Asala Greatsword - Texturing

I've started texturing the model now and I've hit the all too familiar color matching problem. I don't have access to the source textures (not the textures that shipped) for the original model, so I have to guesstimate the base color of details, highlights, and shadows from the composite. Since I made most of the details actual geometry, I can skip a good portion of the texture and leave flat colors (touch up comes later), but that doesn't exempt me from matching the color scheme.

I'm off to a good start, but the crossguard's filigree is a pain because I have to simulate the shadows and highlights (yes, it can be done using the normal map) and trace the original patterns before distorting them to fit onto my UVs.

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Quite a few of the weapons in Dragon Age 2 are straight copy/pastes from Dragon Age: Origins; no higher resolution meshes or textures. It makes sense to do that from a time standpoint, but don't the devs have the original masters that generated what they shipped? Surely it doesn't take that long to lower the optimization aggressiveness, hit export, and carry on, right?

This is assuming, of course, they didn't originally model the weapons with a 1000 polygon limit using only polygons (no splines, patches, etc), split the UVs awkwardly in half (for swords), and create the textures in 128x256 in sideview without vectors.

Home IT crash courses

I've finally setup my own virtual PC lab in VirtualBox. I'm using 2008 R2 to create an Active Directory, have a WinXP client, and pipe them both through pfSense. It only took 2 days to install and update 2008 R2 with most of the second day spent fiddling with VirtualBox's quirks when trying to get the XP client working from an existing vdi.

Things that went wrong:

• Didn't use a 2008R2 SP1 install cd/slipstream with SP1/Use 2012's eval
• Skipped installing the DNS role because the router will take care of it (wrong)
• Moved XP vdi into a virtualmachine folder before VirtualBox created the machine, thus resulting in it saying the machine already existed when it didn't (no configuration files whatsoever).
• Renamed the XP vdi after selecting it, but before creating the machine, resulting in VirtualBox opening 4-5 "Select disk image" dialogs with all of them non-responsive. Had to force quit it and rename the machine's folder half a dozen times.
• Set secondary DNS server on client and server. Forwarders were already setup on the server, so all I had to do was point the client's DNS settings to the server and the server's DNS settings to loopback with desired DNS servers (Google, OpenDNS, pfSense, my router) set as Forwarders in the DNS role.
• Still having problems resolving. I have to ping or attempt to connect to sites twice before they'll work.
• Having the wrong DNS settings on the client will result in it hanging at Retrieving/Applying personal settings. The machine will respond, but since it isn't logged in yet, you can't do much anything.

But, I now have a working domain that I can finally install Outlook and Exchange on. I could install Outlook before, but the interview is probably going to contain how to set it up and I'm not going to fork over my login credentials to a trial email client whose downloading process is needlessly long and, well, read my previous post.
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I woke my desktop from sleep half an hour ago and the following occurred:

• Firefox was frozen, but not "not responding" or whiting out
• I could not open new explorer windows.
• Then I saw the network connection icon was displaying a yellow exclamation sign
• Unplugging the Ethernet cable didn't change the icon to a red x.
• I could move between and interact with windows, but not navigate into or out of currently open folders
• Start Menu would open and highlight what the mouse hovered over
• TaskManager opened as a blank window with menu items, but could not be closed or moved
• I could open run dialogs, but shutdown -r -t 0 didn't even execute.

So, I hit the reset button and watched as it "resumed windows". It's done this before. It's like it does not completely load from hybrid sleep and enters the above quasi-functional state. This hasn't happened for a long time and I'm starting to think it isn't a coincidence it stopped when I moved the page file onto my other drives and only started again when I put a small page file back onto my OS drive.

*As for why I put one back. It turns out using one drive for documents, music, page files, AND Photoshop Temp files and using them all at once is a really bad idea, especially on a 5400 rpm drive. It's like Windows refused to acknowledge I had a second page file on a faster drive and my machine would occasionally lock up while the slower harddrive made heavy access sounds..*

Once I got to the login screen, it said I was still logged in, so, as previous experience dictated, I waited for all the harddrive grinding to stop before logging in. Once I tried, the screen went black before I could click my name, my monitor lost signal, then the bios showed up. A complete restart. Again.

Apparently, all the commands I issued before pressing the reset button were still queued up when it restored from the hibernation file...which doesn't make sense to me.

Asala Greatsword - No more polygons

Okay. Now it's official, I'm making the bands in the texture. The bands you see above add 8440 polygons and put me way above my comfort zone of 10k polygons.

I looked up, got the gist of, and tried patches, but they're even worse. I didn't even get to double symmetry to cover all sides. There were just too many polygons per band.

I could trim maybe 200-300 polygons from either method, but that still leaves me with an absurd amount of polygons. So, I'm going to try extruding a little tube to merge the crossguard with its rings and leave the rest in texture.

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I have 3 days to learn, configure, break, fix, troubleshoot, and otherwise become an expert on Exchange and Outlook for an interview Monday, 100 miles from home, in the morning, through several heavy traffic areas. Wooo.

Currently, I'm waiting for the Windows Server 2008 R2 VM I just created to finish its first batch of updates (128 updates, 350MB). I have a Windows XP VM ready to go, but the Server VM is taxing my harddrive and I can't copy it over without slowing everything down significantly.

Downloading Exchange was easy. Find it on Microsoft's site, hit download, count to a hundred. Outlook, on the other hand, was annoying. I kept getting redirected to a text-only page saying "Server error!" in 4 frames surrounding a Windows Live login. This lead me to create a Windows Live ID (ugh), log in, verify email, read the "We won't give you the option to opt out of special email offers until you get them" and "We now own your personal information" license agreements, get to the download page, download the downloader for the download (Is Outlook really that big?), and spend 5 minutes trying to sign-out because the Sign-Out button kept redirecting me to a "You can't do that"/"Server Error" page. Once I managed to sign-out, the button did not change to "Sign-In". I don't recall a sign-in button anywhere, actually.

Why was a Live ID necessary? Simple: You have to get a trial key.
I can download a dozen flavors of Windows and install them in trial mode without a key, yet Office and its components require trial keys. I'm not seeing the logic there.

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EULAs and licenses in general have gotten way out of hand. Everytime I install something, it's like I've signed my life away. I can understand the "don't steal our stuff" parts, but all those Marketing/R&D/CYA sections are ridiculous. Every "Agreement" I read just reaffirms it is in our nature to screw over the other guy. Loopholes, specific language, definitions in context, all that jazz.

Then you have all the legalese to sift through. Everything is intentionally written to be vague and hard to read. Additionally, THEY USE ALL CAPS TO MAKE "IMPORTANT" SECTIONS EVEN HARDER TO READ BECAUSE WE DON'T LIKE READING BLOCK LETTERS IN HUGE CLUMPS BECAUSE IT DOES NOT HAVE THE STANDARD FLOW OF LOWERCASE LETTERS, THUS MAKING IT MORE DIFFICULT TO TRACK YOUR POSITION IN A SENTENCE AND THAT EXTRA PROCESSING MAKES KEEPING TRACK OF THE SUBJECT MATTER EVEN MORE OF A STRAIN FOR THE "AVERAGE" PERSON. SO, IN ADDITION TO ASSUMING EVERY USER IS HELL-BENT ON DESTROYING THEIR COMPANY FROM THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION AND WRITING DOWN TERMS TO PROTECT THEM FROM SAID VENGEANCE, THEY DECIDE TO SCREW OVER THAT SAME PERSON FOR GP, GENERAL PURPOSE. BECAUSE, IF THEY'RE GOING TO DO IT TO YOU, YOU MIGHT AS WELL DO IT TO THEM FIRST, RIGHT?
*Now: How many of you read that as yelling?

I'm pulling from Graphic Arts lessons for the above section. Also, the afterimage of the whitespace between lines is uniform when in ALL CAPS, thus making it harder to track your position using landmark letters/words. Try it. Stare at a full page, all-caps section of any "Agreement", shift your eyes until you see the afterimage, and look back. Now, try it for a lowercase section. Or, try reading any book in all caps. Not fun. Although, I was probably the only person to say caps were easier to read on that graphic arts test...oops.

...I'm tired.

Asala Greatsword Progress #2 and Job Hunt Update

The polycount is quickly rising. I'm almost at 6k (original is included in the screenshot's polycount). I'm making the topmost details in the texture physical geometry with the rest staying in texture. This method is giving me some bad vibes about the end result, but I don't want to sit here twiddling my thumbs because it may not look right.

If I made the rest of the metal...uhm...bands on the crossguard geometry, I'd probably add another 1200 polygons. It is quite tempting.

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I got a rejection email, ahem, personal response saying the following:

• I had "a lot of technical skills" (good) "to acquire" (ouch) before being able to work in their Junior IT position.
• "It would take a lot of training" (You said you were willing to train...) "to provide you with all the business, sales, and technical knowledge" (Sales? That wasn't in the description and I'm not going to sell product when I'm trying to fix machines). 
• "We have no problem providing training" (Uh huh) "But $15/hr is too much to pay a Junior IT position" (So, the bottom end of the average salary for a Junior IT position according to Glassdoor is too much.)

For the technical skills, I knew I wasn't going to get the job as soon as I read them. Here they are:

1. Ethernet, TCP/IP protocols (down to the packet capture level)
2. Telephony (PRI/ISDN/POTS/PBXs)
3. Linux
4. Planning, installation, troubleshooting and administration of Exchange 2003 and 2007/2010.
5. Planning, installing, troubleshooting and administration of Microsoft Windows 2003/2008/2008R2 Server and Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 Desktop operating systems.
6. Active Directory and Group Policy creation and deployment.
7. SonicWALL firewall and security products
8. Hyper V and/or VMware virtualization technology
9. Microsoft SQL and mySQL
10. Asterisk PBX compiled from source code and Polycom IP phones
11. Programming: PHP, ColdFusion, .NET

Out of all those requirements, I had half of 1, maybe 2. Should probably add Windows 8/Server 2012 to the list if they haven't filled the spot yet.

From what I've seen of other "Junior IT" positions, the requirements for this position were absurd. For example, another Junior IT position ($12/hr, 3 days a week) I applied for required the following:

1. Installation of Windows XP/Vista/7 and drivers for specific hardware
2. Familiar with joining machines to a domain and setting up/using Active Directory
3. Familiar with troubleshooting Windows machines
4. Familiar with networking

For these requirements, I definitely had 3 out of  4.

I kind of wish there was some sort of standard on what is and isn't "Junior" level because the differences between these two are ridiculous. (I didn't get the bottom position either. Oh well.)

Asala Greatsword Progress

Just a quick screenshot of where I'm at now.

I think I'll have to wait a little before I merge the rings into the crossguard like in the texture. I am considering adding additional geometry that wraps the ring to the crossguard instead of merging the two objects together and have been looking for swords with metal rings on them for references.

Starting on Asala

No, not the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia.

Now that Yusaris has been released, I've started work on it's sister sword, Asala.

Unlike Yusaris, Asala's original model's plainness is rather hard to break away from. It doesn't have a lot of detail I can turn into geometry without really cranking up the polygon count. For example, look at the bottom right viewport. There is so much filigree it isn't funny.

Right now, I'm getting all the big details done. I've worked on the handle, pommel, and blade. I'm currently working on the crossguard and it's a bit tricky. There are a lot of elements in the texture that flow on, into, or over other major pieces of geometry. So, I'll have to selectively raise and lower geometry to better represent the texture's details. Or, I could just draw it all out in splines like I did with both Vigilances and make a 20k polygon sword. Well, 40k because there are two sides to this weapon.