SS2 Simon Pennington Protocol Droid - Edited: RocketMan/Grosnus

[6740adff4ddceRocketMan]

He has done a really great job and has now passed me the ball for finishing touches on the model.  I'll be beveling the head, shrinking the forearms, attempting to re-add the laser I broke (don't worry not for everyone) and fixing some buggy polygons.

By the way, I do have a problem that I'll need to reach out to the community for:

In my alternative weapons pack, I noticed that the SFG (which has transparent blue glass) works fine.  You can look through the glass and see stuff on the other side.  However with this droid, the transparent parts of the ribbon cables on the arms and legs do not allow any part of the droid to be rendered on the other side.  I used to have that problem with the SFG but don't remember how it was fixed.  In any case it looks bad and I don't know what to do about it.  I need to prevent these transparent pixels from hiding visible polygons behind them.  Any clues?  ZB?

[6740adff4df11RocketMan]

Never mind.  Grosnus figured it out for me already lol.   Apparently all I needed was a 1-line material file.  Doesn't explain why the SFG works but meh...  I can live with that mystery.

[6740adff4e18aOlfred]

It's something about setting alpha transparency.
You can do it either in ShockEd or via material file I believe.

[6740adff4e330voodoo47]

also, nothing wrong with a little tease now and then, but it's been ten days, methinks the actual download should get attached soon or this will get moved to the Engineering.

[6740adff4e481RocketMan]

I can appreciate that but this isn't vaporware or anything.  The only thing keeping me from uploading it is a somewhat illogical hesitation to publish something that the original author hasn't personally reviewed yet in its finished form.

I'll be done making final adjustments to this within 24-48 hrs.  Is it ok to hang in there at least that long?  Otherwise you may be moving it twice in a relatively short interval.  I emailed him again yesterday and mentioned Polito while I was at it.  Fingers crossed.

[6740adff4e58dOmegaDEATH]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0VxGRWPh28

[6740adff4e717Kolya]

How did we get to The Neverending Sto...kay I see. Great book but a relatively bad film. I reread it lately after 30 years. I didn't remember it to be so sad and depressing in the middle part, although that was probably still somewhere in the back of my mind.
Verdict: Hat mein Leben zerstört!

[6740adff4e849RocketMan]

I didn't get the reference, probably because I never watch fantasy type movies.  I feel a little sheltered...

Quick technical question.  Where's the setting in ShockED that forces AIs to exist, animate and render even when you're not looking at them?  Efficiency did nothing.  It seems that when the droid's physics box is not within the POV of the player, the droid and everything attached to it disappears.

[6740adff4eb1bOmegaDEATH]

How did we get to The Neverending Sto...kay I see. Great book but a relatively bad film. I reread it lately after 30 years. I didn't remember it to be so sad and depressing in the middle part, although that was probably still somewhere in the back of my mind.
Verdict: Hat mein Leben zerstört!

Ha ha ha.

[6740adff4ec22RocketMan]

Just about done now.


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[6740adff4eea2Grosnus]

Body proportions are looking a lot better now. Good idea to make his feet use that metal texture, I couldn't figure out anything clever there with what was already on the old texture (I would have to remake that fragment from scratch and sadly I started to run out of time).

[6740adff4f145Marvin]

Looks great, a huge improvement on the original.

[6740adff4f2beSalk]

Really nicely done...

[6740adff4f3ccKolya]

I'm beginning to see his show master qualities. Should visit one of the poetry readings sometime.

[6740adff4f523Chandlermaki]

Looks perfect now, as far as I'm concerned!

[6740adff4f65bSystem]

2-3 embodiment alternative to the Droid?

[6740adff4f74cRocketMan]

There will be a laser version, a non-laser version and a casket version (if I can get the damn thing to compile).

[6740adff4f86eOlfred]

RocketMan, which cascet did you use?
There is a tweaked/fixed cascet available in the fixed objects pack
I could even provide you with a 3ds file if needed.

[6740adff4f9a8RocketMan]

Oh.... yes a 3ds (or better still v7 or lower max file) would be super.  Particularly because I've suffering all kinds of fail so far with graphical corruption with the stock casket.  All the textures are mapped wrong, the droid looks like that fragmented bastard from Tron 2.0... it's a mess.  I was going to try mesh mode, to see if that helped at all but if I'm going that route, might as well have a properly modeled and texture mapped casket.

[6740adff4fadbOlfred]

There are still some minor disortions on the very bottom (which I couldn't get rid of and only visible ingame), but apart from that everything should look decent.
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[6740adff4fce2RocketMan]

Well I've fought with this all day and nearly polished it off but I seem to have an irreconcilable render problem... AGAIN.  Seems the casket glass is messing up the droid's polygons.  I'm certain it's the glass and some sort of transparency thing so I've handed it over to Grosnus once more to see if he can rectify the problem.  Other than that it looks ok and I'm pretty sure I'm 1 triangle short of a no-compile situation so it doesn't get any higher res than this!

One thing that I noticed is that the SCP casket seems to look different than the stock one.  Not sure if it's my imagination but I saw different textures between them after loading both in ShockED.  Then again, I've also been having UV mapping problems so who knows what's going on there.

Projected release time is tomorrow evening.  That'll certainly include the 2 AI versions and possibly the casket.  If not, the casket will follow shortly, fixed or broken, depending how it goes.  If Grosnus is unsuccessful, we might need a hand with it.
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[6740adff4fe67Grosnus]

Unfortunately I have no idea what's going on here. All I can tell is that something is definitely wrong not only with the mapping, but it looks like some parts of the box are missing too.

I downloaded Olfred's casket (the bin file) and it looks fine in Shocked:

If you compare both you'll notice, those cylindrical things on both sides are missing for example.

Don't know how to solve the glass issues either

[6740adff4ffa3RocketMan]

WTF?
Well, to be honest as soon as I loaded the 3ds file, it immediately started giving me problems.  Same with the cutlery from earlier.  I just couldn't work with it in poly mode at all.  I wonder if it's my version of max or something.

Ok... any idea what's up with the glass?

[6740adff5012cJoin2]

Good work, Rocketman & Grosnus and good luck/skill with the casket.
I hope this expands into further teamwork from you two.

I dislike the silver feet & the LEDs + the wiring on the abdomen though, yet still it's an improvement over vanilla that for the most part stays true. I'd wish the waist/hips was a little more faithful stylistically also.

Picturing the robot do the macerena already.