WIPs - "Sirren" AKA Stefano's Characters Dump

[Sirren]

Don't worry, code can be fixed. Bad art is forever.
Speacking of which.. Ladies and Gentlemen we have something which could be mistaken for a raindeer. Simply don't look at it too close. (Any ladies around?)
Texturing is still a WIP, but I managed to test-rig the model. The stand Idle sequence won't be a problem. The walk one is another matter. Just a matter of time anyway.

[maximinus]

Looking sweet! And you don't have to be anatomically  perfect 

[Zimble]

That looks nice. Now just add a deathray and some laser eyes and you're done

j/k

[mvBarracuda]

Raindeer looks good to me :-) You got a hand for organic models Sirren!

[zeli]

Reindeers I should have known
I think It would be rather neat if the reindeers would replace the function of a mule: drag caravans and carry goods.
or did you intend to make it entirly wild?
(geuss using it as a horse, for riding, would also be kinda cool. But sounds like a pain in the ass to make and a little silly now I start to think of it )

Really nice work with the modeling btw!

[Sirren]

Thanks for your compliments guys. The model's not perfect (legs and hooves expecially) but it's the third attempt and it came out nicely. I'd say that under an anatomical point of view it's about 80/85% correct. I'm rigging it as I write. I should be able to upload a stand idle animation in a few hours.
The idea of raindeers or horses used as mounts/mules isn't that bad IMHO. In-game vehicles haven't been decided yet, but they're taken in consideration.
Thanks again for your appreciation, Gents.

[Sirren]

*Another* shameless bump. This time not without a reason:
http://rapidshare.de/files/47137221/Deer_Test.rar.html
This contains a test Stand Idle animation for my raindeer. I'm not sure about my lighting, shadow orientation, animation timing and sorry, it's too late in the night to understand how the SVN repository works..

[maximinus]

Here it is: I like this!

[Sirren]

Don't look too closely at it, I hadn't enough time to tweack my animation.. Well, a few assorted things, with no particular order:
This animation is 15 frames long and is 1,3 megs in size. Too huge? Too huge canvas?
In Fallout Stand Idle is a long animation, it's used to give a particular flavour to a given creature and the length ranges from 10 to 20 (a monster). Generally speacking the rest of the animations is much shorter.
I propose to make a few more test animations and try to establish a maximum length in frames.
This animation plays too fast. It lasts about a second, it should last about two. Are we going to have a way to decide at which speed a given animation will be played?
I thought we could make more than a SI per character, to be played randomly. I don't know, I didn't expect 1,3 meg in size.
Which tool did you use to put your .gif together?
Isometric games tend to be very demanding under the point of view of art assets size. The crew who made Fallout  was bound to stay within a CD size. See their game: 4 wretched cars in the whole game, characters run showing no weapons, one dog sprite, one kid sprite and so on. We're not going to be bound to a cd size, but..
I'm pretty sure the final game size is to be considered, but at which degree?

[maximinus]

In answer to your questions:

Changing the animation speed is easy.

I threw together the animation in the GIMP. Going back to it, and tweaking a few variables, I managed to get it down to 55k 

[Sirren]

The .gif or my .pngs?

[maximinus]

The gif. But you can cut optimise PNG's as well to some degree (and cropping the image somewhat helped a lot).

[Sirren]

You cropped it? It's 200x200 like the original.
Anyway: I can render it a bit smaller, canvas size could be reduced, but North/S/E/W orientations are longer. The critter has to fit into the canvas.
In Fallout animations sequences "HAD" to start and end with the same frame. It was mandatory to center each animation with the Stand Idle one. Since we're driving centering with an external file, could we cut the last frame out? Or is this going to give centering issues?

[zenbitz]

That's a good idea, but I'd go for the polar bear. The gorilla isn't viable, not after 20 years in the snow.

Wikipedia: "The Mountain Gorilla has longer and darker hair than other gorilla species, allowing it to live in hot or cold weather and travel into areas where temperatures drop below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius)."

So it's not INSANE for the warmer parts of the map.  It would make sense that lack of normal food would cause it to prey on humans...

[Sirren]

We could try then. I don't know story-wise.. Since those who were born after the disaster never knew about gorillas then it may fit.