WW2 allied airborne model

I have been very busy in the last period but I have made some progresses. The model of the allied paratrooper is finished and the textures are well under way although I'm not completely satisfied, because - for budget reasons - I had to delete the shoulder straps and paint them on the texture. I found a very low limit for all the polygons body models (I think due to export plugins) ... it's around 1600 verts or 3050 tris.

The specops model for CQB is also finished and the texture almost completed.

I'm putting what I did in order and soon I should be able to release two packages to be shared with the CQB\ETL dev team. The content of the packages is still at an early stage: it's very rough and there are still some problems (for example, the ones related to the neck deformation, which I previously written of). All the textures are hand painted and improvable, it is necessary to make more head models (also with face animations) and more body models, synchronize the arms models increasing the number of their polygons, make the tuning of the models rig, check the tag position and of course all the mdx animations from scratch. For the ETL package, headset and accessories are missing, and the models need to be scaled because they seem to be lightly smaller. I tried to maintain compatibility with the original asset, but it was not always possible. I decided to work on CQB and ETL at the same time even if it was much more time expensive, hoping in this way to increase the opportunities of collaboration and feedback. Nothing is completed and there is still much to be done but it can be a starting point.

WW2 german paratrooper (fallschirmjager) progress

WW2 German paratrooper player (work in progress) for Enemy Territory Legacy http://www.etlegacy.com/ 

Just some renders to see how it looks. There is still much to do. After the rig I'll have to see how the mesh behaves with the animations. Then tuning and the export phase (that always has some problems...)

Here some useful links that I used for reference

- great painting and guide for WW2 camouflage
http://www.artizandesigns.com/painting-guides.php

- very useful miniature's blog
http://drjaykim.blogspot.it/2012/11/fallschirmjager-wwii-116-alpine.html
http://www.themodellingnews.com/2013/10/jeff-shius-new-parra-figures-have.html

- great site with real soldier turnaround
http://www.paratrooper.fr/en/pages/mannequins.aspx

- WWII Airsoft Association
http://ww2aa.proboards.com/board/15/axis-impression-information
 

helmet --> tris: 558, verts: 319
head (+ eyes & teeth) --> tris: 1254, verts: 682
u_body --> tris: 1222, verts: 642
l_legs --> tris: 1142, verts: 634
u_rthand --> tris: 392, verts: 198
u_lfthand --> tris: 392, verts: 198

enemy territory axies paratrooper (fallschirmjager) progress

I had very difficult days since the last update but despite the short time I managed to have some progress. I used a bit of time to learn more about uniforms of World War II and the first patterns camouflage used. Some patterns are really great (my favorites are Splittermuster 31 that I rebuilt from scratch and Sumpfmuster 43).

The geometry and the uv map of the new axis's player (and the m38 helmet) is essentially complete although some adjustments after the rig and the export will be necessary (for example, I modelled the y-straps instead of painting them but I have to see what happens to the mesh with the automatic lod calculation). I also started the base texture but is still rough and flat (as soon as I have something that is acceptable I'll do a render).

Some pieces like some heads are now mature and I do not think that they will be modified again (as it had already been completed for Enemy Territory Close Quarter Battle) and I thought that if I release the reference someone could help me with some photosourced texture (maybe using their own face). We'll see ...

crazy flying tag ... solved

I finally figured out what happened.

1 ) It seems that the verts of the neck are not assignable to any bone and can not be deformed. They simply follow the rotation of the head managed by tag_head. I made some changes but as long as you use existing animations there are no good results.

2) assign different materials it's necessary to be able to export the player mesh in different pieces (l_legs, u_body, u_rthand, u_lfthand). The bones are not involved in this process because aren't visible in the game... but for most 3d modeling programs the tags are triangles and are not considered bones so they maybe can receive a material by default when they are created. This can be a problem because they are considered as part of the player mesh when you make the export process.

I found a great resource with a real axis soldier tournaround and since the Enemy Territory Legacy project looks really active I currently start to work on ET axies WWII paratrooper player mesh (also i'm tuning a raw texture for CQB blue player body).

Next steps:
- 1 ET axies WWII paratrooper player body
- 1 ET allies WWII paratrooper player body
- WWII headset & accessories
- Raw texture for all the mesh to be used as referece if someone want to improve it.

mdm mdx export problem

I like making animations but I'm much more comfortable with modeling so I am now a bit faster. I make a new body for the Allies for the recon class (fieldops and engineer) and I'm making another one for the Axis

I'm fighting with mds/mdm/mdx exporter and converter. It's really a challange, every time there is something wrong. Currently i have two problems:
1) wrong torsion of the head when is handle in real time with the mouse (when you look up)
2) crazy flying triangle just near the shoulder/neck (... probably wrong a tag_something).

I double checked everything but i did not find any reason. It's so frustrating ...
Anyway probably i can make some workaround:
1) change body rig / modify head mesh / tuning of tag_head position
2) texture with alpha for hide the triangle

Would not be bad to have compatibility with the Inter-Quake Model (IQM) Format.

 I also started to test / tune and reorganize all / write something about the licence and credits.

new roadmap

Recently, I made the walk/run/crounch forward cycle animation only (maybe I'll do and load some animated gifs).
I have had very little free time and cannot proceed as fast as I would like. For this reason, I had to change my roadmap because I realized that change the all animations at once can't be achieved. I will proceed step by step and add new animations in separate files to be loaded by the file human_base.anim
Unfortunately, with this system I will be forced to use the old player's bone structure until the end.

Anyway, this is ready to be exported:
1 CQB blue player body
1 CQB red player body
4 head
4 headset
2 Accessories

All the models are normal map ready. I forced me to make them keeping in mind that all must be modular and "2d skinner user frendly". This means for example that uv maps are maybe not perfectly optimized.

Next steps:
- Texture for all the mesh (photosource)
- CQB player essential animation
- Head animation
- 2 CQB arm
- 1 ET allies WWII paratrooper player body
- 1 ET axies WWII paratrooper player body
- WWII headset & accessories
- ET player essential animation
- ET player complete animation
- 1 CQB vip/hostage body
- ET additional animation (vip/hostage)
- High poly model (for bake AO/normal map)

I think I can achieve everything I've written ... the only problem is to find the time to do that quite soon.

Enemy Territory animations

In the summer holiday I could not use my PC so I only spent a bit of time redo the set of common texture ...

Recently, I tried to become familiar with the ET animations system, looking at the file body.aninc and human_base.script. It was quite clear but honestly I have not figured out exactly how transitions are managed. However, it all seems very flexible (I think you can even customize the animations for each type of weapon). Initially I thought to redo the animations strictly necessary for TC:CQB, but after a brief exchange with the developers of ET:Legacy I decided to redo all the animations, to ensure the highest compatibility.
Many animations are very similar and have been made by observing the initial and final poses and keeping the number of original frames.In any case, all the animations are made from scratch.
Here are the ones did untill now (although a subsequent tuning phase will be necessary...).

death_machinegun_1, death_rifle_head_2, death_machinegun_2, death_gut, wounded_idle_1, revive, stand_binoculars, stand_radio, pain_head, pain_chest, pain_gut, pain_groin, raise_rifle, stand_rifle, firing_rifle, reload_rifle, firing_rifle2

I knew it would have been a long task, but I never imagined that it was so long...