Unit Preview: Death Machine from FF VII

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

You mastered unit making pretty quickly...theres hope for me yet...

 

[odintheking]

Wow, Hikaro, I wish you could give me some of your awesome unit-making abilities. Waht program are you using?

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Sword, I wouldn't use the term "mastered," at least not yet. I've yet to do any truly complex animations, like making this bad boy walk. Besides, this isn't the first time I've modded stuff in 3d. I have 3 Counter Strike maps under my belt and these maps had complicated stuff like fully interactive apartment buildings, complex underwater passages, working fixed gun turrets, and a fully functional train. I've also been modding games in general since Wolfenstein 3d. The original, not the recent remake. So, has your mom let you try Poser out, yet? I'd like to know how that turns out. I could give some help for making leaderheads (I've made one already, but haven't been able to upload it due to my internet connection).

Odin: I aint that good. I've still got a long ways to go before I catch up to the likes of Bebro, aaglo and Kinboat. I use Bryce 5 for making and animating my units, however, I'm going to have to sit down and try to master Blender if I want to make something more complicated, since complicated animations almost absolutely require skeletons, and I can't export boolean groups from Bryce. There Is a method for creating meshes in Bryce, biut I haven't had the time to try this method out, just yet. You see, Bryce can make 4 types of meshes, that can then be exported as 3DS or other formats. The first two are terrains and symetrical objects. They are basically the same, since they can be created and edited in the same way. The difference is that the terrains are one-sided, whereas the symetrical objects are full-3d meshes that are created by mirroring the terrain. The cool part is that if you have a good, clean picture of one side of a symetrical object, such as a sword, you can load the drawing into the terrain editor, and adjust it so that the background of the picture is 0 elevation (which, in the case of the symetrical objects is cut off), and the highest point of the sword (the middle of the blade, for instance) as some elevation slighlty higher than that, and it'll map (based on brightness) a perfect 3d replica of your sword picture. This can also be used with topographical maps to create 3d terrain of real places that can then be edited all sorts of ways. Movie studios use similar methods and software for major CG special effects, like in the move 7 Days.

Anyways, I've got the Default and Death animations done, and all I have left to do is the (ugh!) run animation, and sounds. (Of course I could try to convert the sounds from the original game, but then I'd have people who've come to expect quality soundwork on my units chasing me with torches and pitchforks). What should be the final preview (unless I need some help with the walk animation) is posted below.

Animation order is: Default X2 (it's a really short animation), fidget/fortify, Matra Magic (attack a), W-Machine Gun (attack b), 100 Needles (attack c), Victory, and Death.

 

[odintheking]

Odin: I aint that good. I've still got a long ways to go before I catch up to the likes of Bebro, aaglo and Kinboat. I use Bryce 5 for making and animating my units, however, I'm going to have to sit down and try to master Blender if I want to make something more complicated, since complicated animations almost absolutely require skeletons, and I can't export boolean groups from Bryce. There Is a method for creating meshes in Bryce, biut I haven't had the time to try this method out, just yet. You see, Bryce can make 4 types of meshes, that can then be exported as 3DS or other formats. The first two are terrains and symetrical objects. They are basically the same, since they can be created and edited in the same way. The difference is that the terrains are one-sided, whereas the symetrical objects are full-3d meshes that are created by mirroring the terrain. The cool part is that if you have a good, clean picture of one side of a symetrical object, such as a sword, you can load the drawing into the terrain editor, and adjust it so that the background of the picture is 0 elevation (which, in the case of the symetrical objects is cut off), and the highest point of the sword (the middle of the blade, for instance) as some elevation slighlty higher than that, and it'll map (based on brightness) a perfect 3d replica of your sword picture. This can also be used with topographical maps to create 3d terrain of real places that can then be edited all sorts of ways. Movie studios use similar methods and software for major CG special effects, like in the move 7 Days.

Whatever Hikaro, you know you're great at this stuff, stop with the "modest" junk. This is one great unit,

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Sword, I wouldn't use the term "mastered," at least not yet. I've yet to do any truly complex animations, like making this bad boy walk. Besides, this isn't the first time I've modded stuff in 3d. I have 3 Counter Strike maps under my belt and these maps had complicated stuff like fully interactive apartment buildings, complex underwater passages, working fixed gun turrets, and a fully functional train. I've also been modding games in general since Wolfenstein 3d. The original, not the recent remake. So, has your mom let you try Poser out, yet? I'd like to know how that turns out. I could give some help for making leaderheads (I've made one already, but haven't been able to upload it due to my internet connection).

Odin: I aint that good. I've still got a long ways to go before I catch up to the likes of Bebro, aaglo and Kinboat. I use Bryce 5 for making and animating my units, however, I'm going to have to sit down and try to master Blender if I want to make something more complicated, since complicated animations almost absolutely require skeletons, and I can't export boolean groups from Bryce. There Is a method for creating meshes in Bryce, biut I haven't had the time to try this method out, just yet. You see, Bryce can make 4 types of meshes, that can then be exported as 3DS or other formats. The first two are terrains and symetrical objects. They are basically the same, since they can be created and edited in the same way. The difference is that the terrains are one-sided, whereas the symetrical objects are full-3d meshes that are created by mirroring the terrain. The cool part is that if you have a good, clean picture of one side of a symetrical object, such as a sword, you can load the drawing into the terrain editor, and adjust it so that the background of the picture is 0 elevation (which, in the case of the symetrical objects is cut off), and the highest point of the sword (the middle of the blade, for instance) as some elevation slighlty higher than that, and it'll map (based on brightness) a perfect 3d replica of your sword picture. This can also be used with topographical maps to create 3d terrain of real places that can then be edited all sorts of ways. Movie studios use similar methods and software for major CG special effects, like in the move 7 Days.

Anyways, I've got the Default and Death animations done, and all I have left to do is the (ugh!) run animation, and sounds. (Of course I could try to convert the sounds from the original game, but then I'd have people who've come to expect quality soundwork on my units chasing me with torches and pitchforks). What should be the final preview (unless I need some help with the walk animation) is posted below.

Animation order is: Default X2 (it's a really short animation), fidget/fortify, Matra Magic (attack a), W-Machine Gun (attack b), 100 Needles (attack c), Victory, and Death.

I think I'm going to sneak into my mom's art room and snag poser and install it on my comp. I don't think she will mind. I'm tired of waiting and my mom's busy with the back-to-school business going on(she is a teacher) so soon I shall try poser.

I want to make the Polynesian Swordsman(Based on Kal-Els sketch) and a Polynesian Medival Infantry based on the Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Boss, Odolwa. But I'd also like to make some Final Fantasy Units like Galbadia's Troopers(From Final Fantasy 8), or Esthar Soldiers(also from FF8)

 

[odintheking]

Yay, Odalwa! He is by far the best boss in MM

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Well, the unit's finished. The walking animation wasn't as bad as I though it would be . It turns out I linked all the objects in the legs properly, and only took three renders to get it right (what I mean is that I animate, render to an .avi movie to check it out, go back to Bryce and try to fix the stuff that looks wierd, and repeat the process until it looks right).

Anyways, the unit's available for download in the unit forum, so go an get it already

Odin: You should see some of my brother's stuff if you think mine's good. He's a pro, and is joining one of his professors from art school in forming a start-up production company in Pittsburg. Right now they've managed to land a movie deal (some animated pirate flick), and my brother has a good shot at being one of the key animators

Sword: Heck yeah! I'm bascially combining all the cities and civs in FF VII into one: SEED, since (a) Squall & co. kick all the competitions' butts, and (b) there aren't enough cities/towns for two or more civs anyways, and I could definitely use both as UU's (I was thinking of making that HUGE tank as the third UU).

Anyways, I'll be working on the Sweeper variant of this unit tomorrow. I've posted one of my brother's earlier works at the end of this post to show you what kind of stuff he can do (and he says that this animation is "crappy"). He modeled everything in the scene himself, using Maya and 3D studio Max. I had to shrink it to half size, delete 3/4 of the frames and adjust the timing in order to be able to attach it to this post

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

that is good...really good.

I'm worried that Poser One won't cut it for unit making though....I hope it does...I really do...

Combining all the FF8 nations? Thats just wrong..

You don't have to have the city names be from the game. You could be original and make up names...as long as they sound like theyed be from their respective countrys, then it doesn't really matter. Their are three main countries in FF8(Esthar, Dollet and Garbaldia), and numerious smaller countries. While I don't think the small countries are a priority in a larger mod, Garbaldia and Esthar diffinitely deserve their own civ. SEED is another country as far as I'm cercerned.