Could we use something like this?

[Destructavator]

I was frustrated in the past when it came to making armored jackets and such for the soldiers, but now I think I've figured out how to do jackets and coats.  It involves having a coat "fanned" out a bit, and controlling it with armature, at least with the way I'm doing it (I'm sure there's other ways as well, I don't claim to be a world-class veteran modeler or anything...)

I put this together as an experiment to try an idea for a trench coat, perhaps with some modification this could be a new civilian model?  Or an agent of some kind?

Turning the long coat into a short jacket is very easy, it just means scaling the skeleton parts in the coat down a bit.

...And BTW as one can see this doesn't have a high-detail permanent texture, at least not yet.

Edit: The little blue things are parts of the skeleton, they wouldn't be rendered in the game.

[Bartleby]

cool.
hope this will go into game. looks great =).

[Mattn]

if you make the clothes animated and good looking... - yes

[Destructavator]

I attempted to make a version in a business suit of some type, although I'm not really good at smaller details.  This is what it looks like at the moment.

If anyone good at making detailed textures wants to help, now would be a good time.

I kept it reasonably conservative, I'd imagine this could still work for the game setting some 80 years into the future, as most formal business attire that I've seen doesn't change a whole lot because its, well, conservative.

Down the road when I get to casual stuff, who knows...

Edit: @Mattn: I forgot to mention that yes, the coat can be animated, as it is done in multiple sections so it can bend and move with animations quite easily.

[Destructavator]

Altered the clothing texture a little, and added some pockets.

[H-Hour]

Destructavator, I don't have Blender, but if you can provide me with a picture of the texture with the vertex coordinates laid out and some pointers on where they point on the model, I'll have a go. I'm a slow worker, and I'm more experienced with buildings/man-made object texturing than I am with organic shapes, so those are the caveats. Also send me some ideas of what you want to accomplish.

[Chriswriter90]

It reminds me of Darth Vader for some reason.

[Destructavator]

It reminds me of Darth Vader for some reason.

Yeah, the first pictures with unfinished placeholder textures did that for me too somehow, you're not alone.

@H-Hour:  I didn't forget your offer, but I've got a number of things going on at once, and sometime in the future I should get back to this.

[H-Hour]

@H-Hour:  I didn't forget your offer, but I've got a number of things going on at once, and sometime in the future I should get back to this.

No worries, it will have to be in a future time-frame for me as well.

[Destructavator]

Ha!  Figured it out!

Originally I had many (over several dozen) sections and joints for the long coat, and from animation tests it proved to be quite messy and difficult to get the coat to work.

I cut it down to just five long bones just for the coat, with only one joint in each halfway down, and now it works much better (and is *much* easier to animate).

This version shown here is actually a different version meant for another project, but I could do something like this for UFO: AI civilians, or adapt this model (glue the fingers together, change the pockets/equipment to civ clothing, etc.).

[Mattn]

looks good - nice job.

i'm sure i have to mention that we would like to have this for ufo, too

[vedrit]

Another thing to think about is this: Movies as textures. I know how to work it in Maya, and someone that was in my animation class who used Blender as their main program said that it was also possible in Blender. I think this was discussed somewhere else here, as the point of animated advertisements came up. It could also be used for computer screens, etc.

[Mattn]

this works in ufo for brushes/faces only, not for models, we have the material system for this.

[Destructavator]

Another thing to think about is this: Movies as textures. I know how to work it in Maya, and someone that was in my animation class who used Blender as their main program said that it was also possible in Blender. I think this was discussed somewhere else here, as the point of animated advertisements came up. It could also be used for computer screens, etc.

This is extremely easy in Blender for Blender's own rendering engine (good for animated cut-scenes and cinematic clips and such), but as Mattn said it wouldn't work for models in UFO: AI because animated textures wouldn't export to MD2 format (I don't think MD2 supports such a thing).

...But if I don't export to MD2 and render something from inside Blender, yes, it is very easy, all I have to do is go to the image selection for a material that would normally point to a still graphic file (JPEG, PNG, BMP, TGA, etc.) and instead point it to an AVI or MPEG or such, then tell it which frames to use from the video clip.  Not only that, but I can also have it use/calculate an alpha channel and mix it with other textures or make parts transparent, etc.

I've actually done this before, yes it is very easy and impressive, but as I said it only works internal in Blender for direct rendering to a video clip, not for export to a game engine like the one used for UFO: AI.

Some of the newer game/3D graphic engines that have come out more recently do support video clips as textures though, for example the Irrlicht engine (you can find it on sourceforge) supports video textures for imported models, and is frequently used for games coded in C++.  The older quake 2 modified for UFO: AI is a different story, and I don't know if it ever could support this if modified further or not.