The Alexander the Great Project!

[Ekmek]

I agree with bernie, you should really concentrate on a more youthful look. Even though what you have now is probably a good representation of someone that spent 10 straight years in hand to hand combat without any healthcare. He is really remembered as the "boy" king that conquered most the known world.

Yeah I'll try to make him younger but ultimately bernie will outdo whatever i come up with

Have any of you guys put any thought into the background yet? Capo had mentioned that having the a scene of greece in the BG bugged him since he left in his early 20's and never returned. But I dont think that any other locale would really be any more fitting. Having Babylon or persepolis wouldnt really do, he was still carving out a greek empire. The one place that I feel was a constant for him would be a battle field or a siege/burning city. If any one should have a background that screams "conqueror", it would be Alexander.

I have the 2004 Alexander movie and there are some good scene scapes I can get from there (babylon etc). When the time comes I'll try to lift some scenes from there and post options.

 

[The Capo]

I agree with bernie, you should really concentrate on a more youthful look. Even though what you have now is probably a good representation of someone that spent 10 straight years in hand to hand combat without any healthcare. He is really remembered as the "boy" king that conquered most the known world.

That actually looks awesome besides the age. One of my gripes with the original Alex was that he looked too old, well at least a good five to ten years older than he should appear. My suggestion would be to tone down the forehead wrinkles and maybe make his jawline less sculpted. You might want to give him a little more "messier" hair too. I noticed that Hannibal has tufts of hair underneath the back of his head and I think on the sides, if you incorporated that into it (altered of course) it may give us a better look. I don't really know how to say this, but there is something about his nose, I think if you made it point up a little more (so you can see his nostrils a bit more) he'd look more "aggressive" in a sense. But that is friggin awesome so far, darker hair might help (just a few tints) but Bernie can do that.

Plus another thing; I think if we made him look younger he'd get a more "cartoony"/CivIV look, which I think we should go for on this one. One of the things I liked about our Hitler LH is that it looked a little comic book-like, we might want to go in that direction with this one. Although the "glorious" tone also gives him a more Alexanderesque tone/feel... if this all sound ******** I'm sorry, I'm drunk.

Have any of you guys put any thought into the background yet? Capo had mentioned that having the a scene of greece in the BG bugged him since he left in his early 20's and never returned. But I dont think that any other locale would really be any more fitting. Having Babylon or persepolis wouldnt really do, he was still carving out a greek empire. The one place that I feel was a constant for him would be a battle field or a siege/burning city. If any one should have a background that screams "conqueror", it would be Alexander.

I was envisioning a few things. One of them was the shores of the Bosporus/Hellespont, so its like he's arriving for his conquests. Another idea was some sort of temple, like how he was rumored to have cut the gordion knot or where he was rumored to have taken Achilles armor. Another option would be to use the BG from the Philip II (of Macedon) LH that already exists, although I think he'd be better outdoors. If possible we should have a bright sun in the background, I think if we make him look awash in sunlight he'll look a lot cooler but I am not sure how good this would look and again, I am intoxicated. Good work though Ekmek, you've outdone yourself yet again.

 

[The Capo]

Alright, here are my drunken ideas put on to a helpful picture so you know what I mean. In Green are the areas I think need to be altered. I tried to make the jawline look more smooth (in the drawing) and removed what appeared to be extra skin around his chin. I drew what I thought was a slightly smaller nose with more inflamed nostrils and added parts where I thought his neck should be thicker and where his hair should be more "mane-like," all that is in green.

The red parts are areas where I think the shading/detail should be toned down so he looked younger. Particularly his cheeks, forehead and where his nose and brow meet. Hopefully this makes SOME sense.

I wish I knew proper plastic surgery markings to show this.

EDIT: And by the way, that's a . .. .. .. .ing amazing remake. Who the hell did you use as a base?

 

[The Capo]

We are about to rip Civ IV Alexander a new . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. I hope the modders have a good idea for who they are going to use him as.

 

[The Capo]

. .. .. .. ., that's three ( ) censored posts ina row. I hope I don't get a notification or whatever.

BTW; Bakuel told me he's going to make a new Greek flavored set in honor of our Alexander project. So we've got to beat him to it in time and quality. Well at least time, that man makes some amazing units.

 

[Ekmek]

thanks Capo and everyone those are good suggestions. I guess if anyone is curious I use Jose San Martin for the head and then reskinned it using Augustus Caesar's nonshader. so that may account for the age but except for the little "boy" hatsheput that was the youngets leader i could find. I'll try some smoothing to soften it but if i cant pull it off it may be up to bernie.

The hair i havent begun scuplting. I'm thinking of going all out on that. most civ4 hair is pretty flat. I'm leaning to make the curls from the statue but make then objects themselves so it textures well and looks more natural.

On another note I think Zara Yacob is the skeleton to go with. I looked at his animations. they are fairly simple and will work well with a helmet-holding Alex. Try attaching the kfs in nifskope and run them you'll see what i mean. maybe the greetingi sthe least likely of the few. The other good news is that Zara works with pericles so whenever Coyote has time to help with animations or show me how we can easily switch to using modified versions of those.

 

[The Capo]

Pacal is pretty young....

 

[Ekmek]

Pacal is pretty young....

too tan. but i did do heavy colorizing on him to make caligula. I guess my caligula has a cartoony young look, but not sure thats what you want to go for

 

[The Capo]

Lemme see if I can make him look European/Mediterranean or whatever.

EDIT: Damn it, you're right that is hard. Bernie! Help!

EDIT 2: Well I'm starting to sober up now so I can probably explain what I meant better. I didn't really mean young and cartoony, what I meant was like idealized. I think it was Igor who mentioned that this guy fought in hand to hand combat for eight years, often being injured and certainly being a sickly drunkard for half of the time. So I'm sure he wasn't the spritely, Herculean, guy he is in CivRev. Having said that; making him look like he is young and "fresh," would fit well with our modern concept of him as a young and brave military genius (and would thus fit in with the rest of CivIV's cartoony and oversimplified leaderheads). So what I should have said is ideallic (i.e. as he appears in the bust) rather than young/cartoony. I think the age we should be shooting for is between 25 and 30 here. So basically my age... man he was conquering the world and I'm just making a model of him for a friggin strategy game...

EDIT 3: you know its bad when one of your edits is longer than your initial post... and when you have three edits.

 

[Ekmek]

so is my caligula texture "too" cartoony or about the effect you are going for. I'll work on softening the texture i have now and post later today.

 

[bernie14]

great work so far guys....i agree with the suggestions regarding the nose, hair and texture.....

i will do my best on the texture with the suggestions provided...i am a bit worried about the curly hair and how difficult that will be to UV map and still look 3D wavy/natural

i like the BG ideas so far....battleground (maybe a seige tower in the background like at the seige at tyre, or as if he is in a valley with phalanxes way in the background ?), the temple is cool or a shore with a tririme or two in the water? i definitively agree it should be outdoors

EDIT: btw, The Capo, how's the hand?

 

[Edgecrusher]

This is looking really good. Good work guys.
I wish I could contribute some way, but unfortunitly my graphics abilities are zero.

Not to hijack the thread, but has anyone heard of the book "Tides of War", its a book theoretically written from a first person point of view about Alexander's conquests of Asia. I am about to start reading it.

 

[The Capo]

My hand is alright, but its hard to use the mouse and to type actually since my right thumb and the bottom on my hand are swollen. The swelling is going down (I had a bad infection if you must know) but I only have the use of my fingers on my right hand which doesn't sound too bad but in practice it sucks! This is part of the reason I want to wait to see what Ekmek and The_Coyote come up with because prolongued use of a mouse and keyboard definitely sucks for me right now. I should be okay within a day or so though its looking better.

EDIT: And Bernie, by the way, what's up with using a British Grenadier for the Americans in your Grenadiers Galore pack? That ain't right man!

 

[Ekmek]

smoothed the skin texture, adjusted the nose (smaller but falred nostrils, narrowed and rotated the tip, probably need more), smoothed the jaw and chin structure. started scultpting the hair.

pic attached

 

[The Capo]

I like the direction you are going in. Its starting to look good although I still think he looks slightly too old, but that isn't such a big deal really. He should look a little battle hardened and considering that he probably scoweled a lot (from fighting) he probably did have some lines accross his forehead. Is there any shot of giving us a profile, uh, shot?

But anyway, I started looking into the hair-color and there seem to be a few schools of thought, I won't get too much into detail but here they are:

1) He was blonde. A lot of sites and people have said modern Greeks and ancient Greeks did not look the same. They claim that after centuries of conquest by dark haired peoples the Greeks eventually became dark haired. I tend to challenge this on a few grounds. The first being that after Europeans became powerful and protrayed Greeks they made them look more like themselves (as they did with Jesus for example), and idealized this classical era of knowlege in their own image. Also on Greek pottery and even very detailed Roman and Greek mosaics their people (and I am including Romans who lived in an area heavily colonized by Greeks) they tend to have black hair. This may just be because a lot of this pottery is black and clay, but it could simply be because they had black hair.

2) His hair was black. This is based heavily on a famous mosaic of Alexander (the one in this thread). That moaic, however, was a Roman mosaic created long after his death and most likely with no information from anyone who actually knew him. Also in most depictions of themselves Romans tended to have black to dark brown hair. Sure there were some who had red hair (the name Rufus comes from this) but that was also because there was a lot of intermingling between Romans and Celtic tribes, particularly in northern italy.

3) Light brown, almost a "really dirty blonde." This is what I'd go with. In the texts o the time he is said to have had fair hair. There were certainly blonde celts etc. during this era and I really think they would have made reference to these people when describing his hair. Its hard to say anyway from translation but if we gave him this hair color I think it would work the best and give us the best look.

Just some ideas.

 

[Ekmek]

I've soften what I could. I think I'll leave the rest to bernie. I'm going to focus on scuplting te hair then rigging it to Zara YAcob and then hand it off to bernie after I get your armor.

Point 1 has some reasonable points except greeks in the North (including modern day Greek macedonia nad thessaloniki) tend to be fair skinned and blone (even Turks do). now this may be because the Slavs have settled in the area but I think it maybe safe to say that in Alexander's day Epirus (roughly albania) and thessaly which neighbored Macedon had a fair amount exposure to fair haired Germanics so the sources that say he was blonde and blue eyed are probably right (one source said he had two different colors but that may be the result of a concussion).

BTW a great book, and a quick read is "The Genius of Alexander" not only does it tell the story it actually compares what we know of the three primary sources in some what historiographic perspective. It sheds light on some of the controversial stuff, especially in light of how one of the primary authors was an Athenian not found of Macedonian hegemony(Diodorus). Another quick read is in the book "what If?" that examines if alexander died before arbela/guagamela - really puts his accomplishments in a greater light.

 

[The Capo]

So what should I do here? Should I give him the helmet in his arm or not? That's the main thing I'm waiting on. Personally I think we should just have the helmet in his arm because the hair will force us to make the helmet bigger (to prevent clipping if he is wearing it and takes it off) and he might look idiotic like that (not that a lion helmet with a plume and two feathers sticking out like antennae looks particularly "cool"). So tell me what to do and I'll put together the attire.

Also should I leave the hands in as well? Because I've already altered his right hand/arm to hold the helmet.

EDIT: oh yeah, how about that profile shot?

 

[The Capo]

(one source said he had two different colors but that may be the result of a concussion).

Is there anyway we can pull that off? I read this as well and thought it'd be cool.

EDIT: Also anyone on background duty? I suppose I could do it but it'd be nice to get a few on it.

 

[Ekmek]

EDIT: trying to keep up with your cross posting

So what should I do here? Should I give him the helmet in his arm or not? That's the main thing I'm waiting on. Personally I think we should just have the helmet in his arm because the hair will force us to make the helmet bigger (to prevent clipping if he is wearing it and takes it off) and he might look idiotic like that (not that a lion helmet with a plume and two feathers sticking out like antennae looks particularly "cool"). So tell me what to do and I'll put together the attire.

Also should I leave the hands in as well? Because I've already altered his right hand/arm to hold the helmet.
[/quote]

Lets go with the rigged helmet to the hand. I'll do rerigging though. I'm going to put what I can on Zara Yacob's skeleton. So when ever you are done with the body and helmet upload it.

Is there anyway we can pull that off? I read this as well and thought it'd be cool.

Its just remapping one of the eyes UV to another eye texture.

EDIT: Also anyone on background duty? I suppose I could do it but it'd be nice to get a few on it.

I'll take BG. I'll post shots later on though.

BTW here are profile shots.

 

[The Capo]

EDIT: Alright, you can do the BG.

Do you want me to leave everything unattached or what? Basically I am asking if you just want a blend or do you want me to put everything together? I ask because if you are going to rig it, it might be easier for you if I just leave everything open.