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Squawks Templates - Oddity Style


Domarius

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Apart from overall feedback on aesthetics, I don't see a need for any unqualified comments - Spring and oDDity are in the best position to say what is nessecary and what isn't, in this department.

 

Ok. What type of qualifications do I need then Dom? Would several pieces of my published artwork be enough? I have that. Would my published work as a political cartoonist suffice? How about the work I've been doing as a graphic designer in the last year? I might not be a concept artist of Spring's caliber, but I'm still an artist, I've done it all my life and I'm just as qualified as oDDity or Spring to make comments. Just because I don't go waving my accomplishments around, doesn't mean I'm unqualified. Christ.

 

I think my responses were quite civil, directed solely at the work at hand... and I said as much by saying I wasn't trying to be a dick. Yet, you reply in your usual combative style...and then I find these clever little insults.

 

At any rate, I'm really not in the head space for your bullshit. I'll withhold any further comments. That should make everyone happy.

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Ok. What type of qualifications do I need then Dom?
An appreciation of why we should go with these templates instead of trying to jury rig oDDity's finalised models would go a long way. Like I said - anyone can comment on aesthetics. We're all qualified for that. But what you're doing is saying my work is unessecary. That requires technical knowledge of the processes, which you don't seem to have.

 

So you're making claims like this...

...oDD's naked male and female models could have easily been manipulated, dressed, skewed, stretched...or whatever.
...as if they are fact, when you haven't even tried it for yourself. At the very least, you could be saying "I was under the impression that..." and then be open to the possibility that you have been misled. But you keep saying these things as if they are fact, which I find really strange, because up until now I've found you fairly objective and reasonable on all matters.

 

I think my responses were quite civil, directed solely at the work at hand... and I said as much by saying I wasn't trying to be a dick. Yet, you reply in your usual combative style...and then I find these clever little insults.
Well I won't ask you to forgive me for the way I responded, but the reasons behind it were - having my work deemed "unessecary" (when I know it's not so) and the reasons you said they were unessecary were points I thought I already covered well enough previously. That's enough to ruffle my feathers, sorry.

 

Ill informed opinions on the validity of my work, yeah I'm a bit annoyed. Sorry if that comes out and offends you, but I've been repeatedly told "this isn't worth it" by people who don't know any better (you and Spar) and quite frankly I'm sick of it.

 

I think more work has been on these templates than an actual character. Templates <_<

Well, you think wrong. Each one of these updates represents 30 mins worth of work, with the exception of the final one which was a couple of hours.

 

And yes, TEMPLATES. They need to be a good foundation if we expect us, and fan mission creators, to model varieties of characters off them. We have one guy making character models. With these templates, they only need to be done once, and then we can have modellers of lesser proficiency making more models more quickly, at the sacrifice of a little bit of character and variety (depending on the artistic ability of the individuall modellers)

 

Extra work is justified, not that I've spent that long on them anyway.

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You started this around Feb. 6 then I created a character from scratch around Feb. 11 & he's on svn already. The inventor engineer has been modeled, textured, rigged & imported into the game. Now the belcher is in progress & I'd imagine he'll be done before we see hide or hair of these templates. Meanwhile our animators are sending me files for conversion & being very productive.

 

I think people are frustrated at your work or lack thereof, & the decision to tweak these models when we can tweak them to make actual characters. I would've been fine working with squawk's originals. Personally, I'm frustrated with you because it takes you forever to accomplish anything. I know you're busy with your job but you keep coming here with problems that could be fixed if you actually knew what you were doing. Case & point: moving the hips joint instead of the origin for a walking animation. Looking at the original D3 animations clearly show they move the origin & not the hips. I should keep this stuff private via PMs but I'm not the only one getting frustrated & please . . . please don't PM me or request an IM chat due this post which always happens when I make a post like this.

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You started this around Feb. 6 then I created a character from scratch around Feb. 11 & he's on svn already. The inventor engineer has been modeled, textured, rigged & imported into the game. Now the belcher is in progress & I'd imagine he'll be done before we see hide or hair of these templates. Meanwhile our animators are sending me files for conversion & being very productive.
I was commenting on work hours, you know that.

 

I think people are frustrated at your work or lack thereof, & the decision to tweak these models when we can tweak them to make actual characters. I would've been fine working with squawk's originals.
Well, apparently you're the only one who didn't think they were so unlike oDDity's style that they were unuseable. Don't hold that against me please.

 

Personally, I'm frustrated with you because it takes you forever to accomplish anything. I know you're busy with your job but you keep coming here with problems that could be fixed if you actually knew what you were doing. Case & point: moving the hips joint instead of the origin for a walking animation. Looking at the original D3 animations clearly show they move the origin & not the hips. I should keep this stuff private via PMs but I'm not the only one getting frustrated & please . . . please don't PM me or request an IM chat due this post which always happens when I make a post like this.

This doesn't have anything to do with the current topic, and you have no idea what you're talking about - it wasn't as simple as that. And check the date of my last PM - I sent a few back when you released the rig. You make it sound as if I do it so much that it's annoying.

 

 

If you are quite finished trying to "gang up on me" by yourself, I'd like the thread to get back on track. If not, start a new thread about "hourly commitment" or something and stop clogging my development threads with this shit.

 

If I had the acess privelages, I would move all posts related to debating the worth of the templates, to a new thread called "Template discussion" because this thread is for feedback on the templates themselves. If a mod could do that though, I'd realy appreciate that.

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I was commenting on work hours, you know that.
Work hours mean shit if nothing's produced. I could tweak a single vertex on a model for a whole hour but that's not being productive.
This doesn't have anything to do with the current topic, and you have no idea what you're talking about - it wasn't as simple as that. And check the date of my last PM - I sent a few back when you released the rig. You make it sound as if I do it so much that it's annoying.
It is related . . . to actually produce something we can get our hands on & every time I make a post regarding your behavior on the forums, you PM me or request an IM chat.
If you are quite finished, I'd like the thread to get back on track. If not, start a new thread about "hourly commitment" or something and stop clogging my development threads with this shit.
I have no idea where you got this hourly crap. It's about actually producing something. Nice screenies & all but they're worthless if we can't get our hands on the actual models. We would have had them already if they didn't go through you first.
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Show me all these PMs please. Feel free to post them (you seem to have a point to prove and something to get off your chest) But do it in another thread and stop dragging this one off topic.

 

Same with the discussion about hours vs work.

 

Can you do that? Please?

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I got tired of having my suggestion that oDD's models could have been used as templates shot down. So, here is twenty five minutes work to turn the city watch model into something that might resemble a humble townsfolk. I did this awhile ago, just to see how hard it really was.

 

post-3-1172647960_thumb.jpg

 

EASY! A few final tweaks, some alternate skins and it's ready to go.

 

What was so difficult about this? Nothing. Why over complicate matters by starting from scratch to make completely new templates, and then only to have to tweak them to look like what we already have? I took a lot of guff about this, knowing full well that it was relatively easy to do after having tried it.

 

This is in the very spirit of the toolset. Taking what already exists, and modifying it. It's quick, it's relatively easy and it yields results that look as if the models were made by the same artist. Add to that...swapping heads, def attachments and multiple skins...we have ALL the models we need already. That's why I'm so extremely frustrated by all of this extra work. It's not necessary at all.

 

I'll tweak a few more things on this guy, try to make a new skin for him...and then I'll post the results.

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Apart from overall feedback on aesthetics, I don't see a need for any unqualified comments - Spring and oDDity are in the best position to say what is nessecary and what isn't, in this department.

 

Even if I may not be the best person to talk about the resulting quality, I can still see the effeciency of a process, and so far it looks close to be zero. Just to clarify this. I don't count screenshots as any actual productive work, because in the end, we can't use screenshots for anything except to make pretty pictures from it. It's good to show them for feedback and such, but as long as it is not on the server, the assets, whatever it may be is, is non-existant as far as the mod is concerned. And this does not only relate to models but to maps and textures as well. Anything that doesn't exist on teh server or at least FTP does not exist as far as releasabillity is concerned.

Gerhard

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That was exactly my question. You made a good job of repeating it.

You seem to be missing the point, unless I've mistaken your position and you were agreeing with Domarius when you replied to him.

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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Ok. What type of qualifications do I need then Dom? Would several pieces of my published artwork be enough? I have that. Would my published work as a political cartoonist suffice? How about the work I've been doing as a graphic designer in the last year? I might not be a concept artist of Spring's caliber, but I'm still an artist, I've done it all my life and I'm just as qualified as oDDity or Spring to make comments. Just because I don't go waving my accomplishments around, doesn't mean I'm unqualified. Christ.

 

Well that's actually one of my pet peeves. Everyone seems to think they are qualified to give an opinion on character art, and that it should be taken as seriously as anyone else's opinion.

I see it all the time on Cg forums, but it's not the case. Unless you've studied anatomy, and I don't mean you've spent your life seeing people, I mean actually deliberately memorising anatomy, then your opinion is worth no more than someone giving their opinion of a jet engine schematic just because they seen a few engines in the past.

If you asked anyone if they know what an ear looks like, they'd give a definite 'yes' straight away, but I guarantee they couldn't model a realistic ear without reference, even modelers on Cg forums have problems modeling various parts of the human body, and they have photo reference to look at.

There's a difference between having a vague idea of what a body looks like, 2 arms, two legs, lumpy bit there, flat bit here, etc, and actually having memorised every part of it from every angle and be able to make a complete reconstruction of it with no reference.

So, most people think that because they've seen a few thousand people in their life, that they know what people look like, but they don't, you actually have no more than a general idea.

Just test it now, try to draw or model an anatomically correct human, or even a small part of one.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Just test it now, try to draw or model an anatomically correct human, or even a small part of one.

 

 

Okay, I will. Like I said, I'm quite rusty. My hands don't reflect what I see in my mind quite as easily as they once did..but I'm sure I can still do it. Heh, thanks for the push oDD...I've been wanting to get this part of my life back on track...you just pissed me off enough to start. lol

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EASY! A few final tweaks, some alternate skins and it's ready to go.

 

Looks pretty good to me for low-poly. And it would have the benefit of already sharing the same rigging, I presume. Frankly, if someone with little modelling experience (I'm assuming) can do that in twenty-five minutes, then it certainly suggests to me that modifying the existing models is quite feasible. Add to that Ascottk saying he can swap the legs off one model and add them to another and it really opens up our ability to modify Odd's originals to create the variations we need.

 

I would much rather work with Oddity's originals whenever possible.

 

Sadly, the debate could have ended even sooner than me posting a screenshot, it could have never started...had the existing models been used, as was requested from the very beginning. It was a reasonable request.

 

Amen.

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Well no, what NH did there was basically remove the shoulder pads and helmet. That's not really modifying anything. Surely you don't want all the models to look THAT similar.

There needs to be some creative input when making the changes, and that means new geometry.

I've been saying from the start that templates really aren't the way to go.

You can stick my models in a background layer and use them as reference for proportions etc when making new characters, but there's really no need for a new template, because as I said, when you add the clothes and armour etc onto the new character you'll have to delete all the body underneath anyway, so these templates are really only useful for for near naked characters.

I can't see the difference between using my city watch model as direct reference when making a new character, or using the template that currently being made from my model.

You're really working from a copy of an original reference then, and anyway, this is only a good reference for a general guard or thug type, and we already have enough of those.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Well no, what NH did there was basically remove the shoulder pads and helmet. That's not really modifying anything. Surely you don't want all the models to look THAT similar.

 

I also shortened the shirt, filled in the legs and did a few more minor tweaks. Like I said, I'm a complete noob and I did that in 25 minutes. This is what a vast majority of FM authors are going to do as well. I'm sure I can make other changes to the character Geometry and maintain the established style as well, but I'll need more time to familiarize myself with Lightwave. If I can do it, anyone can...and they're just fine for our purposes. Creative use of skins, swapping heads and def attachments can go a long way to building unique characters.

 

The builder forger could even be modified to be used as another inventor model.

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If I can do it, anyone can...and they're just fine for our purposes. Creative use of skins, swapping heads and def attachments can go a long way to building unique characters.

 

Agreed. Especially when we consider the things that were already achieved by Ascott and Spring with using skins and different heads.

Gerhard

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Ascottk has already shown with the work he did on the nobleman that it's quite possible (I won't say easy as I don't know how long it took) to change the proportions of an existing character. That would be all that's necessary to turn a citywatch into a townsfolk. I already said a while ago that if you took the pauldrons off and made a few tweaks, they're already set up well to be a generic guy in a tunic.

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