Messages

1

Artwork / Re: New Bloodspider Model

« on: August 02, 2011, 09:42:12 pm »

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?

2

Artwork / Re: New Bloodspider Model

« on: August 02, 2011, 08:20:27 pm »

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?

3

Artwork / Re: New Bloodspider Model

« on: August 01, 2011, 06:58:16 pm »

Hello everyone

Thank you for liking the model.

Well I have some notes & questions.

Also, it's his choice, but in my opinion the spheres on the head could be done in the texture without any real loss in-game. The player would have to look very closely to notice the extra polys, especially when our models begin to support normalmapping (or do they already?), and putting the eyes into the texture would prevent getting the sharp angles where the eyes meet the head.

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.

Our current bloodspider model has an invisible head attached to it (a minicube), but it would be best if the head could be seperated, for detail views...
Also our engine supports 3 LoDs, regarding the polycount.

For what reason does the head needs to be seperated? And I don't get the "for detail views".

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.

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?

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?


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.