The Repopulation - Mesh Hiding for Hair/Facial Hair and T3D
by Joshua Halls (Xerves) · 05/20/2009 (5:16 pm) · 8 comments
We started porting over The Repopulation over to T3D at the beginning of the month as soon as it was made available for preorders and so far the process has gone by rather smoothly. We are seeing quite a bit of improvement for lower end machines using the Basic Lighting, and the Advanced Lighting offers some pretty nice eye candy, but as with any new product there are a few things to be ironed out. Anyway, a few simple screenshots showing the terrain changes, a simple road using the road editor, and a few trees.
Among getting our textures ready for T3D and other tweeks needed for the conversion we needed to finish up the Character Selection process for The Repopulation to make use of a few meshes we have setup for the players so they can change the hair and the facial hair for the male character. Eventually, we hope to have a bit more options in place and a lot more face textures to use (will see some material swapping based on a mesh in the video), but it is a good start. Once the player selects everything the attributes are sent from python to the server to be stored for the player and a special database file is written to store the values for the player to see at the login screen.
The nice thing about all of this is this is all easily changeable during the game as well so players can change their hair. You should be able to see all of this in action in this short video. There is an HD version as I used FRAPS to capture the video. The quality is actually pretty good even at full screen. Anyway, please enjoy the video. Hope to have more up later as we get more work done and T3D progresses a bit further.
Among getting our textures ready for T3D and other tweeks needed for the conversion we needed to finish up the Character Selection process for The Repopulation to make use of a few meshes we have setup for the players so they can change the hair and the facial hair for the male character. Eventually, we hope to have a bit more options in place and a lot more face textures to use (will see some material swapping based on a mesh in the video), but it is a good start. Once the player selects everything the attributes are sent from python to the server to be stored for the player and a special database file is written to store the values for the player to see at the login screen.
The nice thing about all of this is this is all easily changeable during the game as well so players can change their hair. You should be able to see all of this in action in this short video. There is an HD version as I used FRAPS to capture the video. The quality is actually pretty good even at full screen. Anyway, please enjoy the video. Hope to have more up later as we get more work done and T3D progresses a bit further.
About the author
Part of the team that works on The Repopulation, a SciFi based MMO using a heavily modified version of the Torque MMO Kit - T3D. I also take care of the T3D version of the Torque MMO Kit.
#2
05/21/2009 (12:17 am)
The game's coming along really well! The screens look a lot better in Torque3D, and your characters look superb! 
#3
05/21/2009 (2:21 am)
agree with konrad, but also want to add - you have done a hard work, as i see ingame ui (top screen) - i understand, that this is only top of the iceberg 
#4
May i ask the aproach on the clothing system?
I mean it works over torque script? or c / python programming?
05/21/2009 (5:44 am)
i love the look and feels of the game.May i ask the aproach on the clothing system?
I mean it works over torque script? or c / python programming?
#5
05/21/2009 (6:20 am)
The calls are all done in Python, though they could also be done in Torquescript. The code itself is in C++. We're using a variant based on the mesh hiding resource with a few improvements. 
#6
05/21/2009 (8:13 am)
Awesome work guys! The palm fronds in the trees are cool. Very alien. 
#7
07/10/2009 (3:44 am)
Looks very well done :) 
#8
How is the model actually setup for something like this? Is the hair actually "attached" to the model at some point or does it just kinda hover above and is pushed as close to the head geometry as possible to make it look attached.
I want to do this for player armor but I'm not sure how to make the model look seamless when you are swapping meshes in and out ie: places like the arms attaching to the body. Any direction would be great!
10/02/2009 (12:28 am)
I was just looking up information about mesh hiding, since I want to try and implement something like this, and maybe you can answer some questions for me.How is the model actually setup for something like this? Is the hair actually "attached" to the model at some point or does it just kinda hover above and is pushed as close to the head geometry as possible to make it look attached.
I want to do this for player armor but I'm not sure how to make the model look seamless when you are swapping meshes in and out ie: places like the arms attaching to the body. Any direction would be great!
Torque Owner Bryce
Toy Story 2 was O.K.