Rave Girl WIP

[Antigen]

I found this cool picture on the internet and decided to make it into a playable character. This is my first character ever and it's almost done save for the facial texture, hands and a proper re binding. Images attached so tell me what ya think.

 

[SleepyHe4d]

Synthetic slut nurse... Nice, haha. What game is it being made for, 2k4?

Looks like a good alternative to Ophelia, which was my fav char model.

 

[daloonie]

One thing. Learn wtf bmp is and learn why it's a terrible choice for the internet.

Then when you get your head straight you will come back with a jpeg version of any preview you might have.

 

[SaD]

One thing. Learn wtf bmp is and learn why it's a terrible choice for the internet.

Then when you get your head straight you will come back with a jpeg version of any preview you might have.

+1
Way too BIG in filesize .

 

[TurdDrive]

Work in Progress and Pimps

hehe
never noticed that part of the forum before

 

[Antigen]

Daloonie. You're absolutely right, I just uploaded what was sitting in my project folder and didn't take the time to convert it to .jpeg; however, I fail to see what that has to do with the material itself. I usually don't care as long as it's under the max file size, but I see your point and I'll make sure all my images are in .jpeg before I upload them from now on.

 

[-Tj-]

Looks like a good start to me, the model. Hair looks questionable at this point (probably because of the unfinished state) but the head could make or break the model. The body looks great. Looking forward to more.

 

[leilei]

first model and it's looking better than most female models i've seen here (even the simple skinned ones that took 1+ years to make). Good job.

 

[Antigen]

TJ, you're probably right about the head making or breaking the model. With that I suppose I'll have to take extra care in making sure the the texture map for the head turns out right. I was hoping to have the whole thing done in a week from now, but I might need to extend that. I wouldn't want to rush anything. I've attached what I have so far in terms of the head texture and, as you can see, it still needs a little more work. I may end up replacing the single poly locks of hair with something a little more tolerant to being viewed at any angle. This would be a great place for suggestions.

 

[-Tj-]

Don't worry too much about increasing poly counts to better the quality of the model. As long as it's not too high (like some of the 9k to 14k poly models out there) UT2004 should handle the character just fine. If the Intel graphics inside my laptop can handle the game at full settings at playable frame rates, I'm sure most people shouldn't have a problem with it.

The textures on the head look like a good start, but they're a little flat at the moment. The detail on the hair is really good. The eyes are very lifeless right now; if you can capture the feeling the eyes have in the illustration, that'd be awesome. Keep going!

 

[Antigen]

Ok, Here's what I've got on the texture today. I'll get it finished up tomorrow, and then start working on the hair. I ended up trashing the old eyes and redoing them following a tutorial I found. I also hashed out the basic shading a little more. The differences are pretty subtle, but it seems to have made a big difference in making the head more convincing.

 

[XenoAisam]

woot~ slut! i want pretty face!

 

[-Tj-]

Nice! I feel more life in her already.

 

[Antigen]

Ok. I've started play testing it. I need to tweak the texture map just a little bit, but that's no big deal. I have no idea how to set it up for team skins though, and I cant get two sided shading to work on the head texture so right now the hair is only visible from the normals' out side. I have two sided shading checked in the material properties for the head texture but it didn't change anything. Also, she's using the Human Male sounds and voices right now. Kinda weird, haha.

 

[-Tj-]

Hey cool! Bit hard to see at that distance, tho. Here's a tip... if you don't yet have it, download and install ModelViewer2K4:

http://home.metrocast.net/~chipartist/ModelViewer/ModelViewerWeb

That tool has been really valuable to me during my model/skin process since you can manipulate the camera around the character. Also great for screencaps.

Teamskin setup is pretty easy. As I recall, after creating and importing the red and blue teamskins to UnrealEd, all you need to do is add _0 or _1 to the end of the name. So if your texture name is "ravegirlbody," you would name the red teamskin "ravegirlbody_0" and the blue one "ravegirlbody_1." If you want to set it up for CTF4, _2 (green) and _3 (gold) should be made. The game handles switching.

... but don't quote me on any of this too strictly. The last time I did any modding for UT2004 was about 3 or 4 years ago.

I have an idea of why the two sided shading might not be working, but I'm not certain about it. I'd have to see more detailed pics or more.

 

[Antigen]

Ok. I fixed the texture map by just baking it in maya with a dim image based lighting. I underestimated how much bearing Unreal's dynamic lighting has on a character. I still can't get team skins working. I've looked it up and you were definitely correct, but its just not responding right in the game. Also, you said you thought you had an idea as to why double sided shading isn't working. I'm not sure what kind of images you need, but what do you think it is, and I'll just try that.

 

[-Tj-]

Can you set up a team deathmatch with your character as bots and get some close-up shots of the problem? That should help a bit to see if we can figure out what it is.

What does your shader network look like for your head? Is it a shader that links textures together, or are you just using straight textures?

If you're using a shader, make sure you have TwoSided set to True under the shader setting's, not under texture settings.

I've attached an image of a shader network, with notes. Make sure you're using the TwoSided attribute if you're using a shader, as using the texture's bTwoSided attribute won't have any affect on the shader itself.

Hopefully that's the problem... otherwise I'm wondering if there's something deeper and more sinister going on (which can sometimes be the case with UnrealEngine... haha).

 

[Antigen]

No, that did it. Thanks. Still can't get the team skins working, though. I'm gonna look at some other custom skins and see what they did.

 

[-Tj-]

Oh, just came across some info that might help:

- Teamskins must be in the same group as the original
- The teamskin names must be exactly the same as the original, with _0 (red) or _1 (blue) added to the end.

Glad the settings helped the two sides thing.

 

[Antigen]

OK, Everything is definitely labeled correctly, so it's probably something deeper. If I can't figure it out, I think I'll just hold it off till later and start this next project.