Models

[Veda]

I noticed the human model up on the shots page. Modeling, skinning and animating a new human model when you have so many to choose from already part of Q3 is going to take alot more time. My suggestion would to go the Gloom route and just use new skins for the Doom marine or Sarge, etc.

You should be able to make a kick ass skin for one of these in a few hours. Another idea is you could make a new head + skin. That shouldn't take too long either and would still appear very new.

You can always create a new human model down the road in other releases, I just know from personal experience it gets daunting if you think you have to replace everything from the get go.

[koredump]

THey are going to have to be able to make the humans change models as they buy stuff..(I think. i could be wrong) Like the human will actually be wearing the new armor type he just bought.. or wearing the jetpack or night vision goggles.. so mabey this is the reason they are making their own models? just my guess..

[Cybernetsam]

Unlike certain other mods, they want to do quality work.

[Veda]

That would be a clipping nightmare not to mention a pain to animate.

I could see a backpack or goggles working to some effect. You could try that now by link a backpack to a torso tag. The goggles would be easiest.

But as far as any body armor being represented by geometry that can be added/subtracted from the model...good luck.

Cyber it has nothing to do with quality - it's result balanced with work. Is it worth 30 hours of modeling, skinning and animating for a new model vs 4 hours for a new skin? Sure you could bring the time down by attaching the model to an existing biped for the animations but thats just as close as a new skin.

[ This Message was edited by: Veda on 2001-04-11 10:47 ]

[DarkStorm]

Well you see Veda, Koredump had it right.  When a human buys new armor, it will be visible on the model.  And while, yes, it might be tough to make two new human models, it won't be tough to implement the visible armor method.  Say you've got 4 armor areas, and a backpack.  You already have 3 different model areas to work with.  So you'd make an unarmore and armored leg model, same for head.  And the  torso would be the toughest.  You'd have to have one bare torso.  One torso with torso armor.  One torso with torso and arm armor.  One with just arm armor.  And then all the above combinations with a backpack added.  Making a total of 6 torso models.  So in reality the human model project list requiers two head models, six torso models and 2 leg models, all with the same animations.  I'm not sure if this is how they're going about it, but this is the way I was going to reccomend they go about it.  You'd only need one animation set for the whole thing.

[Veda]

Don't take offense but what you suggested Darkstorm is more time consuming than anything.

Make one model with armor. Make faces under the armor. Skin map, animate and export. For the armor pieces make a shader to turn off faces. When a player gets upgraded, just load a new skin instead of a new model and skin.

That would still take a long time but be would be easier on the time and memory.

[Norfenstein]

Maybe Timbo can get a hold of some of the Quake Fu source code...

[DarkStorm]

There's another problem with doing this though.  Our entire mod is supposed to be open source.  So in order for us to use an outside element of media, the artist must agree to the GNU Lesser General Public License.  So, would using an iD skinmap, even though we made our own skin, be a breach of iD's copyright?  It'd probably be a better and safer bet to look for an existing model on Polycount and ask permission to release that model under the GNU.  Then we could just change the skins for that.  Well hell why don't you come to the channel and slap us upside the head and tell us how it is?  Cause I'm still not sure...

[Carcinogen]

I can use Paul Steed's animations, to an extent. Tags will be added. Its not THAT daunting, only daunting to me because I haven't done it before.

Tags are very nice. I hope they will look as nice as we hope. I could have different head models interchangeable (head models require little memory, no animations...)

I'll need some help from outside of tremulous, but thats my problem. I'll get it done, dont worry about it. And I prefer quality. If it doesn't work, I'll take your suggestion Veda.

[ This Message was edited by: Carcinogen on 2001-04-11 17:41 ]

[babyomen]

From what I remember (the last time I checked the docs), there weren't too many different armor types.
I propose we make models of the armor and then combine these with the torso meshes, giving us a complete mesh for each torso/armor type combo.
Shouldn't be too bad once all the torsos are constructed :wink:

[ValouR]

check out the tank girl model on polycount for a better insight into what veda is saying

look at how the bra thing / goggles are removed for some skins

using tags means animating it all multiple times and more than likely obvious clipping :/

[Norfenstein]

Valour, I think those areas aren't removed, just made invisible with the skin.

[ValouR]

which is my point exactly
...

You can either model

head+goggles+helmet
head+helmet
head+goggles
head

each with unique skin map

or you can do
head+helmet
head
then use skin reduction for the goggles

[Carcinogen]

The latter approach sounds more appealing, simply because of the less amount of work. However, I have no clue how to pull it off. Time to go research.

[Timbo]

followup

[Cybernetsam]

What about models for female gamers?

Also, the second option (Different skins) Would probably be best, if it is the easiest. As long as gameplay rocks, who cares about something as trivial as that?

[Hellbringer]

As what I wanted to do with q3gloom adding some female models would be good but its just more memory needed to load the models.  Maybe down the road we can make a female model pak and replace some of the models.

[Carcinogen]

Down the road, yes. A female pack with a little bit of extra coding would be all it would take.

But for now, I'd like Tremulous to be released beforehand.

[Norfenstein]

Maybe I'm being naïve here, but can't the animation and clipping problems with the tag system be solved by just animating the whole model with every tagged model on it (instead of with each piece off)? And it's not like something like this hasn't been done before.

[Hellbringer]

I am pretty sure we have decided to use alpha channels to show/hide the extra parts of the models.  This should keep the poly count as low as we posibly can and look the best we can do.  The other two choices we were looking at was different skins and the use of tags but we found that each would suck.