Male And Female Templates To Come From Squawks This Weekend

[Domarius]

Here's an example pic of 2 different arm lengths - she wants to know what you preffer in relation to this, and she can quickly make the change before she sends it.

 

The left one is the original, the right one has hands down at mid-thigh.

[Springheel]

The left one is certainly the better. The problem wasn't that the arms were too short, but that the waist was too long. I think the problem is that everything from the waist up is scaled for a figure 8 heads high, but the figure is actually only 7.5 heads high, which makes the crotch a little too low. I don't know if it's the lighting, but the crotch doesn't look as low in that image. Either way, it's probably not going to be a problem.

[Domarius]

Well they're just templates, they're meant to be stretched and squashed every which way

[Domarius]

Okay I have some obj versions, and they're looking very clean, but I'm going to get a later version of max so I can make the tweaks off the original max files, rather than work off the obj versions... just to be sure nothing is getting lost in the conversion.

 

The heads should be already triangulated in the template, since the topology shouldn't have to change at all, because most changes can be done with simple vertex pushing and making new maps. UV mapping the heads is really complicated and we can get away without it.

 

The clothes howver, have to be heavily edited to be useful, and while the topology of the body parts shouldn't need to change, they will need to be stitched together, and onto the clothes (eg. hands onto the ends of sleeves). So the clothes and body parts will be left as quads, and not come with maps.

 

And heads have to be seperate anyway, in the game, so the heads mapping will remain intact as it doesn't have to be stitched to anything, so this works out well

[Springheel]

It's nice that she's putting together these templates for character modellers, but we don't actually HAVE any character modellers atm, other than her. Is she also working on some useable characters, like the barmaid?

[Domarius]

Yes

 

Well ascottk seemed to demonstrate some proficiency with resurrecting some of those older models, so we may as well see what he can do with the templates. I would love to as well, but I assume you guys want me animating.

[oDDity]

That's a ridiculous chest she has on her though. Usually at this point I'd rant on about teenage boys and their deluded fantasies about big chested women, but squawks is a woman, so I'm not sure what to say)

However, I've never seen a chest like that, apart from Bridget Nielson's fake one.

[Domarius]

Yes but that's the max breast version There is a small breast version you can see in one of the previous pics. So the average model size would lay between somewhere there...

 

The female model I tweak will be as "average" as possible so that if people don't want to edit things, they won't end up with one extreme or the other.

[ascottk]

Here's an example pic of 2 different arm lengths - she wants to know what you preffer in relation to this, and she can quickly make the change before she sends it.

 

The left one is the original, the right one has hands down at mid-thigh.

Actually, resizing arms according to the skeleton is what I've been doing. The nobleman, for example, had ridiculously short arms so I had to resize them. If she could get the citywatch skeleton to compare to then we'd be ahead of the game

[Domarius]

Yeah she has him

[Domarius]

She was making finishing tweaks to the male head, with normal maps etc. I now have the original male .MAX file with all its maps. I just need to um, "get" 3DS Max 9, which should happen in a day or two, and then I can make the tweaks and convert him to .mb, and upload him.

 

I think it'll require a transitory conversion to .obj, import into maya, associate all the maps, and save as .mb.

 

She created this face from scratch. She takes pride in never using photos as a base for the textures, she likes to excercise her art skills.

 

However, I told her all about Face Gen, linked her up with a copy of it, and the tutorial vid, so she knows all about it now She knows we need her to focus on bodies instead.

[Crispy]

Cool.

 

That is one mean-lookin' mutha.

[Springheel]

The head has a lot of character, and the detail is good, but the proportion on the face is off--the face is too low on the head. It could be fixed by either raising the face (which might be better because it will give him more chin) or lowering the top of the head (as below). If that's quite difficult to do we could always hide the fact by overlapping hair or a helmet, but if this is for a template it's better that it be accurate from the start.

 

[New Horizon]

I'm not sure exactly what it is, but the anatomy of these look a bit off. The arms appear to be a bit too long or something. While templates are great, I do have to ask why we're creating all new templates when we already have templates created by oDD? They might be naked characters, but they match up with our existing AI. Not to discredit the work being done here, I'm just wondering if it could have been better spent completing "The Whore"? Yes, I'm anxious to see the whore.

[SneaksieDave]

I second the whore request!

 

I mean... uh... yeah, good idea.

[Domarius]

I'm not sure exactly what it is, but the anatomy of these look a bit off. The arms appear to be a bit too long or something. While templates are great, I do have to ask why we're creating all new templates when we already have templates created by oDD? They might be naked characters, but they match up with our existing AI. Not to discredit the work being done here, I'm just wondering if it could have been better spent completing "The Whore"? Yes, I'm anxious to see the whore.

Because we can get more variety out of these - they are made from individual peices that you can put together and tweak, which means a lot less modelling skill required for a lot more variety.

 

She's made a variety of interchangeable parts for gowns, skirts, bare legs, long sleeves, short sleeves, etc.

 

We don't actually have oDDity templates as such - what we have there is a fully completed and customised CityWatch guard and a naked female pagan. The naked bodies you're thinking of are not what oDDity used to create the current characters. He specifically said they are old and not following the style so don't use them. He said to use the CityWatch and naked pagan as reference. So they are reference models - not templates. Templates you can load in and tweak, add etc. because they are a bare bones structure with maybe some optional parts you can switch over.

[Springheel]

I have to say, I'm far less interested in these templates than I am in seeing the results of the contributor task we actually assigned. The templates are going to sit around doing nothing unless we get a modeller who can make something useful out of them.

[Domarius]

The head has a lot of character, and the detail is good, but the proportion on the face is off--the face is too low on the head.

She said it's because he's bald, and that it would be the case with anyone if you shave their head.

 

I'm not sure exactly what it is, but the anatomy of these look a bit off. The arms appear to be a bit too long or something.

 

This is what you get with templates, they won't nessecarily look like real people properly, because she has done them with extreme lengths so you can fit clothes on them and then shrink them back by simply selecting a bunch of vertices and shifting them.

 

She's the only modeller we've had who makes a living out of doing what she does, and I've shown her every critisism you guys have made, and she's has had a specific reason for each, so - maybe we should just wait till she produces some characters and critisize those.

[Domarius]

I have to say, I'm far less interested in these templates than I am in seeing the results of the contributor task we actually assigned. The templates are going to sit around doing nothing unless we get a modeller who can make something useful out of them.

Well that will be her, won't it? These templates are great to have to speed up work, ESPECIALLY if she's going to be the only one modelling...

[New Horizon]

Well that will be her, won't it? These templates are great to have to speed up work, ESPECIALLY if she's going to be the only one modelling...

 

I guess my main concern is that we had agreed months ago to use oDD's templates in order to maintain consistency. I didn't think to speak up on this when word of the templates first arose, because I was dealing with my Dad's illness. Now that things have settled down a bit, I am having some issues with the way things are unfolding here. Not in a nasty, negative way...but rather a bit of confusion, as the whore was never given to us before this next project was started. Was anyone even consulted before this project was underway? I realize the mod works on a volunteer basis, but there does have to be some kind of order...or else there is no artistic cohesiveness.

 

Anyway, that isn't meant to discredit her work. I'm just saying, we already had templates that we agreed to use to maintain a consistent style. She was asked to use the female template for the whore/barmaid.

 

I'm probably being quite anal about this, but I feel very strongly about the AI maintaining the look oDDity laid out for us, and this approach isn't going to do that.

[Domarius]

Okay, from the top again, summing up;

 

These templates are the smart thing to do, for her, or anyone, to crank out decent models with a decent variety and in the same style. She hasn't "moved on" from the whore, she just put it on hold, because obviously the whore must be consistent with the rest, so it must be based of the templates, so the templates should be finished first.

 

oDDity said that the City Watch, and the naked pagan woman, are what he considers to be the REAL templates, and this is what we gave to squawks as a reference. (And that's what they really are - reference material, finished products, not bare templates that you can easily tweak)

 

If squawks templates aren't quite enough like oDDity's style for your liking, that's easily tweaked, (and that's what they're meant for, so don't get your knickers in a knot). By me, from the looks of it, since I have the artistic and technical ability to make those changes, and her time is better spent on making new models.

 

Some things like the neck length were deliberately exaggerated to the full extent. I can make average versions of everything, so that people can start from something without having to pick one of the full extremes.

 

She did up some examples to see what you think of this same head size once it has hair on. To me it looks fine...

[Domarius]

I asked her about the whore, and she's only just getting up to texturing it.

[sparhawk]

If squawks templates aren't quite enough like oDDity's style for your liking, that's easily tweaked, (and that's what they're meant for, so don't get your knickers in a knot). By me, from the looks of it, since I have the artistic and technical ability to make those changes, and her time is better spent on making new models.

 

To be honest, you MAY have that abillity, but that's Not enough, since we need models within a reasonable time, and judging from your other tasks, we can't wait half a year (or longer) for every single model to become usable.

It might be that you are actually much faster than you have shown so far, but that's beside the point. We can not count on what somebody eventually could do for the mod, only what is actually done, and whatever the reason my be, why somebody is slow, the fact doesn't get change by any good reason.

[New Horizon]

oDDity said that the City Watch, and the naked pagan woman, are what he considers to be the REAL templates, and this is what we gave to squawks as a reference. (And that's what they really are - reference material, finished products, not bare templates that you can easily tweak)

 

Not to belabor the point. Yes, oDDity said that he considered those the real templates, but they can't be easily used as templates, even I know that...which is why we were going to use the original 'naked' models. I'm pretty sure I posted links to them. By the very same reasoning, oDD's naked male and female models could have easily been manipulated, dressed, skewed, stretched...or whatever. The middle man approach to communicating with Squawks is also extremely frustrating. Everyone appreciates the work, it just wasn't necessary, nor requested. It quite honestly feels like requests were ignored and you guys cooked this idea up and then Ta Da, you've got templates. It's just my opinion, but I feel if the time were spent with the original templates..we could have had 2 or 3 usable models ingame already. Just the view from here, no disrespect meant. It's just a case of not having done what has been asked.

 

I'll refrain from posting any more on the subject however, as it's really not my place to say anything further I guess.

[Domarius]

I don't know what all the fuss is about. The templates are a few tweaks away from being more like oDDity's style, and you're all acting like everything is useless.

 

To be honest, you MAY have that abillity, but that's Not enough, since we need models within a reasonable time, and judging from your other tasks, we can't wait half a year (or longer) for every single model to become usable.

It might be that you are actually much faster than you have shown so far, but that's beside the point. We can not count on what somebody eventually could do for the mod, only what is actually done, and whatever the reason my be, why somebody is slow, the fact doesn't get change by any good reason.

Not sure what you're saying, but if you want an explanation for my sparse updates - the company we're working with is shit, and we're not working with them again, but they are the reason we are all working late nights and why I haven't done much mod work since uni ended, and will be like this for the next 3 weeks until the end of this project, and then we won't be working so much overtime anymore after that.

 

It seems like you're chastising me, but I don't know what help that could be. Everyone is already doing their best in the current circumstances.

 

Not to belabor the point. Yes, oDDity said that he considered those the real templates, but they can't be easily used as templates, even I know that...which is why we were going to use the original 'naked' models. I'm pretty sure I posted links to them. By the very same reasoning, oDD's naked male and female models could have easily been manipulated, dressed, skewed, stretched...or whatever.

Then I better bring you up to speed.

 

The original naked models are too unlike oDDity's style and too hard to work with (click here, and also here). Spar can understand - sometimes its more work to try and make something work with something it wasn't designed for, so you make it from scratch.

 

To sum up what I said in the linked posts - If you're going to use an existing mesh, it better be fairly similar to what you're already making, topology-wise. Otherwise it's not going to be manageable, and not going to be poly efficient. And oDDity's original naked people are too different to the new style. The topology of squawks meshes is such that it's not much of a stretch to make it more like oDDity's current style - no topology changes will be nessecary, just some stretching and squashing. The same CANNOT be said for the old oDDity naked models. He specifically said not to bother with them and to use the CityWatch and female pagan as reference. This is the 3rd time I've typed this I think.

 

I'll refrain from posting any more on the subject however, as it's really not my place to say anything further I guess.

Don't talk like that. Sounds like you're just giving up in the face of impossibility, and it really doesn't have to be like that.

 

It just seems I have a lot of explaining to do with what went on between oDDity, squawks and myself.

 

And I don't see what's wrong with the middle man approach - everything you say is getting through. You're not happy with the way she's copied the style, but that can be changed easily.

 

Is there anything really desperately wrong that I haven't addressed?