310 replies to this topic

[unclewilly]

The voice Is part of the pinmame emulation, have no control over that.
I'm going to redo all the lighting as the old table is much too yellow.
I always do the gi and lighting last so it will be bright for a little while.

Just a few more things to add to the build. Then I'll get it coded up really quick so I can start people testing it while I finish it up

[rein1969]

thank Unclewilly for the info! Can't wait...

[Guus]

Me too, my favorite table finally "comes alive !"

 

The first screen-shots look promising/great and I agree with rein1969 that the light-show is very important.

But I trust Unclewilly with this one more then almost everyone else(without disrespect to the other table developers!); seen the quality of UW's recent awesome tables.

[dark]

Made the heart ramp more "sphere map" friendly and re-modelled centre ramp as per request.  I went with darker plastic images since the table is still quite bright to make them show up better.  I included a few plastic textures for UW to play with so it's on him to make that hard choice between plastic textures.

 

No more lines in the transparency showing up and the plastics look much more 'shiny' now, the newly modelled centre ramp is quite slick I must say.  I used the old centre ramp as a guide for the new centre ramp so it has pretty much the exact same dimensions but better geometry than FP can provide, the only major things I changed from the old one is the new ramp meets up nicer with the heart ramp and the new one also has plastic 'lips' along the top edges.

 

 

The old centre ramp had 3748 faces, compared to the new ramp which has 890 faces, so not only does it end up looking better but this should help over all performance since transparent mesh's need to be rendered as "dynamic".   Although I remodelled the heart ramp by taking pieces of the old one and making new extrusions to provide improved geometry that would work better with sphere mapping it has also seen significant improvement.  The current heart ramp has 3103 faces where as the old one had 6342 faces.  So the total number of faces on dynamic primitives used in this table have been reduced by more than 50% while improving quality of the appearance of ramps!  A reduction in faces like this will help users with more modest hardware run the table more efficiently.  

 

Just a side note, I didn't quite get the heart ramp sized up to fit (just close) but I'm sure UW won't have too much trouble making it all fit nicely.

Edited by dark, 07 July 2014 - 08:05 PM.

[unclewilly]

That looks awesome

[randr]

Flame polished. In frikkin real. Looks great dark you. Are. The. Man

[dark]

Taking a look at other primitives now,  FP really isn't very ideal for VP models.  I made a quick model of the 'score plastic' that goes with the heart ramp...

Here's a rendering, my new one is in the foreground, the old in the background...you can see how the new one looks much smoother and has nice rounded edges despite having wayyy less faces than the old one.

 

Face count:

Old model: 1700,  New model: 135.   A tad bit more efficient I'd say.

 

I don't want to hear anyone crying about "UW's table unplayable" with this one (even though all his tables run fine for me).  

[zany]

Looks AWESOME Dark!

[dark]

Having a closer look at reference photos particularly from a side view reveals that the score board plastic is actually tapered like this:

Waiting on UW to okay this change.

The devil's in the details!

[unclewilly]

Please do
That will be much better

[ICPjuggla]

Wow, that looks awesome dark.

[dark]

Re-did the scoring decal texture maps to fit more accurate sizing according to photo of actual machine:

[dark]

Okay today's progress,  got new score plastic+decals done, shuttle ramp on the left done and I have the upper play field plastic model started.

I made some new versions of the plastic sphere map with 25% more opacity and 50% more opacity.  I ended up going with the 25% more one as you can see in the pic below.  I think it's a good compromise, helps make out the plastics better without losing too much transparency.  The 50% one looked good but wasn't transparent enough.

Good progress so far though

 

I'll end up experimenting further with how the transparency looks with different maps at different levels of transparency.

I notice from photos we're currently missing a few ramp decals.  I'll probably model surfaces for those decals to go on the ramps.

Edited by dark, 08 July 2014 - 05:33 AM.

[zany]

WOW...thats a  BEAUTY!

[thewool]

This build is burning along, awesome collaboration...

[unclewilly]

Awesome dark. Looking great
Maybe you can help me with some physics wool

[arngrim]

i will need to tweak the gear to head movement, it is not synced now, without modding

[unclewilly]

I'll send it to you when I have the face coded in. Probably in the next few days. I'm coding it up before I finish building

[dark]

Okay, got the upper play field plastic modelled up, let's take a look and compare with the FP generated model.

 

The new model is on the left, I basically matched the dimensions and outline just about exactly the same to the original similarly to what I've done for everything else.  You should also note that the original generates a rendering error which is what's spamming that dialogue box with scary red errors - I'm not sure what effect this would have on VP but I'm sure at the very least we can assume it won't be beneficial.  You can see from the rendering (bottom left) that the new model has improved curves, especially in the circular hole.  From the wireframe view top right we can see the geometry clearly, the old model has many polys/faces as you can see by all the lines where as the new model has a minimal amount of polys while having an improved appearance.  The new model only has lot's of faces where it needs them, the curves and the circular hole, using a minimal amount to achieve good results.

 

Face count:

Old model:   1240 faces     |     New model:  166

 

This is a non-static/dynamic model since the ball must be visible below the surface, this model has seen the largest improvement in efficiency of all of them, a HUGE reduction in faces!  Users with below average hardware will come to appreciate this whether they know it or not.  

Edited by dark, 08 July 2014 - 02:01 PM.

[dark]

Alrighty then,  well I compared the model and texture map with real photos and noticed the dimensions weren't really the same and that the image for pinbot was fairly warped.  The warping maybe helped with some of the layback distortion but it wasn't accurate to the real thing and once my eye notices a discrepancy like this, it's hard for me to ignore.  I mentioned this to Zany since I was chatting with him at the time and he was able to find a great image of the original artwork which also included the outline of the plastic.  With this I re-adjusted the current plastic to fit exactly the dimensions of the real thing (it wasn't too far off, mostly just the height was off).  Zany was kind enough to photoshop the image to give it transparency and it worked out great.  So here's BOP with all new plastics including the upper playfield with new pinbot graphic, compare with the old one and you'll see it's much more accurate to the real thing in dimensions,proportion,colour and accurate transparency.  The old one was all partially transparent because it was part of the same plastic which was also transparent, I used 2 models 1 for the plastic and 1 for the image to get better control over this, pinbot had some areas that should of been completely transparent before which were not and many areas which should of been solid which are now.  These are all small details that I doubt many will even notice but I take a certain degree of pride in knowing I'm helping to deliver a more accurate recreation!