Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

New monster model - Mantian


Plutonia

Recommended Posts

Interesting....not sure it would fit in the TDM universe, but I'm sure someone would use it if you got it working with our rig.

 

One crit...the glutes and leg muscles look very mammalian for an insect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting....not sure it would fit in the TDM universe, but I'm sure someone would use it if you got it working with our rig.

 

One crit...the glutes and leg muscles look very mammalian for an insect.

 

Maybe if someone makes a pagan-themed mission set in the wilderness and needs special tougher AI for the harder sections.

 

Oh, and the "muscles" are actually individual sections of the exoskeleton, modeled somewhat after the human muscular structure.

 

I should imagine the body shape is what's supposed to connote 'female somewhat-humanoid', of the sexy-and-monstrous-all-at-once school of cognitive dissonance.

 

Hmm... and I thought I was merely combining humanoid and insect features just like the original designers of Thief 1 with the final bugbeast design. I suppose she could be a bit less humanoid and more insectoid to offset the monstrousness.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The model is great. Whether it fits TDM or not is the difference between the Thief bugbeast and a generic mantis warrior. The reason the bugbeast belongs in the Thief games is because it is a weird, otherworldly Lewis Carrol on acid monster. The voiceset and the way it moves do the trick, plus it shoots insect clouds. It is freaky and frightening, while a generic mantis monster would not be. If it is possible to get this effect, it would make a good addition, and I would use it in my next mission (after I am done with PD 3).

 

I would tone down the carapace and make it dull green, even grayish. As it is, it is a bit plastic-like.

  • Like 2

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cool. I wonder what kind of vocal set it would use.

 

 

Well, the Thief 1 bugbeasts do a smacking noise with their mandibles and do this high-pitched happy humming when idle.

 

I would tone down the carapace and make it dull green, even grayish. As it is, it is a bit plastic-like.

 

Yeah I haven't finished the texturing, plus I don't exactly know how Dark Mod handles materials and shaders.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's awesome!

When did you start this exactly?

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's awesome!

When did you start this exactly?

 

I had the design for most of the body ready for a long time. First I started about 6 months ago but my workflow was all fubar so I abandoned the mesh. I figured out a better strategy and started sculpting the highpoly mesh about 3 weeks ago.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thats a pretty amazing model, absolutely fantastic work my friend! Just as an artistic achievement, its very very well done and all the details and proportions look so good. Your modeling skills are way up there, it would be unbelievable if you could put some of them to use here in TDM, we could certainly use such quality 3d art. Conceptually, it does resembles a human being in a distressing way, which I assume is the intention. This way, it seems to me more like a woman turned an insect like creature by some curse of the gods or magical incantation, than an actual giant insect species. It could be used just like that (since we lack all the rest of the assets to build its insect colony world), an isolated magical monster lost inside the plot of a map.

 

Keep up the great work.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I had the design for most of the body ready for a long time. First I started about 6 months ago but my workflow was all fubar so I abandoned the mesh. I figured out a better strategy and started sculpting the highpoly mesh about 3 weeks ago.

Oh I expected for some reason that "a long time" was a year or more!

Doesn't matter, the similarity to the Pagan creatures from Thief 1 is really there. However I have the feeling that the low-res textures in Thief 1 made those monsters look more like Paleolithic brutes somehow.

Your approach really reminds me of "The Fly" where the dude completely transforms.. eb7bb390d337ff961bea02547d22deda.jpg

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Conceptually, it does resembles a human being in a distressing way, which I assume is the intention. This way, it seems to me more like a woman turned an insect like creature by some curse of the gods or magical incantation, than an actual giant insect species.

 

The bugbeasts and craymen of Thief 1 were made from the very beginning to be simply humanoid demons with features of praying mantis and crayfish. So they're more humanoid than insect or crustacean. The very early version of the bug demon was much more demonic and had way less insectoid features. It had an almost human face and two pairs of regular human female breasts for some reason.

 

The magical spider beasts you encounter in the very last missions of TDP were not even originally supposed to be just recolored spiders. They were meant to be humanoid female black widows, very much like the bugbeasts, with jet black skin that has red markings. They had two legs, six arms, and five eyes like their normal spider counterparts.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you read my PM? BTW fantastic model (i'm not sure about the feet tho, is anti physics law ;D ) but 30 000 polygons for a game character is a tad much, i would try to get it to max 15 000 polygons, if you want to have more than one seen at the same time, if is for a special boss kind monster than 30 000 is doable, but if you do a retopo in modo you can make a very good low poly mesh 6000 to 15 000 polys and with a normal map make it look exactly like the 30K one. You also need to do a low poly shadow mesh because TDM uses Stencil Shadows and they work by tracing (extending) the silhouette polygons of your mesh if they are very dense it will slow down the shadow calculation and the game badly.

 

Also this character with the normal TDM biped skeleton would look very strange and not make it any justice IMO, just like the werewolf this one would need a new skeleton.

 

 

Btw about the A pose to T pose that is easy to fix you can just use the Flex tool on the deform tab to rotate the harms to the T pose, then use the sculpt tools to solve any pinching.

Edited by HMart
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah I know. I need to make LODs and a shadow mesh. Fortunately it's really easy with Modo. Anything that's 100% quads can be decimated pretty easily without compromising the structure of the mesh.

 

I disagree regarding the skeleton though. The character has funky toes and elongated pinkies, but it can still use a standard skeleton. I can bind the bone that governs the ball of the foot to the grabby-toes. And any extra bones can just be ignored by existing animations, for example if I were to have special bones for the mandibles and antennae. Existing animations are only concerned with the bones in the hierarchy that they recognize. It shouldn't even matter if there are slight differences in the lengths of limbs because skeletal animations are all about rotations, right?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perhaps i didn't explained me well has you have noticed my first language is not English, when i mean this character needs a new skeleton i really mean this character needs a new set of animations not the normal guard or pedestrian ones, when i see your character i see a more grotesque kind of movement, something like this motion_2377.gif?1428453022 or like this motion_2371.gif?1427322351 not like this https://youtu.be/V31S7w4qBcE?t=127

 

 

 

About character animation like i said in my PM i'm not a animator or rigger, i have some knowledge but i can't really animate characters or complex stuff, only small mechanical stuff, but one thing i know skeletal animations are not only rotations, you can use bone scaling, to make some crazy stuff, for example control a finger curl/extend or even the open and close of a hand, you can also use translation to do stuff like stretching limb's, animate mechanical objects, control other bones (up vector for example) what i mean with this is that bone animation uses rotation/translation/scale depending on the particular needs.

Edited by HMart
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I agree with that. The bugbeasts were freaky precisely because they moved with an odd, slow, but deliberate pace.

  • Like 2

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One crit...the glutes and leg muscles look very mammalian for an insect.

 

 

It could also play to the models versatility. The way it looks now it could be an insect creature or it could also be a costume thought up by the Inventor's Guild to frighten people away from an area so that they could expand their territory.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

it could also be a costume thought up by the Inventor's Guild to frighten people away from an area so that they could expand their territory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

post-9-0-33676400-1443469434_thumb.jpg

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

It could also play to the models versatility. The way it looks now it could be an insect creature or it could also be a costume thought up by the Inventor's Guild to frighten people away from an area so that they could expand their territory.

 

For the record, Fallout 3's AntAgonizer is a terrible character. Just like all the rest in that game.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

I could imagine a level in TDM with this. Deep in caverns underground. Bit like the tomb mission in Thief where you recovered the Horn of Quintus. Those

sorts of places, or forests would be a good place for a creature like this. I think it could fit in nicely.

 

As for audio, what's wrong with the same sound in thief for them.

 

My only issue with it is the skin specularity is all wrong. It shouldn't be shiny. Parts of it should be yes. Any part that is likely to be

a hard shell (armour) should be shiny, anything that is soft should be matte.

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My only issue with it is the skin specularity is all wrong. It shouldn't be shiny. Parts of it should be yes. Any part that is likely to be

a hard shell (armour) should be shiny, anything that is soft should be matte.

 

It is already that way. Its ass is the soft, non-shiny part. ;)

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recent Status Updates

    • Petike the Taffer  »  DeTeEff

      I've updated the articles for your FMs and your author category at the wiki. Your newer nickname (DeTeEff) now comes first, and the one in parentheses is your older nickname (Fieldmedic). Just to avoid confusing people who played your FMs years ago and remember your older nickname. I've added a wiki article for your latest FM, Who Watches the Watcher?, as part of my current updating efforts. Unless I overlooked something, you have five different FMs so far.
      · 0 replies
    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
×
×
  • Create New...