New character models!

[Quaduce]

The character models as they are are ok but they are very basic. they are well detailed and if they were improved by making the models a bit better they would look awsome.

Like, the cat race, in the animated pic he looks awsome, specialy the way he is stading all cocky.

I imagine they will improve on the character models later on, but its just something id like to see so i thought id post about it  

[Darkmoon]

Well, consider our first incarnation of the Enkidukai (released in Atomic Blue last year):



You can see from this how the model has improved vastly.  For the current models only being our second try, I\'m rather proud.  Everything in PlaneShift is evolving, including the dev team.  The final product is still a long time off, and I\'m hoping that our fan base will hang with us until then.  

[Quaduce]

hahah...

the new models are good, they got nice textures and smooth movment, wich alot of games lack, but its the model itself that needs to be more life like and more fitting a certain discription. All it looks like now is a \"buff cat-dude\" as my friend said.

some of the best character models were in Anarchy-Online and Asheron\'s Call 2 imo. They all had thier certain attitude about them, and you could costomize the way you looked alot aswell. Changing thier attitude by making them a happy type char, evil char, and whatnot. Also, the character stance makes them have this attitdue aswell.

This is something that will probbly be worked on later in the game (if worked on at all wich im sure it will be ). I dosnt realy hold too much importance right now, but new models would looks awsome.

Im thinking of models like the ones on Morrowind, cept, they would hold thier weapons alot better and not do the same repeatative attacks with them  

[kyp14]

I think the models in Molecular a pretty good  I love the cat people whatever there called I can\'t remember but there is one model I think need\'s a rework is the female Demorian she looks about a million times nicer in the drawing

[hook]

wow! you really did make improvement since atomic blue

i sure hope that the next release (whatever it will be called) will have more detailed models (the skins are great and movement is ok), especially it would be nice that female characters would look a bit more feminine (slender for example) ...but i think this will be solved in time

keep up the good work ...i\'m really confident in this project!!!

p.s. waiting for that linux port :O

[Dumb Woob]

heh, improve the animations, then go back to models

[Frosted]

Woob is right. Adding some extra animations and improving the transitions between the existing animations would go further in improving the aesthetics than complete new models would.

[kyp14]

I would think they are doing both of these at the same time (anyone remember the old models and animations lol   )

[Sakiro A.]

How many polygons do these models use? I e-mailed the 3D dev a few questions about models but he hasn\'t replied yet (it was only a few hours ago). It looks like about 800 to me, maybe a bit more. It\'s somewhat hard to tell because they skins are pretty well done. Honestly, I think the perfect polygon count for models (at least right now, and for this type of game) is in the 1000-1300 range.

The thing that really makes a model come to life, though, is fluid motion and a good skin. And these are, in my opinion, a lot harder than modeling polygons, too.

[kyp14]

I agree i can model fine but when it comes to texture mapping or creating textures themselves I hate it i\'m so bad at it

[Sakiro A.]

Here is what Mr. Orregi had to say:

> What is the average polycount of the models?

charaters around 1200. Other things very variable.

> How big is the texture, generally?

characters 512x512. Others very variable

> What formats are supported?

3D can be imported from MAX and Maya. Textures can be
TGA,PNG,Jpg,Gif etc...

> Are there any other notable ways they are set up?

Vertex animation, no skeletons yet. You can use the
CrystalSpace tools to verify your work.
byr
b


Man, I knew guessing 800 was way too low. It looks like they do fall into my range. Must be the clothes and hands. Blarg.

EDIT: Kyp14, texture mapping is annoying, but there\'s a somewhat easy way to do it. What I do is basically make an endomorph and split up all the limbs and put them in their own places, make a texture guide and take a screen shot. Then I go into photoshop, make the skin with the guide as a reference, and put the skin on the model. Then all I have to do is delete the endomorph. It works rather well.

EDIT 2: Yeah, and sometimes you\'ll have to flaten places, which is annoying. But, eh.