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mk Joined: 04 Jul 2008 Posts: 94 |

Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2010 5:11 am Post subject: |

Sajt wrote:
It seems that Quake is the only game that doesn't get something like this (of good quality, that is). Every crappy little cult game from the 90s has some remake project going, usually with contributions from more skilled artists than has ever batted an eyelash at Quake. All of these projects fail, but still they get more attention than Quake. Is it because Quake actually looked good and worked well in the first place?

More like the opposite, I guess. Quake's models were always extremely blocky, and undetailed because of this. In conjunction with the low number of frames in the models, the lack of frame interpolation also did hurt it badly.
What I mean is, it's easier to imagine how a good 2D sprite would look in 3D, than to imagine how an extremely low-poly 3D model would look if improved.
I did make some more detailed models for replacing the originals through Makaqu's pak10.pak file, but what I used as a reference to know what should and what shouldn't be round were the original models' skins; I mostly used the original 3D meshes as a basis for the dimensions, orientation and position of the model in the 3D space (though I changed the orientation and position a bit in the case of the super shotgun, since the original was turned a bit towards the ground and had its dimensions reduced near its front to make it look like it was longer).
Really, if you look at the original models' skins, it's clear that things like the super nailgun's barrels and the thunderbolt's top section were supposed to be round if it wasn't for the extremely low polycount limitations of their 3D meshes.
However, some modellers have the habit of making their model replacements more faithful to the original 3D meshes than to the original skins, and some users also prefer it this way, so I have no idea if it would be possible to make a single set of replacement models that would please most people as effectively as the HRP does in Duke Nukem 3D.
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gnounc Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 120 |

Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2010 5:58 am Post subject: |

With Rygels textures and the myriad of engine choices, the only thing duke3d really has on quake is dukeplus. Quake has high quality art assets. I would like to see the monsters and charactor models heavily improved though. But if you look at dukes HRP, their models are about on par with quakes original models.
I really...really want some high quality quake models.
Something along the lines of electros WIP ranger.

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Sajt Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 1026 |

Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2010 7:35 pm Post subject: |

Quake has retexturing projects and remodelling projects, but they don't look good. The retextures are often as faithful as humanly possible to the originals, but for some reason they still end up looking wrong. It might be the discrepancy they create in detail level between textures, world geometry, monsters, and effects details. Quake had a very consistent and level of detail which made it "work". And I haven't seen a monster remodelled without terrible animation, and all the remodelling/retexturing for monsters I've seen anyway looks cartoony or bad.
The original Quake monster meshes were to me works of art. They don't beg for more polygons. They have immediately identifiable silhouettes (the excellent animations are also responsible for this). They are not disproportionately more detailed than the world, nor are their textures. They don't have twice as much detail in their face than in the rest of their body. Their meshes, their skins and their animations are the work of experienced, tasteful, discreet artist(s).
It's possible that someday a remodelling project can be done right, but the global population of game artists still seems to be recovering from having been allowed to use so many polygons. Further years should hopefully teach restraint from trying to use these polygons to create so much detail that the monster, its texture or its silhouette just turns into noisy garbage when the player sees it running around (see Quake4 among many others).
The other problem is that more detail usually means you have to pick between realism and distinct stylization (cartooniness). Quake's polycount and texture resolution predated the need for this choice. Gameplay-wise (physics, speed, size of ammo boxes, simple damage system, simple AI, etc), Quake is pretty arcade-like and unrealistic, but it doesn't look cartoony. To make it look more realistic makes the unrealistic gameplay stick out more. To make it look cartoony ruins the atmosphere.
For a while I've hoped that a new theory of restrained visual design will arrive soon. Just because you have more polygons to use, doesn't mean your weapon model has to acquire tons of little gizmos and attachments (Serious Sam, UT3). (On this note, I do think the remodelled Quake weapons out there are pretty good, other than the single-hue textures.) Games rarely have simple, fleshy monsters like Shamblers and Fiends anymore, because you have so many polygons to use you might as well put them to good use, and make detailed cyborgs or toned Marvel superheroes (Doom3 hellknight).
Of course I'm disregarding non-fantasy games like WW2 shooters (i.e. games where the artist is not inventing anything at all). But those aren't really relevant to this discussion.
To get this thread 10% back on topic, Duke3D's HRP works because the game is essentially cartoony. The monsters are brought up to MD3 level, anyway. If they started to add normal maps and stuff to that game, it would probably start to ruin it. (Also, it didn't hurt that Duke's original sprites were pretty ugly, if you think about it. Not as ugly as Marathon or System Shock, but still ugly...)
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Dr. Shadowborg Inside3D Staff Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 726 |

Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2010 9:00 pm Post subject: |

Sajt wrote:
The original Quake monster meshes were to me works of art. They don't beg for more polygons. They have immediately identifiable silhouettes (the excellent animations are also responsible for this). They are not disproportionately more detailed than the world, nor are their textures. They don't have twice as much detail in their face than in the rest of their body. Their meshes, their skins and their animations are the work of experienced, tasteful, discreet artist(s).
It's possible that someday a remodelling project can be done right, but the global population of game artists still seems to be recovering from having been allowed to use so many polygons. Further years should hopefully teach restraint from trying to use these polygons to create so much detail that the monster, its texture or its silhouette just turns into noisy garbage when the player sees it running around (see Quake4 among many others).

I'm with Sajt on this. I mean, seriously, do people really care if they can see the polygonal nose hairs of some hideous monster or not? Odds are they won't even notice because they're too busy trying to kill the damn thing while avoiding a death by evisceration, etc.
Seriously. Nobody is going to go "Look! OMG they like put highpoly nose hairs on that monster's model! AWESOME! NOSE HAIRS, like LOL!".
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mk Joined: 04 Jul 2008 Posts: 94 |

Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2010 9:21 pm Post subject: |

In the case of most monsters I also agree, but there are some exceptions. In the case of the knights and the ogres, the shapes of their heads sticks out too much, to the point they look very deformed when viewed at half of the possible angles, and this could be fixed without raising the polycount.
In fact, I actually identified some places in the original models that could have had their polycount reduced without affecting the shape of their models. There's a lot of room for optimization in some of them.
But there are also some models that are simply perfect, like the fiend, the vore and the scragg.
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GiffE Joined: 08 Oct 2006 Posts: 141 Location: USA, CT |

Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 1:59 am Post subject: |

No one said anything about going poly crazy. I'd take the source engine for example, games like TF2 are not so incredibly detailed, but the curves in the models are clear and clean. That is all I need pertaining to models, to spark interest. (granted sources art pipeline sucks...)
Texturing in my opinion is more important. None of the quake high res texture packs (which add the normal mapping and such) make me feel like its anything like the original textures.
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Sajt Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 1026 |

Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 2:09 am Post subject: |

TF2 is a cartoon game That's one direction you could go in with Quake that would turn me off and pretty much everyone else too (I would assume) except those who just play DM with fullbright skins and stuff. Anyway, all questions of modelling are moot if the animation is not good, and not one Quake remodelling project to my knowledge has enjoyed the services of an even competent animator.
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GiffE Joined: 08 Oct 2006 Posts: 141 Location: USA, CT |

Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 3:15 am Post subject: |

Sajt wrote:
TF2 is a cartoon game That's one direction you could go in with Quake that would turn me off and pretty much everyone else too (I would assume) except those who just play DM with fullbright skins and stuff. Anyway, all questions of modelling are moot if the animation is not good, and not one Quake remodelling project to my knowledge has enjoyed the services of an even competent animator.

Well TF2 may have been cell shaded, but others on the source engine (HL2 for example) have the same degree of detail, without the toon. What I mean is HL2 and TF2 are good examples of games which are not polygon excessive but have models which are clean and smooth.
Quakes animations weren't too great either though, and obviously a model is nothing without good anims.
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gnounc Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 120 |

Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 6:36 am Post subject: |

Good animation makes me salivate. I often wish I had the patience for animation for exactly that reason (I found out a long time ago that I do not)

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Spirit Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 476 |

Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 10:00 am Post subject: |

GiffE wrote:
None of the quake high res texture packs (which add the normal mapping and such) make me feel like its anything like the original textures.

Have you tried http://qexpo.quakedev.com/booth.php?id=6 ?
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gnounc Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 120 |

Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 7:33 pm Post subject: |

I was wondering where those were hiding.

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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 8:24 pm Post subject: |

Aren't those just resampled quake textures with added noise? I don't get why Quake and Doom's redux packs have to have so much 'creative liberty' put into them, seeming almost like an excuse. Duke3D HRP is extremely faithful (which is why it's strongly noted in this thread), and only has the 'creative liberties' put into new (and rather unfunny) text jokes from textures that previously contain indescernable tiny text... and that's it.
It'd be awesome if the talent of Duke3D HRP got together and do a Quake HRP, but alas, Quake is the blood nemesis of Duke3D... ah well.
It's also funny to note that most Doom redux packs still use the tired old YPOD models and even the old Q2 Doom Unleashed model continues to be abused as-is. Not even the Doom community can scrap up 3d artists, and those that try, just use the completely wrong tools and get the wrong advice (Milkshape 3D and LithUnwrap are so half-life and 2000)
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reckless Joined: 24 Jan 2008 Posts: 390 Location: inside tha debugger |

Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 12:12 pm Post subject: |

well got an extremely modded dosbox for those games that simply refuse to run win stylish (its pretty fast to). carmageddon with glide on vista yup it works.

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Spirit Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 476 |

Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 4:41 pm Post subject: |

leileilol wrote:
Aren't those just resampled quake textures with added noise?

Hell no! But that you think that might be an indicator how faithful they are.
Click for PNG:
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mh Joined: 12 Jan 2008 Posts: 909 |

Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 5:06 pm Post subject: |

There's still quite a heavy noise content in them which is a shame as they'd be great textures otherwise. The ID1 textures may be crappy low res 8-bit things but at least they're reasonably clean and crisp, and it's a testament to the quality of the original artwork that they can still stand up well enough today.
I don't think that image is entirely fair to the ID1 twall_ texture either; it should be twice the size and have corresponding more detail.
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