Legionary Character

[Domarius]

If you're gonna replace oDDity you've got a lot to live up to.

 

And I must say, as far as initial appearances go, you're practically there.

 

What remains is optimal poly usage for low poly and good joint bending, and texturing.

[BlackThief]

made some progress on the lowpoly model - it's almost there. only few details for the buckles are still missing

 

 

 

ATM it weights at 4570 triangles, but I'll be able to reduce it quite a bit when optimzing the mesh at the end. (for comparison oddity's elite guard has got around 5500 tris)

[sparhawk]

Wow! Strange to think that this ugly model, will later show up as that cool looking legionare.

[drumple]

the model looks really good. as for the poly count.. i would think the lowest that it can go without sacrificing

quality is needed, since there may be a few of them in area's and that can impact the fps...

 

but another thing i was wondering about, is that maybe there should be a bone that extends from the hip

area's on the models.. outwards.. so that things can be binded to them.. like potions/money bags.. ect..

 

i have tried experiments where i made a model appear at the hip area and it moved with the character, but

the problem was when the character turned, the bound model would not follow correctly.. since it binds at the

characters origin. if it was bound to a bone at the hip for that special purpose, it would be nice.

[BlackThief]

I took a look at oddity's elite guard model with the md5 viewer and it looks like he also assigned a bone at the hip for the sword sheath. I never rigged a character before so this stuff is all pretty new to me, but I have to learn it one day anyway As far as I know maya is the only programm which has a proper md5 exporter - anyone able to share?

[Dram]

You can get it on www.isohunt.com and a good torrent downloader called azureus (you can limit upload speed etc).

 

 

 

Not that I'm promoting illegal software or anything, since that would be illegal

[Domarius]

Yeah you're just providing the information, not giving them the software. Heheh.

 

I imagine you could keep carrying that concept on - I'm not giving it to him, I'm just making a copy, and if I leave it here, and he takes it, that's not my problem!

[sparhawk]

Maya is pretty cool! I worked with it before I started to use Blender, because Maya is quite an overkill for my needs and Blender is legal and offers all that I need. Still, if I would start to use a commercial 3D app, I probably would switch to Maya anytime.

[Domarius]

The people who made Maya also made Nendo, a smaller program specifically for modelling single objects and rough texturing. Wings 3D is based on Nendo.

 

oDDity was using Lightwave and had a workflow set up for converting straight into the Doom 3 engine - this is what id software used as well.

 

I'm used to 3DS primarily, so if you used that I could help you with it, but I don't know about a workflow for exporting to Doom 3 yet. There is one, I just don't know it, never been required to find it.

[BlackThief]

The people who made Maya also made Nendo, a smaller program specifically for modelling single objects and rough texturing. Wings 3D is based on Nendo.

 

oDDity was using Lightwave and had a workflow set up for converting straight into the Doom 3 engine - this is what id software used as well.

 

I'm used to 3DS primarily, so if you used that I could help you with it, but I don't know about a workflow for exporting to Doom 3 yet. There is one, I just don't know it, never been required to find it.

 

nope - both oddity and id used maya for exporting the models into doom, since lightwave seems to be quite complicated when it comes to character rigging and animation.

 

Animated models are quite a bit more complex. The only animation system supported in Doom 3 is skeletal (no vertex animation like in Quake), and the only file format supported is .mb (Maya binary). The files have to be processed using a built in tool to convert the Maya files to .md5mesh and .md5anim files.

 

thanks dram I'll check this out.

[BlackThief]

can't get the bittorrent prog connecting. it's probably because of my crappy router - eventhough I opened all required ports.

[Dram]

Damn...wish I could help there but I know very little about networking

[sparhawk]

Which ports did you open? But it may also be that your provider doesn't forward these ports or does some statefull inspection to prevent P2P. Some do this, I think. I can download it and upload it on FTP for you, if you want.

[Springheel]

I took a look at oddity's elite guard model with the md5 viewer and it looks like he also assigned a bone at the hip for the sword sheath

 

Perhaps we should include one at both hips by default then? We wouldn't want FM authors to have to choose between giving their guards a sword OR a belt pouch.

[Domarius]

nope - both oddity and id used maya for exporting the models into doom, since lightwave seems to be quite complicated when it comes to character rigging and animation.

WWWHHHAAAAAATTT???? After all that raving oDDity did about LightWave being the best? And Doom 3 supports .lwo natively?? What's going on?

[BlackThief]

Which ports did you open? But it may also be that your provider doesn't forward these ports or does some statefull inspection to prevent P2P. Some do this, I think. I can download it and upload it on FTP for you, if you want.

 

I opened everything the configuration assistent wanted and even more - TCP and UDP 6881-6889 and TCP + UDP 50000-50100. Would be nice if you could download that for me spar, I'm always have those problems with my router, not only with P2P software, but also with mp-games.

 

 

@ spring yes I think that won't be a problem, once I've got the right software and knowledge how to properly rigg a character

 

 

@dom yes I'm pretty sure he didn't use lightwave to rig the characters - the rigging tools really suck and there's no plugin or something to export to md5.

[Fingernail]

Yes, the id workflow is model in lightwave, animate in Maya and then export to md5.

 

All the static props are just lightwave -> Doom 3

[Domarius]

Actually I think its;

 

-Model in LightWave

-Rig in Maya

-Animate in Motion Builder

-Export from Maya to md5

 

oDDity always sent me an FBX for animating in, and the idea is I send it back to him and he converts it in Maya to md5.

[sparhawk]

I opened everything the configuration assistent wanted and even more - TCP and UDP 6881-6889 and TCP + UDP 50000-50100.

 

688* should be ok. I did that on mine and it works.

 

Would be nice if you could download that for me spar, I'm always have those problems with my router, not only with P2P software, but also with mp-games.

 

Already done. I just have to find a place to upload it. I put it on our FTP. I hope that works, because it is a bit unreliable.

 

@dom yes I'm pretty sure he didn't use lightwave to rig the characters - the rigging tools really suck and there's no plugin or something to export to md5.

 

I remember him asking if somebody could compile the newest Maya plugin for Doom 3 at some time. I think this was because of that.

[BlackThief]

em, I don't know how, but somehow the bittorrent thing must have worked, eventhough it complained that it isn't able to connect. I just came across a 211mb rar archive on my HDD called maya6 - unfortunately the archive is corrupted, I probably turned of my machine before the download was finished. so it'd still be nice if you could upload it to the ftp spar

[sparhawk]

I'm already uploading it. The version I got is Maya 7.0.1. I'm also downloading the Docs for it, which are another 400MB download, but it is much slower then the binaries. I haven't installed it yet, but I verified that the archive is working by copying it's content onto my harddisk. So this should be ok. I guess I will install it also after the upload is finished.

I chopped it into 7 pieces. Just replace the number in the filename with the piecenumber for the other files, but it is not yet finished. 1 and two is complete and can already be downloaded.

 

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Files/Ma/...7.0.1.part1.rar

[sparhawk]

It's uploaded. I tried to install it, but I haven't succeeded yet.

[BlackThief]

I just installed it, works fine for me.

[Dram]

excellent

 

Good luck BT

[sparhawk]

Huh! How did you get the licensefile to work? I always get an error when I run the keygen and try to load the resulting file into the license engine. Did you do any special things?