64 replies to this topic

[Deathbringer]

Very good work.Keep up like this.

[Guess Who]

A screenie of boromir, denethor and halbarad.
Click Here.

[Taralom]

Halbarad and Denethor look strange.
keep practising. I can't do it

[Guess Who]

It's my bind.
Im having extreme errors with halbarad, to make him look perfect.
Denethor works fine.

[Allathar]

Well, it still isn't very good, but I can see you're progressing. Good job!

[Mathijs]

''King'' Denethor?

[King of Universe]

Good work. Keep it up

@Matias: How did I know you were gonna comment on that

[Deathbringer]

Yeah goooood work.Soon you will be great.

[Dain Ironfoot]

Needs a lot of work. I refuse to go with the flow and say "good work" for everything anyone posts. This is exactly what we were trying to stamp out.

[m@tt]

Higher res' screenshots would be more useful here, some of those images are kinda difficult to make out.

[Deathbringer]

.

Needs a lot of work. I refuse to go with the flow and say "good work" for everything anyone posts. This is exactly what we were trying to stamp out

Even if guess who was trying to make some good models for a long time without any success we would't tell him, "hey your models suck you should give up and try to find something else to do" Now that his has made some good progress you don't even tell him something nice, good so far but still needs a lot of work or something.You had better not posted anything at least.No offence for all the above

[Mathijs]

And yet, Dain has a valid point.

[MajorDima]

Imo people who mod should say thanks to people like Dain who don't lie just to be nice, lay it out the way it is, his models are improving, but still need a lot of work.
No one said he should quit, he just has to work more for it to be decent.

[Deathbringer]

Ι agree but my point is that he should at least say something nice, cause he has worked hard to make all this progress.He has a lot to learn, as i do and as many new modders have, but it that way he discourages him.If he doent's know what progress he has made to reach here he shouldn't post anything.I never said he should lie for his progress nor quit.

Edited by Deathbringer, 08 October 2007 - 06:54 PM.

[Guess Who]

Well im no coder so it was very difficult.
And denethor that was just a idea of him in armour , he works perfectly ingame.
And higher res would use alot more space, but next time i will.
@Dain: Would you rather renders?
And i know i can improve, i made these about a weeo ago, halbarad i made about 2 weeks ago.
But then again i'd rather the truth so uh thanks Dain.

Edited by Guess Who, 09 October 2007 - 01:26 AM.

[Dain Ironfoot]

Ι agree but my point is that he should at least say something nice, cause he has worked hard to make all this progress.He has a lot to learn, as i do and as many new modders have, but it that way he discourages him.If he doent's know what progress he has made to reach here he shouldn't post anything.I never said he should lie for his progress nor quit.

Oh I'll admit it's an improvement. So I could say "getting better" but I won't say "looks good!" if it doesn't. It isn't good. He really needs to spend a lot more time practicing with random models which he wants to make (instead of trying to fill the normal LOTR mod status quo) rather than trying to "renew" Age of Evil.

Therefore

The rigging needs improving as it looks like you just tried to click autolink and then shove it ingame.. good rigging often takes a long time of checking the animation in w3d viewer until your satisfied. It's the most tedious thing ever but there's no point making a good skin if it just becomes deformed. Some tips- the edit mesh modifier is quite useful for those bits which don't need to be bendy: The bow, the sword, the shield.. add an edit mesh modifier, and shift those bits far away from the main body. Then you can freely grab those vertices and bind to bone by name. Then just turn off that edit modifier and they'll jump back into the hands, fully bound and ready to chop stuff up.

With the skeletons your using.. binding is quite easy.. however after you autolink, and bind the weapons you'll probably need to grab the chest vertices and bind them to the rib bone. You'll almost definitley need to rebind the handbones as they'll become bound to the sword and take on a life of their own (don't worry, even Nertea forgets this sometimes ) You may need to do the waist on Boromir/Faramir as well.

The skin of Denethor... EA's unused captain model wouldn't be my immediate choice for anything (it's a weird model and it's anims are horrible) , let alone the steward of Gondor. It looks nothing like him therefore. You really need to think about if it resembles Denethor. At the mo, ingame it just looks like a whiteish blob. But the general concept of a Gondor warrior all in white is a good one is it not? So why does it have to be Denethor? Why not start from scratch, with a bigger texture and take some time to draw the cloth properly (Check out Nertea's tutorials for this) It could look good. Take time to add detail and depth to your skin and it'll start looking good. Make sure it's clearly defined enough so that ingame it doesn't turn into a blob.

Halbarad's rigging is indeed messed up. But his skin really needs improvement too. At the moment it looks like a mess of horrible pastel green with no definition or anything. So the same things apply (though here I think you really need to think of the concept and colour scheme in general)

I know exactly how he might feel hearing all this, but I've been through exactly the same thingand it is a lesson everyone should learn, to accept criticism. Especially at this level when improvement is so deperatley needed.

Therefore I beg, I plead: Stop posting in every thread in the forum, stop trying to "renew" age of evil and stop making banners for said renewal. Just learn to mod... redo these models, keep improving them until someone has a good reason to say good. Once you know how to get one model to a decent level, you can do the same for another... then you can think about making a mod.. but just remember it takes a long time to make a decent mod (Look how long Celeglin took to do a mod which is essentially one new faction) sure you can churn bad skins out a rate of knots, but there are so many similarish LOTR mods around these days that you really need good art to make yours stick out.

I really hope you read all of that...

Edited by Dain Ironfoot, 09 October 2007 - 11:53 AM.

[Phil]

I read of all of it and to be honest: if I was trying to be a modeler/skinner, I'd freaking love you for that kind of in-depth criticism.

[Mathijs]

I really hope you read all of that...

I doubt it. Good stuff though.

[Deathbringer]

Can we stop this conversation?It leads nowhere now exept fighting which i never wished for.I got your point and you mine.

the edit mesh modifier is quite useful for those bits which don't need to be bendy: The bow, the sword, the shield.. add an edit mesh modifier, and shift those bits far away from the main body. Then you can freely grab those vertices and bind to bone by name. Then just turn off that edit modifier and they'll jump back into the hands, fully bound and ready to chop stuff up.

With the skeletons your using.. binding is quite easy.. however after you autolink, and bind the weapons you'll probably need to grab the chest vertices and bind them to the rib bone. You'll almost definitley need to rebind the handbones as they'll become bound to the sword and take on a life of their own (don't worry, even Nertea forgets this sometimes ) You may need to do the waist on Boromir/Faramir as well.

The skin of Denethor... EA's unused captain model wouldn't be my immediate choice for anything (it's a weird model and it's anims are horrible) , let alone the steward of Gondor. It looks nothing like him therefore. You really need to think about if it resembles Denethor. At the mo, ingame it just looks like a whiteish blob. But the general concept of a Gondor warrior all in white is a good one is it not? So why does it have to be Denethor? Why not start from scratch, with a bigger texture and take some time to draw the cloth properly (Check out Nertea's tutorials for this) It could look good. Take time to add detail and depth to your skin and it'll start looking good. Make sure it's clearly defined enough so that ingame it doesn't turn into a blob.

Halbarad's rigging is indeed messed up. But his skin really needs improvement too. At the moment it looks like a mess of horrible pastel green with no definition or anything. So the same things apply (though here I think you really need to think of the concept and colour scheme in general)

All these guess who is the one who needs to read, he makes the models.If i decide to start modelling i will take a look at it.

Edited by Deathbringer, 09 October 2007 - 02:45 PM.

[Mathijs]

Yes it does, you just don't like where it went.