What would you like to see...

nope unfortunately; tiger animal companions ftw

it still needs a bit of work too; on my to do list, which is rather gargantuan

 

brown wolf texture

 

been well over a month since i've posted anything here, thanks to kotb work and my new job, so i thought i'd start working on a pit fiend to make up for it

 

welllll... the gargoyle model uses two textures, and they're not exactly the most straightforward UV layouts... the 3ds import plugin doesnt support multiple textures currently, and... well... it could be tinted red easily, but anything more complicated than that would be a real nightmare

 

That pit fiend looks great, vampiricpuppy, especially the wings.

are you going to place holes in the wings as in the case of the dragons in the movie Lord of the rings? I think it would be really nice if they actually looked damaged, to make the point that the creature has seen some fighting.

 

Nope, I already asked that question privately (btw ted did you know long bows and short bows use the same model)

 

@ S.T.-- looking into your previous comment in the tools... Poser/Daz3D can be exported into a 3dsmax obj/model... and reading through these posts it appears this is how VP did the skins for the other monter mods... is it possible we could do something like this for poser items.. I am not limited just to people ... there are models of animals starting with the dinosaurs to people imaginations for tomorrow...

I'll look more into it tomorrow:rock:

 

Hey Ax,

You should be able to get the Poser stuff INTO max, the problem is we can't get it OUT and into the game. The exporter we have only handles non-animated weapons, so creatures of any sort are out of the question. This applies to the stuff VP posted in this thread aswell. Unless someone comes along and writes us another exporter, none of it will ever be in the game

Cuchulainn.

 

Well, at this point, having Maruts wouldn't be that difficult.

The most complicated is the beaked helmet one, but just for the beak.

The others two ( idon't remember their names), are EASILY doable:

The one that looks like a mechanic centaur could be made from the Lamia's skin; the other is simply a human with a helmet and a big sword; and the third( "beakie"), could be done with a bit of cheating on existing skins.

 

kolyarut and zelekhut? that the ones? i'm going to have to look into the lamia more it comes up every time something centaurish gets suggested - id assumed it would be too catty though.

If people are wondering how i reskin models, i grab the model out of the game into max, then turn it into an .OBJ, and import that into zbrush where i 'paint' it basically. For anyone that hasnt tried Zbrush, and has an interest in modelling/texturing, you should check it out

People do manage to do good work without it, but it requires a more thorough understanding of how UV maps 'wrap' models.

 

Wow, the cuddly Nosferatu it's back!

Yes, those two creatures.
The Lamia would do for the centaurlike dude, and since they seem to have no gender, i won't matter if it's a guy or a gal.
The cracked skin, missing parts and all the "mech stuff it's easily doable, and for one time, that damned tail would be of use (i've tried to make a centaur of it, but yes, it's too much "catty", the movements, and proportions and i think that it's not posible to erase the tail)

Btw, do you work with the model in a 3D program? i just simply open the skin in photoshop, and paint him and modify/cut the alphas...
In fact i use a similar trick than Cujo, but i'm more comfortable with mine.
(the Lamia skin it's a PITA, really, but i figured it)

 

I'm very impressed with your panther by the way

I've been taking a bit of a break, constantly promising 'ill be back' and not delivering, but the KOTB release gave me a slight kick up the pants - browsing what ive missed in the last couple of months has been very interesting!

When i first reskinned models (theyre floating around this forum) i just changed colours in photoshop, its a VERY easy thing to learn to do - getting the skin into the game is a lot more work.

Altering details on the models is a harder step, it takes a bit more experience, and because of the way things work in UV maps, if you draw a detail on the image, it can come out totally warped when applied to the model. Reskinning the phase spider proved a nightmare - the UV map is kinda all over the place, theres a lot of stretching involved, so to keep the texture uniform you'd have to adapt your painting to be stretched in areas where the modeller decided to give extra space to a particular polygon inside the uv area.

So, my process for reskinning is as follows:

step 1: get model

step 2: get skin texture

step 3: import into 3dsmax via plugin

step 4: export to .OBJ file

step 5: import .OBJ into Zbrush and apply original texture file/or start from scratch.

step 6: Paint the model in zbrush - this is why i keep recommending the program: you can literally airbrush the model in a 3d environment without having to constantly nut out the UV stuff. Dont get me wrong, knowing how it all works will help immensely, but its REALLY great to say, 'i want a spot on this creatures hip' and to simply apply it, rather than going into the model viewer, and trying to find a corresponding blob on the UV map that just might be a hip

step 7: save the texture - you dont have to do anything with the model after that, youve got a working texture file that can be brought into the game.

now ive skipped a few sort-of-optional steps there, like 'pruning' a model for duplicate geometry (the phase spider uses one single part of the UV map again and again to map each of the legs and feelers), so to make it easier to paint, you simply can delete all the feelers and all but one leg, but yeah, thats not 100% necessary.