Unit Previews: GrossPanzer and Modern Ninja

[Dease]

lookin good
maybe a bit lighter though
also, I checked your attached preview to some other civ units and it looks quite large compared to them maybe the endiku dude is unnaturally large

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

She's about as light as I can get her with the current texture. There's another camoflage texture in Poser that's a light olive green that I could give a try. Enkidu warrior rather large compared to the other units?! You don't say! Actually the reason I use the Enkidu Warrior as a comparison is that it's what's considered the acceptable size limit for Civ III foot units. The reason I'm going for his size is that I'd lose way too much detail if I went any smaller. Besides, these are supposed to be elite special units, so they deserve to be a bit bigger than the run of the mill, IMO.

Besides, any smaller and you wouldn't be able to tell she's a girl. I suppose I could try reducing the size by another 10 pixels, but If I don't like what I see, I'll put it back to where it was.

 

[A Viking Yeti]

No offense, but I can't really tell the sex anyway. The units looks great, but with the camo and gun and helmet, I can't tell if it's a guy, girl, or both ... Still looks cool though.

 

[Dease]

She's about as light as I can get her with the current texture. There's another camoflage texture in Poser that's a light olive green that I could give a try.

Well, if poser isn't like OFX where you can intensify lights, then you could just lighten your texture in a paint program.

BTW, I can tell she's a she but I think that's cause I know she's a she, someone else prolly couldn't say if she's a he or a she

EDIT: wow, I'm a poet and i didn't even know it

 

[truckingpete]

EDIT: wow, I'm a poet and i didn't even know it.

Could barely see it on the Dark blue layout....

Anyway nice job and I can tell she's a she... and that tank looks cool...

- TP

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Okay, here's a preview of the re-sized version. The preview has (from L-R) Dom Pedro II's Chin Spearman (for reference), the lighter version of the cammo, and the original cammo textures. Before I sink another 4 hours into rendering animations, I need to know wether you preferr the old size, this new size, somewhere in between, and which of the color jobs you like.

Oh, I've also completed the GrossPanzer's run animation and have attached a preview. Please let me know what you think of that as well.

Pete, glad you like the tank. It almost looks like it could be used as an Ork unit for the WH40K mod, but it's straight from FF VII.

I'm off to bed now.

 

[Dease]

If right is as light as you can go, then go with that,
still rather large, but it would work

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

If right is as light as you can go, then go with that,
still rather large, but it would work

Actaully, the middle one is supposed to be the lighter version. I actually darkened the light camo texture a bit because it looked ridiculously light on my laptop's LCD display, but when I loaded it here, it looks really freakin' dark. If you look closely, she's the same exact size as the Chin Spearman, but has more armor adding to her bulk and heighth (the pointy part of the helmet adds about 4 inches to her height). I'll post another preview later with the original version of the light camo.

Also, I think the reason that most people can't tell her gender from these preview pics is because of the way she's holding her rifle (but believe you me, you can tell in the E,W, and to a good extent in the NE/N/NW directions due to... curavture ).

So, what do you think of my tank's run animation (aside from the fact that I forgot to convert the BG when I was pasting in the frames from the default animation ). That took me about 4 hours to get it to look right. I was at a loss as how to make the treads look like they were moving since they'r made up of two clyinders and a square that's been chopped up with negative boolean objects and I don't have the option of using a skeleton. That's when I remembered that Bryce's texture lab had some advanced capabilities, including the ablility to rotate a texture along a given axis, so I had the textures rotate along the Z axis at the same rate that the wheels were, and it worked as expected. If there are no objections, I'll render out that animation and call it done.

 

[Dease]

the run is good the only thing id change (apart from the dark background) is give it a big stream of smoke from the muffler, not wussy little puffs, but a big BIG blast of smoke, kinda like a train

 

[A Viking Yeti]

The run animation looks great, but I agree with Dease, smoke would be nice .

 

[Dease]

I just looked at it again and I think the front spikey thingy should rotate, would look cool, although I think a huge big blast of smoke should be higher priority

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

After lookin' at it, I have to aggree with you about the smoke. Unfortunately, in Bryce, there are no particle effects. All Smoke and such is done by volumetric solids, which leaves me with basically two alternatives for creating a stream of smoke. The first would be to use several volumetric spheres or metaballs with the smoke texture, and animate all 4-5 of them. The main drawbacks to that approach is that it's a pain in the butt to animate the individual metaballs and the more volumetric objects I have, the longer it takes to render the animations. The other method would be to use the same technique I used for the dust cloud coming from the treads. To whit, I'd use a single, elongated volumetric sphere or cylinder, and rotate it along its long axis, while changing the density of the volumetric texture and the angle of the object itself. I'll try the second method later.

In the mean time, I've got a quick Arashi commando sampler. From left to right are: the original, the light camoflage texture, the Firaxis Guerilla for size/color comparrison, a more green version of the light camoflage texture, and the Ritsuko (tank girl from the Those Who Hunt Elves anime series) version. I'll let you take your pick as to which you like the best (I'm probably going to use the Ritsuko version for something at the very least )

 

[Dease]

I vote for the light camo texture (second from left) IMO it's better than the light green 'cause it's less regular
BTW, what's with the last one

 

[A Viking Yeti]

Well, with their guns down I can tell that they're women ... Especially the last one, though I have no idea who are what it's supposed to be (the secretary's gone postal!).

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Well, after working on it for 8 hours, I've finally gotten the GrossPanzer run animation redone the way I like it. I've got a preview below.

As for the Arashi Commando, I'll start animating the lighter version hopefully today, along with the last version (psycho Japanese Schoolgirl). If you guys want to know what the deal with that one is, I'll tell you. I originally started with that version as a joke since most of you said you couldn't tell that the unit was a woman, but then I came up with an even crazier idea. I decided to make her look like Ritsuko Inou from the Those Who Hunt Elves anime series. This series is a hiliarious comedic fantasy about three people from our world who get magically summoned into an alternate universe full of magic and fantasy creatures. These people are an oscar winning actress named Airi, a self-centered macho martial artist named Junpei (who it so happens is a huge fan of the previously named charachter), and a Japanese high school girl named Ritsuko who it just so happens also is familliar with the use, maintainance, repair and capabilities of every single weapon in the Japanese Self Defense Force's arsenal (she's also the only one who can drive the T-90 tank that somehow got summoned in with them).

Anyways, here's the new Run preview:

 

[Dease]

I like it!

 

[A Viking Yeti]

Woderful! Almost looks like a late WWI tank or something... Though those were really boxy... ANYWAY, nice job!

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Thanks, guys, I've finished the run animation up, and after compiling it into CivIII FLC format, I looked and the size of the run animation alone is 830 KB Anyways, here's a quick preview of the Arashi Commando's default animation (I used AVI output to speed the process up a bit, so some quality was, unfortunately lost. The finished product should look sharper). Barring any major complaints, I'll finish rendering this one, and start working on the Fidget animations for both the Commando and the GrossPanzer.

AVY: What you said about it looking like some kind of WWI/II tank is interesting. In Final Fantasy VII (which, BTW was first released in America 7 years ago this month), all of Shinra Corporation's armored units were named after WW II tanks. There was the Gun Carrier that could be found in Junon (named for the Bren Gun Carrier used in WWII and during the 50's), the Cromwell Tank (named for a WWII British tank) that could be encounterd during the Makou cannon assault (in the first area), and its larger cousin, the GrossPanzer (which you see here).

Anywho, preview of the Arashi Commando Default anim:

 

[A Viking Yeti]

That's one big file... I've seen entire units not half that size . It'll be worth it though. And what'd you say, A Viking Yeti output . I think the Arashi looks great.

I've never really played any of the FF games, so I don't know that much about it, but that's kinda coincidental. I was only 1 world war off... Darn .

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Well, time for a quick update:

I've got the fidget animation for the GrossPanzer finished, but ran into some serious delays yesterday. The OS on my laptop somehow got corrupted, and I couldn't boot up. I did manage to find my windows XP Install CD and was able to fix it. If the same problem re-occurs today, then that means that my HDD is on its way out (it is 3 years old, after all). If that is the case, this whole project may end up being delayed until I can purchase a new (and bigger) HD during the next port visit, although I hope/think that isn't the problem.

I did, however, take the opportunity to dump my entire mod folders and all my Bryce 5 models onto one of my 640 MB MO disks, in case the problem repeats itself.

If no further problems arise, I'll get the Arashi Commando's Default and Fidget animations finished tonight.