Woodelf's build a Dwarf thread

Thanks to Rabbit and others we have incredible weapons to use, but short of skinning them the units themselves had no individual characteristics--->until now. With the birth of Mr. Potato Dwarf I hope to see interchangeable parts for all types of units.

I'm beginning with heads because my skills aren't up to body modeling yet, but when they are I envision Borg, mutants, and interchangeable limbs galore. For now I'll settle with helmets, beards, and other facial parts.

As Rabbit White pointed out to me earlier the human skull is definitely not round. This is a problem in Civ because most units also have different shaped heads making the helmets modeled look quite foolish when they don't conform to the head properly. For this reason I have begun with a single dwarf head, molded a starter helmet to said head, and worked from there. This simple helm fits perfectly, as will all other helmets made for this cranium.

In this first post I'll post the basic dwarf head. He and the other parts are all roughly skinned, but they could definitely be improved upon. In the next post I'll start dropping helmets of various styles. In the third post will go beards and finally I'll have a miscellaneous post for stuff like eyeglasses, pipes, or whatever.

Without further ado, here's the basic render shot of the dwarf:



Many thanks to Ploep for nif viewing the screenies that will follow. Also to Rabbit, Chalid, the Duke, seZ, Roland, Dual, and anyone I've missed for helping me out so far.

The basic head on a body via nifviewer:



edit - A skinnable version of the basic head can be found here. Don't try to skin the one in this post.

Here's the render of the first helm I made simply to see if the concept worked and if it fit! Check the next post to see that it does indeed fit.



And now a basic leather cap.



A render shot of a roughly skinned horned helm.



A render shot of an unskinned dwarf wearing an unskinned heavy helm.

The basic beard. I'm trying to get it long enough to be WH worthy. Again, textures and skinning are roughly done. I'm simply trying the mechanism for now.



A pic with both helm and beard, again thanks to Ploep.

reserved for misc accessories

Now someone can take the woodelf position.

"I hope Im not taking a reserved spot! Nice work!"

- Woodelf memorial quote

I only hope to get these guys good enough to get into FfH.

Heres the model like you see it on the screeny. I wonder what this will gonna be

edit: also included weapon dds.

Thanks Ploep.

Looking good man! Even w/ the rough textures I'm definitely getting the angry dwarf vide and if seZ makes some textures it's definitely gonna be one wicked dwarf.

Rabbit said:

Looking good man! Even w/ the rough textures I'm definitely getting the angry dwarf vide and if seZ makes some textures it's definitely gonna be one wicked dwarf.

Click to expand...

hehe i will definitely try my luck

I can't wait to see what you whip up seZ. Thanks.

I can live with him looking like an angry Dwarf.

Looks Awesome! Woodelf, you are improving at an amazing rate Great Job!

Thanks Civmansam. I know it isn't Jango's helm, but I'm getting to it.

Updated the 2nd post with a skinned render of the horned helm and the files.

If he needs a new beard check this post

Oooh. Will that fit on this guys face?

woodelf said:

Oooh. Will that fit on this guys face?

Click to expand...

Don't know ?

You can play with the rotation matrix if you want or better you can import it in max and make it fit.

ok, i had a short look into your dwarven files.... and well its hell first you got sooo many triangles and vertices that i dont think this version should be used and considering the textures, i wont draw anything until you found out how to get a connected wrapped up texture to skin (like the ones in every game!!!!) and not a puzzle / mosaic which has to be trialed and errored even to find out which piece of the head is where

So please reduce polys and get let rabbit or chalid tell you how to create a texturefile which can be skinned like the ones from vanilla or the ones rabbit created

if you get to that i will happily create an angry dwarf but with the texture you included i would have to invest toooo much time and the result wouldnt be what i would like it to be...

So consider this as motivation not as critique or something

Thanks seZ. There are other ways to make texture files? This is all news to me.

More to learn and just when I was about to lose my noob status.

Okay seZ, I think I can make this easier on you.

Can you check this zip and see if it'll work better. If yes, then I'll redo my orge, cyclops, and other heads as well. (It's completely unskinned).

I'm removing the head from post 1. I really butchered that unwrapping job.

edit - Now I readded the head simply for the reason if someone doesn't want to reskin it. I'm confusing myself!