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DeepOmega

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Everything posted by DeepOmega

  1. Know how that is. Just got my new room all straightened out - sorta. Been trying my damnedest to figure out how to fit in a 32" TV, and I think I've got it.
  2. Using one skeleton for multiple differently proportioned models is essentially impossible. The number of changes that body shape forces on the skeleton is so big that it can't be done automatedly. Then different skeletons can't have the same animations..... Yeah. Not really feasible. An interesting idea, however, would be to use blending more than is really done. I've got something percolating in my head... will post if it ever makes sense.
  3. I'm setting up the city watch model, and was wondering how we've been rigging the weapon. Is it a separate object which is attached (or detached) from the hand bone, or is it part of the model? Also, are there any standards for bone setup? I'd hate to get a fancy rig all set and then find out there's a 10 bone limit.
  4. Correct. This is the problem. This robot I made has no hips - because hips are a fancy joint, and having working hips takes a lot more than a ball-and-socket. It's where a lot of complicated balancing and center-of-gravity control happens. This is why I made sure our boilerbot is hipless. Hips are too damn fancy for this kind of robot. Instead, the center-of-gravity manipulation will happen at the ankle. Giving it an extremely weird gait, I hope. But for now, am rigging the citywatch guard.
  5. I could rig it. Character animation has come easy to me for a while, so I can rig it, show it, then do it again with the legs flipped.
  6. Well, the ankle is a ball and socket joint. Honestly, the issue is at the hips, not the knees or ankle. It has no hips, so it can't adjust its center of gravity to be closer or farther from one foot. So when it moves, it will be in short, stumbly steps - sorta like the old combot in T2.
  7. So are we good with this model? If so, I'm going to start texturing it. Let me know tonight if there are any further crits.
  8. I'll see if I can't wrangle up BT to hook me up. I'll probably redo a big chunk of the flashbomb. I made it kinda nastily, so it could use some cleanup work. But otherwise we should be good. BT, are you reading this? Up for some ASE to LWO conversion?
  9. Since I'm working with 3DS Max here, all of my models are coming out as ASE files. This is fine for me, but I know we want all models to be LWOs in the CVS. Thus, I think we should set up some way to get ASEs to LWOs quickly and easily without having to track someone down to do it every time. Maybe set up a folder on FTP called ASEtoLWO, where any files that need converting can be uploaded, for people with Lightwave to convert once a week.
  10. Lowpoly done. Do we want this normaled, or just textured? I'm thinking normal map as it has lots of carvings and bumps in the velvet.
  11. Spring, that's got instructions on setting up the textures, but not where to put them (so to speak). FTP? CVS? Something else? If you'd rather take this onto IRC, I'll be there.
  12. As you can see, they are normal mapped and textured. I'm going to do curtainrods separately. I think it makes more sense to be able to swap out the rods, as I can certainly imagine a few different styles thereof (especially since end-pieces will look different from middle-pieces in a wall of curtains). So. Can anyone give me a little guidance for what to do next? I have a feeling the way I'd been doing it (putting it on FTP) is a bit out of date. If anyone can toss a link or just give an explanation of what the best way to set this up is, let me know. I can give an ASE and two TGAS though.
  13. Scholarships everywhere, man, if you have a high enough high school GPA and write good essays. That's how I'm doing it. Full ride scholarship from the good state of Maryland, plus a stipend from the National Merit Scholarship people.
  14. To get the best results out of dynamic cloth, you need to make sure it's gridded properly. There shouldn't be any strips that suddenly collapse, or any unevenness to it horizontally. (This is for curtains.) You can get away with only a few rows of polys - that's what this is. But it's really important that it's an even grid. So, what's AF then?
  15. Ha! Tech school indeed. Real gangsters get into industries where all you need is a portfolio and a connection in a company. My boss has been trying to convince me to drop out for a year now. Maybe if they offer a signing bonus.
  16. DeepOmega

    Curtains

    Was up late watching Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 1 on DVD, and screwing around with the cloth sim in 3DS Max, when suddenly, this happened. I know it's on the request list, so I'll texture it tonight or tomorrow.
  17. While you're right about balance issues, I actually like the idea of this precarious, ungainly, tottering robot. I imagine it's gait being very quick, short steps - like the combots in thief 2. Canting the legs inwards wouldn't work in terms of the knee joint. If we were to do it the way they did the originals, the legs would be almost underneath it. Personally, I like this almost birdlike design. It's very weird, and very disorienting. Again, these quick, bird motions keep coming to mind. Also, yes, this is normal-mapped. I don't even have a high poly model. I don't like doing high polys of mechanical things. They almost never line up, and you get subtle but noticeable distortions of hard edges. Instead, I have a huige pallette of prerendered pipes, vents, and so forth that I drop in in photoshop.
  18. New feet whoo. Also added some pipery to the neck area. Can you taste the excitement? I'm pretty happy with these feet. They seem to strike that balance between preposterous and monstrous. On the one hand.. giant chicken feet? What? But this whole thing has this sort of psychotic bird body shape to it. It feels right. Comments and crits welcome, by the way.
  19. Yeah, it's unfortunate that it's hard to make hip joints that look steampunky. I played with the idea briefly, but to no avail. It looks too effective to be powered by steam.
  20. Yes. Self-illumination. Apply it to the.. uh.. globe thing. Yeah.
  21. Definitely. If anyone wants to give me, uh, foot designs? That'd be awesome. I spent a while working on them but I'm not really happy - they look too scrawny. I do kinda like the ball and socket ankle joint, tho, as it gives a suitably ridiculous way for them to turn (shuffling, spinning steps). Using the true majesty of normal mapping. I found a fantastic high-rez pic of an engraved stock on a gun. I took it into photoshop, ran it through high pass filters and contrast adjustments until it was a nice approximation of a grayscale height map. Brought that into 3DS Max and dropped it on a plane, rendering it out to a normal map. Technically this is dumb, as it defeats the point of normal mapping, but because it was so high rez, when I scaled it down in photoshop it still had lots of detail, making this worthwhile. Finally, I used photoshop a LOT to clean up the etchings, make them more legible, and so forth. Yes. I actually really like the idea of adding a hose or tube of some sort to that area. Animating it might be a bit obnoxious, tho. I'll play around with boning and see ifI can get some good results. Glad you guys approve. I'm still technically working 40 hour weeks, so I'll tweak some more tonight once I'm home. Keep the crits and suggestions coming. Oh, and for those keeping score, this is a single 1024x1024 map.
  22. So as I'm about to post in a more appropriate forum, I have returned from.. well, from real life I suppose. Will post explaining elsewhere, but for now, something relevant. I've felt badly about my lack of content creation - aside from a few bits and small models, the biggest thing I ever did was that thief, which we scrapped anyway. So I decided that before posting, I'd spend a week whipping up a new model for this mod. Thus do I present: the boilerbot. I'm pretty happy with the modeling. The normal is decent, if a bit rough in some areas - but the talented texture painters can certianly take a gander at it, see if they can't clean it up in some places and roughen it up in others. I'd like to add an embossed mechanite logo somewhere, too. Comments and crits welcome. She weighs in at 3300 or so polys. A bit heavy, but it's gonna be a rare enemy anyway, so it shouldn't be a big deal. I plan to try to texture it, too, but wanted to post now that the normal is roughly done. Also note - right now it has a sort of flamethrower nozzle deal going on in its mouth. This is quite changeable. A cannon looks ridiculous, tho. In addition, I dropped in a crazy hinge-type deal inside the head cowling, so the head can justifiably look up and down and left and right. The neck is designed to retract (I guess I should add a normal mapped thingy to justify it at some point). Anyway - I hope this'll help me get more into the flow here. Good to be modelling here again.
  23. The bricks themselves are basically way too low-rez - or just undefined. They're blurry and hard to distinguish.
  24. You shouldn't use the same normals for the 3D version as for the flat version. Why, you ask? Because you get horrible shading artifacts around corners and curves - for instance, right at the, er, peak of the pillars on your model, where it goes pitch black. Think of it this way: the normal map is relative to plain, vanilla, flat normals, so if you're now painting it over a normal that's at a 45 degree angle to a flat one, it'll go crazy.
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