.

Updated Goku's Base Form Head Mesh to correctly treat the hair as a separate material. This will allow the usage of Base-Form's facial morphs on higher transformation levels. Previously Super Saiyan 1 and 2 had no facial morphs. (Edit: I can "hide" the hair with an invisible material, and have the Super Saiyan material applied to his face for the other material, visually it doesn't look very different from the normal Super Saiyan face mesh, but since Base form has the morphs, it can be animated where as Super Saiyan's face mesh currently can not. /edit)

Also adjusted Kid Gohan's mesh and rerigged it to Goku's Skeleton and proportions because I was bored... (Edit2: Forgot to mention, I did not do the same with Gohan's wristbands, I figured the geometry and visual style should be similar enough that I can simply pallet swap Goku's normal wristbands if I need to. Just haven't done it yet... /edit2)

(Edit3: Fixed the wristband's material to desaturate the color, and then multiply it by a Float 4 (RGBA) parameter, to allow instance materials to have multiple colored versions of the same material, and added a "Red" one to correct the color to properly match the rest of Goku's "Gohan costume", removed previous picture and uploaded an updated version to show this... /Edit3)

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

This picture remembers me of moddb's addon page. *laughing out loud*

At least there's no missing shaders and wrong colors.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Wh1t34Gl3(SAS) wrote : This picture remembers me of moddb's addon page. *laughing out loud*

At least there's no missing shaders and wrong colors.

The difference being there's a reason behind why I did it beyond just being bored, but I'm still iffy on if I want to officially add that all in because of all the extra 3D work I would need to do to make that system work...

I'll give you a hint. 3 words, each starting in order as C A C...

Cows and Crows...
Carriages And Clogs...
Clearly All Clowns...
Create Awesome Cakes...
Create A Cabbage...?

No no... Must be Create A Carebear. That's gotta be it...

Coming soon, the ability for Z Fighters to wish for their own personal Carebears with the Dragonballs and have them follow the player around like a pet and do battle with other Carebears! There'll be so much caring, you might go blind from the sunshine and rainbows!

No... That still doesn't sound right...... Where was I going with this, I forget......?

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Maaan, I already have difficulties with English, now you are giving me puzzles.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Wh1t34Gl3(SAS) wrote : Maaan, I already have difficulties with English, now you are giving me puzzles. :*laughing out loud*:

Think about it, why would you want the ability to switch the meshes around on a character...?

If that's still not a strong enough hint, what can you do in Xenoverse that you can't do in most other Dragonball Z games...?

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Mmh, I got it, now you present it under this angle. But I don't think they used model swaps in xenoverse.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Sheesh.. I didn't think it would be that hard for you to figure out, I wasn't exactly being that cryptic...

It's not just model swapping, I'm debating a Create A Character system...

I already know how to do it from experience with Spritehaven, so it wouldn't be difficult to port over a similar setup for ZOPU, it's just the time commitment that's required in order to add in all the different options.

Basically, I'd have to rework all the various models to match the same base shapes at intersecting points, such as where the pants and shirt meet at the belt. Most ZEQ2-Lite meshes are not setup under such an idea, and are instead modeled exclusively for the individual character they were for, so their proportions are largely all over the place in order to fit with that character's proportions.

Friday, August 21, 2015

It's not for nothing that I keep insulting myself, I don't want to look more intelligent than I am. And even with that, everyone say I show off...

Since most of the words you used are unknown to me, that was a heck of a puzzle, yeah..

As for the diversity, you can use ZEQ2-lite models for their initial use, and adapt a copies of them for the character creator. That will be quite demanding, but you will be able to keep the original models as they are and not kill them with edits to suit the others. Otherwise it would need a complex system of automatic resizes...

Friday, August 21, 2015

Wh1t34Gl3(SAS) wrote : It's not for nothing that I keep insulting myself, I don't want to look more intelligent than I am. And even with that, everyone say I show off...

Since most of the words you used are unknown to me, that was a heck of a puzzle, yeah..

As for the diversity, you can use ZEQ2-lite models for their initial use, and adapt a copies of them for the character creator. That will be quite demanding, but you will be able to keep the original models as they are and not kill them with edits to suit the others. Otherwise it would need a complex system of automatic resizes...

It's simple to do, actually, and I've already started it a bit with the above posted Gohan mesh. I leave the base character files alone(aside from rigging them with the same bones as Goku so they can all share animations), and just merge copies of their clothing, accessories and/or hair into a root "custom character" file for the actual resizing and rerigging in 3DS Max. The most complicated part is the resizing itself, because like I said before, every character's proportions are a little different, even if similar.

This would be made even more time consuming, seeing as I'd have to resize a bunch of these meshes twice in order to fit a female body type, plus having to make some male and female exclusive options, since logically there's stuff only male characters would wear, that females wouldn't, and likewise the other way around.

Friday, August 21, 2015

That's what I meant when I said "complex system of automatic resizes".

Friday, August 21, 2015

Wh1t34Gl3(SAS) wrote : That's what I meant when I said "complex system of automatic resizes".

Except that "system" and "automatic" both imply some sort of tool to magically do it for me, either of which is wrong.

I have to do them all manually, so there's no "system" or "automatic" method that I can use to accomplish this, it's all done by hand...

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Possible, but not easy to do. I agree that it would still need a human check after the process. Just to be sure it worked well.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Just tinkering with an idea I had for the aura... Far from ideal (And probably more costly than I'd like), but it has a nice visual flame-like "flow" to it at least... I'll see if I can post a video or something tomorrow after I've gotten some sleep to better show it...

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Gif or randomly generated ?