[Fantasy] Eagle Rider and Eagle

[Chalid]

As Kael still uses his old reskinned fighter as falcon i thougt i would make him a new bird. And to experiment some more i gave it a chokuno (provided by firaxis via the example files for the SDK) as rider. The bird + rider have own custom animations but do not feature any actionsound soundtriggers at the moment. They can only be used as DOMAIN_AIR units.

Furthermore there are two drawbacks, but i hope that both will be overcome in the near future.
The first it has only descent air strike animation, but no intercept animation yet (there is no other fantasy air unit that it could counter and figting against an interceptor seemd kind of senseless).

The second drawback is still a mystery two me. Its about the fading at the beginning and end of an attack. It works very well for the bird and i think for the weapon too, but i could not get the rider to fade at the right time. Instead he seems to fade spontaneously (even during idle animation). It has to be some animation sequence that came with the chokuno but i was not able to find it until now. I used the alpha track within the shader to make the bird and weapon dissapear, and changed this track for the rider too, but it did not work for him If someone has a clue i would be very grateful.

Oh and the birds skin was created within 5 minutes so it might look not as convincing as one would wish. So if someone would make a better skin...

One more thing: It might be possible to replace the rider with any Civ Biped, but i unintentionally changed the orientation of the bones at frame 0, so you might generate freaks when trying to replace him (and the headbone must be renamed to BIP head01, as the bird has the BIP head-bone).

So enjoy

 

[Civmansam]

Yes haha first post.

That looks really good but the screenshot is a little too small but other than that fantastic!

I'm really itching to see your kraken and air elemental. Will I have to wait till phase 2?

 

[Chalid]

I just forgot to publish them... maybe i will do it tomorrow. But of course you can wait for Phase 2, too.

You are right. Attached an bigger screenshot.

 

[Kael]

Looks great. We could have a hunter with a hawk as cargo and a hawk with a hunter as cargo.

 

[Civmansam]

The first it has only descent air strike animation, but no intercept animation yet (there is no other fantasy air unit that it could counter and figting against an interceptor seemd kind of senseless).

Well no, I can think of a few air fantasy units, like a dragon, which by your signature you seem to be making. Unless of course the Dragon is a land unit. But I think Kael could work his magic and make it land and air just like he made the drown land and sea. But he also said that it would be hard.

 

[Chalid]

The first release of teh Dragon will be Land only, but its still a long way as the beast has 58 or more bones what makes animating him a real pain (for comparison: human untis have 18 bones, that birs has only 7), so he is probably not within the first beat (or Alpha) of FfH Phase 2. Later on i plan to make an airborne set of dragons too. NAd as you can see from your own post one can think of many Fantasy air creatures, but they have not been done jet and so fantasy aircombat, and the best animation sequences therfore are not jet established .

 

[woodelf]

Very nice Chalid.

 

[Padmewan]

Looks amazing! Looking at your sig I'm guessing it's not too long a hop from this to Dragonrider??

 

[Chalid]

Actually that was kind of a test how well combining those units works. And obviously it does work, but it is a pain, as those bipeds are not very flexible.

 

[Rabbit, White]

Very very cool Chalid. I am also very curious about the air elemental, do you have a preview screenshot you could share with us?

 

[C.Roland]

Nice Chalid !

I don't want to insult kael's skin but this eagle is better than kael's reskinned fighter

 

[J_Period]

very nice, mind if we modify and use for WH?

 

[Chalid]

I would be disappointed if you did not use it at least if you have some uses for it.
I will further support this one of course and provide all missing animations in the near future (and maybe even an rider with correct visibility track if i find the problem )

For the Air elemental. The problem is its kind of partially invisible so one does not see very much on screenshots. It does look quite Air elemental like ingame through.
Nevertheless:

 

[Kael]

Nice Chalid !

I don't want to insult kael's skin but this eagle is better than kael's reskinned fighter

Hey! Every hawk needs a jet exhaust.

 

[seZereth]

very very nice, i think we will use him for the woodelf warhawk rider. thanks for that one and keep on pioneering

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Wonderful Chalid! Now with both of our real 3D modellers gone(seZ and me are still just Nif editors so far, allthough I'm starting to learn blender) I already feared we never would get totally new models for WH that soon. It's awesome to see this. Good that the two of our mods start to profit from each others' works. Something that further on should be encouraged.

Edit: the link to the airelemental says no permission to access. I'm quite curious may I see it too?

 

[C.Roland]

Edit: the link to the airelemental says no permission to access. I'm quite curious may I see it too?

It's because this screenshot was posted in the FFH phase 2 forum and you don't have acces to it Chalid have to repost it on a public forum.

 

[Jeckel]

Nicely done, but I have to vote Kael's reskin of the fighter as one of my altime fav units, and nothing beats the bird making the jet noise when it scouts an area.

Is there a version without the rider, just a normal eagle?

 

[Chalid]

Jep. The small one in front of the sea is without rider. In the zip there is one folder "bird" with just the bird and one folder "birdrider" with the rider mounted on the bird.

Edit: Added the Elemental pic to this thread