Question About Skinning And Animating An Ai

[Maximius]

I need some advice about a project that I intend to carry out in LightWave 8. I want to create a new kind of AI undead, a worm lich. whats a worm lich, you say? Why, you ignorant fool, its a lich (undead sorcerer/ess) that is formed from the worms that infest an evil magic users grave. Basically you summon the lich but it uses the worms in the ground and the skeleton of the dead individual to form a body. I've already got the intro movie scene laid out in sketches, its a stormy night at an abandoned grave yard. A witch casts the final piece of the summoning and the ground around the grave begins to squirm and bubble up. Then, the skeleton begins to rise out of the ground while thousands of fat, slimy worms swarm around the bones and wrap and interweave themselves, taking the place of ligaments and muscles. When the transformation is complete, the abomination is tasked to kill a certain individual and is given an item of the individual to help identify him or her. The lich has no special unique skills, only that it can move underground and kill its targets by smothering them in a carpet of worms....

 

 

Now this is a project I am not ready to even think about beginning, I know nothing of animation yet let alone AI modelling. But I have a question about it anyway. Would it be possible to skin this thing with a animated coat of worms? Not individual worms but a layer of moving models embedded in a skin texture that would give the appearence of a human figure composed of squirming worms wrapped around weathered bones.

[Gildoran]

I need some advice about a project that I intend to carry out in LightWave 8. I want to create a new kind of AI undead, a worm lich.

Sounds difficult...

 

Not individual worms but a layer of moving models embedded in a skin texture that would give the appearence of a human figure composed of squirming worms wrapped around weathered bones.

It's not possible to embed models in a texture, unless the texture is a camera or gui, in which case it won't interact with lighting.

 

However, I highly recommend playing D3 for inspiration... they had some great squirming bloody cancer-tentacles, with slowly scrolling textures that really brought them alive. You'd probably want to combine something like that with an alpha-test mask shaped like a mass of worms. Perhaps it'd look even better if you could have the alpha-test scroll at a slightly different speed from the diffusemap. (but I'm not 100% sure if that last idea is possible)

[Maximius]

Sounds difficult...

 

It's not possible to embed models in a texture, unless the texture is a camera or gui, in which case it won't interact with lighting.

 

However, I highly recommend playing D3 for inspiration... they had some great squirming bloody cancer-tentacles, with slowly scrolling textures that really brought them alive. You'd probably want to combine something like that with an alpha-test mask shaped like a mass of worms. Perhaps it'd look even better if you could have the alpha-test scroll at a slightly different speed from the diffusemap. (but I'm not 100% sure if that last idea is possible)

 

 

Thanks, I kind of remember that texture from playing around with D3eD. But please clarify your first comment. Is it hard to create a new AI, or are you referring to this specific project. I had thought that the AI itself would simply be a matter of some new sounds, some new scripts (and nothing radically new I think), and some new textures wrapped around an AI that already exists.

[Gildoran]

I was thinking that modeling and animating a skeletal corpse infested with worms sounds like a difficult project. If you design the model with the same set of animations as another AI (such as a revenant), I think you could just swap out the model/sounds. Being able to move underground and implementing smothering things with worms would require coding that I think would be non-trivial.

[ascottk]

One possible solution is to use two overlapping meshes with that maggot-type material effect. One material goes in one direction while the other goes in a different one.

[Maximius]

I was thinking that modeling and animating a skeletal corpse infested with worms sounds like a difficult project. If you design the model with the same set of animations as another AI (such as a revenant), I think you could just swap out the model/sounds. Being able to move underground and implementing smothering things with worms would require coding that I think would be non-trivial.

 

 

I see, I hadn't actually thought of trying to code those things, I just meant to include them as storyline props. Maybe when the beast attacks the player it will suck out blood and drain h.p., I could include a nasty squishy sucking noise or something.