Yang Liu
H.Balck
I have an Smilodon (Sabretooth Tiger).
H.Balck
[REQ] Mammoth and War Mammoth units
- Thread starter Madeira
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H.Balck
timerover51
Deity
I was hoping to do something like that with Yang Liu's mammoths and a Mammoth Cavalry Wonder similar to the Statue of Zeus. My assumption is that Mammoth's are not going to be the easiest animals to tame.
Balthasar
Wise Man
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Yay! That's great! Post it! Post it!
@ Balthasar :
The biggest mammoth, the Imperator, was 4m high max at the top of his head (and was the one with the gigantic "teeth" of 4.3m long and more). It was an American animal, and he lived in California.
The woolly mammoth was 3m top.
The giant mammoth from your picture is a "Mammoth of the river Songhua" (Mammuthus sungari). As all Chineses "discoveries", he was strangely "more ancient, more big, more all you want". For example, the "giant squeleton" you maybe know was made with more than one...
For the dinosaurs, I just say what i often say : "The dinosaurs have lost because they were the strongers". The spinosaurus of your picture have is spin nearly at the center of his body. Mean he is really FOUR times more little than it look. Add Dinosaurs have long necks and tails when mammal have more evolved systems for balance, reach, agility control and energy stocking and you have animals who just LOOK big.
The biggest mammoth, the Imperator, was 4m high max at the top of his head (and was the one with the gigantic "teeth" of 4.3m long and more). It was an American animal, and he lived in California.
The woolly mammoth was 3m top.
The giant mammoth from your picture is a "Mammoth of the river Songhua" (Mammuthus sungari). As all Chineses "discoveries", he was strangely "more ancient, more big, more all you want". For example, the "giant squeleton" you maybe know was made with more than one...
For the dinosaurs, I just say what i often say : "The dinosaurs have lost because they were the strongers". The spinosaurus of your picture have is spin nearly at the center of his body. Mean he is really FOUR times more little than it look. Add Dinosaurs have long necks and tails when mammal have more evolved systems for balance, reach, agility control and energy stocking and you have animals who just LOOK big.
Yang Liu
H.Balck
BTW - I can produce many other praehistorian placentals...
all important african animals...
some North american animals...
some Phantasie animals...
some Dinosaurs...
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Balthasar
Wise Man
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Bring it on, Yang. I have an immediate use for all of it.
tom2050
Deity
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Unfortunately, Age of Wonders units are easy to convert, but they only have 6 directions (missing E and W I believe, because the isometric map is laid out a bit different than Civ3), so all those units are unusable. I check out AoW and AoW:SM when I first started doing conversions, and was met with utter disappointment!
The others may be possible. World of Warcraft had a Mammoth as well, somewhat fantasy looking and armored.
Tom
The others may be possible. World of Warcraft had a Mammoth as well, somewhat fantasy looking and armored.
Tom
I wouldn't recommend trying to convert anything from WoW, for reasons already much discussed.
Balthasar, I hate to be pedantic* but I must point out that there weren't any water dinosaurs... the large marine reptiles of the Mesozoic era were not dinosaurs. Durand, dinosaurs didn't all have long necks and tails. Indeed they weren't all big at all - there were plenty of relatively small ones - I believe that the average dinosaur size was roughly that of a horse, which when you consider how enormous the big ones are is not large at all.
If it comes to it, I would be happy to make the various mammoth units that have been requested, if anyone can find/provide me with a good quality mammoth/elephant figure for Poser. I haven't been able to find one myself, at least not one I can afford.
* I don't hate to be pedantic.
Balthasar, I hate to be pedantic* but I must point out that there weren't any water dinosaurs... the large marine reptiles of the Mesozoic era were not dinosaurs. Durand, dinosaurs didn't all have long necks and tails. Indeed they weren't all big at all - there were plenty of relatively small ones - I believe that the average dinosaur size was roughly that of a horse, which when you consider how enormous the big ones are is not large at all.
If it comes to it, I would be happy to make the various mammoth units that have been requested, if anyone can find/provide me with a good quality mammoth/elephant figure for Poser. I haven't been able to find one myself, at least not one I can afford.
* I don't hate to be pedantic.
BTW - I can produce many other praehistorian placentals...
all important african animals...
some North american animals...
some Phantasie animals...
some Dinosaurs...
H.Balck
Those are all so great Yang Liu! If you could do them im sure many of us would have use for them, as pre placed barbarian units in stone age or fantasy scenarios, or whatever the creative minds among us think of
As for myself, I could use a few Mammoth units, for different civilizations in the northern hemisphere, since my scenario is a "what if the ice age didnt completely end", we could have north American Indians, Scandinavian and Asian Steppes peoples riding Mammoths
Also they say there were Elephants in America once, so we could have meso American peoples beside African, middle Eastern and Oriental peoples riding Elephants.
Yang Liu
H.Balck
Plotinus - you can work with my Mammoth for Poser. I have produce some animations and I will give you my material to work again. I am to busy with my game projects, to produce some various Mammoth units.
Let me known, if I can help you - send me a mail and I will send you my stuff. Than, we can create some units together.
Spoiler :
H.Balck
Yang Liu
H.Balck
Hi Plotinus
Thats right ! I payed some Euro for this model packet. No problem. Do you have an other better model ?
H.Balck
Thats right ! I payed some Euro for this model packet. No problem. Do you have an other better model ?
H.Balck
Balthasar
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??? You mean that if I purchase a model of a Thark and ask you to animate it, you have (moral, ethical, commercial) issues with animating it? No offense, but that's ridiculous. Once it's been purchased you have every right to use it, as long as you 1) Don't try to re-sell it, and 2) make clear in the Readme that, except for the animation, it's not your original work. The law is clear, and certainly clearer in a case of a purchased model (or models) than in the case of a conversion from another game. Whoever offered that pack for sale has a reasonable expectation that any of those models could end up being animated and put into someone's game. Yang Liu has every right to privately send you models that are legally his for you to animate. He has not got the right to dump the raw models onto the web for anyone to animate. That's where the line is drawn.
If you're still wracked with guilt over the whole thing, change the mesh to, say, animate the tail, and make a new texture for it. Voila! It's now your original artwork, and you can use it with impunity.
If you're still worried, you could animate it, upload it to another site anonymously from a public (library, e.g.,) computer, and then provide a link saying, "Oh hey, look what I found!" Let them try to find someone to sue.
I work surrounded by law books every day. If someone thinks I'm wrong, send me a citation that says so.
No problem, YL. Balthasar, I won't challenge your legal knowledge, but it's not the use of a model to make into a unit that I'm wary of, it's the passing of a model from one person to another so that two people are benefiting from a file that only one has actually bought. Just as with music file sharing and so on. Now if Yang Liu has bought the model for his own use then I wouldn't want him to pass it on to me for my use too; I don't know what the law may say about it but it's not something I would want to do. (It would be different if someone else merely paid for the model for me since I would be the only one actually using it - I remember that Spacer One got me a model in that way to do his beaver requests.)
Anyway, Blue Monkey gave me a tip-off: DAZ are currently offering a pack containing their African elephant for free. I've morphed him into what I think is an acceptable-at-civ-scale mammoth so I shall do my best to realise some of the mammoth-related requests here. It may take a little while but I'm hoping it shouldn't involve too many difficulties.
Anyway, Blue Monkey gave me a tip-off: DAZ are currently offering a pack containing their African elephant for free. I've morphed him into what I think is an acceptable-at-civ-scale mammoth so I shall do my best to realise some of the mammoth-related requests here. It may take a little while but I'm hoping it shouldn't involve too many difficulties.
Yang Liu
H.Balck
I wish you an good working prozess with the african elephant and I am very happy to see your own animations with him.
I think, its a good idea to use him - he looks many better like the WoolyMammoth and have more possibilities for moves and better textures.
I hope, you can transform the african body correctly to an Mammoth !
Let me know. if you need help with the animations or some extra models (tusks, armoured, weapons for the tusks etc). Its a hard way....and its your first komplex Model here or ?
H.Balck
I think, its a good idea to use him - he looks many better like the WoolyMammoth and have more possibilities for moves and better textures.
I hope, you can transform the african body correctly to an Mammoth !
Let me know. if you need help with the animations or some extra models (tusks, armoured, weapons for the tusks etc). Its a hard way....and its your first komplex Model here or ?
H.Balck
Balthasar
Wise Man
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..And just as with music files, it's perfectly proper and legal for one person to privately pass on a file he bought.for another person to use. That's a private, non-commercial transaction. The only time it becomes actionable is if he were to post the raw files for anyone to use. Once that file's been animated (sequenced, sampled) it's a whole new object, and perfectly legal to post. Some artists hate it, but that's the rule.
You may be thinking of TopGun's current troubles. I side with him. The company (or person) that made the original models didn't also provide Civ-ready flc files - that was done by the animator. Once he did that, the original mesh maker should have no claim to the result, especially if said flc files aren't proffered for sale. Just because someone sues or complains, it certainly doesn't mean they're right.
I'm not an attorney myself, but as the lawyer I work for likes to say: at some point common sense has to enter into the argument.
That said, I'm glad to hear that you've found a work-around. The Mammoth unit is something of a holy grail around here lately....
Well, as I say, I don't want to dispute the legal issues; if I'm going to err I prefer it to be on the side of caution. That's just me.
YL, I think I've got the elephant looking pretty good as a mammoth, and I've even got a nice walk animation working well with him. I'll post a preview tomorrow. I haven't yet tried to re-texture him and I am not happy with the tusks - I cannot find anything that really looks like a proper mammoth tusk. If anyone can find one that would be helpful. The elephant is, in general, a good model and I think should not be hard to animate.
I've usually restricted myself to human units, but I have done one or two things with more complex models before - by far the worst being the Nazgul unit, which was actually based on the Velociraptor model that comes with Poser, but I fiddled about with it a lot. The worst element of that unit was the special lighting for the flaming sword effect, and I have always found special effects of this kind to be the most difficult aspect of unit-making (apart from dynamic cloth elements); thankfully they should be kept to a minimum with mammoths.
YL, I think I've got the elephant looking pretty good as a mammoth, and I've even got a nice walk animation working well with him. I'll post a preview tomorrow. I haven't yet tried to re-texture him and I am not happy with the tusks - I cannot find anything that really looks like a proper mammoth tusk. If anyone can find one that would be helpful. The elephant is, in general, a good model and I think should not be hard to animate.
I've usually restricted myself to human units, but I have done one or two things with more complex models before - by far the worst being the Nazgul unit, which was actually based on the Velociraptor model that comes with Poser, but I fiddled about with it a lot. The worst element of that unit was the special lighting for the flaming sword effect, and I have always found special effects of this kind to be the most difficult aspect of unit-making (apart from dynamic cloth elements); thankfully they should be kept to a minimum with mammoths.
Blue Monkey
Archon Without Portfolio
As I pm'd to Plotinus I'm willing to work on making a suitable texture. If someone can track down a tileable fur image that looks like a woolly mammoth would wear it I'd be grateful. I can resize the image appropriately with no problem.
Perhaps someone can make a "prop" set of tusks. A know it would be done with a cone primitive, but I have no experience in actually producing something like that.
My 2-cents on the intellectual property question (based on many years experience in the academic world): I am aware of cases where lawsuits have been brought because a film was shown in a film studies course without permission. Also cases where professors/institutions were sued because passages from texts were copied in a packet & distributed for use by the students. Both of these are cases where common sense would say that "fair use" would apply.
The issue begins to get complex because the model is distributed as a copy while the person who purchased it retains the original instance. Since it was offered as a commodity, with reasonable expectation of financial gain, distributing copies gratis would violate the owner's control of their intellectual property - and might even be prosecutable as theft. As we're currently seeing in the case of the aircraft models it's important that the forum err well on the side of caution. "Build a fence around the Torah" as the rabbis say.
Perhaps someone can make a "prop" set of tusks. A know it would be done with a cone primitive, but I have no experience in actually producing something like that.
My 2-cents on the intellectual property question (based on many years experience in the academic world): I am aware of cases where lawsuits have been brought because a film was shown in a film studies course without permission. Also cases where professors/institutions were sued because passages from texts were copied in a packet & distributed for use by the students. Both of these are cases where common sense would say that "fair use" would apply.
The issue begins to get complex because the model is distributed as a copy while the person who purchased it retains the original instance. Since it was offered as a commodity, with reasonable expectation of financial gain, distributing copies gratis would violate the owner's control of their intellectual property - and might even be prosecutable as theft. As we're currently seeing in the case of the aircraft models it's important that the forum err well on the side of caution. "Build a fence around the Torah" as the rabbis say.
Yang Liu
H.Balck
My 2 variants of tusk props:
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