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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

ART- Civillians: Concept and models


Deimos

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Well I've been playing around with low poly modelling in Milkshape (gotta love that prog its so cool) and here's my first model.

There's not a heck of a lot of detail on it becasue it is meant to be a female civvie. The hands are supposed to be like that. I figured I'd use inspiration from the original tomb raider where Lara's hands are basically fists. I will texture them up that way too.
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Something that I think is relevent for civs, is that we should include average and below average fitness levels for the body shapes. Or bluntly said, we need some fat people too. So if people start making more of these, don't forget the average person isn't a professional athlete or super model, unless the terror site is in SanDiego California, then yes they all are. :D
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Well a simple way would be to as Vaaish says, model a template Civvie and either let the game engine modify them or just use those templates and manually tweak verts to make it look right.

I would say we would need a different model for kids but as its not a good idea to include them in a game where people are getting killed we won't need to.

We will however need some differing kinds of civvies, apart from the obvious male and female we'll need people with and without hats, coats and so on.
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I agree that children should be kept to a minimum, and we can scale the average body type to make more fit/less fit variations, while keeping the same vert assignments on the bones. So I guess after the average body is totally animated, then we'd go back and make those adjustments to save on work?
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Guest drewid
That would work. but you might have to have different objects attached (a couple of hats, children of the head bone. a couple of skirts, bags/cases, glasses ) Then hide or show them depending on the context.

This would mean you have to know how to do this in Ogre. (sub meshes?) It also means adding stuff later may possibly be a pain.

Hmmm. You could do a set of accessories that use the same bones but are a different mesh. which would eb more flexible, as in you could add them later.

We also have to bear in mind the whole "one texture per sub-mesh" thing.
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  • 1 month later...
The reasons are posted here: [url="http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4205&st=0&#entry75490"]http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?sh...t=0&#entry75490[/url]

Server problems in short.

Greetings
Red Knight
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That's OK, we can adjust it as well. What formats can you import from, and I can scale and repost it to you, then you can import that (will include the block) and have a reference. Just repost the model here and we're set.
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[img]http://www.lyytine.herwood.net/dude.jpg[/img]

now that i looked more carefully i found out that there indeed is a import .3ds option.
:stupid:
so i managed to scale it afterall. had some problems fitting the guitar inside the block tho :) Edited by flam
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I just want to see him running away from a Spawn pursuing him, suddenly he quickly turns around and smashes the critter on the head with his guitar... and then he's zombified (would he still keep his guitar as a zombie?) :D
How many polygons is that dude? Edited by j'ordos
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File Name: D:\Mdl\dude.AQM

ID: 1330660425
Version: 6
Number of Skins: 1
Skin Width: 320
Skin Height: 200
Number of Vertices: 317
Number of Skin Vertices: 393
Number of Faces: 520
Number of Frames: 1
Average Size of Triangles: 0
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The stats on the skin verify the visual of it, it needs more detail IMO. But even without more detail, it has to be sized a certain way. The Xenocide style guide has all the details, but the main thing is that the texture must be sized to a power of 2. The closest sizes to your current skin would be 256x256 or 256x512 or 512x512.
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Here's a dockworker. He'll be wearing overalls once I get him textured. Does anyone want to contribute a face to him? All I need is a pic that has good lighting and is taken pretty much from straight direction from the face. I can add your name into his name tag too. :)

475 polys. I just hope that the arms animate well as I used relatively little polygons there, so I don't have to redo them! :whatwhat:
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Hey folks, before we go wild on Civ models don't we have a few guidlelines?

I'm seeing that Flams models are looking very styleized and cartoony in comparison to Fidel and Deimos as well as the general look of the environments and alien meshes.

Also, were we planning on having a single male civ model and female civ model that we would simply scale and tweak before adding clothes to cut down on the amount of animation that will be needed? It would seem to me this would be more effecient than creating a massive number of varients and regional models..
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I agree with Vaaish.

Creating just 1 simple universal model that could fit in anywhere should do the trick. Textures do way more than models that are just a bit different.

[u]u have 2 options:[/u]

[b](1)[/b] Maybe u guys could make these [b]variations[/b] :wink: :

- small (children)
- fat man
- normal man
- fat woman
- normal woman

[b](2)[/b] or u could also make use of something like a skeleton model like the people of lionhead studios (with famous game creator [b]Peter Molyneux[/b]) had done with the game 'Black & White'. The model could change depending on some variables.

So that way u just have to make a man and a woman. It can grow, shrink, become fatter or become thinner depending on your variables. ^_^

(And for children u would just use the male model)

It would only need some more coding. But it enhances the variation en realism enormously.
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I also agree on this point, a single model as a template can be made and animated, then people can take that and make variations to the shape or textures.

Flam, I think your quake editor might have trouble exceeding a certain texture size, I don't think it was designed to take large mappings perhaps. Take a look at Milkshape 3D, 30 day free trial and only $25 to register, it works rather well and has import/export tools for many games. Even quake skeletons IIRC.
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Ok, hmm. So who is going to take up the task of creating and animating the template model? I can give it a try unless Deimos or Flam already have plans for it. However, the animations and bones will be a problem when importing the template to other modeling programs, since we all seem to work with different programs. :) Edited by fidel_
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Whoever has the time to create the model and bones would need to make sure they save it in a format others can import. Milkshape can import/export quake, halflife, and genesis3d off the top of my head, perhaps a few more. It even comes with some skeleton templates for those games, but I think that's because there's a bunch of animation scripts they use which may or may not apply here. But if we can find a skeleton format most people can save to we'd be set.
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Right now Fidel appears to be farthest along on what could easily be translated into a male template. I'd say that he finish that up with template instead of dock worker in mind. I'm not sure if Deimos is plannig on finishing up the female though.

Flam is farther with skins and bones, but i think it will be much more work to get his model properly tweaked and reboned/skinned than doing it once and not having to wory about residual skinweights etc.
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[quote name='breunor']Whoever has the time to create the model and bones would need to make sure they save it in a format others can import. Milkshape can import/export quake, halflife, and genesis3d off the top of my head, perhaps a few more. It even comes with some skeleton templates for those games, but I think that's because there's a bunch of animation scripts they use which may or may not apply here. But if we can find a skeleton format most people can save to we'd be set.[/quote]

How about exporting the model into ogre mesh, and then importing it from there? Or is it even possible? This calls for further experiments...

[quote name='Vaaish']I'd say that he finish that up with template instead of dock worker in mind. I'm not sure if Deimos is plannig on finishing up the female though.[/quote]

I'll try to change him into a jeans & jacket type of guy and we'll see how it ends up. Edited by fidel_
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[quote]Flam is farther with skins and bones, but i think it will be much more work to get his model properly tweaked and reboned/skinned than doing it once and not having to wory about residual skinweights etc.[/quote]

umm. that model of mine is just some tinkering i did a year ago. :) i can't even get more than 256 colours on da skins. ... and there's no bones in the dude :)

i need to upgrade my hardware, and till then i think i'll stick to music.
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The model I did is up for anyone that wants it. I've got a few things going on at the moment and my time is becoming restricted so I guess some things will have to be prioitised.

So take the model, tweak, skin and bone it to your hearts content. I had written her in there but edited it as it sounded rude ;)
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yahoo, saw that a civilian was need, and tada I made a civilian
its a 1350 poly character, not done yet of course, just put it all togheter quick to show how it looks.

the face texture and body is for it self, duno if that is bad.
[url="http://www.home.no/bjelling/deimos/test/"]http://www.home.no/bjelling/deimos/test/[/url]

btw, its suppose to be a kid... abit larger perhaps but I can probably make it smaller Edited by Monkeyboy
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btw.

about making these models in general...
when i start to build some mesh, i usually start by making the torso, then i make the arms and "plug them in" ... is this ok, or should it be just one whole mesh?

or does it matter at all?
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I start from the feets and work my way up, all in one mesh expect for the head and then link the head and body together.

I use this method
[url="http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp"]http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/j...rc/joanmenu.asp[/url]
with less polys of course :) Edited by Monkeyboy
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This probably wont happen but maybe we should add dogs for effect. Cos most people have dogs and it would be more horror movie liek if we do it barking and cowering away from aliens or somint.

can some of the civies have baseball bats or somint, i doubt theyll walk around armed only with a guitar Edited by Kamikazee
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[quote name='flam' date='Apr 21 2004, 05:22 PM']btw.

about making these models in general...
when i start to build some mesh, i usually start by making the torso, then i make the arms and "plug them in" ... is this ok, or should it be just one whole mesh?

or does it matter at all?[/quote]
Easiest way right now is make the entire body as a single mesh to make deformation and animation smoother. For variety make the head a separate object so we can swap various heads in and out to make more varied civilians.
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I agree that pets should/could be done as well, along with other props along those lines. The civ kid looks good, can you make a copy with the jacket scaled down for warmer weather too? It's looking very good. Just make sure to post an attachment with the model and texture files so we have a copy on file, thanks!
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I guess we'll also need regional clothing variations for the civvies as not everyone dresses in Western fashions. IE if the ufo lands in the Middle East or the Far East (near monasteries and so on). So we will need a few more types of civillian models other than our basic male and female template models.

For the meshes, do as Vaaish suggests. A single mesh with swappable heads.

Personally I'd like to see a wide variety of civillians in the game rather than just generic men and women. We have to include some Hari Krishna's as a nod to Grand theft Auto ;)
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[quote]Just make sure to post an attachment with the model and texture files so we have a copy on file, thanks![/quote]

I just have to fix the the texturemap so the head and body comes in one, and increase the the quality of the textur, and I'll make the bump map. Will do it tomorrow at school and attach the files :happybanana: .
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The attachment didn't work, make sure to use the attach link at the bottom of the reply screen. Also, make sure to include the model in 3ds format too. Thanks!
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Here is the zip file loaded as an attachment, in case those links ever change:
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  • 2 weeks later...
[quote name='fidel_' date='May 8 2004, 10:17 PM']I got some time to work on the civvie model. I've boned it now, and it's ready to be animated. I've also textured it somewhat. How about heads? Should I just leave them out entirely?[/quote]
for heads, i guess we have 2 diffrent setings fr each gender, and 5 diffrent textures for each seting. This is 20 diffrent civs, and combined with diffrent bodies...


looks cool, whats the polycount? Judging by the first pic, it seems kindof large.
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1030 polys. I had to smooth the arms a bit for the sake of animations, and while I was at it I decided to smooth the blocky torso a little too so that it wouldn't stand out too much. I could probably tweak it down to 700 with endless vertex welding and animation testing but if it's fine I would rather leave it where it is.

Ok, so will the head be included in the model (that will make a lot of models) or will we swap heads in the game for bodies?
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  • 1 month later...
What about elderly people?
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we might be able to use mutators to tweak things like build or we might just have an elderly body, middle age, buff, thin. and obease for both genders add onto those the heads and maybe make 5 or 10 textures for both male and female we could have quite a range of different civvies.
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  • 4 months later...
Just to let you know I'm not entirely dead yet, I've been working on this civ model for quite some time now. Here's some pics of the mesh and a test walk animation file for ogre (mesh and skeleton files in the archive). I'm not sure when this will be finished, there's always something in it that I'm not happy about. I've redone it many times already from scratch. I have a high-poly version of it for bump-maps and base texturing (which I probably need to revision too).

1008 polys.
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I think it looks fine and can move on to texturing. Don't let yourself get caught up in the minutia of creating the perfect model. To a point it is good to want to create the best piece you can but the second part of the equasion is the time factor. Do the best you can within the timeframe we have to do it in. If we get caught up in constantly changing the models and refining them we will end up with another Daikatana, so since for all intents and purposes this model can accomplish the things we need it to do so lets pack it up and send it off.

In fact I would even say that at this point we shouldn't be worrying about boning and animation beyond checking to make sure we have enough joint detail to make the proper deformations.

We need to concentrate only on getting the models and gtextures complete and then move to defining the animations.
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