Authentic Model Improvement

[NightFright]

Needless to say, it's amazing. You can't see any edges on that shield at all any more, actually.

[Tea Monster]

Not done the skin yet.

[NightFright]

Well, don't forget: There are some cases in the to-do list which just require existing remakes to be reskinned or have some animations added. I know that's something you don't like to do, but if we are realistic, we'll never get the original artists to do it for us, so you are pretty much our only hope now.

Update:
Added to-do list on Github now for easier and more convenient access.

Side note: Post #500. Time to party!

[Tea Monster]

I can do it. It just takes a lot more time. That was an experiment to see if I could get away with editing the originals rather than having to re-rig and animate them. I still may be able to pull it off. I'll investigate in future.

[NightFright]

You are working on monster models already? I thought finishing the static ones first would be faster. Not taking the easy road, eh? But well, multitasking is not a bad thing if you can pull it off.

Poly count in the addons is indeed higher in general and those models are less needy of remakes (just like the levels are more detailed and complex, which is why hardware requirements were higher for the addons compared to the original game). Quality level is uneven, though, which is why I picked those models that look worse than others.

I am afraid I am also not skilled when it comes to model adjustments. I don't know many active Quake modellers these days. Sock over at the Func_Msg forums is the only one that comes to mind.

[osjclatchford]

I certainly cant help there, getting in the realms of dark magic of model trickery there. this is the kind of thing that I can never wrap my head around. just too much maths in it for me.

shame too because i can honestly say that what you've got going on there looks so good so far! (minus that dodgy vertex obvoiusly) I do sincerely hope there is some kinda quick fix solution to this as to get so far in the project and have to abandon it for such wank would be a real dick-punch at this time...

[Tea Monster]

This is the problem you've got. I've rounded off the shoulders and chest and it's preserved the UV map, so all you'd have to do to get an 'authentic' model is to recut the polys to remove angles and ESRGAN the skin and hey presto.

If you look at the elbow, there is a triangle poking out the back. That is a new vertice that hasn't held the animation information as the others have. I don't know if you can fudge to accept the other vertex animation from another vertice. You might be able to fix it frame by frame in QME. Dunno.

[Tea Monster]

I remember them being a pain. I've not played Armagon since it came out (on a Pentium 200MMX!). It looks like they tried to up the polycount from standard Quake for the expansion. I can easily model it, but it's the time involved with rigging, animating etc.
That isn't that difficult, but takes a lot of time. It's not the same as just banging out a rejigged static model which I can do in an hour or two.

[osjclatchford]

if anyone can do it, you can...
and, you know, you've said you might now so...

what do you guys think about the gremlin? I mean, he's not terrible but I suppose on-par with the original id1 fiend in terms of quality...

[Tea Monster]

I have a penchant for the Centroid, but it's going to be a big project. It's not just cutting extra verts in here and there, it will most likely required re-rigging and animating.

[NightFright]

Good. Then we are down to the tricky models only again (which need modelling skills)...

[osjclatchford]

ok, Ive ammended it: http://www.mediafire.com/file/abaum5...eball.zip/file (same link to file above, ive overwritten it)

qme has it all at my fingertips so I figured I'll just do it and reupload...

[NightFright]

Well, QuArK only shows one frame, and if I remove that, I break the model entirely. No clue where those three frames actually come from, it shouldn't be animated judging from what I see in the editor...

[osjclatchford]

Does it? Lols missed those Amin's. Well feel free to delete those frames if it helps! Lol
btw it's the comet.mdl from malice reshaped resized an reskinned. Just FYI...

[NightFright]

It's going in the right direction, but the model seems to consist of 3 frames instead of 1 and has some kind of "pulsating" animation, at least when I look at it in q1mv. The original fireball.mdl is not animated. And it's a projectile used by the dragon (final boss).

Regarding the lavarock/-ball, fair point. No idea why they added the same model with different names, though.

Oh, and two more things about the Vore:
- Should be de-tittyfied
- Idle animation (standing and breathing) should be added - Seven did that for the original model

I have optimized Chillo's Vore model we are currently using by removing one needless animation called "base", renaming the idle animation from "stand1" to "idle1" and deleting the second (unused) skin. It shrank model size by over 300 KB, it's something. If it's supposed to look like in Seven's model, the idle sequence should have 9 frames.