Orcish War Machine

[Grandraem]

This is an Orcish War Machine (hereafter called the OWM for short), although there's also goblins and an ogre on board. It's based on the OWMs described in the D&D Gazetteer #10, "The Orcs of Thar", and an image of one from the cover of the book, as well as the cover of "Thar's Manual of Good Conduct", which was a little booklet included inside.

It was purposely made very large, so if it's too large for you, then feel free to use Steph's SBB to resize it for your own purposes. It was originally even larger, but that caused too many problems. Even still, at it's current size it'll probably be a good idea to check "Ranged Attack Animation" for this unit.

I would have liked to have made it more detailed, more eclectic, and have humanoids hanging off it all over the place, but I'll have to blame my computer for limiting it to its current form.

Anyways, hope you enjoy it!

Previews:

Download:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=19232&act=down

Fixed Death Animation:
If you downloaded this unit prior to May 11th, please download the attached fixed death animation and replace the previous one in the units folder.
If you download this unit from May 11 (2012) or later, then your downloaded unit will already include the fix and you won't need this patch file.

 

[Kyriakos]

Excellent work

 

[Supa]

An unit can never be too large, if it's properly centered!

It's a incredibly great unit, I already smell a strong participant for the Unit of the Month Competition!

Did you try other light settings to get rid of the slight flickering in AttackA and Default (in parts that shouldn't be that affected by the fire) ?

 

[Pounder]

It's beautiful, I will have a use for it, thank you.

 

[Gojira54]

I love it! Can't wait for CoM...

 

[smirnoff]

wow, very cool unit, i really like it and good job on that unit

 

[gwendoline]

Great animation Grandraem! It's like a living machine

 

[Ozymandias]

A wonderfully twisted contrivance!

,

Oz

 

[Delta_Strife]

Wonderful unit be hard to beat in the monthly unit competition. Going to have to do something good!

 

[Don Pepito]

I really love the drum beater!!! This weekend is being full of nice surprises from modders!!!

 

[Quinzy]

It'll make a great Scrap Launcher for the Ogres in the Warhammer mod!

 

[Usteros]

Great vehicle!

 

[Yoda Power]

Wow, that model is crazy! Very fine work.

 

[nick0515]

Damn good job! Damn good, bloody good, damn good job!

 

[Grandraem]

Thanks to everyone for the nice comments!

Unfortunately, I just saw an error!!! I realized that in the death animation the horn at the front jumps back suddenly. This happened because I had to adjust the position of the OWM and re-render it, and I forgot that I removed the parenting of the horn for the death, so it's in the wrong position. I'll have that fixed and uploaded by next weekend. You have no idea how much work this unit has been for me and how much re-rendering I've done.

Supa,
About the lighting, I wanted a flicker effect, and I didn't want to have to adjust multiple spotlights for each frame for each animation, so I used a point light centred on the flame that I adjusted for each frame. I wasn't sure of a better way to do it.

 

[T-mun]

Keep the faith, Grandraem! This OWM is amazing and is really worth the long work! Keep it up

 

[Supa]

Supa,
About the lighting, I wanted a flicker effect, and I didn't want to have to adjust multiple spotlights for each frame for each animation, so I used a point light centred on the flame that I adjusted for each frame. I wasn't sure of a better way to do it.

Perhaps a point light, put in the exact same place as the fire, with flickering animation (intensity and/or shadow) and setting the fire object (I guess it's a sprite ?) to 'no-shadow'. If you were working in a raytracing space, you could also uncheck "Visible in Raytracing" in the fire object in order to be sure the fire wouldn't project any shadows.

But that's really minor and certainly don't ask for a redo. It's a great unit and it shows the time & efforts you've put in it.

 

[tom2050]

That is a really spectacular unit, I gotta say: we’ze goin’ Stuntie huntin’!

Flicker effect is quite good. It gives it a feel of fantasy ancient medieval

 

[Takhisis]

I c whut you did thar.

 

[Grandraem]

Thanks again to everyone!

Supa,
The lighting you described was pretty much what I did - point light centered on flame with flickering "intensity", and the flame prop checked, or I should say unchecked, to not cast shadows. I hadn't unchecked "visible in raytracing" though. The fire object was a relatively flat box with an animated texture and transparency map. I didn't know of any better way to make an animated flame in Poser and couldn't find any links or tutorials that didn't involve particles (which for sure would have overloaded my computer due to the increase in memory).