Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...

[MCR]

After understanding all this skinning, texture & team*.ufo stuff, I've started working on different versions of textures & also on upgrades there...

Here would be the place now to tell me your do it & don't do it stuff (what you would like to see) ...

I personally think we could easily make 16 different combinations possible for the Taman without armor for example, I am also thinking about quadrupling the texture size there to the same standard the Ortnoks in light & medium armor use already, but I am not sure if I will easily succeed in completing this task perfectly (yet)...

What I mean by 16 versions is essentially to make 4 different body skin textures & also 4 different textures for the heads...
IMHO not every Taman should look exactly the same or are they clones ?
We could give them slightly different eye-colors, skin tones, coat patterns, insignia, ranks, different colors of suits...

What do you all think about that  ?

Here some screens of (very early) wip (gave the Tamans new eyes from a cat, all md2 files correctly set up & modified, ufo file modified, additional head.md2s added for light & medium armored versions to avoid any file not found errors, first test versions of different skins): 

[BTAxis]

Greensuit Taman looks fairly horrible, but the various symbols on the suits are fine.

[MCR]

Tell me exactly what you like to have & you will get it...

How do you like the new eyes from a cat ?

[Mattn]

keep in mind that you have to do this for all "three" armours (no armour, light armour, medium armour) - otherwise we can't use them.

[MCR]

Yes I know. (now)
But I have to just copy the head.md2 files & leave the reference to the same head for the different md2s... That saves some space
I will also reorganize the naming scheme there to make it less confusing & more consistent for all of the aliens @ least...

[MCR]

but it should be consistent everywhere...
It is very confusing there really & hard to understand because it follows no logic @ all...

[MCR]

btw, I understand everything regarding this now, have also already edited the md2 files with the great perl script, but the naming scheme should really be reorganized there & follow the same standards for all of the heads & for all of the bodies

Also there is much room for filesize reduction there @ the moment as it is enough to have references from different head.md2s pointing to the same head & it is not necessary to have the same head graphic copied 3 times there...

But I will make them be useful as I will edit those also to bring variety (Ortnok medium & light armor heads for example...)

[MCR]

& the script is not able to 'downgrade' the number of skins, just to upgrade this number, btw., but this is no problem @ all just FYI...

I told you I am learning fast 

[Prinegon]

Well, if you want to do different skins on aliens, as far as I am concerned a male and a female skin would do pretty awsome for some aliens (although one has to agree first, how the different gender would look like for each race and it would be properbly good to add the difference in the appearance in the description for the race, too).

[MCR]

Another problem here is that I would have to edit the mesh also for a female version, because I would think that female aliens would not have the exactly same 'form'... 
So I do not think that that will happen in the near future...

[Prinegon]

Not necessarly. If you look on animal life on earth, mostly there is only a appearent difference in shape if the animal happens to have teats (cause male subjects normally miss this body part). More often one can judge the different gender eighter because of a different body size (female often are taller) or a different skin/fur color (male are more often more colorful).

[MCR]

You are maybe right, Prinegon.

You could help & provide a test skin & upload it here, because I have not enough inspiration & imagination to do a female taman... 

You can find the original skins & heads in yourufoaiinstalldir/base/models/aliens/taman. (you have to extract 0models.pk3 [it is a simple zip])

I am sure if your Tamania  looks good, devs will include & incorporate her into the game, so go for it  ! 

[MCR]

Here are some screenshots of some of the new unarmored Taman variations (former: 2 variations possible, now: 16 variations)

I am not fully satisfied yet, as each one of them does not yet have a very distinctive & individual look, although we have now 2 bodysuit colors, 4 ranks, different body skin colors, different body skin patterns, eyes colors, noses, mouths, head skin colors & head skin patterns...

Judge for yourself & tell me if you have some final suggestions before I prepare the patch:

[MCR]

Here the head skins:

[MCR]

I will make the heads differ from each other even some more, especially I want to make the skin patterns more individual, but I think this is a quite nice beginning already...

What do you think ? Any suggestions ?