What've you skoped lately?

[SickAlice]

This one is feral and unfortunately won't become an inside cat. I built a house for him and he visits. Not so much a stray. People get kittens and are people who have say have habits so they don't really raise them, hence why he doesn't know what litter is, and once they aren't kittens they abandon them. Happened in the other city in the desert where I hope to move back to where there are roaming litters of cats like this and I took care of them there as well that occupy blocks. I don't like the idea of people ditching animals like that so I'll keep food stocked and make shelters for them. My cat otherwise passed away in 2015 and I don't have the heart to have another full time.

[WyldFyre]

My cat otherwise passed away in 2015 and I don't have the heart to have another full time.

  I know that feeling. If we didn't have more than one, I'm not sure I would want another either. We both feel that way after losing our last dog several years ago. Part of me wants another, but part doesn't want to go through losing them.

[SickAlice]

Cats. People. It's just like that. He's feral anyway again. He can't be trained not destroy the place nor does he really want to stay inside.

A few values to add to the keyframes and I can release Doom. I screwed up and burned my hands badly. I thought it was a smart idea to clean the metal rain gutters in 110 F weather. My hands keep shaking and it made it hard to make straight lines on the textures. I think it looks pretty good all things considered. So probably upload it in a few days.

[SickAlice]

Oh and I suppose for need to know keyframes cape data does not contain scales. I never noticed this before but obviously they need to be there if you want animations other than just hanging/breathing. So that's three bones that need scales per animation. I kind of wish I would've noticed earlier. I've been working on a unified keyframe set for users to use to easily copy and past from and/or make new keys without having to do the tedious work and would have added all this.

*edit: Some keyframes have scales for cape top but they are set to zero which we do not want. Obviously I have not checked every keyframe set but like most flaws it is safe to assume this is legacy thus is found in most keyframe sets or at least going back to Taskmaster. Interesting though, yeah?

[DoctorRuina]

Cats! I live with 12 cats! 

[SickAlice]

I grew up with about that many. Mom's saw a litter and brought them all home. Mom's saw another and brought them all home. So on. Good deal really. I can't stand people that scoop up kittens just to have a toy and then ditch them once are big and not as squeaky. That's how the cats around here and the ones I take care of (and a skunk now too) came about. I've seen this pretty much along the whole tristate border. You can find roaming packs of cats on each block and park.

[WyldFyre]

It's the same here on the east coast. Feral cat colonies abound. People her though have started to catch and spay/neuter them. We actually have a cat rescue that will help defray the costs of this. My wife volunteers for them.

With regard to keyframes. I had long thought about a universal keyframe set. The sheer task of compiling it had kept me from trying. I knew certain bones were required for certain sets. Gren's Taskmaster sets and Tommy's versatile sets were the closest to "universal" I had seen. The capes indeed probably stretch back to the original mesh makers as most just copied IG's meshes but wrote a lot of their own keyframes.

[SickAlice]

South side of the Rockies is pretty bad too. Same situation sort of. People ditch em or pass away and the cats just ended up in the wild reproducing like crazy. I took care of a lot there. Though many meet with grim fates with all the eagles and mountain lions and such around. I dunno. I think pets are equal members of family and should be treated as such. Or at least if humanity is all that we have a responsibility to show it by taking good care of animals and each other for that matter where negligence just lowers us.

I have a fairly robust Taskmaster keyframe set built. Cordless I think? TM is a very early set. Yet it isn't compatible with a lot. I find, if I'm not too lazy the best way is to go to clean copy of the earliest set, so male_basic in this case and copy backward to it. That way most keys will work with it where often they won't with recent meshes and sets. But that TM will probably be my universal since I add so much to it. It's both my base for MOTU male characters and TMNT so I have a lot pumped into it. Might as well keep building on it imo.

Gambit 97 is up next now that Doom is done though. I was really impressed by the animations and want to replicate those spinning bo staff attacks on Ink and Gren's mesh and keyframe set.

[SickAlice]

Finished all Gambit's weapons. Getting the card prints to look exactly like the cartoon was a chore. I think I'm going to go in reverse order and make the animations before the body work here since that was the thing that really caught my eye.

[SickAlice]

I resolved the "sphere jaggles" problem today. If you look at the basketball on the left which is TB's you can see where the texture "bleeds" from the middle seam. This is known as jaggles. If you look at bald meshes you'll see the same problem. On a bald mesh where the texture is the same color it isn't too apparent. On say Spider-Man where a black line runs right over the seam then it is very apparent and ugly looking. I have some files and have been working on fixing a Spider-Man mesh for that matter. See how I resolved the matter by creating a seam made of actual faces instead of a normal seam.

Anyway a texturable basketball which will come with a future release is finished. I love making models of little common items and working out texturing ideas for them.

[SickAlice]

Gambit is coming along well. A lot of new parts for skopers to have fun with and I'm always trying to improve trench coat mapping. Good thing. I had to have surgery on the arm today so I'll have to take a break for awhile while it heals. Stitches won't come out for I think two weeks.

[WyldFyre]

Ouch. Sorry to hear about the surgery. Hope you have a speedy recovery. Gambit looks good.

The coats have always seemed a little wonky to me. Especially on the female meshes. The combination of low poly and the limitations of the engine seemed to make less than satisfying coated characters. Not quite as bad on the suits, but the trench coats never seemed quite "there".

[DoctorRuina]

Yes, I already noticed that the texture of the Sportsmaster basketball had that problem.

[SickAlice]

Again in TB's defense most 3d models of basketballs do. Even in older basketball games. Some things are hard to map and then again jaggles is a problem. Especially if the engine doesn't have the modern code to get around it like "locking" which is the case here. The head thing is important here of course because we spend a lot of time in game looking down at the top of a characters head as we do looking at their backside.

As far as coats check anything I've done after Fantomex. I think that was when I first started addressing. Fantomex has a remapped version of Ink's Gambit jacket. Psylocke, Custer and others a weighted to female version of it. After that point I kept trying to make new jackets with easier mapping for skinners. As of Doctor Stasis I felt I was getting closer. I also worked on weighting and keyframes there to be able to control the bottom of the trench via the cape bones.

This will be the case in Gambit '97. The mapping here now closely sticks to the same mapping for male_basic so skinners can just match them up. It will also help with weighting and when it's animated to keep the movements a bit more streamlined. But I am always after a certain minding skinners and trying to make things easier for them and I think I have it finally. You can of course see there is variations like the leisure suit jacket and crop top. Also a few other firsts aside a properly mapped basketball is a beignet and a durag (going to remodel and remap that today).

So I'm happy with it regardless in that I will providing a lot of new parts for skopers and skinners with this for Gren_male bodies. Of course I am working the animations and this time making FX. The cards are redone too as you can see and have the correct faces and if you looked at the backside they also have a backside like they should. Getting them to look just like the ones in this animated series was a bit of a task though, especially the face of the Queen of Hearts.

Anyway it's a fun one. I have the hair to do next obviously which I'm going to take my time on. Then polishing the textures and working the keyframe effects. I'm using an odd method to make the staff spin in those, something I used on the helicopter blades in Overdrive and hat blades in Luigi. Something again that's going to be easy for skopers and skinners to use for other projects.

But? To deal with the arm today. Of course there are only two Band-Aids left in the box. Dreading the cost these days speaking of there. On the bright side I got eye drops for a $1.19 and then after telling the skin and cancer doctor got professional grade ones for free. So it will even out.