Whore/Barmaid model

[Springheel]

She won't be nude when she's done. Although you're right, the more bare the neck, the harder it will be to match other heads to it. Something to think about.

[Domarius]

Our pagans were going to be nude (ascottk might have been referring to that)... perhaps we have to give them some kinda ornamental necklace sheath thing, to hide the seam?

[sparhawk]

If we want to swap heads, then it must be ensured that the necksize matches. Spring, you gave the female models from Odd to Squwaks?

[Springheel]

Our pagans were going to be nude

 

That was Odd's idea. It was never the plan that pagans wander around nude, especially in a climate where it snows.

 

If the neck is bare, it's going to be virtually impossible to line up other heads so they match exactly. Even with a necklace to hide the seam, you'd still have to make sure that the slope of the neck was exactly the same size and shape, which won't happen by accident.

 

It's not like there's any female D3 heads though (actually, there's supposed to be one somewhere but I haven't found it yet). So we'll just have to make sure any heads we make are the same size. And we'll need to try and incorporate neck accessories into the model designs where possible.

 

It would also be smart to make the hair a separate model on female AI, and attach it the same way we do helmets. That would allow for different variety without having to swap heads.

[Domarius]

But if we are modelling the bodies and heads, it should be sufficient to have a necklace or something hiding the seam. We just have to make sure our models and heads all meet at the same place at the neck. The female bodies and heads can be different than the male bodies and heads (i.e. more petite) because we wouldn't swap male heads onto female bodies.

 

We should use the city guard and the female pagan as templates - the male body you model has to fit the city watch head, and the male head you model has to fit the city watch body. And same for the female modelling, using the female pagan as a template.

 

Of course the D3 ones won't fit our exact specifications though.

[Springheel]

I don't know what the size of the nude model is, do you? There's not much point in using a standard if it's not the right size.

 

But if we are modelling the bodies and heads, it should be sufficient to have a necklace or something hiding the seam. We just have to make sure our models and heads all meet at the same place at the neck.

 

That's a lot easier said than done. We already have three different female models, and I doubt they're exactly the same in the neck/shoulder area. Besides, a necklace will not hide the fact that the head tips forward or back as it moves around. We'll just have to try and limit the number of bare-knecked models we have, or live with the fact that we won't be able to do much head-swapping with them.

[New Horizon]

We'll just have to try and limit the number of bare-knecked models we have, or live with the fact that we won't be able to do much head-swapping with them.

 

As you were suggesting earlier Spring, I think hair swapping will be a viable alternative for some of our female models.

[sparhawk]

Women are always difficult, aren't they?

[Springheel]

As you were suggesting earlier Spring, I think hair swapping will be a viable alternative for some of our female models.

 

Yep. If you look at the existing female heads, they have hair that is pulled back close to the head, with a pony tail or braid. Those could be separate models that could be mixed and matched, and we could have other hairstyles of different colours that could be attached to the top of the head.

 

If we have bare-chested male pagan models (which wasn't part of the plan) we'd have to do the same thing.

[ascottk]

We could just add different skins for the nudes. We also could use the head separately for other models.

[sparhawk]

Don't forget to tell Sqwaks about the hair, or can she read this forum?

[ascottk]

Don't forget to tell Sqwaks about the hair, or can she read this forum?

Well she did start this thread so I hope she can read it

[sparhawk]

Oh! Right.

[Domarius]

I don't know what the size of the nude model is, do you? There's not much point in using a standard if it's not the right size.

All you have to do is load the body into your scene, and make sure the vertices on your neck line up with the neck hole on the body. And the reverse for making bodies match the head. Existing models would have to be tweaked this way.

 

The only side effect should be that the vertices aren't actually connected, so the shading will not carry across from the neck to the torso, creating a visible seam, but a small one, that could be covered up with a thick necklace.

 

Besides, a necklace will not hide the fact that the head tips forward or back as it moves around.

I didn't realise the entire base of the neck moves like that. It should be possible to have the base of the neck stationary while the rest of the neck deforms (as in real life), by giving the vertices at the base of the neck zero weighting to the neck bone.

 

I think we could do this if we wanted to, it just depends on how worth it everyone thinks it is.

With the heads as they currently are, it seems we're limted to heavily armoured guards for decent head swapping. There is no way you culd get away with the base of the neck moving around with the rest of the head without a nice thick covering.

 

Were scarfs in fashion back then? I'm just thinking a lot of female outfits leave the neck pretty bare.

 

Probably don't bother with headswapping for non-armoured people. You're mostly going to be looking at guards anyway, civilians are not as common, and it would be a shame to force all the noblewomen to wear huge scarves or jackets to cover their neck instead of slim fitting gowns.

 

For those women, we could resort to hair swapping, and face texture swapping, as a comprimise.

[Springheel]

It should be possible to have the base of the neck stationary while the rest of the neck deforms (as in real life),

 

It is possible to do this (Ascottk posted about this in a different thread) but it would require redoing all the rigging and animations again. I don't think it's worth that much extra work.

 

Were scarfs in fashion back then? I'm just thinking a lot of female outfits leave the neck pretty bare.

 

Odd's noblewoman has a wide cloth ornament on her neck, but I'm not sure whether that will work or not. I think we'll just have to live without headswapping for some of the female models. Hair-swapping and textures will have to do for variety in those cases.

 

edit: actually, it could be done, but the heads would have to be modeled specifically to be attached, with a tapering neck (like a blunt carrot) at the end. See image below. The blue line would be where the main body is cut, and the red line would be how far the model clips into the body. That way it could lean back and forth without looking too bad. We'd still need some kind of necklace or something to mask the seam, but it might be doable. We wouldn't just be able to cut the head off a completed model and use it however--the heads would have to be modelled with the extra-long neck in order to be used.

 

[Domarius]

Almost like a ball-and-socket-joint.

[Springheel]

Essentially, yes.

[Domarius]

I updated the model export tutorial to be more thorough, for Squawks to read.

http://www.thirdfilms.com/darkwiki/index.p...Anims_into_Doom

She has made some changes to the model, it's a bit less insanely curvey with the proportions all over (face and body) and generally much nicer looking

[Springheel]

Any progress here?

[Domarius]

Actually I just asked her the other day. She said she would continue work on it next week, as she's been busy with work for a client recetly. Also I'm going to set up Doom 3 and the model export process for her on her computer, to save her time, instead of her attempting, running into some issue I forgot to tell her, waiting a day to find out, etc.

[Springheel]

Any wip screenshots would be great.

[Domarius]

Yeah I'll bug her for some. At the moment she has an important contract job she's working on to get herself some exposure, so unfortunately this is on hold for a little while. I know she made some moderate aesthetic improvements to it since her last update here, so she should be able to post pics of that.

[Springheel]

It's been two and a half months since Squawks last posted anything...should I assume this task is dead?

[Domarius]

I just spoke to her and she said end of next week she'll have pics of what she's done.

[Domarius]

I know some of you are going to say "Hold on, she's started the barmaid before the templates have been tweaked" - the answer to that is, the tweaking can be done, in fact I'm going to send her a tweaked version of the female template tonight. So that's no problem. The heavy work is the actual modelling.

And "why is she going ahead with X when she hasn't asked us - see, this is why its a problem that she doesn't post here" - if she had questions to ask that she would have asked in a post before she started modelling, she would have asked me, and she didn't. So if she was posting here directly - this is exactly what you'd see - this post, but by her. She's been working on it tonight and just sent me a pic.

 

Of course the point of this update is for feedback and critisism, so fire away.

 

Below is a pic of the corset, and one of the two textures, where part of it is used for the corset. It's all a work in progress. She's going to add lace onthe top half of the cups, then the bottom half will be leather for the support.

 

She's going with two 512x512 textures to cover the entire model, is that okay? Because she said she can squash it down more if nessecary, without it looking much worse. She said unsharp mask is great for resurrecting detail lost by resizing down - you should use it for all textures going into games.