Development > Artwork
New Bloodspider Model
MCR:
--- Quote from: Makaber on August 01, 2011, 06:58:16 pm ---I also thought that normal maps would be good enough, but I didn't know if the game supports them or not, so I just put them there.
There is no problem for me to create a normal map.
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Please do not forget that it needs to have the height encoded into the alpha channel for parallax mapping in UFO:AI working correctly.
Currently model normalmapping has some minor issues in-game though, but I am quite sure those will get fixed soon...
--- Quote from: Makaber on August 01, 2011, 06:58:16 pm ---For what reason does the head needs to be seperated? And I don't get the "for detail views".
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All our actor models have their heads seperated from the body, the head not being animated.
If you start a Skirmish game you can see only the heads in the soldiers' selection - the current bloodspider model shows its cube (lol) here (the invisible small cube attached to the main model).
--- Quote from: Makaber on August 01, 2011, 06:58:16 pm ---There shouldn't be a problem on creating LoDs, but are they necessary? Crystan told me the current polycount would be good for distance. But on the other hand there isn't much to improve on the model through more polygons.
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No, creating those is not necessary. In fact your model would be the first to use this possibility. But the possibility and theoretical functionality to support 3 LoDs is already integrated in UFO:AI and is planned to be used for future models...
--- Quote from: Makaber on August 01, 2011, 06:58:16 pm ---Because MD3 file format needs to have tris for polys and no quads the new polycounts are 1060 for the small and 1260 for the big one. Booth counted without the eyes (as they will be removed).
I don't know how much the engine is cabaple off, but maybe I should create lower poly LoDs given this new fact.
So are there any recommended values for the LoDs?
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Around 1000-1500 tris is quite perfect for actors like the bloodspider.
You have to judge yourself which values would make sense for the LoDs.
I would suggest one version with less (for very distant views) and another with more tris (500 and 3000 for example)...
--- Quote from: Makaber on August 01, 2011, 06:58:16 pm ---Can someone give me a list which animations are needed/wished and the frame length?
I've take a look at the current model and to what I can see there is walk, attack and two death animations.
But maybe there are also new wishes for animations, or maybe I overlooked something?
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Sorry, I cannot. But I would like to see several different death animations, maybe also different methods of attack (currently bs is using 2 attack methods, but just 1 anim iirc), eventually run and maybe some equivalent to crouching would also be nice.
Maybe someone else has more suggestions here...
You can take a look at the .anim files in base/models/soldiers/male (txt files) to see how the engine determines which animation to use.
The number of frames for md2s is limited: 512
The number of frames for md3s is limited also: 1024
--- Quote from: Makaber on August 01, 2011, 06:58:16 pm ---As for using booth, Crystan linked me some articles in the wiki and I read about a combat bloodspider.
I would say that the big one would be the weak one which carries blood and organs, and the small one would be the combat, because it doesn't need the blood collecting stuff and is more agile.
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This is a very good idea.
I am looking forward to seeing your model in action...
P.S.: Welcome to the forums :)
geever:
--- Quote from: Makaber on August 01, 2011, 06:58:16 pm ---Can someone give me a list which animations are needed/wished and the frame length?
I've take a look at the current model and to what I can see there is walk, attack and two death animations.
But maybe there are also new wishes for animations, or maybe I overlooked something?
--- End quote ---
Here is our wiki about character animations. You're probably interested in other modeling articles around it too. Welcome!
-geever
Makaber:
I have taken a look at the animation wiki and also the current .anm file
I'm not really familiar with the game so bare me if I make some stupid questions.
There are some animations I don't really know what they are meant for.
stand_menu - some idle animation in a menu?
stand_still - used ingame? but what is move_* used for? only for holding an item?
panic0 - I guess some state, does the bloodspider panic?
MCR mentioned two attack types, but there is only shoot_melee available, so what should I take for the second attack? shoot_item?
Is there really a need for crouch? I don't see how the spider would benefit from it. I could implement it, but there isn't much room for the spider to crouch, so it may be that it's not really visible in the game.
If crouch is needed. What are the animations for changing between stand and crouched?
Am I completely free to choose the framelenght for the animation as long as I stay under total of 512?
About the head, does the head model get automatically attached to the model?
And as it seems the only the head model will be displayed in some cases.
Well I could make a head model which shows only the "head" of the spider and maybe a fancy animation. But this would only work as long as it doesn't get attached to the model ingame.
Which size should the spider (the big one) be in blender units?
If the importer does it right the old model would be 12 unity long and 12 units wide.
Is this the size of a square ingame?
H-Hour:
Hi Makaber, thanks for contributing. I can only answer a couple questions:
panic0: yes, there is a morale system in the game and aliens can panic. I'm not sure what a bloodspider panicking is supposed to look like, but the more humanoid aliens go into a crouch and cover their heads (I think). Maybe you can come up with something. The important thing is that a player should be able to learn the difference between a normal stance and a panic stance (I realize this might not be easy with a spider).
mattn will be able to say for sure about the crouch issues, but from an art perspective, a bloodspider does not need to crouch or stand or change between the two. It may be that for technical reasons we still need these frames to be "occupied", but the bloodspider wouldn't actually need to move during these frames.
About the head: most of our models have separate bodies and heads. The head is attached to the body in the game through a "tag" that is placed in the models.
Makaber:
Oh well, seems the tag script is only working with older blender versions.
So someone probably needs to add the tags later on.
Someone needs to funky around with the model anyways to convert it to MD2, so I guess that is a minor problem, right?
But should I make a head model which can be used as avatar and just leave the ingame model without tag?
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