Video Game Art (Update 3.21.04)

[Josh]

Hahaha.
Sorry Icepick! You'll be getting none from me.

Dude... thats fine. I'm not a fan of cock anyway.

[Drewbacca]

*snaps fingers*

Damn.

[Calliander]

Hey NoktUp, have you ever made any models for Morrowind?

[NoktUp]

Hey NoktUp, have you ever made any models for Morrowind?

Mike:
I've never played Morrowind, is it good? It’s an MMORPG, right? Any how, I imagine that making a model for that game is just like making a model for any other game, with a different theme, of course. The rigging process might be a little different, and I have no idea how easy it is to export models for that game. For UT, they provide you with an exporter for all major software packages. Sounds like fun. I kind of wanted to pick up some new projects in the next few months, because the reality based games are getting a little boring. Though, I really had my eye on the HL2 SDK. Maybe make some kind of an RPG, sports game, or a RTS/1st person combo. Why do you ask?
Latah,

[NoktUp]

Heeeeeeyaaaaaaa, heyaaaaaaaaaa!
Here is a link to my FTP. It has some animations I've made for the game. I think there are just 4 or 5, out of 141, total. And you can see how I went through two stages of development for the walk cycle. The first walk cycle has a very primitive upper body rig, I had trouble making the Lead in and Follow through of the gun look natural with just IK Handles. So I went in and added a pivot to the arms that controlled both of the IK’s for the arms. The pivot is located at the right shoulder, and made it very easy and accurate to get the "bob and weave" of the gun to look natural.

http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-NakAnim

[Calliander]

Mike:
I've never played Morrowind, is it good? It’s an MMORPG, right? Any how, I imagine that making a model for that game is just like making a model for any other game, with a different theme, of course. The rigging process might be a little different, and I have no idea how easy it is to export models for that game. For UT, they provide you with an exporter for all major software packages. Sounds like fun. I kind of wanted to pick up some new projects in the next few months, because the reality based games are getting a little boring. Though, I really had my eye on the HL2 SDK. Maybe make some kind of an RPG, sports game, or a RTS/1st person combo. Why do you ask?
Latah,

Morrowind is actually just a single-player RPG. The models are .NIF files. Player characters have models for the head, neck, chest, clavicle, upper arm, forearm, wrist, hand, groin, upper leg, ankle, and foot. The creatures are one whole model, I believe. However, I had wanted to dissect some creature models and turn them into a player character races. I can't find any such mods on the web, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. Some of the textures are TGAs, but a good portion of them are DDS files. I have no clue how to go about doing any of that stuff, so even if I had the program I would be dead in the water.

www.morrowind.com

I dunno what they have on there for dev stuff.

[NoktUp]

The models are .NIF files. Some of the textures are TGAs, but a good portion of them are DDS files. I have no clue how to go about doing any of that stuff, so even if I had the program I would be dead in the water.

I dunno what they have on there for dev stuff.

Mike: First order of business would be to find out what engine they are using for the game. Many game Studios purchase 3rd Party Engines, because it’s cheaper than developing, and you don’t have to worry about so much R&D and debugging. After they finish the game with files in the native format of the engine, they then go in and change the source of the engine to support these proprietary formats, to make it harder on hackers, cheaters, and sometimes MODers. Once you find out what engine they use, it’s an easy matter of finding out what exporter to use, to get a character out of your 3d package and into the game.
Now as for allowing you to use a monster as a player model, that might not be so easy, unless the monster, is a humanoid type, in which case you can just rename the monster over the player model (somehow). This is because the player model/skeleton/animation is more thoroughly developed, to cover a wider range of movements and abilities. While a monster might look great as a monster, it might not look so well as a player, because the monster was designed with specific tasks/animations in mind (In almost all cases I’ve seen, the player character was 10-100X more intricate when it came to animation, and skeleton.) Who knows, it might be possible to get it to work, but most likely the monster's skeleton won’t support the player animations. It’s worth looking into, though. It’s a great way to learn and nobody ever said that this shit was easy. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. I'd be glad to point you in the right direction.
Latah,

[Calliander]

Thanks for the info. If I could get ahold of the software, would I want to go with it on Mac or PC, would you say? I'm a Mac person (certified Apple tech and all), but I'm no slouch on Windows, at least. Would you say Maya is the best? I think I'm dedicated enough to dissect a non-humanoid monster model and make up animations for it.

[NoktUp]

Thanks for the info. If I could get ahold of the software, would I want to go with it on Mac or PC, would you say? I'm a Mac person (certified Apple tech and all), but I'm no slouch on Windows, at least. Would you say Maya is the best? I think I'm dedicated enough to dissect a non-humanoid monster model and make up animations for it.

Mike:
As for what format to use...I have no clue. Go with what you know. Maya is the best out there for me, but it has a very intimidating interface at first, but when you get used to it, everything else sucks. 3DS MAX is the industry standard, but only comes for the Windows and maybe Unix boxes. Maya comes in MAC, Windows, Unix, Irix, Linix, and SunOS( I think they make a SunOS version). There's MAC native packages that are good, but there’s no support for it in the community. (not that there is much for anything else.)

Some things you should know when picking out a 3d package that suits you:
There are 2 types of software out there; Stack Based, and Node Based.

Stack Based: 3dsMAX The actions you do,( i.e. move a vertex, add an object to the scene, or edit anything in any way.) are piled onto a stack, or history of the scene. Like your history in Photoshop. To undo an edit you did a few step earlier, means you have to undo all the edits above it, until you get rid of the one you want.

Node Based: Maya, XSI, Houdini. The functions you perform are added to a network of other nodes, objects, and functions. It’s similar to what a family tree looks like. If you don’t like any one node in the node network, you just delete it and the software redraws the network as if that "node" never existed. You can also undo like you would in Photoshop or MAX.

Maya is by far the most logical Professional 3d software I've used. Well between MAX and Maya any way
Maya, though, is much harder to learn at first, but it gets muuuch easier, as you understand more. Also, its seemingly cluttered interface begins to make sense, and you realize that there’s a reason why it's like the way it is. Plus, the steps in creating something are much more logical. Finally, to do in MAX, what you can do in Maya Builder 5.0 right out of the box, would take thousands of dollars of plug-ins.

Price: Maya 5.0 (1 year license) $2500(Builder) - $16000(Unlimited)
MAX (1year license) $3000 + Character Studio (1yr) $1000

Hope this helped. If your realy down, I know of a dozen or so sites with tutorials on both Maya, and MAX.
Latah,

[jonas]

The good thing about Maya is that you can learn on it for free.