Character modelling questions

[67431ab36c7b6Guud]

After the release of the v2.4 patch, I figured now would be a great time to take advantage of the engine improvements by attempting to up-rez the old character models. I have little 3d modelling experience and even less technical knowledge, so I'm gonna be asking lots of questions and seeking out those who know their way around the modding scene.

The current models I have made are within the 2500-3000 range. Could I get away with something higher; should I aim lower? Does the patch effect the poly-count limits?

I have also encountered problems with the default animations badly distorting the new character models; is there anyway to modify the animation pre-sets or am I just gonna have to work my way around it?

Assuming it all works out anyway, thanks in advance.

The test files in question:
http://www.mediafire.com/?83czrp2vwm0x9

[67431ab36caa7Kolya]

I don't think the poly limits for AIs have changed. As long as you can get the stuff past 3ds2bin you should be fine though.
I know very little about AI creation, one thing I remember though is that you should start with an existing 3ds model that already has the names and limit planes for animation. Otherwise animating it later will get really hard.
You can find more information here: ShockEd: How to make new BIPED Meshes for Dark Engine Games
That guide is quite old but most of it should still apply, if not all. Also read what Nameless Voice wrote in the ShockEd Toolkit about 3ds2bin (in the Tools subdir).

[67431ab36e65aRocketMan]

Having trouble loading with my version of max.  Can you post a screenshot of the mesh?

Anyway, do you have any texturing skills?  Regardless, we should work together.  I can help you.

[67431ab36e8afGuud]

I updated my mediafire folder with a .3ds version of my model with the joint planes in place. I did in fact, use the Thief 2 animation references. My biggest problem comes with the animations, and how they treat the model.

When in a neutral stance, everything seems to be in order:
Image: http://i50.tinypic.com/20ze2dv.png

But distorts horribly when in certain poses or animation cycles:
Image: http://i48.tinypic.com/2rhs879.png

Now I understand that the original game models were so crude in a lot of ways, that sometimes there was no geometry between joints on a character, and by adding several hundred more polys it's going to have unintended results. Plus the character models behaved weird even back in the day. The question is; can I do anything about it?

I could scale down the model detail, but I would like to explore other avenues first.

[67431ab36eac2RocketMan]

Of course I can't be certain from just looking but I THINK I know what the issue is.

First of all, you've got a natural wrist angle in your model that I don't think should be there and the scarecrow pose is kinda lazy (the arms droop).  If you angles built into the geometry then when the engine applies its own for animations and such, the sum of the angles can look wrong.  Best to keep a straight wrist and arms straight out to the side with palms facing down.  You'll notice that currently the limit planes are not intersecting the mesh at right angles and this is bad.

The second thing I notice is that some of your limit planes are tilted like the neck plane.  I'm not sure if thief uses this deliberately but in ss2, all the ones I see are flat.

The third thing is the complex geometry you have at the elbow and shoulder.  Too many tris there so local distortions can take on a wider range of shapes.  Also bending cannot occur in a precise plane.  It seems to need to follow a staircase pattern around the arm, which will only look smooth in a couple of basic poses.  Any extreme repositioning will cause vertices to jut out in weird ways.  Also since the resolution is so high in these areas, certain polygons anchored to the rigid members will move but will not carry the adjacent polygons with them.

Dunno if I'm making sense but let me know if you agree.

I will say that you have superb modelling skills though... at least compared to me

[67431ab36ec34Briareos H]

I personally think that his model looks nice and that the Dark Engine handles mesh deformation awfully.

[67431ab36ed21Kolya]

Basically you should start with the Leonardo pose, ie stretched out arms.

[67431ab36ee69Marcelo]

Maybe you can Import the File of the original mesh (3d cal?) and ad a few Polygons and see how it goes. Personally I think the models should be low rez to make them more retro like. Too high rez and It will look like another Rebirth or Arcaniac model. The grunt is one of the best models because of the head is not as bad as the crew models, and to be honest no one has yet to create a model as scary as that one. There's also the possibility of making bigger brush textures I played a little bit with this scaling the texture to 512 and adding some images of my own and the model looked more detailed but each thing goes with the other to make it work.

[67431ab36f37aGuud]

There's a reason why the character T-pose has the drooping arms and upturned wrists, and it's because it would end up looking like this:
Image: http://i49.tinypic.com/33mby55.jpg
(Please note this is a far older version of the character model)

Again, one of the many problems with the default animation rigging that I had to work around, such as removing the ankle joints (the feet would deform into pancakes).I'll play around with a lower rez model with higher rez textures and see if I'm satisfied with the results.

The whole reason I started this project in the first place was to make something that could replace the Rebirth models, which are beginning to look aged, and which I always felt looked stylistically off. The one goal in mind was to revamp the characters, not re-imagine them. I wanted to take what worked, what was creepy and unique about the original concepts, and expand upon them. So I started out by testing higher resolution textures on the default models, seen here.
Image: http://i47.tinypic.com/2yltnb7.png

Which then got me playing around with the idea of doing a complete overhaul of all the biped models:
Image: http://i50.tinypic.com/5mz9ys.jpg

Image: http://i46.tinypic.com/jslhrs.jpg

Again, thanks for the replies so far... I was beginning to worry that this forum had died.

[67431ab36f5f6voodoo47]

those concepts look really good (no such shotgun exists in the vanilla game though). hipoly AI models that would be closer to the originals would be really great (as mentioned, the rebirth ones, while popular and still pretty ok, indeed are slightly off).

and no, we ain't dead, it's just that there are only few of us.. and there are so many tasks to do (especially now, when the engine capabilities have been expanded).

edit: adding concept art (you are probably aware of it, but just to be sure http://www.garethhinds.com/conceptart/index.php):

Image: http://www.garethhinds.com/conceptart/images/char_oncegrunts.jpg

I'm a big fan of the "face off" approach, as it alleviates the "all enemies look like clones of the same person" issue quite a bit.

[67431ab36f77bRocketMan]

Where did you get your limit planes from?  Which model did you use?  The Garret model doesn't do that to the wrists.  I've imported a few AIs using it and though they're far from perfect they don't have any weird joint angles like what the screenshot shows.

Those are some very nice concept shots btw. Stylistically, they look a bit too deliberately scary though.  I think it's the eyes.

I would consider using the default Garret .e file converted to bin to get the planes.  Delete G and replace him with your model but don't move the planes.  Try to fit the model to the planes instead and ensure that they intersect the model at the same angles they did for G.  This is just a thought of how you could troubleshoot.  If you do it this way and still have problems at least you can narrow it down to poly count and positioning.

[67431ab36f8c9voodoo47]

one thing that needs to be brought to attention, I believe - in the original game, only Diego actually had his own model and texture, even though there were quite a few characters that would deserve to have one as well - for example Bronson, Watts, Yang, Polito, Delacroix, maybe even some mutated characters, like Turnbull, Miller, or Bloome. it would be really awesome to actually be able to recognize them (this is one of the main issues of Rebirth - thanks to the hipoly models, they look nothing like the portraits in the audiologs).

[67431ab36f9cdRocketMan]

Well from doing the Bloome mod, I realize this is totally possible.  You just need to create 1 new instance of a crewmember and give it a unique model.  It's relatively trivial to do once you have the mesh and texture.

[67431ab36fb46Marcelo]

I've been tweaking a bit with Mesh Lab to create a higher poly Mesh of the Crew Members but I have no idea How to convert a .cal to an obj or an obj mesh to a cal so I'm using a Thief Model, divided and using the original skin with spotlight to create the texture. I assume 3d Max converts objs to cal 3d? If anybody knows an easy way let me know. This is what I've done so far, please be gentle, this is my first model.   I'm trying to keep the 90's feel to the meshes combined with the vanilla skin.

Image: http://i45.tinypic.com/6husma.jpg

[67431ab36fcf2RocketMan]

1.  Do all your modelling work in your editor of choice.... check
2.  Export your model in .3ds format... incomplete
3.  Use "3ds to bin" in the ShockED toolkit to convert the 3ds file to bin format... incomplete*

*During the conversion process, the tool will detect that you have an AI mesh and it will generate the .cal file when it creates the bin file.  You don't have to do anything manually.  To convert from .bin/.cal back to .3ds, just make sure both the bin and cal are present in the same folder and run the 3dstobin tool again, this time opening the bin file and selecting 3ds as your output (Save As).

Be advised that Rebirth redoes the crewmembers and they are one of the more common AIs seen ingame so whatever you do would have the rival the level of quality in Rebirth.  Don't let that deter you.  Just saying it's not going to be easy.

EDIT:  Can't believe I actually said that.  Musta been on crack.

[67431ab36fe0fMarcelo]

Thanks for the help RocketMan that was really useful for me. I don't think I can make the meshes better than Rebirth. I just wanted to do some models that looked more like higher poly versions of the original game. I'm also doing it as a practice for my 3d modeling that's actually my first model so hopefully it will get better with more practice.

[67431ab36fee7Marcelo]

BTW How do I convert the cal to 3ds?

[67431ab36fff3Kolya]

Read RocketMan's post again.
I personally don't think you need to measure up to Rebirth. I'd welcome other models simply for having some variety.

[67431ab3700feMarcelo]

How can I assign a texture of the txt file to my model? If possible?

[67431ab370504voodoo47]

Image: http://i45.tinypic.com/6husma.jpg

I have to say that creating a slightly higher poly versions of the characters that would still look very close to the originals, but less like cardboard cutouts is a pretty good idea (if I understand correctly, that is your aim, right?). go for it, I say (and a note - it'd be nice if the new models were headtracking friendly).

btw, you should consider registering.

[67431ab3718fdMarcelo]

Image: http://i50.tinypic.com/5mz9ys.jpg

Image: http://i46.tinypic.com/jslhrs.jpg

Again, thanks for the replies so far... I was beginning to worry that this forum had died.

If you made those images then I have to say you are very talented. The concept art looks very consonant to the style of the original mesh. I would suggest to make them as disgusting as you can within the parameters of the style.


I've finished the models but unfortunately I was unable to texturize using spotlight since I need a very high poly count mesh in order to make the image crisp enough to be usable. It seems that there's a very low limit to the polycount cause my 3ds to bin crashes every time I try to convert a model with a high poly mesh. So I just used one of Thief meshes edited some aspects like the clothing the nose etc to make them more similar to the SS2 Meshes, here's some results with some issues (I've tested them on grunts to watch them in movement):

Image: http://i49.tinypic.com/10s6tdg.png
Image: http://i46.tinypic.com/mjbde0.png
As you can see the model worked fine but they appear to one of the wrist panels incrusted so I've erased them in that side and it worked fine but probably a crew member uses the left hand at some point? There's also the issue of being a bit smaller than the original meshes specially the female but those were the meshes that seemed to work the best. I still need to learn how to apply the skins or apply them from the txt file. The process of making high poly count is very easy to do the only problem is the issues with 3ds to bin every time I edit the meshes a bit I receive this error:

Image: http://i50.tinypic.com/25sq2xs.png

Please help

[67431ab372138RocketMan]

Those limit planes are supposed to be invisible.  It's actually an interesting idea that you can see where they are on the model during animation but I don't know how you did that unless you modified the limit planes somehow.

How many polygons are we talking about when the conversion crashes?  I've had models of 3000-4000 tris that didn't crash.  I don't think it's just the poly count but also the geometry itself and how you create your model that matters.  You should shoot for 2000 or less if you can.  That should be safe.

As for textures I don't understand what your problem is.  Could you be more specific?  If you want more detail you can simply create more textures and just map them to smaller parts of the AI.  For example you can have 1 full texture just for the head... or half the head and then mirror it.  You can do the same for the body and this will save memory and give you more detail at the same time.

[67431ab37224cMarcelo]

I want to try and apply the original skin of the model. I just don't know how to apply it to my new models. I think it has to be applied via shocked but I don't know the procedure.

[67431ab37245eRocketMan]

no, you have to change the model name in shocked, not the texture name.  The way it works is like this.  The texture is linked to the model:

Model <---> Texture

The model is linked to ShockED

ShockED <---> Model

You do all your texture work in your modelling program.  ShockED has no thing to do with that.  Once you're done, you either name your model the same as the original used in the game OR you make up your own name and then you have to go into ShockED and play around so the game finds it.