This is something I worked on a long time ago, but never released the tags for. I don't think I'll finish it, but all that's really left is to make a better plasma cannon firing and plasma impacting sound, find a fitting engine sound(currently uses warthog), and make lod's.

EDIT: I have decided to try for getting it shown on CE3, so I'm removing the pics and stuff. No one actually downloaded the tags(because deviantart's download counter said so), so I think it still qualifies.
Edited by MosesofEgypt on Mar 21, 2016 at 01:11 PM

Looks really cool :)

I had your old ver. but it had someone else's credit, glad to know u are the creator and theres a new ver. I had the old one on Race mode for the lolz for Lazarus valley, but on the remake il use the new one. Cool Beans bro!

That's funny, I didn't think I handed it out the tags to anyone. Guess one of my friends "shared" my test map. I've gotten much better at making stuff though. This thing is very nice to control. It kinda feels like controlling a deadly RC tank.

Also, could you link me to the map? I downloaded the one I thought was it, but it wasn't in the map. I checked with hek+
Edited by MosesofEgypt on Mar 20, 2016 at 09:38 PM

Simple but cool little tank you have there. Nice!
Now put it in UE4 :-D #bestEnjin

Cool looking drone.

If any of you guys would read, that's the 8+ year old version that you see. The version I originally made the thread for has been removed from the thread completely and I'm going to try and get it featured on CE3. I'm removing the crappy old pics now since you guys got confused.

EDIT: To show you what I mean when I say you saw the old version, this is a halfres, green alternate coloring of the current texture. I saved it as a low quality jpeg since the tiff wasn't uploading.


Edited by MosesofEgypt on Mar 21, 2016 at 01:30 PM

DSN or PBR use?

DSN. I baked the normals into the diffuse for the Halo version, but for the full quality version I have a 2048^2 diffuse and normals for the body with a 1024^2 spec/glow/detail_mask, and a 512^2 diffuse and normals for the wheels with a 256^2 spec/detail_mask.

The normals are baked from a high poly model with details done in photoshop.

This is a halfres of the body normals.


The model is also completely redone from the old one. The proportions are also different since I was able to capture the concept art much better this time around. I even rigged the high poly version of the thing using inverse kinematics in 3ds max.
Edited by MosesofEgypt on Mar 21, 2016 at 08:58 PM

Very good tension! I usually make more of an effort to bake out at a higher res than intended however.. It really does make a significant difference when mimapped down to game res as apposed to a model baked at game res.
Edited by Super Flanker on Mar 22, 2016 at 01:47 PM

I actually did bake it at 2048 with the intention of using it at 1024, but I didn't realize how blurry the details would be even at that res. This tank has a ton of surface area. If I ever need to, I can just re-run the bake scenes at 4096^2 or w/e and upscale the additional photoshop layers. I made up for the slight blurryness of the textures by using a tasteful amount of detail mapping. I say its tasteful because it isn't 100% multiply like for all the original halo vehicles. I've tweaked it so it's just enough to add micro detail without the tiling being noticeable and not being too strong

Yup 1k normals do suck infact I have noticed a significant loss of light direction within the same sort of maps used in reach. Which Is probably why most of the props are of a higher detail count than say compared to halo 3 and other games of that era.

Typically the nml maps usually seem to promote patterned and engraved details at best.

Which Is why I reccommend to anyone to bake out at at the very least, twice the res you intend for your asset to accompany.

Supersampling helps a ton too, though I wager since you already have show exemplary profficiency within your work, you are probably already aware of the difference that can achieved by enabling hammersley as your main GSSampler in conjunction with cat-mull rom as your filter algorithm. (F10. render settings for those unaware)

As for downsampling in photoshop, I'd point to using the bicubic sharper reduction method which can be found within image settings.

Additionally with each resample I also suggest you add a simple sharpen filter with each 2^ reduction. Only 1 sharpen per reduction however anymore and you may incur horrific aliasing.