old naked dude

[Arcturus]

Couple of years ago I started making a character with Darkmod in mind. Then I abandoned it, then returned to it last year.

Link to low poly version on Sketchfab

Since it has the right proportions for Darkmod rig I might as well port it into the game. I already did the "skinning" part:

There are couple of kinks that need to be worked out. First of all at the moment the mesh is in one piece. However, the main rig has only the "head" bone, no bones for the eyes and mouth. For the most part heads in Dark Mod are separate and have a separate rig with eyes and mouth bones. Zombies don't use the head rig, and so it seems they don't have facial animation. If both rigs were connected in some well defined way one could attach the head precisely. But from what I see, in the game the head rig's origin is in arbitrary places:

[jaxa]

It's me

[datiswous]

I wonder if it's somehow possible to make children/smaller humans/fat people/etc. Now everyone seems to have the same proportions.

[chakkman]

At least he had the decency to keep his shorts on...

[Arcturus]

I will probably need to add some sort of scarf to hide the neck seam.

3 hours ago, datiswous said:

I wonder if it's somehow possible to make children/smaller humans/fat people/etc. Now everyone seems to have the same proportions.

There is one fat "inventor". A smaller character would probably need additional work like setting up AF.

[Arcturus]

 

[JackFarmer]

That looks fantastic! 

[kingsal]

Very cool! Really nice texturing and overall execution. Id love to use this model if you do end up getting it all working. 
Btw, how are you doing the animation scale stuff?  
 

[Arcturus]

Thanks!

I don't like the default idle pose.

11 hours ago, kingsal said:

Btw, how are you doing the animation scale stuff?  

You just need to export md5.anim animation files with smaller scale:

 

[Arcturus]

Exported body and head separately. I managed to eyeball the position of the head somehow. Seam is noticeable at closer inspection but it's not very distracting I think. So no scarf needed. I need to make shadow mesh now, I guess.

The way eyelids are animated makes lower lids move more than the upper ones. Heads in Darkmod have other useful bones. If eyebrows were randomly animated it would liven up the NPCs. You could give guards a frown when in combat mode for example.

Edit: I see there is already some barely perceptible eyebrow animation that I guess is part of the idle animation.

 

 

[nbohr1more]

I love those aged guards! 

[Arcturus]

I moved the entire upper part of the torso down a bit.

This way his shoulders won't be as broad any more. As a result this character will be a little shorter than other NPCs. Still a lot taller than the player though.

[Arcturus]

That messed up fingers (duh). This will work better:

[STRUNK]

Grumpy old George, I love it : P

[STRUNK]

18 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

I love those aged guards! 

Aging just like us XD

[Arcturus]

I screwed up a little when I made the old rigging in Blender. With most Darkmod characters you can't really tell where the elbow is. In my animations there's an incorrect arm roll and the elbow is pointing in the wrong direction. But because all characters were dressed it didn't matter much. This model has wrinkly elbows so it's very noticeable.

That means I will need to reexport animations with a fixed arm rotation.

 

[Bikerdude]

hmm, if the head had a beard, he could be used in my WIP...

Might also need clothing mesh that would suit a nobel walking around his manor in the evening, I got forget what they type of clothing is call though.

[Arcturus]

I made new hair cards.

@Bikerdude  I think I am done with this model for now. 

[Arcturus]

You can put a skybox on an NPC.

Edit: I meant skybox, not portal..

[datiswous]

4 hours ago, Arcturus said:

You can put a sky portal on an NPC.

Could actually be really interesting with the right sky portal. For example to make a more interesting looking fire elemental.

[Arcturus]

@datiswous sorry I meant sky box. Sky portal doesn't seem to work.

Blood decals do not spawn on top of the hair. Looks like it's caused by "alphatest" keyword in the hair material. When I remove "alphatest' then splats do spawn correctly. As you can see if I next bring back the alpha, then blood decals render nicely on hair.

Was this turned off intentionally? In this particular case it looks a lot worse without it.

[Arcturus]

I added forceoverlays keyword to hair material which fixed it.

I noticed that a lot of clothes on NPCs do not spawn blood decals.

I uploaded the old guy to repository. I created new .def and .mtr files. It can be moved if needed. I copied nobleman's definition. Some idle animations don't fit the character, like adjusting belt or eating peanuts so that needs sorting out. I uploaded 2048x2048 texture, figured it will be enough. I can upload 4096x4096 if needed.

[kingsal]

Very nice! Im definitely going to use this guy. Which repository is this uploaded to?  There are several official and unofficial these days. If you can, it would be helpful to have a link to the files in this thread so its easy to grab them. 

[Arcturus]

@kingsal https://svn.thedarkmod.com/svn/darkmod/trunk

Is there a parallel development going on that I'm not aware of?

[kingsal]

There are some other repositories besides the svn  : https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity 

The github one seems useful : https://github.com/thedarkmodcommunity

Are you able to package all the files up and send them to me? It would be easier to integrate it into my own FM than trying to find all the files in the SVN. (im having a hard time finding everything)

Edited September 27, 2025 by kingsal