AE:BGI: Difference between revisions

AE:BGI (view source)

Revision as of 23:44, 6 October 2010

4,000 bytes added , 6 October 2010

→‎Armored troopers: further tutorial, and a new model underway

Geyser

Administrators

5,389

edits

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 ==Armored troopers==
 [[Image:Black Spartan from Halo.png|right|63px]]
-These are the guys supposed to deal not only with Muro's Strikers, but ultimately with (Mutant) Muro himself. Not bound by the WCG's regulations, they are physically enhanced by cyborgization and/or doping and thus can carry a full body armor similar to [[Barabas]]'s or [[Mukade]]'s.
+These are the guys supposed to deal not only with Muro's Strikers, but ultimately with (Mutant) Muro himself. Not bound by the WCG's regulations, they are physically enhanced by cyborgization and/or doping and thus can carry a full body armor similar to [[Barabas]]'s or [[Mukade]]'s. Or maybe they're just [[robots]].
-===Model===
+===Placeholder===
-The best candidate so far is the Spartan design from Halo. The character wasn't designed by the same guys who worked on Oni, but the final model has features that remind both of Oni's TCTF SWAT and of Mukade. This double similarity makes all the more sense in the context of  [[Oni2:Truth Number Zero]] (in which Mukade used to be part of BGI before Oni). Of the existing textures, the black variant is perhaps the least reminiscent of Halo and the most fitting in Oni's universe. Permanent phase cloaking and self-destruction would limit the sightings of the asset to situations of physical contact, contributing to the mystery surrounding the BGI entity and hopefully minimizing the legal issues.
+An obvious first take on the BGI trooper was to toy around with the Spartan design from Halo. The character wasn't designed by the same guys who worked on Oni, but the final model has features that remind both of Oni's TCTF SWAT and of Mukade. This double similarity makes all the more sense in the context of  [[Oni2:Truth Number Zero]] (in which Mukade used to be part of BGI before Oni). Of the existing textures, the black variant is perhaps the least reminiscent of Halo and the most fitting in Oni's universe. Permanent phase cloaking and self-destruction would limit the sightings of the asset to situations of physical contact, contributing to the mystery surrounding the BGI entity and hopefully minimizing the legal issues.
 The model we initially got busy with ([http://www.sharecg.com/v/18378/3d-model/Halo-Masterchief HERE] and [http://www.linefour.com/acatalog/3DHaloMasterchief.html HERE]) was a promotional model distributed for free by LineFour (their only free character model). We rather naively assumed that this was an original (although somewhat unfinished) model by LineFour. Later, we found multiple instances of the same model on Turbosquid: [http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/285129 HERE], [http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/272592 HERE], and [http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/356026 HERE], the latter being the actual rip and the others more or less accurate renditions of it.
 The ripped mesh suffered from a few defects (disconnected triangles, duplicated triangles, missing triangles) which were fixed. The model was then decomposed into rigid body parts and imported into Oni, along with a ripped and downsampled texture. The troops are available in the newest version of the level0_BGI plugin, with several variants, ranging from nimble assassins to powerful giants. See [[AE:Plugins#BGI]]
+===Candidate===
+After a while, we came across another model, less familiar and perhaps even more fitting than Master Chief. It was found on Google SketchUp's 3D Warehouse - obviously ripped from some game, but so far nobody has been able to tell which game exactly.
+Here is a list of SketchUp entries based on the model:
+*http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=6a1d00e2085b561c6372c627cab660a9
+*http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=9dbabc507f6044978a58c51e0b0b06c2
+*http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=44f382eff4d3e9e879539d8b3db35fd0
+*http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=59f0ac893106f7cc51cfdb4c9f126c12
+And [http://geyser.oni2.net/edition/characters/bgi/alien.zip HERE] is an OBJ based on it, split into body parts and UV-unwrapped, but not textured.
+Here's a mini-tutorial for rigging this model.
+#Open the OBJ above, select all the meshes, scale it by 0.49, rotate by -90° around X, translate by 0.15 along Y (up) and by -0.5 along Z (backwards), and "Freeze all transforms". Rename meshes to match OniSplit's convention (everything should be lowercase, and the spelling we use is "biceps", not "bicep").
+#Extract ONCCninjabot with the -noanim pose and drop him/it/whatever into Scene_Root (after deselecting everything, just in case). Set the pelvis height to 10.3577 (the default 9.32 works only for Konoko).
+#Select all the meshes of the new model, then look up the ninjabot's material and "Assign to selection". The UV maps have nothing to do with this texture. You can fix them, and some model issues, at this point, or you can save it for later.
+#Now we must use the ninjabot as a posing figure, rotating its parts. The rotations that need to be changed are the shoulders and arms (i.e., "biceps"): set them to (0,+-90,180) and (0,+-58,0), respectively.
+#The translations of the ninjabot's parts need to be tweaked a bit too. Widen the hips to (0,+-1.35,0), offset the feet to (4.5,0,0) instead of (3.96,0,0), shoulders to (-0.37,-0.4,+-0.48) instead of (-0.37,0.02,+-0.48), "wrists" to (3.1,0,+-0.2) instead of (2.77,0,0) and "handfists" to (2.52,0,+-0.2) instead of (2.52,0,+-0.2).
+#Make centers visible, select the ninjabot as a tree and check that all the centers are consistent with the articulations of the new model. Save the scene or select everything and export to collada (make sure that the ninjabot is selected as a tree).
+#At this point you should have something like [http://geyser.oni2.net/edition/characters/bgi/BGI_stretched.zip THIS] (with some extra modeling but no texturing yet).
+#Now you should assemble the new body parts into a hierarchy that is consistent with the stretched ninjabot. Switch to "Center" editing, and match all the transforms of "pelvis" (the alien's) to those of "pelvis2" (the ninjabot's). Then drag-and-drop both thighs and "mid" (only those 3 parts) into "pelvis", and match ''their'' transforms to those of the corresponding parts of the ninjabot. Then do the "children's children", the "children's children's children", etc.
+#When you're done with that process of reparenting and transform-matching, you should get something like [http://geyser.oni2.net/edition/characters/bgi/BGI_stretched.zip THIS], which is essentially Oni-ready. [http://geyser.oni2.net/edition/characters/bgi/BGI_ready.zip HERE] is what I feed to OniSplit and [http://geyser.oni2.net/edition/characters/bgi/level0_Droids.zip HERE] is what I feed to Oni (PC-only).
+#It looks OK for a start, but of course it still needs to be textured, and depending on the animation scheme some bone orientations must be tweaked. Perhaps the most annoying for now is the excessive rotation of the head. Either it must have narrower aiming constraints ([[TRAS]]), or we can just glue it to the chest or neck.
 ===Animations===
 The ideal fighting scheme is Elite with a touch of Mutant Muro. More specifically, the more powerful combos will be backed up by discharges/explosions/etc generated by the armored suit. Jumping will also be dramatically enhanced by the armor. At the moment of writing, no custom TRAM or TRAC are available.
+Maybe there can be versions that are large enough to be driven (with roughly Murzilla-themed animations). "Press CTRL to board this mecha." ^_^
 ----
 ==Executives==
 (preliminary version shown; far left and right on the image below)