? ART- VIPER: Merged Topics

[Breunor]

And when the snakeman kills a civ kid, it just swallows them whole... muah ha ha!

[Cpl. Facehugger]

There will be civ kids? That's news to me. No, he won't swallow the kid whole, just eat him piecemeal. An arm here...A leg there... But seriously, we should stay away from brutally harming children. I know that some people take offense to that.

[Breunor]

There was discussion about civs and kids in the terror site thread, it's been worked out to a good extent there.

[Guest drewid]

It could be made to work, any intersection should be hidden by the coils pretty much, and it's not like it going to be -that- big on screen. The biggest problem would be getting the snake in the right relative position in a way that doesn't look too contrived or fake.

 

I'm sure it could be made to work.

 

hmmmm

 

It might be easier to whip the tail round so the tip ends up at the top of the coils IYSWIM. Might look more convincing as a trap, as it could be a much faster action.

 

 

Fidel - I don't mean to harp on M8 but the lower front realy does need a bit of smoothing out to bring it up to match the smoothness of the head and face. The critter is 1000 polys another four or eight won't make much odds.

[fidel_]

Ok, you mean this part drewid?

[Guest drewid]

yeah, that angle at the top of your pic stands out, probably only need one subdivision ie the polys above and below

[Zipperhead]

just been playing with the texture, Im still not sure what Im doing, but I add a bit of detail to the face.

[Breunor]

That face and teeth are looking awesome, really nice! IMO the main item to tweak at this point is the chest plate, if some extra polys were added and edges turned so you create a set of faces under that chest armor texture, you could extrude it a little bit to make the armor stand out from the rest of the chest, I think that would really help the look.

[fidel_]

*scribbles notes*

 

I'll try to work those issues today. Adding more polys to the tail is easy but we'll see how the armor ends up.

[fidel_]

Ok, fruits of this nights tinkering session.

 

Plate (+ 100-200 polys) & tail detail (+50 polys)

 

I'm still trying to work with the armor texture.

[Cpt. Boxershorts]

That is a thing of beauty....very nice, fidel.

 

I especially like the armor around the shoulder socket. Quick question though...what happens when the arm moves?

 

-The Captain

Edited February 5, 2004 by Cpt. Boxershorts

[Vaaish]

much better, whats the overall poly count?

[fidel_]

Overall is 1300, it used to be about 1000 before the changes.

 

About the arm movement, ideally it should go like this perhaps? So that the plate does not move with the arm too much.

snake2arm.rar

[Deimos]

Very nice work Fidel. The armour now looks like its a seperate piece. I quite like the armour texture as it is

[Guest drewid]

Really nice work. The armour looks loads better for that texture. I think you can stop on that now.

 

The only room I can see for tweaking now is to maybe lighten the texture round the edges of the mouth and eyes to show that edge up a little more.

 

Other than that lets stick it in a crate and ship it.

[Breunor]

That guy's rockin! Arm motion looks good, and I really like the (IMO) Egyptian influence of the armor, a nice link to the real!

 

Do you have the verts assigned to joints when doing the animation shots, or are you just moving the verts? he he, a good way to check for clipping might be to have a model do the Macarena(sp?) dance... anybody still remember that, or was it just an American thing? Our charismatic-as-a-stick vice president got on stage once and did it years ago, if he did it so would invading aliens...

 

I ask about the joints because I might try learning a bit more about animating, and what better way that silly dancing?

[Zipperhead]

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

[Whitewashed]

Very nice work! I hope we'll get to see full body movement soon, I want to see it dance!

[mikker]

i like it. The armor might be a little....outside for an alien.

 

1)is it made of alien alloy?

2a)if yes, does it have a sheen?

2b)if no, what is it made of then?

3aa)if yes, how does it look?

3ba)if no, why doesn't it?

3bb)if no, is it just as good defensively as AA?

3bc)if no, where does the alien have it from? can we reproduce it?

[tzuchan]

based on the pictures:

 

1) Nope

2b) Bronze

3ba) 'Cause it's ceremonial

3bb) not at all... Some defensive points (Can be counted as the alien't natural armor since you won't see it anywhere else

3bc) Can, but what's the point? It's bronze!

[mikker]

ok tzuchan

 

but.....WHY do they wear BRONZE and not AA?

 

mindstorm: something to do with chryssalids?

[Zipperhead]

becouse mikker, it looks cool.

[Anthraxus]

If their defense is caused by their skin and not the armor (which it would have to be if the armor is bronze) the armor would have to be purely ceremonial. A cultural battle ritual perhaps. They have a very ancient culture according to the CTDs, I'm sure it can be explained as a tradtion

[Zipperhead]

and it looks cool

[Guest drewid]

Which is the bottom line after all

[fidel_]

That guy's rockin! Arm motion looks good, and I really like the (IMO) Egyptian influence of the armor, a nice link to the real!

 

Do you have the verts assigned to joints when doing the animation shots, or are you just moving the verts? he he, a good way to check for clipping might be to have a model do the Macarena(sp?) dance... anybody still remember that, or was it just an American thing? Our charismatic-as-a-stick vice president got on stage once and did it years ago, if he did it so would invading aliens...

 

I ask about the joints because I might try learning a bit more about animating, and what better way that silly dancing?

Yep, the system I used was similar to milkshapes' joints, with the exception that they are called bones in 3dsmax. It's pretty easy actually, animating it moving the vertices by hand would be nightmare.

 

I'm not sure if Ogre is compatible with 3dsmax animation/bones/physique so I might have learn how to use milkshape to animate it. :/ Or find a 3dsmax exporter that saves animation. But before I dwell into that, I should know few things like how weapon placement are going to be done (assigned to a certain joint perhaps?). And how many frames movement/idle/melee/etc animations should be long. Having some guideline for the animation stuff would be nice.

 

About the Macarena dance, it was a huge hit even here. I might try that just for fun, it would look hilarious I bet. Before we get all the details on animation written down.

 

About the armor, if everybody thinks it's fine I'll leave it as it is. That pretty much makes the model complete. I'm not really a texture artist so there's lot of room for improvement in the texture, if somebody wants to take a stab at it. I'll upload the model sometime today along with the texture tweaks Zipperhead made.

[Guest drewid]

Do a google for the OGRE website. IIRC they've got a Max exporter.

 

Edit :

Milkshape isn't as good as Max for animation, at least it wasn't the last time I looked. I believe we might be able to go Max ->file.fbx -> maya -> OGRE if all else fails.

Edited February 5, 2004 by drewid

[Breunor]

Yep, Max is one of the exports for it. It exports a .mesh file and a .skeleton files IIRC. I think it has you put all the animation (walk, fire, die) into a single animation, and during export you tell it where the splits occur. But their web site has all the details of course. I'm looking forward to updating your entry on this guy so we can spin him around!

[fidel_]

Uploaded in my folder (outdoor models). I checked and double checked it, should work fine. Only thing is that my exporter somehow messed the lighting values so that model was entirely black. I had to up the emissive levels to get the texture visible. That wouldn't do too well in-game. Hopefully I can get the ogre exporter to work with animations, I already did some testing with it and got it to work with ordinary models. I'll look into it later, my finger hurts from all this vertex dragging.

[Breunor]

I think when you export to Ogre's format, it's expecting an external light source of some type. It might be handy to create a room with an overhaed light that the model is placed inside? I had some pieces for an urban scene, we could make a street corner with a street light or two to see how it all looks.

[fidel_]

I couldn't concetrate on modeling today, but snakeman is now learning to dance. As you can see he isn't very good at it (yet!).

 

Oops, I should have separated those two sentences Breunor, I meant that my 3ds exporter somehow messed up my lighting values and I couldn't fix them in milkshape. The Ogre mesh viewing tool I have puts lighting in the scene even if there isn't one.

snakey.zip

[Guest drewid]

What flavour AVI is that? my media player doesn't want to know.

[fidel_]

It's Divx, but if you can't view it you won't miss much. It's rather silly actually.

[mikker]

it looks like there are som invisible strings holding it.

 

it shouldn't move its base, but the top.

[Guest drewid]

It's Divx, but if you can't view it you won't miss much. It's rather silly actually. 

 

<note to self, must get divx on new machine>

[fidel_]

Hey can somebody send me the alien plasma pistol or rifle, I'm trying to do some of the animations and I would like to see a weapon in his hand (preferably in right scale). I can't access the ftp (auth failed) and I didn't find either of these weapons from the asset list. Thanks!

 

Address: [email protected]

[fidel_]

I finally got animations to work in Ogre. (hint: never ever link bones together instead of building a complete skeleton ) I can now start doing the animations for the creature.

 

I'm going to do the animations so that each ani (weapon fire, idle etc.) start and end using this pose, death animations not included of course. Is this ok? And also, to get the arm positions right I would like to get some those alien weapon models (hint hint ) so I can do some testing. Heavy, medium and light weapons should probably be held differently.

 

Here's the walk ani, tell me what you think about it. (divx)

 

... And here's some music for relaxation. I love this song.

http://koti.phnet.fi/holoantt/elvis-egen-indian.xm

walk.zip

Edited February 12, 2004 by fidel_

[Breunor]

Plasma pistol/rifle/heavy are on their way to you Fidel.

Edit: And the walk animation looks good, better than swaying to the sides. Nice work!

Edited February 12, 2004 by Breunor

[fidel_]

Thanks, got them. I'm going to try some weapon fire animations right away.

[fidel_]

I need some advice on how to do the animations. Right now what I'm doing is having one general pose where I start/end all my animations. But this works well only for one weapon type the character is holding. I need to have different general poses for each weapon type, and with those I have just tripled the amount of animations. But this is the way it has to be done, right? And all these animations need to be inside a single mesh?

 

Another thing, I'm assuming weapons are placed in the hands of the character by attaching it to a hand bone in-game?

 

I had some fun with the pistol.

lgun.zip

[Anthraxus]

Great work fidel. These look really sharp. I especailly like the plasma :plasma:

[Foozball]

Yeah, really good job.

Although I think it should lean into the shot a lot more.

[mamutas]

I finally got animations to work in Ogre. (hint: never ever link bones together instead of building a complete skeleton  )

What do you mean by that? Did you write a program? Or what?

[fidel_]

I finally got animations to work in Ogre. (hint: never ever link bones together instead of building a complete skeleton  )

What do you mean by that? Did you write a program? Or what?

I tested my animations both in the mesh viewer tool and the skeletal animation demo you can download from the ogre site. My first skeleton wasn't continous, and I had my arms linked to the rest of the skeleton. (pretty much like this) Ogre didn't apparently like these links and my animations turned into twisting and rotating mess. When I remade the skeleton so that everything was continous I had no problems.

Edited February 12, 2004 by fidel_

[Breunor]

The weapon kick looks good, here's 2 suggestions for making the same animation for all weapon types:

 

1. Have the alien bring both hands up to support the pistol, typical reinforced grip type of action. Due to the sleeve it won't be exact of course. Do the same with the larger weapons, it will look like he's holding them with both hands as well.

 

2. Have him fire every weapon with 1 hand from the hip, with the second hand moving towards the first a little.

 

I'd suggest trying the first option. If he's holding the weapon with the left hand, have the right hand just forward of the left like he's supporting the weapon body. The heavy plasma has a second grip that will not line up for this, and is big enough the torso will probably need to twist slightly towards the weapon side.

[Deimos]

Looking good fidel. I like the weapon kick.

 

Is it possible for you to involve the rest of the body when the weapon kicks as at the moment it looks a little too rigid. His body needs to absorb the shock of the kick and as the spine bends it might be good to put a little backwards motion into it as well.

 

The 'walk' anim is coming along nicely, though at the moment it does look like he's sliding across the ground. Would it be possible to have the S curve look like its pushing him instead of sliding.

 

Im thinking along the lines that the muscles in the walk cycle would actually pick the creature up a little (maybe a millimetre) as they push each section of his tail to make him move.

[fidel_]

Here's new walking animation. Hopefully it's a bit better now, bear with me since I haven't really animated anything more complex than a tennis ball before.

 

I'll try what you suggested Breunor, having just one set of animations is a relief for me. Might take a bit of tweaking though before I get it right.

 

About the weapon kick, it should be possible move the whole body backwards, I'll experiment on it a bit later once I get him to hold those weapons correctly.

walk3.zip

[Crix Dorius]

Much better...

[mikker]

ouch those spikes sure look nasty.

 

i like the animation, though i have no experience at all with animation (god darn rigging is just so borring).

[Guest drewid]

Good thinking that man with the spikes. Spot on animation too. Very nice.