werewolf model

[white.haired.boy]

hi,

i've recently started using blender and i wanted to try my hand at making character models for games. i don't feel ready to make one from scratch just yet, so i've been working with nexuiz models to get a feel for how it's done. here's an example of what i've done so far....

http://img215.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bothls6.png

i started working on the lycanthrope model. to me it looked like an older werewolf, stocky and a bit grizzled. i decided to make a younger sleeker version. after extensively remodelling the head i decided that i wanted to give it dog legs, so i took the head and grafted it onto the body of the carni model. it's still not quite finished, but i'm pretty pleased with how it's working out.

any feedback?

white haired boy

[Ed]

Nice though I'm not so sure about the legs. They seem to have one too many joints.

One of the major complaints about Nexuiz's models is that the polycounts are way too high. If you can do any clever optimisations there then it could improve performance a lot.

[white.haired.boy]

on the subject of optimising the characters, i did notice something really wierd about the character meshes. if i selected what looked like a single vertex it would often turn out to be loads of them, so i had to use blender's merge function to turn them into a single vertex before i could do anything useful. i foung the quickest way of finding these multilple vertices was to apply subsurf to the model and looking for rips and gaps in the subsurf.

these were models that someone had converted to 3ds files and posted on the forum, so the same problem may not exist with the actual character meshes in the game, but it might be worth checking.

white haired boy

[leileilol]

welcome! yay another modeler on board.

The polyflow is very messy, and that crotch :X tossing him in nexuiz at this state would turn it into Furcadia 3d

also that's some tiny non-canine feet

[ihsan]

Although it is much too high=poly for games you may want to check out makehuman: http://sourceforge.net/projects/makehuman/

Merge verts like a maniac and you can get some great characters

[leileilol]

Makehuman as a base isn't really optimal at all, not even when decimating. I really really wouldn't recommend it.

[esteel]

Yeah cool to see a modeler being interested in Nexuiz. We really need more people that are able to create some cool stuff. I like that model but i too think its feet are a bit tiny and look to fragile

[white.haired.boy]

ihsan-
i've downloaded the makehuman stuff, thanks for the link. even if it's too high poly for gaming stuff it looks like an interesting project.

cheap alert -
thanks for the welcome.
could you explain what polyflow is, i've heard the term before but i've no idea of what it means.
as you can see from the picture it looks pretty realistic with subsurf on it, so i'm guessing whoever made the model might have made it using subsurf and that's why it looks the way it does.

esteel-
yeah, i reckon you're right about the feet.

[Irritant]

Yeah, as Cheapy said, the polyflow is pretty messy in that model, particuarly in the way the muscles on the arms and legs are being done.

Another thing to consider is, that is just too many polys for what the model is, and being in a deathmatch game. There are a number of areas where you can cut down the number, such as there is really not a need to model each finger on the hands, and if you do, certainly not using as many polys there.

I'm not sure how many polys that model currently has, but for it's type, you should aim for something less than 2000, maybe even around 1500.

[ai]

There's this guy (cannot find the thread nor the link) that is doing a wiki on the models and if I remember correctly these models have something like 2000 polys. If I find the link I'll update this post.

UPDATE:

The forum thread: http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=1013
The site link: http://virtualworlds.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Nexuiz

Check that thread out to get more info about that site if interested.