The Litterbox site update thread

[SickAlice]

Ty. Time and a lot of work yes. Whatever is happening with my arm is severe, this is going to be a thing. Of course it effects my ability to do Freedom Force projects of course, something which I'd otherwise put more time into while bed ridden. At any rate just so no one thinks I'm ditching or something, between that and a lot else life has just been demanding lately and I have little time for hobbies. Working towards getting back to a position where I can devote most of my time to art but it seems to be getting further from my grasp. The issues you read about in the news are having on effect on all that of course. I do hope each and every one of you is finding reasons to smile each day given the difficulty of these times.

edit: update. Good heavens, freak ice storm knocked out the power and services in the area and dropped a giant pine tree over my driveway and our plow truck. Didn't even get into the hospital until this morning. They gave me more pills as you probably guessed, want six months worth of routine physical therapy but that's a no go for me.

[SickAlice]

Still having site issues so uploads are sitting on the hard drive. In the meantime here's a quick PNG of "Rosspool" aka Bob Ross Deadpool with a cutaway for anyone that wants to have fun and make meme's with it.

http://catman.freedomforceforever.com/temp/rosspool.png

example:

[SickAlice]

A few low poly 3d models I made for a Lady Death project. I take the most pride in the swords and the hourglass which I think I got close to accurate to the comic books objects. The hourglass in particular in which the sand moves, even though it's small enough the eye probably wouldn't see it happening, as I had to force myself to learn about texture scrolling and some new to me variables.

[WyldFyre]

Oooh. Scrolling textures? Interesting.

I like the guitars especially. I don't know why I get a Lila Cheney vibe from them.

[SickAlice]

The texture is one is one of those things that turns out to be simple when you learn it. I have a working hourglass and I think I uploaded a barbershop poll that detail how to do it. There's a few objects in the second game that take advantage of the feature as well. It's a nice easy way to make an effect without really taxing the memory of the system.

The guitar is a replica of Monte Moore's Hard Rocker cover art for Revelations. In fact every object and thing throughout (there are tons trust me, I worked in this project for years now) is my attempt at recreating one thing or another directly from a Lady Death comic and/or variant art cover. Personally I see a customized Ibanez SC in that guitar design though my mind might be going there since it was the guitar I owned.



There's only a few exceptions where I designed things to fill in blanks, like the Star Wars variant of her Deathbringer sword for example. I figured it would be a fun learning experience for me and for fans of the series to catch those little Easter Eggs though I named most of the texture packs appropriately so anyone can look up the source art as well. Oh and naturally in some cases I made adjustments to keep it PG-13 where needed of course, some of the LD art is pretty salacious at times.

[WyldFyre]

You put a lot of work into these. I never read Lady Death regularly.  I think I may have read only one issue iirc. Not that I didn't like the character, just was moving in those days and missed a lot of comic characters then.

I have picked up a few in the past few years though and enjoyed them.  You're right about the art. But it fits the book and character.

[SickAlice]

I figure I'm providing content to use, in this case this is a project heavily mindful of skopers and skinners so I should try and be accurate. It was originally a plan to make detailed women's costumes easier for users here. My hopes when all is said and done with this one is there will be lots of options between models for people to use to create other works (the full nif includes everything but the kitchen sink). Lady Death just ended up being the subject due to the variety. I wasn't a reader either, I delved for this project alone (I enjoyed the Boundless run though). I'm glad I did. It turns this character is well known beyond comic books and just as a subject in the art world, specifically painters are aware of it. I see why given the wealth of artists contributions. I went with that in turn and tried both commending the known artists over the years as well just the look of the character in canon throughout eras and publishers. Anyways when I get the uploading bug worked out this and I ton of other projects I've been working on for year or better, likewise standing requests in the que will see the light of day. But just dropping in to say I'm still around and still working on stuff albeit at a crawl these days.

[BentonGrey]

Very cool, SA!  I'm sure those swords and other goodies will come in handy for me one day!

[SickAlice]

One day yes. The whole thing is finished. I'm just stuck on the upload problem. I tried again tonight to no avail. Reading a server sided error ECONNREFUSED. Disconnects in a loop. If I try many times I can get a small upload through, like these images here but that's about it and this thing is too big for all that of course. I haven't been able to get a hold of the site manager to figure this one out yet.

[SickAlice]

Building a few things among them the classic Ninja Turtles Party Wagon. Some pics of the process soon. A bit of trivia, the origin of it has never been pinpointed. Upon looking through the original cartoon designs I determined this was meant to be a storm chaser/meteorologist's vehicle based on the instruments and layout of the interior, likely to compliment April's news van. Then infused with concepts from panel vans/buses (mostly VW designs, what else is new in comic book design world there?) and the canopy is based tanks.

[bearded]

Are those weapons available for  ?

[SickAlice]

Are those weapons available for  ?

I only make stuff for  since I only have that game/like the usable features more. I on occasion do requests for  but it's a pain since I can't test or view them. I could teach you though I think you know enough to run with this, if you want to convert  to  just use the Blender plugin method (Randomdays). Import  , export  , clean it up with Nifskope after. Else same problem as I said above, I'm having a server host problem that I can't resolve. Catwhowalksbyhimself loans me the site space but I haven't been able to get ahold of him. Again it may be this rural internet but it's reading an error from the other end. So I won't be able to upload Lady Death anytime soon. I can get away with small things but like that sound pack I just uploaded? Took about an hour and I could use the PC or internet for anything else. Lady Death is several gigs between the skins so it's not going to happen yet. I have a lot of finished work that's been sitting on my drive since last year when this server problem started really.

Edit: Forgot, also this would depend on me uploading them but the other method for just retrieving parts is just use Nifskope of course and export the model then work with it from there. They're all to scale so most can just be exported/imported pretty easily.

[SickAlice]

I fixed my connection so I can get back to it. Still a slow junk internet in the middle of the woods so slow but I can upload while I sleep. Else here's some photos of a little fox that's been hanging out with me lately for anyone that needs to see them.

[cranlox]

it?s nick Wilde!  very nice animal

[SickAlice]

Zootopia? Sorry I had to look up the reference. I never seen it though maybe I'll name it Nick. Well, I found out there's three and they all look identical so I probably don't know who is who here. They can all be named Nick. But the mother was here when she was not older than this. She hurt her leg and stayed on my porch and I fed her while she was the mend. So not long ago she brought this one and placed it next to me on my porch where she used to hang out for safe keeping while she went about adult fox business. That's how I ended up with this friend though now I'm not sure which it is since two more are showing up. I buy them kibble of course is what's drawing them in. They'll abandon that pretty quick over live hunt though and the raccoons and skunk will take it instead.

[cranlox]

Yes! The one from zootopia. Nice story of how you socialized with the furry visitors, they are very cute although seeing them hunt as well as being natural is a bit strong for my taste (although it is logical and known)
Maybe they are brothers why not the wilde brothers? ha ha ha
Beautiful photos !
I wonder if you also captured the skunks?

[oktokels]

where are you? u.s.a.? the forest looks comfy

[SickAlice]

oktokels: USA, yep. I've been much of everywhere here. My family built and sold houses and I had close friends in the industry so I got to adventure a lot. I've never left the country, I can't fly due to some physical thing. This is the lake house in the Upper Peninsula are near the Great Lakes. I came from the Mojave desert prior. It is comfortable. My family unfortunately doesn't relish in it, they watch the news and stress out all day. It also is a LOT of work. I have a few acres worth of fallen trees to cut up and pine needles to rake. But I like animals, they're my escape from the stress of our world.

[SickAlice]

Question for anyone that has been skiing. I haven't so I'm not familiar with this stuff. So our Turtle Wagon converts into some sort of Snow Cat type vehicle so the boys can go to skiing and have fun at a lodge and such. The things I circled are added for this trip to the vehicle, apparently something that would normally be on one of these ski lift type vehicles. I have no idea what it is and the art is pretty choppy. Since I want make a 3d model that's accurate I'm trying to find out so I can look at a real life example of this to use as a reference. Thanks in advance anyone who can help.

[SickAlice]

Still trying to figure that thing out. Since I'm on the subject of Nina Turtles I thought I would share a thing I looked up last night.

[BentonGrey]

Hmm!  So, just a guess here, but I'm thinking the thing on top of the Trutle Van is some sort of cord or rope, like for pulling the vehicle out if it got stuck or something.  It doesn't look like anything with an exact real-world equivalent.

Is that manhole cover similar to the one from the 'toon opening?

[SickAlice]

It just looks like fancy dinner rolls to me. Like I said, no experience with snow cat vehicles so I dunno. I can always drop it, I was going to give the party wagon it's modes but it's not priority to the look.

Not to the cartoon but that is the real life location of 122nd and an 8th Street in NYC where there happens to be an entrance the sewer. Hopefully the pizza guy has Google, wouldn't want him to be out three bucks.

[Panther_Gunn]

I would say it's more in the category of a throwaway object drawn on top of something just to take up space, and less like something that might have a real life correlation.  That being said, it seems to be some kind of canvas wrapped object(s).  It could be tools, ski poles, or emergency cold-weather gear (blankets, rations, dry clothes, etc.).

[WyldFyre]

Ninja'd by PG. I was thinking cold weather gear as well. Maybe an emergency shelter.

[deanjo2000]

I?d say it looks like rolled up pizza dough 

[BentonGrey]

 

[SickAlice]

Pizza dough it is. Of course the issue at hand is I can't make 3d model of a thing I actually can't identify. Man, there was a lot of weird stuff happening in that cartoon.

And yeah my sense of humor is weird, sorry. What really happened is I did research on the lair, I had thoughts about recreating it hence my recent questions about map making. It led me in a few directions and one was a fictional property assessment of the lair from the 1987 cartoon. Fun stuff especially for someone in that market myself but I noticed right away they listed it as some random location in Hells Kitchen, NY. The Ninja Turtles and Splinter do not live in Hells Kitchen though, they live in a sewer, most times in New York City, centrally. So it popped in my head to wonder if the location itself actually a real life counterpart, that is was there a 122nd and an 8th St. in New York City and is their an entrance to the sewer at that location on top of it. Well, it appears there is so that means we are one more step from there being real life Ninja Turtles.

[BentonGrey]

Haha, the rabbit trails we chase! 

Did you see that there is a pretty great map of the Turtle Lair in the TMNT mod?  I think it was CmdrKoenig that made it for me, but I'm not 100% sure.

[SickAlice]

Haven't gotten to look it at. Well short, I had your mod and my laptop choked. Twice, one junk laptop before it. So then when I went to took a harder look was recently, again when you were off and the dl link wasn't working. All I have is a handful of character nifs from your mod someone is sharing on a backup site. But I'm interested in doing so, comparisons and all. I looked at the texturing for instance on that Technodrome, it's lifted from TMNT Smash-Up but he avoided the more gratuitous texture mapping which is smart. Like they mapped every single wheel thread and so on despite them being just a repeated pattern. Yet on the other the lower poly from Legends mapped the entire orb when it's just two simple square patterns repeated seamlessly? But that's the stuff I look at and then the functionality I'm putting in. My tanks wheels move or appear to and the eye follows player characters and such. Likewise I like the approach of the blimp so far. My larger goal is the detachable glider but I have it figured out. Else I do like that the lair has been made, it saves me the trouble. I'm good with map objects, not so hot with maps themselves of course. It also means I can focus on something else.

[BentonGrey]

Right, well the update shouldn't be necessary, and you can download the mod either from my site or from ModDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/ninja-turtles-turtle-power

The glider being detachable would be awesome, but I've discovered that, because of camera angles, it's hard to actually see the glider in game because of how big the blimp itself is.