Galbadian Elite Soldier from FF VIII (27 AUG 06)

DJ Bonebraker

a.k.a Laura
Joined
Mar 10, 2004
Messages
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Eorzea, Hydaelyn
I finally got this power-armored Galbadian soldier UU for Galbadia in the FF mod done. It was originally a project started by Muffins last year, but he lost the animations he did for it during his infamous HD failure. Thankfully he still had the model. When he announced that he was retiring from Civ III unit making, I emailed him, and he gladly gave me the base model he had backed up on a FD so that I could finish it. about 6 months later, I finally got around to importing the model into Bryce 5, and getting it set up. Surpirsingly that required little work, and I was able to do all the animations over a 3 day period.

So without further ado, I give you the annoying bad guys from FF VII:

The Galbadian Elite Soldier

Here's some recon footage of one in action:



BTW, this is a good example of what Bryce is capable of once you understand the basics.
 
very good, a good additiont to the FF MOD!!

one quick comment, the run animation looks kinda awkward...it looks like hes flicking his legs out...
 
Run looks fine to me... Especially since I copied it (almost frame for frame) from the standard Poser 5 run animation (i.e. the standard for most humanoid units on these forums).
 
I'm guessing the run 'runs' a little faster normally, people do flick their legs forward a bit while running, it just happens so fast it looks smoother, so again, if the run runs faster than in the preview, it'd probably be fine. Doesn't look that bad anywho.

Good work, and I'm sure you've had a lot of this, but your dedication in co-ordinating the FF mod is staggering. :thumbsup:
 
Looks great HT.:salute: That salute is very nice. I think I found my first uu for the Legion of Doom civ in the Omega Project.
 
Orthanc said:
I'm guessing the run 'runs' a little faster normally, people do flick their legs forward a bit while running, it just happens so fast it looks smoother, so again, if the run runs faster than in the preview, it'd probably be fine. Doesn't look that bad anywho.

Good work, and I'm sure you've had a lot of this, but your dedication in co-ordinating the FF mod is staggering. :thumbsup:

Thanks, Orthanc.... And you're right about it being faster for the run animation in game.... You see, I make the preview GIF from the actual unit FLC files, which means that it has a variable framerate, which Animation shop Pro and most other GIF viewers, including Mozilla Firefox can display properly. For some reason, Bill Gate's "wonderful" Internet Explorer can't, and it will display a varying framerate animated GIF at the AVERAGE framerate. Since the run animation has a framerate of 40 (.04 seconds per frame), and the attack animations have a framerate of 100 (.1 seconds per frame), the run animation is greatly slowed down when viewed in IE.

@Stormrage, better hope the SeeDs attack first, since the Galbadian Soldier in the FF mod replaces the dragoon and has increased attack power, and the SeeD replaces the Samurai and has increased attack and bombardment, meaning that whoever attacks first will most likely win (RNG and terrain mods non-withstanding).

Storm Grunt, Since the Galbadian army was essentially a legion of doom under the evil sorceress Edea, I'd have to say that they would work great for any evil legion of doom type civ.... ;)
 
Hikaro Takayama said:
It was originally a project started by Muffins last year, ...
BTW, this is a good example of what Bryce is capable of once you understand the basics.

You found it easier to animate him in Bryce than to add bones to animate him in Poser?
Looks good, but what a pain it must have been to do nearly every frame manually.
 
Hooray: Since I consider an infantry unit in Civilization III to represent at least a squad of soldiers, and every squad of regular galbadian soldiers had an Elite Soldier as their commander, I use this to essentially represent both in the FF mod.

Bjorn:
Actually, the way I rig humanoid units for Bryce, it is MUCH easier than trying to add a skeleton in the Poser 5 Set up room... As a matter of fact, every attempt I've made to either make a skeleton or modify one in Poser 5 was a complete disaster. Therefore, me and the Set Up room have not been on speaking terms ever since.

I'm planning on uploading the BR5 I used since I've had some people PM me about how to do humanoid units in Bryce so that you can see how I set up the base figure and animated the run.....

Basically, What I did was have invisible spheres between the various joints (they're labled as R&L Ankle Joint, R&L Knee Joint, R&L Hip Joint, Torso Pivot, Neck Pivot, R&L Shoulder, R&L Elbow Joint, and R&L Wrist Joint). I didn't have to keyframe every frame of the run animation, only about every 4 frames for the actual arm and leg movements (frames 3, 7, 11 and 15), and had two or three keyframes for the Hip Pivot sphere (used for moving or tilting the whole body) to add a realistic bounce to the run animation. It did take longer than in Poser, but because Bryce renders faster, and it's easier to use object linking in Bryce than inserting a skeleton in Poser (and the other animations took about the same time to do as they would in Poser 5), I was able to finish the unit much quicker than it would have taken had I done it in Poser 5 (I did up to 5 animations in 1 day, when usually the most I can do in Poser 5, due to extraordinarily slow render times is 2-3).
 
Hikaro Takayama said:
I'm planning on uploading the BR5 I used since I've had some people PM me about how to do humanoid units in Bryce so that you can see how I set up the base figure and animated the run.....

Basically, What I did was have invisible spheres between the various joints (they're labled as R&L Ankle Joint, R&L Knee Joint, R&L Hip Joint, Torso Pivot, Neck Pivot, R&L Shoulder, R&L Elbow Joint, and R&L Wrist Joint). I didn't have to keyframe every frame of the run animation, only about every 4 frames for the actual arm and leg movements (frames 3, 7, 11 and 15), and had two or three keyframes for the Hip Pivot sphere (used for moving or tilting the whole body) to add a realistic bounce to the run animation. It did take longer than in Poser, but because Bryce renders faster, and it's easier to use object linking in Bryce than inserting a skeleton in Poser (and the other animations took about the same time to do as they would in Poser 5), I was able to finish the unit much quicker than it would have taken had I done it in Poser 5 (I did up to 5 animations in 1 day, when usually the most I can do in Poser 5, due to extraordinarily slow render times is 2-3).
This is essentially the same method I've used in my human experiments in Bryce. I have used these animation controllers ( as I called them, though they are basically Bryce style bones) to animate a few humans. The tank commander in the JS-3m opens the hatch, climbs up, looks around and pulls it shut, and later he does the same and waves a white flag trying to surrender and again in the victory animation. I've used this in most of my flyers as well since I've put crews in almost all of them. It adds very little to the unit, but I think it might give just the hint of more life like behavior.
I imagine Wyrmshadow uses a similar system since is the only way I can think of to animate organics within Bryce.
The problem I always had, and never could solve, was one way parenting in Bryce and two way in Poser. For example, in Poser you move a hand, the arm follows, you move the arm, the hand follows. This two way association is missing in bryce. So even if I was really careful in my rigging, I had always move the hand, then move the elbow, etc..
Did you solve this, are are you just really really patient?
 
I link things the other way... I have it set up so that I move the shoulder, and the whole arm moves.... If any more posing is needed, I'll move the elbow and wrist as well. Same goes with the hip joints.... I rotate the hip forward, and the rest of the leg points out at that angle, and If you're doing a goose step, that's all the more you need to do ;) For a more realistic walk (as in my gatling gunner) or run (as in this unit), further manipulation of the knee joint and ankle objects are needed... In addition, the Hip pivot (that moves the whole body) is used to tilt the whole body slightly forward to make the run more realistic..... As I said, I'll upload the base figure with the rigging, as well as the completed run animation later so that anyone who wants to see how I do arms and legs can use it for reference.
 
Well, I WAS using NeOmega's Techensai (which looks sorta like a Galbadian regular soldier) as the Galbadian soldier, however, the unit was not the highest of quality, but it could work for a Biggs and Wedge Munit.

BTW Hooray, what happened to your Kodachi Kuno avatar? :confused:
 
I was just kidding. I doubt there's much use for a Biggs and Wedge multi-unit.

My avatar disappeared at some point, not sure when. I guess I should make a new one.
 
So, the animations with the unit sync up to the introduction of Crazy On You by Heart. Isn't that weird?
 
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