This Week's Previews: Squall Leonhart LH & Ork Looted Leman Russ

Well, I've already got started on my next two projects: an Ork Looted Lehmann Russ tank that GoldFlash requested, and a Squall Leonhart Leaderhead for my FF mod. Previews are posted below. Note: if anyone knows where I could find a good leather jacket prop for Squall, that would be greatly appreciated (I spent like 4 hours searching through over a dozen 3D model sites and came up dry (although I did get a kick-donkey Boba Fett model, a cool knife that could become a gunblade with a little work and a nice A-10 model that I'll be using in a future project).

Squall's looking a bit normal, but hopefully someone'll find a nice jacket to suit him. The looted Leman Russ looks good- what's going to go in the side sponsons?

Cool Russ. I'm not quite sure on the practicallity of the spikey roller right under the front gun - looks to me like the spikes would go through most of the werky bitz.

Apart from that it's pretty funky.

The leaderhead's got a bit of a dodgy nose...

After I get my $400 check for doing research I'm going to blow it on Warhammer $0K table top stuff.. and a Looted Russ is some thing I'm going to make. Mine will probably look soemthing like this. About the Sponson Weapons... well I don't carereally.. Twin linked Big Shootas or a heavy Bolter.. I dunno. up to you. Looking good, Hikaro!

Well, my search for a leather jacket for Squall has still come up dry, so I'm trying to make the Nehru shirt that's part of the Poser 5 library into a reasonable facsimilie of the Seed uniform. I've also been messin around with the face room to make some necesarry adjustments to his face.

As for the looted Russ, I'll leave that for one of my mek boyz to explain:

"Tanks, well as yu kin see 'ere, weeb addid a spikee ting to da front of da tank. Yu see it werks kinda like a snowplow, but it's fer plowin' dem 'ummie marines. Da boyz also wanted lotsa spikees on da main cannon, so we wuz like 'sure ting, boss.' We took dem wimpy 'ummie gunz off da sidez and replaced dem wif some propa shootas. Da teknikul turm fer dem is medium twin bangas, an' dey'll put da 'urt on dem stinkin' 'ummies. Speekin' of puttin' da 'urt on... if yu direc yer atenshun to da wheelies, yu kin see we put in some bladez. Dese blades go in an out so az to cut dem 'ummies off at da kneez when dey get too close."

Pic of latest Russ, Ref pic for Squall, and the latest version of Squall

Oddly enough, that new jacket reminds me of the Asha'Man/Rand from Wheel Of Time and I know I've seen a mod idea about that somewhere... http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=87138

Anywho, very nice. I especially like how you used the Garden background for him.

Man I've just had one wierd evening. I've actually created my first complex mesh EVAR!! And I did it using Bryce. I don't know if anybody remembers me mentioning about the possibility of using Bryce to create Poser props by using a 2D greyscale image to create an elevation mapped mesh, which can then be exported as 3ds, obj, dxf, etc. Well, since I have FF VIII PC version, and they have the Lionheart pendand that's on Squall's necklace right there in the load screen, I took a screenshot, removed the background with PSP, and grescaled the image. I then fired up Bryce, made the mesh and exported it as an .OBJ file which I imported into poser. In Poser, I used the create primitive prop funciton to create the chain (I used 5 torii), after which I re-exported it. I then opened up the Squall file and re-imported textured and scaled the prop and presto: you have an almost perfect replica of Squall's necklace. As for the SeeD uniform, I must admit to feeling a bit sheepish on this one. I remembered that Poser 5 came with a CD that (supposedly) has extra figures and props so I decided to dig through my CD collection. Well, to make a long story short, I found the CD, and THE FIRST MODEL I find happens to be a Chinese-style "Mao" outfit that was almost perfect. The reason I say "almost" is because the shirt, while the requisite black color, had a crouching tiger on the back and a not-so-hidden dragon on the front. That proved to be no big deal, since I figured out how to manipulate texture maps for Poser. I took the Texture map for the shirt into PsP, removed the dragon (I could care less about the tiger, since it won't be seen anyways), and used the lionheart symbol to decorate both the shoulders. As you can see, the results are most satisfactory. I also did some more work on the face and lighting. If noone has any major complaints, I'll start animating tomorrow.

Hugin, it's funny you mention about the Asha'man, since that's the same impression I got when I first saw a picture of one. As a matter of fact, I used the Asha'man unit that CamJH made a couple weeks ago as the SeeD commando, one of Garden's UU's.

Preview of the latest version of Squall:

Even funnier, I started off using that exact same "Mao" shirt from the poser disk when I began my Asha'man unit. Then Kinboat was nice enough to model a wardrobe for me so I switched to that.

BTW, the preview looks great.

Good job on the leaderhead, will President Rufus be the Leaderhead for Shinra?

Wow, that's one hell of a job on a leaderhead that only bore the slightest resemblance to Squall into a much more accurate model. Good one!

I do think Squall's forehead is a little too wide. Looks like you could land a Boeing 777 on it.

The Looted Russ is Gud n' Orky! Really, you went above and beyond my expectations!
Wow, man. Supurb!


As we say around my dorm....



oh.. we also say 'James's Mom' alot, but you wouldn't understand.

Well, since I haven't had any major complaints about Squall (Goldflash, as you can see in the ref pic, he's supposed to have a rather wide forehead), I'll get started animating shortly. Since it takes at least 3 hours to render the 121 frame animation, my laptop's going to be tied up for most of the evening.

With that said, I'm glad you like the tank, GoldFlash, and thanks for the WAAAAAAAG! There's one last thing I must ask before I start with preliminary animation of this tank. Do you think it looks better with the spiky marine crusher the way it is, or with the same texture as the rest of the tank, so it looks more like it belongs. I've attached a pic with the green texture applied to the spiked ram, and the guns in training/elevation linking test mode.

Hikaro, one comment on the LD, if I'm not too late. It looks great, but the hair is kinda weird. The hair on the forehead looks very different than the hair everywhere else. Otherwise, superb job on the LD and I love the tank. Good job,
Speaking of the Boba Fett model you found, will you be making that unit anytime soon?

Hey Odin, I've just started the actual animation, but not rendering. I double checked the hair textures (for all parts of the the hair prop), and they're all identical. The reason the front part looks a bit odd is that (1) he's got long bangs, as in the actual game screenshot I'm using as a reference pic, and (2) instead of being parted, the bangs are combed back. If you guys really want to know, of all the hair props in the Poser 5 pack, the closest one to Squalls actual hairstyle was one of the female hair props I guess this only proves the running gag at Gamespy.com/GameInformer magazine where they compare all the main dude's hair to some famous chick's style.

As for Boba Fett, not likely. Well, not until I at least can install Poser on my descktop. I'm not really comfortable with making units in Poser, and my last attempt has been put on indefinite hold because I'm having problems with the run animation, and as slow as poser is on my current comp, any attempts to make a run animation take an excruciating amount of time, and I'm tired of wasting 3-5 hours at a shot (especially since at the time that was what my entire free time amounted to ) and coming up dry every time and not figuring out how or what went wrong. With a faster comp, I can goof up to my heart's content until I've made every possible error and figured out how to do it right. That, in a nutshell, sums up my usual method of learning all this stuff. It's either that or wait until someone writes a detailed step by step walk animation tutorial that even a first grader could understand, or I've gone long enough without sleep that I have some kind of revelation (sorta like what happened when I came up with Squall's outfit). In the meantime, I've got a TON of mechanical units (which I know how to do) waiting to be built.

I MAY however, do a Boba Fett LH in the near future (for the Star Wars Mod guys), as well as post the model in the reference/model library in the tutorial section for other prospective unit makers to take a whack at making a unit with it.

It looks better Grey, I think...

Here's the tank, all civ-sized and ready to animate (alongside a standard 'ummie Russ for comparrison). If you got any last comments, Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Oh, and Goldflash, here's some more entries for your Ork movies:

Orks vs Predatur: "Whoever wins, we WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Star Wars: A New Ork: "Hokie relijuns an' anteek weaponz ain't no match fer a good slugga at'cher side."

Anyyyyyywayz, here's the preview:

Looks Go0d!! Yeah his for-ed looks big.

Started working on the animations tonight, and got the Default, Fidget (most likely fortify and victory as well), and Run animations done. I also did some last minute texture tweaks for the treads and the spikes (made 'em shinier so that they would stand out better). There is some civ-color flashes on the spikes to to their reflectiveness/shinyness, but it looks natural (like a shiny metal object reflecting its surroundings), so I didn't feel the need to change it.

Here's the preview:

Default (all 1 frames), fidget, and run.

Cool! The spikes show up much better It's just like an Ork to want to bash people with their guns rather than shoot them

Here's the second (and hopefully last) set of animation previews. If anyone has a good WAAAAAAAAAAAG! sound for the victory, send it my way.

Default, run, Fidget/Fortify/Victory, Attack A, Attack B, Attack C