Possible Projects Interest

[Deaths Jester]

You can probably use UV Mapper to map out uvs for the sketchup model....might be worth looking into, at least.

[Randomdays]

Well, I looked at the program demo of "uv mapper" if that's what you meant - didn't get to far and it wouldn't let me export without registering.

I've tried a few things in Milkshape and Blender, and the best I got was creating a uv where the entire skin was mapped to each and every face on the mesh.

For the Thundertank, I'm not worried about it too much, though it would be nice to know. Probably more important if I do the Snarf stl.

[cranlox]

What you see of the tank with Panthro I really love it!
I'm still a fan of your work.
In stl there are some cannons from the thundercats vehicle.

[Randomdays]

On the Thundertank - this will be the only version I'll do. To have the back gun up and available would mean an entirely different model import and starting from scratch.

Of the 4 different Lion-O's I have, Dean's is the best, but it errored out on Blender import - there's a lot going on with it. I might try a different import from somewhere else, but for now I added Wingzero's Cheetara in the passenger seat.

I'm leaving the tank's colors as they are for now. The seats should be a lighter blue, but I'm worried that Panthro might blend in with them too much.

Panthro is posed with legs bent, one hand on the wheel and one hand on the gear shift. Cheetara still needs to be posed and the bounding/selection boxes set.

[deanjo2000]

That looks so cool

[Randomdays]

Thanks Dean - Your Panthro at work (Hope you don't mind)

Just about finished.

Re-centered the mesh with the origin. Added alpha property to the windshield. Cheetara had alpha property enabled and I removed it - I found that you can't see an object with alpha on if you're looking at it through another alpha object.

Resized the bounding and selection boxes, and did some bending and rotation of Cheetara's lower body to straighten her out and fit in her seat. Both characters aren't perfect and their feet vanish into part of the tank.

I probably won't be doing a version with Lion-O or Tigra anytime soon. Feel free to skope away if you want.

I exported a version for both games and I'll put a simple kf with them. If you want weapon nodes or the like, you'll free to mess around with that also.

The tank is a bit high poly at almost 20k. I'll try them out in game and if they work, I'll zip them up and post them soon.

After that, some work on the John Carter items a bit. I'm also looking at some possible Star Wars vehicles. As far as I know, no one has ever brought in a landspeeder or a snowspeeder. It might be fun to try to put Luke in one of those.

[deanjo2000]

Your more than welcome to use anything of mine  I?m on a bit of a burn out but I must admit all this is getting my spark back.

[Randomdays]

Thanks!

Glad to hear that your getting your interest back. Let me pull out my list of 500 projects I have in mind..... I'll be sending a few cases of red-bull your way.

[Randomdays]

A quick one before I go to bed for the night.

One of the skins that's been on my wish list for a long time are the Jupiter men, the 1st bad guys Thor met, in his premiere issue.

I've been looking at AA's Impossible Man as a source, and happened to see Atomic Robot's Clayface and thought they would be a good match (Looking at it, a Thing skin might work also.

The cover of Thor has them green ,but they're brown in the comic itself. A simple body swap later and I think it came out pretty good.

A male heavy body might fit better. If I just take the body and expand it in the x and y directions, that may bulk him out a bit.

[Randomdays]

Finished up the Thundertank and I'll be uploading it in a few minutes. Tested it in FF2 and while collision worked with buildings and other vehicles, it could go thru some objects, and the civilians walked thru it quite a bit. A FF1 nif is included (untested). To see Panthro in FF1 you'll probably need to convert the dds skins to tga.

Tried to change the x/y on AA's Impossible man to thicken him up a bit. It's a complex mesh and after changing the size, it still looks the same in the viewer. For now, the Jupiter Men are staying skinny. If anyone knows of a similar mesh to the one on the Thor page, let me know.

[style]

On the Thundertank - this will be the only version I'll do. To have the back gun up and available would mean an entirely different model import and starting from scratch.

Of the 4 different Lion-O's I have, Dean's is the best, but it errored out on Blender import - there's a lot going on with it. I might try a different import from somewhere else, but for now I added Wingzero's Cheetara in the passenger seat.

I'm leaving the tank's colors as they are for now. The seats should be a lighter blue, but I'm worried that Panthro might blend in with them too much.

Panthro is posed with legs bent, one hand on the wheel and one hand on the gear shift. Cheetara still needs to be posed and the bounding/selection boxes set.

AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Randomdays]

Thanks Style - but no less than what you're doing. And you can give the original Thundertank mesh creator, Dean, and Wingzero most of the credit

Going back to another mount next - putting Tarzan on an elephant. I'll have to go thru the different Tarzans out there but I'm leaning towards Daglob's. Russ Manning's version has always been one of favorites.

[deanjo2000]

For a Kronan i had this idea.

I just worked over my plasmus skin so did'nt take long. He's in my marvel folder if you want it.

[Randomdays]

Wow! Thanks Dean!

That's a nice surprise to find.

Grabbing it now!

[Randomdays]

Spent a few hours helping someone with a couple of meshes in Blender - on both, skoping some of the pieces on with nifskope did things that Blender didn't like - they would import but not export without deleting a few items - some sort of problem with the uv. More complicated than I thought it would be.

After that, it was great that the next project went smooth and quick - Putting Daglob's Tarzan on the Civ 4 elephant. The only hiccup was I had forgotten that when you join two meshes together that each had their own armature/kfs, and they're different, the second nif that you import has control of the animation. The 1st attempt with Tarzan imported last did some funky things to the elephant. Swapping the import order fixed that. I'm pretty happy with the way he came out. Uses the new Civ 4 FF2 kfs I imported for the elephant. Tarzan is static and I only had to pose him a bit. Thanks DG for the skope!

Pic below;




Tomato sent me his six -armed martian mesh skin. I haven't started work on it yet (with is permission) but seeing the elephant it looks like it might be a good source for some tusks for the martian. In queue down the line


For the male teen transfers, I'm looking for a pageboy length hairpiece, a little shorter than the ones used in the original meshes. I think it would go good with all 3 characters. Check the pic below of Andar.  I'm pretty sure there's at least one out there, but nothing comes to mind at the moment - any ideas? If not then I'll try a longer piece like the one from Tarzan or John Carter back a page

[BentonGrey]

My gosh, RD, I've apparently missed literally a YEAR of your stuff somehow!  All of your work with the maps, your theme park, your city, all of that is AMAZING!  You've learned so much about the game, stuff that I've only poked around the edges of.  You've accomplished some really cool stuff, man!  I can't wait to check out your maps!

[Randomdays]

Thanks Benton - stay awake!

It'll be awhile I think until I get back to map. I'll have to get up to speed again after taking some time off.

After spending some time on the teen characters and Andar mentioned last, I after remembering Dean doing a Dorno with similar hair. By then I had already finished what I wanted to get done though.

I wound up using hair from female Bob. Working with Taskmaster and male_teen_12, I found that Taskmaster is not friendly with Blender - just importing and exporting it back out breaks the mesh for both games. male_teen_12 got broken twice, including my original file somehow. Luckily I had another backup to save the day.

So, for the first batch, two new meshes! male_teen_12_bob_sword with either young versions or sons of John Carter (Carthoris) and a rather grumpy looking Conan (Conn) using Dana's Conan.




Second new mesh is male_teen_bob_rope_bow_dagger with Tarzan (Korak) and Turok (Andar) using Tommyboy's indian_t skin. None of the weapon animations are there since they're still on the original kfs. The weapons are from Gren's Taskmaster and the Tarzan skope of it - shrunk down to fit better.

I may add a head feather for Andar and split that off into a third mesh.




Being posted soon. These are for FF1 only as I couldn't get them to work for FF2. Some reskinning would be nice....

I have versions for Tomato's male_teen almost done - the mesh wouldn't respond to any of the tm kfs I tried so I was able to do a main mesh swap with Taskmaster.

I'll also try to get a set done for male_teen_14 if I can

[BentonGrey]

The teen characters all look great!

[SickAlice]

I worked with TM a lot, still am. It's the base for the MOTU stuff I'm doing. I have gotten around the issue in Blender but it's messy and frustrating. The way I figured out to do it instead is to copy and paste backward from Taskmaster, this includes nodes and keyframes if you want, to male_basic_effects and work off of that new nif and keyframe set instead. Once you made it once then you can keep using it and don't have to go through the work again of course. It also allows you to use keyframes then that Taskmaster wouldn't be compatible with.

Edit: That might be vague but it's kind of simple. For lack of better terms I will say male_basic_effects is a "legacy" as are it's keyframes. And we'll call Taskmaster "decendant". So when you take the parts and nodes and such from Taskmaster or any other male basic nif (works equally for female and such) and copy them into mbeffects (I used Nifskope for it, I can't speak for other programs) you remove compatibility issues. Same for the TM keyframes backwardly into the older standard keyframes that came with mb. This gives the added advantage that you can bring in anything else from any male_basic "descendant" without any issues where you might find them when copying between the later made nifs and keyframes.

If that makes any sense of it. Doing that eliminated all the issues I was having as well opened me up to making custom animations from scratch. And all because I was having issue with TM add I hated the lack of area animations. INK's Exodus is otherwise compatible with TM meshes and keys for areas btw. It took me endless trial and error to figure that one out.

[Randomdays]

Thanks SA. Next time I need to work with a TM, I'll read this over again and maybe hit you up with some questions.

Benton - The Tarzan looks good to me, John Carter and Andar are alright but could use some skinning.

Young Conan is just creepy.

I tried a few more to see how they would work out. As far as I know there are no skins for civ Dick Grayson, civ Superboy Clark Kent, and civ young Bruce Wayne.

I tried a few that I had and the only one that didn't look too bad is Lightning Man's Clark Kent. I'd need to add his glasses and some skinning would probably have to be done by someone since he probably wouldn't be in a suit - but the face looks good.

I'd like to see someone do the above, plus a Pete Ross if anyone is interested. Either on the teen_12, the teen_14, or Tomato's teen mesh.

Here's LM's Clark on the teen_12 mesh.

[SickAlice]

It goes without saying I'm sure that the Exodus keyframes can be used for Cordless as well and likewise any missing string names need to be added to the keyframes. But the other method will save you every headache in the long run. It's kind of simple, whatever mb based nif and keys came "after" mb itself so mb having come "before" has no issues when anything is copied to it. So for example you shove TM and DS animations and so on into an mb nif and keyframe set without any issues so long as you add the required nodes.

And again it's better for making custom animations. I went into that in the What Have You Skoped Thread a bit, I think while you were offline. The tutorial image links need to be updated and I will otherwise do a full tutorial on how to use Nifskope alone to make any animation you can think of. It's very useful to know how to do, another thing it took me ages to figure out.

[Randomdays]

I've got a few things to say here;

1) That's one awesomely animated turtle.

2) If you animated this from scratch, that's even more awesome.

3) Does this work for both FF1 and FF2? I know they handle animations differently

4) The fact that we're still learning new things to do with this game, after all these years, is awesome.

5) That this game can be modded in so many ways - meshes, textures, animations, fx's, maps, missions, is just incredible ( Ha! I bet you thought I was going to say "awesome")

[SickAlice]

I made quite a few from scratch animations and Mike has some particular ones. That one uses another anim as a base, it's the right way to go so they all line up but you get the picture. Pulling out pizza it and eating it, riding boards, all sorts of stuff. Still polishing all this and the models and so on.

Imo only  because I only know of converted keyframes being something one can manipulate in Nifskope. Unless you know a method to do it with  keys but I don't know of one. I also only make things for  of course so I wouldn't be making and testing on  .

The very long short (I don't want to clog your thread with images) is you take your choice Nif, I make a copy just for this usage so I don't mess up my original somehow, and start moving whatever it is you want. As you do this record the positions. Record those positions as well into the keyframes. It's real simple and like the male basic as a base thing I'm not even sure why it didn't occur to me before. Else again a full page tutorial will be available sooner or later on how to do all this.

[Randomdays]

Thanks a lot SA. I went through the pm you sent and can probably wrap my head around it, but at the moment I can't think of any custom animations I need.

A couple of quick Blender skopes below. For those who have never read ERB's books - Mars, Venus, Tarzan, etc. ,you're really missing out compared to the movies.

In the Tarzan books, he's portrayed as much more intelligent - living in a normal house with servants on the plains with Jane and his natural son, Jack - who's ape name is "Korak", which means "killer" in their language.Tarzan can speak many languages fluently, learning new ones as needed, and can even fly a plane.

In the Dell comics, Tarzan was shown frequently flying on the giant eagle Argus to get around. I think Argus is specific only to these comics.

I put Tarzan on the back of an enlarged Sam the Eagle with his basic skin. Pics below





ERB's Africa is loaded with various Lost Worlds, starting with Opar, a ruined city left by Atlantis in the 2nd book of the series, "The Return of Tarzan"

In the 8th book of the series, "Tarzan the Terrible", Germans kidnap Jane and head inland, with Tarzan following behind, and find a lost world called Pal-ul-Don that's usually surrounded by a great swamp full of dinosaurs, as is the lost world itself.

Thanks to a drought, everyone is able to reach Pal-ul-Don. There's a lot of action of course, fighting between two tribes of tailed monkey men, fighting over Jane, and fighting with a more primitive tribe of cavemen. In Pal-ul-Don, the stegosaurus and the triceratops are both more savage than normally seen, but the cavemen have found a way to tame the triceratops, which Tarzan learns by watching.

To learn more, you'll have to read the book or a comic adaptation.

Below is the cover to the novel, and Tarzan riding a previously imported triceratops - a bit smaller than the ones in the books

[Randomdays]

I was able to find a martian mount (thoat) and John Carter's pet (Woola) files to download for free, but they're both stl files so they'll be a pain to set up for skinning. I'll put them aside for awhile. Same with Snarf from Thundercats.

For the martian lion (banth), rat (ulsio) and white ape, I'll try to just add an extra pair of legs to existing models. I'm not sure if there's a white skin for any of the apes/gorillas we have for FF so I might need a skin for that.

I still have to look at Tomato's Martian to see about adding some lower fangs to it and see how it looks.

Nothing really out there for the plant men from the second book, but I might be able to throw a few things together to make one. Do we have a one-eyed cyclops mesh?

While the "kid" transfers don't look too bad, It would be great if someone did some true skinning of Cathoris and Thuvia, as well as some generic red martian warriors.

Hopefully I can do a quick rig of the baby unicorn and send it to Dean so he can reskin it as needed.

Other items down the line;

1) Lord of the Rings - RBD and Starlock did most of the Fellowship way back, and dm imported a few of them as well, though I think these might be a little too detailed for the game. I'm looking to import not just the Fellowship, but characters like Sauron, Gollum and Elrond, as well a some troops from both sides. I picked up the 2006 game "Battle for Middle Earth 2" which looks like it has everything I need. I just need to check out the model details and see if they can be ripped from the game.

2) Star Trek TOS - I think the Enterprise crew I imported a while back came out pretty good, considering they were the first things I ever imported.  They were made by Laz Rojas for the "Elite Force" game in 2001. He did a ton of models for all the Star Trek tv shows, as well as others.  His site is still online if you want to check out his models. They're a little low poly for FF, but workable.

http://lazrojas.com/elitefarce/bots/index.html

And here's a couple of screenshots  of some models I'll try to import from the TOS era;

[WyldFyre]

Those are Gorna be interesting. <realizes that is one of the worst puns ever and slips away>

[style]

I was able to find a martian mount (thoat) and John Carter's pet (Woola) files to download for free, but they're both stl files so they'll be a pain to set up for skinning. I'll put them aside for awhile. Same with Snarf from Thundercats.

For the martian lion (banth), rat (ulsio) and white ape, I'll try to just add an extra pair of legs to existing models. I'm not sure if there's a white skin for any of the apes/gorillas we have for FF so I might need a skin for that.

I still have to look at Tomato's Martian to see about adding some lower fangs to it and see how it looks.

Nothing really out there for the plant men from the second book, but I might be able to throw a few things together to make one. Do we have a one-eyed cyclops mesh?

While the "kid" transfers don't look too bad, It would be great if someone did some true skinning of Cathoris and Thuvia, as well as some generic red martian warriors.

Hopefully I can do a quick rig of the baby unicorn and send it to Dean so he can reskin it as needed.

Other items down the line;

1) Lord of the Rings - RBD and Starlock did most of the Fellowship way back, and dm imported a few of them as well, though I think these might be a little too detailed for the game. I'm looking to import not just the Fellowship, but characters like Sauron, Gollum and Elrond, as well a some troops from both sides. I picked up the 2006 game "Battle for Middle Earth 2" which looks like it has everything I need. I just need to check out the model details and see if they can be ripped from the game.

2) Star Trek TOS - I think the Enterprise crew I imported a while back came out pretty good, considering they were the first things I ever imported.  They were made by Laz Rojas for the "Elite Force" game in 2001. He did a ton of models for all the Star Trek tv shows, as well as others.  His site is still online if you want to check out his models. They're a little low poly for FF, but workable.

http://lazrojas.com/elitefarce/bots/index.html

And here's a couple of screenshots  of some models I'll try to import from the TOS era;

would love to see you import the Original TOS Crew and TNG Crew from that game it would be Awesome they also have Klingons from both series too!

[Randomdays]

Wyldfyre - you're gorna get get it for that one -


Hey Style!

He did a great job on all of those didn't he - a great modder for that game. I may also try to do his Duke Nukem - I don't think we have one for FF?

The original crew has already been imported and is up on my megasite, along with a shuttle.

Dean just did a TNG klingon, and Lionheart did a TOS one a while back; pic below

And a pic of McCoy, my very first import from back in 2011. The meshes for Elite Force come in three pieces = head. chest and arms, and waist and legs. Due to the base shape of the shoulders in the mesh, they look a little strange in FF, but still pretty good. All my imports are on Tommyboy's trek_t kfs, and have original TOS phasers, rifles and tricorders - maybe communicators too.

[Randomdays]

Spent most of the day throwing a plant man together.

In ERB's mars stories, when you got tired of life, you could go down one of the few waterways to the isolated Valley Dor, where you were assured a peaceful afterlife.

In the 2nd Mars book, when John Carter returns to mars from earth, this is where he finds himself. At first everything looks perfect with park like manicured lawns and relatively peaceful.

But it soon turns out that the previous unknown yellow men of mars are operating a scam - keeping the good looking pilgrims and killing the rest with banths, white apes and the plant men.

The plant men have mouths at the end of each arm, and their cropping of the grass for food is why everything looks trimmed. When attacking, they leap into the air over your head and smack you with their tail. They have one eye like a cyclops.

There's been a few different looks for them over the years - below is one from the great comic book artist Joe Jusko. After that is a picture of the mesh I threw together. I started with the Spiderman villain "The Kangaroo" by Blobula. This gave me the "jumping" run that I needed.

Deleted the extras and swapped the body out with male_heave faceless and removed the thumbs from the hands Added a tail from male draconis, and some medusa hair and a cyclops eye from 2 NWN custom models - couldn't find any hair that would match in FF. Now he's waiting for a skin to match the pic......

And here's a different look for a figure made for the new John Carter rpg

https://www.modiphius.net/products/john-carter-miniatures-plant-man?_pos=53&_sid=85aa63143&_ss=r

[SickAlice]

I only read of those characters in the various Dynamite intercompany cross-overs. Though immediately Tarzan stuck out as depicted more intelligently as you put it and perhaps more fascinating than the film counterparts.