this is technical information and discussion mainly intended for modellers that are interested in helping out with remodelling player models for future Nexuiz releases. I'm getting response from several artists showing interest and I hope we can assemble a small team of modellers to have a sane workload for each modeller and some variety style wise.
First of all: Thanks alot for your interest!
I have been asked to provide some technical information and some artistical (style) guidance, Well, I'll try. Feel free to ask for more information if you miss something.
We aim for a polycount of about 1200 (is this realistic?) - with a high poly version being modelled to generate normalmaps. Basically whatever Doom 3 and Quake 4 are doing.
We have a number of formats to choose from, but our current favorite is perhaps .dpm (a custom model format, skeletal animation, keyframe animation). Currently we're using the .zym model format (another custom model format, skeletal animation, animation loops) which has proven to be hard to control animation with (e.g. sync weapon firing animation with actual emission of bullets).
We can use Quake3's model format, too - but it's not based on skeletal animation and therefore is quite heavy on memory - it has better tool support, though. Our custom model formats have tools to generate models from Half Life format .smd files - I can only hope Blender can export to .smd. Judging from the "blockbuster" status of Half Life and Half Life 2 I assume there must be .smd export scripts somewhere.
I think we'll segment the models into head, torso and legs and tag them together - this way we can implement looking up and down and have credible strafing. This would enable us to glue different heads onto the same torso etc. (small bonus). We may even opt for having the same animation sequences (name, length) as Quake3 to give experienced modellers an easier start (we need a similiar set of animations anyway).
As for the style: Every artist is free to model what he likes. It may be nice to have remakes of some of the better current models, though. I think we should still opt for a sci-fi style similiar to what we already see - so no knights or witches (cyborg witches and knights may look cool, though
)
We aim for variety and don't want to kill creativity - so you can create whatever you can imagine to look good in-game.
I think it would be wise to have a reference set of animations so modellers not feeling up to the task of creating animations themselves can create working models, too (or can use them as a starting point). We can't use animations from other titles as e.g. Quake 3, even if we shall opt for using the same set of animation sequences. Every modeller is invited to create animations for their creatures if he feels this improves things - this shouldn't be a requirement, though.
If you feel you'd like to model some monster creatures: Feel free to do so - it'd be cool to have (optional) monsters in Nexuiz (similiar to UT2004's Invastion game mode). Let your creativity flow
We can use new item models, map opjects (fancy teleporters, jumppads, trees, rocks, ...) too...
