Modeling Options / effects and more.

[[RMI]Psychel]

There are 3 LOD's: High, Medium, and Low - Yes, you must make all 3 yourself.
Polycounts (Triangles):
High : up to 3000
Med : up to 1200
Low : up to 500....I think - if you can't manage this, try to get it as low as possible, we have a few that are a bit over the limit.

From what i got from a 2 post read if found on the forum there are 3 levels of Detail on heroes as from the quote there.

What i dont get is. When do you use these, and if there is a litle edge over those limits for the mid and max. i get the low can be a litle higher but what about the rest.

And what about texture limits, didnt find anything worth reading yett on specific max size and minim size and so on.

Also any usefull guides on how the actual animations work in this game ?

Im using maya, and wont transition to max since max / maya is a choice i dont wanna make, to lazy to learn both realy since i just like maya more.

And is there any good tutorial for effects making.

Im asking mainly since im doing a hero and wold like to know what others have done / use.

[Yuichi]

Those are not really limits just general guide lines for your model size so that everyone can run them.
You can also just make one high detail model but then people with low end computers wont be able to use it.

As for textures I think the only limit is your graphics card.(Ive seen some 2048x2048)
Default sizes for textures ingame are (Also just guide lines)
High 256x256 (Some heroes have 256x512)
Med 128x128
Low 64x64

Not much tutorials around here yet.
Could try checking the resources sub forum.

Oh and as far as I know there is no way for maya to export models to HoN so you are pretty much limited to
3ds Max 8(Only export and only works on version 8 )
or Blender(which can also import models and animations so you can study them).

[[S2]BlacRyu]

Effects are pretty easy to learn yourself just by looking at existing .effect files, the variable names are pretty self explanatory most of the time. If you have questions ask on the #honlabs IRC channel at http://www.vinthian.com/hon/, or just ask on the forums.

Animations are controlled by the .mdf file, again you can look at any of those files for reference. If you plan on overwriting any mdf files, be sure to keep the animations in the same order that they were originally, otherwise it won't work correctly if you try to use it online.

[[RMI]Psychel]

oh ! thx for the response !

@ Yuichi

i know they wer just guidelines, just wondering how much are the actual limitations, if anyone found out !

Btw the texture sizes are insanely low. 512 should be high atleast.

And @ the maya no export yet - that sucks. kinda lowers the %chance people will actualy try.


@BlacRyu

Thanks for the info / link !

The animations you mention, do they have a specific frame rate ? wold be good to know att what speed things animate.

[[S2]BlacRyu]

@BlacRyu

Thanks for the info / link !

The animations you mention, do they have a specific frame rate ? wold be good to know att what speed things animate.

I think the default is 30fps, but you can change it for each animation in the mdf file.

[[RMI]Psychel]

I think the default is 30fps, but you can change it for each animation in the mdf file.

oh, alright, thats convenient.

Do tell. What are the maps used ? Texture. Displacement, And what more ? AO ? or anything alike ?

[[S2]BlacRyu]

oh, alright, thats convenient.

Do tell. What are the maps used ? Texture. Displacement, And what more ? AO ? or anything alike ?

I believe the maps used depends on the shader chosen in the material file. I think the most inclusive is the mesh_color_unit_team_lightmap_spec shader, which would require 5 textures. I think most heroes just use diffuse, normal, and team color maps.

[[E]theli]

well, model importing/exporting have little to do with textures :P

afair there are such types possible
normal map, specular color map, diffuse, lightmap (glow), team color map
you can also use your own shaders to do something else (you need to write both hlsl and glsl variants if you intend it to work on all platforms)