The Litterbox site update thread

[Randomdays]

Very nice... Makes me a bit jealous... with all the problems going on with Covid, etc, it'd be nice to get away, if just for a while.

RD

[SickAlice]

 naitvalis: Not sure I understand. I buy large bags of kibble for them that is shared with foxes. They're all becoming fairly cozy with me. Deer have deer feed of course and whatever treats.

RD: Well worth working towards. I got lucky and a bit of foresight, paid attention to what scientists where saying and got ahead of all this. I had to bumble through the rough stuff first of course. I lived in all the nice places with gunshots going off all night and so forth. I think I absorbed enough culture to last me a lifetime.

[naitvalis]

Looks very peaceful, and now you have also a friendly neighborhood, i hope that you could find some relief from your health issues Sa, you are an important part of this community.

[SickAlice]

Ty and that was part of the reason for moving away from the cities yeah. Having more surgeries again so I need the downtime.

Two more photos from this morning then I'll stop spamming my own site update thread. The animals are my friends now, this doe and fox just come right up to me now and/or my backdoor to see me. It may sound silly but they're my break from such a confusing world. A reminder that there's more than what troubles us.

[deanjo2000]

Looks so peaceful and away from society. I think we could all do with that.

[SickAlice]

I encourage trying to work towards it. I kind of feel like I wasted a bit of time in areas that were just miserable as well polluted. I have memories that I do like from those place but, well I was in a few that rapidly deteriorated and at some point made a commitment to save and work away from it. Life's too short and precious to be exposing oneself to all that.

[SickAlice]

Finally learning how to hand draw Spider-mans costume webbing after all these years on a texture with a mouse and also at the same time forcing myself to learn to draw the modern pattern. I'd previously learned how to draw him using the Bronze era look and when I try my mind pushes me hand there. Likewise I'd done textures on male basic of Spider-man but I cheated and did something messy to cover it up. Now I'm doing as fine a texturing as it gets to connect the lines on any side, I see why people avoid doing this one. Maybe a weird thing to announce but I'm proud of this one, my hand is still killing me from steady drawing last night over it (because I got a touch screen laptop only for it to neither work a pen nor for touch to work with Photoshop at all, because of course it is! ).

Also came to a few conclusions about this and FF. Looking at many game models of Spider-man they almost actively avoid the type of texturing we normally use even when they use it for the rest of the characters in the same game. The reason is the type of texture mapping doesn't lend to his mask and likewise almost no reference material conforms to it. Like if you ever tried the whole Photomatching technique with him, well it doesn't go well. So usually game designers make a side view mapping for him. Also noted and this is a constant that the middle line of vertices on our male basic models is bad and causes terrible jaggles. Normally it doesn't stand out but here it really does. I always wondered why C6 avoided adding that specific line to his textures.

So a project I've had going is a new Spider-man nif. It was born out of a lot of requests where the game model I imported wasn't conformed to male basic (it has better mapping than mb imo though). I had made a Spider-man_basic then but never put much work into it. So these findings are going into that work. I decided the mask head will be on a separate texture with it's own mapping as opposed to the standard male head for unmasked skins which will be able to alpha'd out. Maybe I'll try and fix the jaggles there too but I think it's burned in pretty badly and partly may do with where the animations push the verts. Otherwise it will be a thing skinners have an easier time working with my only concession is I am going to give it proper foot mapping since I loathe the one sided nonsense we use as it is. Well any of you who tried to fine detail texture say a shoe already knows what I mean.

[oktokels]

So a project I've had going is a new Spider-man nif.

That would be amazing because i have a lot of spiderman skins that i dropped because of the impossible mapping on the mask.

[SickAlice]

Looking at it soon. It "may" be the vertices themselves in that line aren't congruent and need to be tightened and rewelded or the opposite that they're too much creating the jaggle effect. But a new head is in order anyways. So I did this by hand to the exact pixels match the vertices as well a bronze era webbing before it. So mapped so that the 1 px wide lines meet up with any attached part on the other side. So my wrists is throbbing of course.

[oktokels]

The amount of work needed to do this is a LOT, this is very much appreciated. 

[SickAlice]

Ty and tis the point, I mean to be appreciated. Obvs this is the preview, I will be providing the templates, both PS and say transparent pngs so whoever can use them as a basis for their own textures after that. Updating the other stuff as well like stamps for the different front and back spiders, eyelets and so forth. So the real deal won't have all the color then nor the eyes, so on. It will just be the webs which I'm going to extend all the way past the costume borders so anyone can just cookie cutout, say if doing a different design like House Of M or coming up with something unique. I know what a pain those specific spots on the textures are where things are welded on the mesh itself but in different spots in the texture. Like I don't even think I could make a heat map for it. I know where multiple vertices where joined (again why the foot mapping is going in my work and you're all going to have match your textures to the new and enjoy it lol, the current mapping is an atrocity) or where there's a different number on one side of a mesh than one the other it welds to (where we end up with overlaps of course and then jaggling textures). Like where one could count out say nine single pixels from the center of a choice vertex (six pixel square on the wiremap of course) on one side but the matching pixel on the other is twelve pixels due to an uneven mapping process (not uncommon in any game mind you but I don't map this way myself anymore, everything is symmetrical or bust). So yeah, I'll be proud when I get this all done and the tutorials to match knowing it will help whoever along the way not have to sit for hours straining their eyes and wrists figuring out.

[SickAlice]

Fixed Index and Workbench pages graphical errors. Issues on the server side, waiting for the boss to find what's up with it.

[SickAlice]

More Spider-man stuff coming. Working on Spider-mobile with RD which in turn led me to work on a few other Spider-man related characters at the same time. Still held up by the hosting problem but I'll figure out a temporary solution if need be. Anyways I'm not going to spoil some of this but when you see what's in the Spider-mobile release you'll also have a preview of the characters that are coming along side it.

[Randomdays]

 

[SickAlice]

I fixed a glitch in my Spider-man animations and reuploaded both the Spider-man on the Spider-man page and Spidey Basic on the workbench page.

[oktokels]

Wonderful  Thank you Sick Alice 

[SickAlice]

NP. As I've said guys I'm not a shy person or easily shamed. If you find mistakes I made feel free to inform me right in this thread. It's easy enough to be doing a lot of work and overlook something. I'm kicking myself on this one of course, it was the Idle animation of all things and very much shows up in game. I had a lot going on that I remember at the time but still I shouldn't make errors that bad and just leave them hanging for years. It was bad time stuff actually as I been chatting with RD about and just happening to be looking at my prior Spidey work for his project. I feel lousy for anyone who dloaded it. I'll make it up to you all though. I have a bunch of Spider-man characters coming this year plus a new version of Spider-man himself that's going to be mindful of skinners of course as opposed to the transplant I bought in from another game.

[SickAlice]

Here's the aforementioned mapped to the pixel point/vertice Spider-man webbing. I really do have carpel tunnel btw, this is a nightmare to do with a mouse for me. I hope anyone gets good use of the template. Sorry about the image size too here, resizing my screencaps destroys the image for some reason.

[oktokels]

 Yahooo amazing !!

[BentonGrey]

I missed a lot of this.  What a lovely place you've got, SA!  Yes indeed, a nice refuge from the world!

[SickAlice]

In that way I am really fortunate. And yeah, it helps a lot these days to be tucked away in nature.

[Randomdays]

More great work - looking forward to this too.

[SickAlice]

Ty. If people like it then it was worth it. We talked about credit elsewhere and I may stand out that I don't care. I make a lot of my stuff from scratch but don't even bother to credit myself. Because to me you or whoever using it for whatever you like, so long as you get some fun out of it is the whole point. For me it's the art practice and study I get in turn. Like learning everything about buggy's. Learning how different axles work, the history, anything to make that 2dimensional image work in 3rd dimensional space. This one though, ugh. This is one of those things I had on the list to challenge myself with but really didn't want to. This is the third time I did Spider-Man, way back in the day before Nifskope and all that and I cheated on the texture. Second with an imported model because texturing the webs freaked me out. With your Spider-mobile I realized I also had to make stand alone Nifs for many of the riders and drivers from the comic books that showed up in that car, Spider-Man, Miles, The Tinkerer, his manservant Toy, Black Cat and her posses Bruno and Boris, The Shocker and Deadpool respectively. Likewise I mention I combine work and I have a Turtles Wagon in process yet so it was just time to do this stuff. But man if you get how hard this thing was. The vertices on our meshes do NOT align.

Like basic models are one vertice off, always are and I get that and know how to work around it. Generally when you make a 3d model and it's a sealed single piece you seal with an extra vert thus have an uneven amount of rows. But just male basic here for example. Mirror each the side torso? Nope, you're texture won't work. The verts on either side aren't synced up. Next the position of the right foot and thumb on the texture is off by a margin and the rest of the torso on that texture as well but in a different direction by a different number of pixels. If you ever tried to copy, paste and mirror on it's texture you'll get this one. Next the legs, same deal. One side doesn't match the other, verts in the wrong place. The soles of the feet aren't lined up at all, right side is at an angle. Multiple vertices on the bottom shin are lined up to the same point on the feet. The problem with the head as mentioned, you'll see it in this release. I plan on fixing those issues myself, the head I figure is a misplaced vertex being dragged. The feet mapping is just wrong by game standards all together, they should unwrapped from overhead, not a side view. And then that torso issue.

My program doesn't mirror texture coordinates speaking of but I think I know a trick to get around it. This will be Spider-Man's standalone but I'll carry over this model, likewise I've been doing it with a female base more and more that I remapped a part at a time. Hopefully I won't go too out of bounds and these won't be difficult for skinners. I know the foot thing is going to through people off but I think it will be for the best and think skinners will appreciate what changing that allows them to do in turn. Plus I don't think anyone's beneath the task here. Though I mind all this stuff when I'm doing the work, always. I always think to myself will people understand how to texture this? Especially when I'm making the models from scratch. Hence a lot of the extra garbage that's packaged with Spider-Mobile, I made nearly every part by hand so I can't expect people to know how it's mapped off a wireframe alone. Also mind you setting aside the standard for guidelines gets around the draw issue with TGA's in the second game, I wasn't willing to budge and go DDS on this one. The format isn't cumbersome to fast texturing speaking of. Then I think about skopers next and how or if they will be able to recycle things to use for X named character design they have in mind. It's why the little bits, just certain shaped masks and hats are important. And you of course since it's for you, I thought about what use you would get, you'll see that again and I implore you when you do to crack the nif open. Else I know you like to work with stock vehicles, multiple buggys in fact were on your mind when you opened the request so hopefully I set up something here you can use to do that with much greater ease. Again you can with the exception of the tires just import models straight into this and lined up, all zero'd and no weight painting at all in play here so that should open a lot of doors.

Pleased to be moving onto to easier stuff though. I do have a couple other challenges on my drive of been putting off but, eh. And then scripting python of course, one of these days I'll take a course or something. Always surprised me that wasn't pre-req when I went back to school actually. They apparently think everyone still relies exclusively on heavy typewriters and scientific calculators (I can't even afford one, I have a cheap dollar store one and otherwise the app on Windows). Still you'd think it would be worked in there somewhere. Not even mentioned in the textbooks. Juan and Jill never are cut off in the middle of a Zoom meeting and Juan figures out he has to reset his router, nope. They're still screwing around with an old apple cart where Juan sells apples and only has a limit of twenty apples of any variation in stock at a time. So the answer is Juan is broke and Jill is his broke friend swiping his food. And I then get an F for answering the question that way of course but it was worth it. Yeah, the more I think on it the less I miss being hunched over a desk at six in the morning scratching equations on a piece of paper and am reluctant for my wildlife and farm type labor instead.

[SickAlice]

Update Spider-Man page and fixed some bugs there. Separated it into two pages, the second holding the nifs and skins of Spider-Man.

[DoctorRuina]

Hey! I was searching for a White Rabbit mesh! Thanks SickAlice!

[SickAlice]

Thank you. That pleases me and I love that character. I thought no one would ever care that I made that one but me.

[SickAlice]

Still kicking. Love and care about you all always and hope life is finding everyone at it's best. I have a lot going on is all that's consuming my time, my health isn't well either so I'm having problems working on and finishing Freedom Force stuff (I took out an arm now because of course I did that and am on the mend). Just checking in at any rate. Any established requests are still ongoing albeit at a snails pace given my situation.

[deanjo2000]

Glad your ok, sucks about the arm but hopefully you fully recover soon. Stay safe and I?m sure there?s no rush for anything.

[cranlox]

get well soon. Hopefully time will pass quickly on these issues.(Recovery)

[windblown]

I'm sorry to hear that you're having health issues SA, I hope you get well soon.