Greetings!

Hello, my name is Michael and I go by Savage in game. I thought I would introduce myself and give a little background and perhaps show some previous work once I figure out how to use the forums a little better. I do character design and modeling and worked in several engines but mostly the UT2k4 and UT3 editors and the Source engines Hammer editor. I have done some mapping but mostly made character and prop content for other mappers. I hope to bring something to the group and hopefully make some more characters for the game. I'll see if I can't post some work here since some people have asked to see some of my work but I had a hard drive crash not long ago and lost a lot of my newer stuff but was able to salvage some older pieces. Glad to be here and I'm very excited to work with all of you on an excellent game Now lets see if I can post some images here...

Drawings:

By savagedogg at 2011-09-02

Mostly made in Blender but one GIMP picture at lower left:

By savagedogg at 2011-09-02


Working in UT3 Editor:

By savagedogg at 2011-09-02

By savagedogg at 2011-09-02

I couldn't get the youtube video to embed so here is a link to my timelapse of the Alien:


I usually make a quick box model to rough out a desired yet vague shape and sculpt my project. Then I retopo my high poly model with a topolgy that is more manageable and can be animated nicely and take a normal map of the original high poly. I'm going to work on some characters but I wont retopo until I get a thumbs up from the community that they like my style and get the go ahead. My style may not be what you guys want but to give you a rough idea on my style of characters, play Brink. I usually do characters like that with exaggerated facial features and caricatures. I hope that is something you can get into but if not, I can always help the mappers with custom props and I'll be more than happy to work with ya very exciting, I'm stoked!

P.S. I have a surgery to look forward to, gall stones compounded with other issues, so I may be out of commission for a couple weeks here soon but I have already started working out a base model for characters for the game. Hopefully with this rough base mesh, I can knock out some ideas for you all to look at before my surgery takes place but it is doubtful. If not, I'll land on my feet running when I return

Welcome and impressive work I have to say. Good luck on your surgery and recover quickly!

Welcome, you made it! (Guy from Facebook here)

New player models coming?

Thank you Not a whole lot to look at at the moment, I lost a lot of good stuff, a lot... :\ O' well... makes room for improvement Your work is impressive as well. I always wanted to learn the piano. I had a midi keyboard for a while when I was very young but it is long gone now. I'll get another someday. Anyways, very nice to meet you and I hope I'm able to contribute.

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lol, yes I did Hopefully! That is the plan Already got some stuff in the works

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The only work I was able to salvage was that from my FB and Youtube accounts. Everything else went bye-bye

Welcome to the Forums and good luck with your surgery

I edited your post to embed the YouTube video.

I hope you make backups of your work now! No one is ever safe from a disk crash.

Cool, thank you! Yeah, I backed up some of my work and thought I had all of it but when I went to my thumb drive after the crash, not all the .blend files were there, I lost a couple good ones and various junk and unfinished work and I lost a lot of textures and brushes too so... not the first time and not the last, I'm sure, but I am backing up everything every time I close a session now. Think I may set it to auto-save to a safe partition but that sure is a lot of work I don't feel like doing so maybe later. lol, procrastination hard at work Wow, that is a paradox!

Other than on the real world implications, what is Xonotic, what is the story behind Xonotic, the in-game world? Is it just a wild tournament of machines, aliens, and humans? Is there going to be a campaign mode with a story and if so, is there any brainstorming going on for such a story line? I need art direction is why I ask so I know what steps to take. Can I just make some busted up men, women, Aliens, and machines, by just winging it or is there a mode of thought I must stick to in my initial designs? Is there team logos and can I know more about these teams and there background and what they stand for or are fighting for? I need logo images to put on armor and tattoos on the characters I make also, I got some but wasn't able to find all of them. It will make a huge difference for my design if say, the humans have been battling it out with aliens the past 10 years or over 100 years. Armor may be new and pristine or battered and worn or improvised from junk after many decades of fighting. What year is it in xonotic? You know, that sort of stuff... Thanks!!!

what is the story behind Xonotic, the in-game world? Is it just a wild tournament of machines, aliens, and humans? Is there going to be a campaign mode with a story and if so, is there any brainstorming going on for such a story line?

As far as i know there is no story behind Xonotic yet, people are waiting for the first official release to start working on a singleplayer mode and then adding a story to Xonotic

http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=2032

I need art direction is why I ask so I know what steps to take. Can I just make some busted up men, women, Aliens, and machines, by just winging it or is there a mode of thought I must stick to in my initial designs?

I think this could help you:

http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=81

Is there team logos and can I know more about these teams and there background and what they stand for or are fighting for? I need logo images to put on armor and tattoos on the characters I make also, I got some but wasn't able to find all of them.

If you download the Xonotic git version you will find some logos in the the textures pack.
Also here is this thread about the small icons:
http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=1868

Mainly the logos are Red and blue (close to brown), maybe someone has somewhere the Official logo in .png i don't know. I'd love to have that logo too...

What year is it in xonotic? You know, that sort of stuff... Thanks!!!

Somewhere in the future, most of the maps are battles in the space. Maybe if you think of this like futuristic warriors that are fighting all around the universe and that sometimes they get to some old castles, ruins and stuff...

Btw, if someday you need any help with mapping or you have more questions or anything else here i am or you can also find me on irc.quakenet.org at #eatseakittens

Thank you so much, I appreciate it and the links I'm sure will be extremely helpful.

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Eatseakittens!!! I already like you I have played there forever, excellent server and maps, but being more into making than playing, I rarely play

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Okay.... I think there may be a alight problem. The poly count in characters now in xonotic it is very hard to make any real difference in characters without making it a massive difference. How can I explain this? Ummm... Okay, we *may* be allowed a 5k poly max and that is workable with the art direction I'm seeing. For instance, we can make aliens(I know people don't want aliens) and humans look unique and interesting with a low poly count but with everyone wanting no aliens and only humanoids, without a higher poly count, there wont be much variation in models. To make humans look different, the face is what matters and you need higher polies(it is psychology.) I can make two humans look interesting and different to where the have the same body size but look distinctively different than one another with a poly count of 5 to 6k or better with emphasis of the poly count in the face. A lot goes into the faces of characters when dealing with all human characters and my style of caricature actually allows a minimum of poly count to make huge changes but even so, I need more than a little over 3k otherwise we may as well make one model and throw different skins on them which everyone will see with todays games. There are games out there with many fold 5k. I think we should at least have a 5k max, at least. If we are going for arena style game play with evenly matched players with the same body types then we at least need a higher poly count to make variations in players. I hope I was able to explain that well. I could make one model with a helmet and make it look different through specular and normals maps but only so much. I think many characters will need faces. In that regard, i vote 5k at least.

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I'm soprry, a 5k max at least

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Even flying past another player at 50 miles an hour while blowing shit up, you see that it is the exact same face you saw 2 seconds ago with no expression whatsoever. It is a human feature of pattern recognition. Either put a helmet on everything(I say no on that) or rise the bar a bit. I can put a helmet on some characters and focus detail in the suit of armor but some need faces in which case, i can pull back detail from the armor and put a fraction of that in the face with a grimace! I like the glowing patterns on armor idea though, that is excellent, and I do think it makes it fair to keep body types tight as possible but with body types so tight, we need a higher poly to make them interesting, we need to rise the bar just a bit. Well, with that... I have some great ideas I'll work up some illustrations first and give a rough estimate of polies required but I'll keep it below 5k as much as possible. With that, I have work to do If you don't hear from me in a while, I may be recovering from surgery but I'll have a tablet in hand. cya all soon! Exciting stuff!

There are bits of relevant info on the dev wiki as well: http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic/wiki

You might want to discuss poly count before getting started with modeling I think. I don't think the limit can be pushed this far without it becoming very inconvenient to play.

I'll try to put some illustrations together first but I may push out a few sculpts since they don't take much time. What is most time consuming is retopo and tweaking the topology to fit animations and armatures. I wont do anything like that before showing you guys something first. I do think we need that 5k though bad if we want to make body types consistent. Thanks for the link and again, I'll keep you all posted as I come up with material I'm happy with

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Xonotic Wiki, yes, excellent... thank you!

OHHH!... I was looking through the git texture package as one of you suggested and realized you use relief mapping on characters!?! I'm not a fan of using relief maps on any animated object in game, must we use it or can we use normal mapping only? Would that be okay? Is that why there is such a low poly count in characters in that you plan to use relief mapping? I'll be honest, I have never used relief mapping at all. In-game on static objects it looks great but... Not sure I can be helpful in the relief mapping area. Can somebody give me the scoop on this? I'm familiar with specular, ambient(glow) maps, and normals maps, procedurals, and many others but not relief maps although I'm very interested and willing to learn.

More about the Xonotic story: http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic/...se_to_home

No, no, no. That is not official.


EDIT: The game supports offset and relief mapping. I don't know about technical details. But AFAIK there is no actual geometry deformation, it just affects lighting. I guess relief maps map a texture to normal vectors for use by the lighting system to give relief to a flat surface.

Excellent, thank you!

And even more: http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic/...nglomerate

*sigh of relief* pun intended! lol

Are they not official? Thought they were because they are on the wiki. Well, anyway, I hope they might give you some inspiration.

P.S. One hundred posts! Yay!

This is exactly what I was looking for Mepper, thank you. This will be so helpful in the direction that I take with characters. I'll read it in full several times. It is really good to have a story-line in character development to get to know them, what they like and represent, how they dress, etc. I like to create a back story for individual characters, an attitude, and personality. It helps the details which I'm a fan off obviously. I even come up with histories for scars and accessory on their armor. This will help greatly.

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Even if it isn't official, it gives me something to work with. Changes can be made as they arise.

I was just looking arount a bit in the wiki and came across them, I'm glad you like them

I repeat, this is not at all official, these are community propositions that have not been reviewed

I know relief maps often occlude portions of a texture as you move about which allows "crawling" of a texture on a surface when animated unless there is a subdivision to allow for more geometry which is what I thought might have been going on here but if not, all is well. I'll figure it out as I go

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Okay, np. I just need a place to start brainstorming for ideas.

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I'll use it with caution.

This might also help: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=16

Well, this is probably useless then but I'll leave it here anyway. Not everyone plays with offset mapping enabled btw.

It's a gif, click to see the anim in full size.

Aaaand it seems this shows there's something wrong with the weapon model. Will investigate.