2021 Halloween Artistic Challenge - That's a (mummy) Wrap

[Panther_Gunn]

So.  Here we are.  The first Challenge in the post-daglob era.  I am by no means picking up the reins for all of this, but in deference to our lost friend, I'll get things started again & host this one.  It's a little early, but I wanted to give everyone enough time to get back in the swing of things.

You all should know the rules by now, but just in case you don't (or have forgotten), here they are again. 

Quoth the 'glob, "create some kind of Halloween content:  a skin, a character, a bit of art, anything with the proper theme. The prize is the adulation of your peers.  Deadline is October 31st.  Post your work here so we can all see it.  Have fun."

As is the tradition, I will start things off by re-posting something I actually contributed (y'all can stop clutching your pearls, I *do* occasionally create something) in a previous Challenge.

...overheard mutterings on Halloween....  "Jonah Hex can kiss my drunken arse!  I make this look good!"

[Podmark]

A very fitting tribute to Daglob. And a nice skin too.
I never had the time to participate in his challenges, but I was always impressed he kept them going every time.

[SickAlice]

Nice job on that. No pearl clutching, I cheated on his contests half the time and pointed out I did by using content I made for something else as well. Except Halloween, he had me tasked doing characters from The Nocturnals for him and I'd usually roll them out then as a treat. Anyways I'm in for daglob and CB for that matter then as well just for Halloween and will think up something fresh. Been thinking about them, I stopped what I was doing to work on Spider-mobile for RD initially out of obligation since it was the last request I had in my inbox from CB which itself was in care of daglob. I figure I pretty much have to finish that one to honor them.

[Randomdays]

Good job on the Jonah Hex.

I've got some Halloween items coming up - ghosts, vampires, black cats, etc... but since they're all imports and not original work I don't think they should go here - probably on the other thread I'm working on.

[Deaths Jester]

That is not Jonah Hex, that is my avatar skin draped on Texas jack's avatar mesh!! Blasted youngsters...

[Randomdays]

Oops..... I guess the western backdrop threw me off.

[Panther_Gunn]

That is not Jonah Hex, that is my avatar skin draped on Texas jack's avatar mesh!! Blasted youngsters...

Oops..... I guess the western backdrop threw me off.

That would be my fault, I failed to make it clear that the only "work" I did on that skin was to plop DJ's av face onto an existing Jonah Hex skin (also not mine) and dropping it onto a background, in the spirit of putting various forum members into different Halloween outfits.  I blame Mikey, after the first dozen or so he did inspired me to follow suit that year.

RD, feel free to post any Halloween items here as well.  Daglob never had any firm rules about that.  It's content that isn't already in the game, you're making it available, I'd say it counts just as much as some of the fun things we were posting in the theme that's clearly a kitbash & un-releasable.

[Randomdays]

Okay Panther - I'll put a few up here. But imports are easy and I don't want to spam the thread with the dozens of releases I have in mind. Hopefully others will try putting some together and we'll get some good entries to honor Daglob.

[Randomdays]

First character. I'm going to go mainly with the typical stereotype characters for the holiday.

So, first up we have a Vampire Lord, from the Fall From Heaven 2 mod for Civ4. Unclear of the original mesher and skinner since not a lot of info is given with the mod, and searching the Civ fanatics forums didn't turn up a lot of info either. Comes with a set of standard Civ4 unit kfs - run, idle, melee, melee idle, pain, and fall.

There's a couple of other vampires in the mod as well, based on a different set of kfs, but I'll leave them out of the Challenge.

RD

[naitvalis]

i have this werewolf by night done some time ago but still not released so i place it now, Hail Glob!--->download :  https://files.fm/u/ptaevj98q

[Randomdays]

Very nice! Downloaded!

[Randomdays]

Two skeletons from Civ 4. The first was imported to Civ 4 from the "Fiesta Online" game by modder saibotlieh. I like this one that, with the ancient Greek warriors I had imported earlier, you could recreate the great battle at the end of the classic "Jason and the Argonauts" movie.

The second one is also from Civ 4 from the "Fall from Heaven 2" mod, but no information on who created it.

Uploaded to the keyframe import folder on the mega site I use.

Also, imported 2 more vampires from the same Civ 4 "Fall From Heaven 2" mod and packed all 3 together for upload.

All 4 use the basic Civ 4 swordsman keyframes. There was no problem with the keyframe imports, but I had to use a few tricks to get the models in.

The swordsman keyframes come with a couple of special animations - "Stretch" and "Taunt", plus 3 complete set of combat groups, each made of a melee, melee idle, pain, and fall. You could set different groups up with renaming for individual creatures to give them some variety.

Also, the Vampire Lord is based off the Civ 4 unique unit, "Sumarian Vulture", which has the basic set of kfs mentioned above, but it can also use the expanded swordsman kfs, and those are included in its folder for alternate kfs.

RD

[spydermann93]

These are really cool, RD!

Sick!

EDIT: Great Werewolf, too, Nait! Looks awesome!

[Randomdays]

Doing a little more testing on them since I got a report of issues with them in game. Testing the two new skeletons and vampires, they move about in game and can attack map items, and they can take damage, but when they're set up as enemies you can't target them. I did set them up with selection boxes and bonding boxes

Edit - Problem found. The selection and bonding boxes were not in the proper spot in the nif. moving them from the mesh to the bip seems to have fixed the problem. I'll be fixing and re-uploading them as the day goes on - and probably a bunch of other previous releases as well.

Thanks Cranlox for testing them and finding the problem.

Edit 2 - Problem fixed. Looking at some of the default FFvt3R characters, the ones I looked at all had bounding boxes, and some had selection boxes. Even with only the bounding box, I was able to target the enemy. The 5 vampires and skeletons have been re-uploaded with the boxes in the right place. Tested and working for this problem.

Still 2 unresolved issues with just about all the new imports though - 1) the characters will only attack twice and then stop. If you move away from the target and then back, they''ll attack once more. Same with the imports as enemies. I have no idea why.

2) Depending on the way the original game handles animations, after the character falls, they jump back up again. Has no effect on game play - they will still fade away, or end the rumble room combat if they're the last on their side.

I'll put some info up on the project help page of others things found, instead of crowding it on here.


RD

[Randomdays]

The problem with the new imports having limited attacks has been fixed. Probably something simple for some of the old timers like SA or Benton, but not something I was familiar with.

Thanks to an old post by Seraglio, I found that the problem was that the melee animations in the kfs didn't have contact points. Adding those in fixed the problem. More info for those interested will be in the projects thread.

After adding the contact points, I watched 4 of the new imports beat 4 copies of themselves up until one side was defeated.

Instead of re-uploading all the files again, I'm just going to upload a rar with the fixed kfs in it. The "Svulture" kfs are for the Vampire Lord, and the "Swordsman" kf are for the skeletons and vampires, but will work with the Vampire Lord also. Just rename them to "character.kf" and replace the old ones.

Uploaded to the import folder on the mega site.

Sorry for the trouble, but at least the imports are getting better in game functionality as I pick up new info.

RD

[SickAlice]

I miss the contact thing every time actually. More that fussy stuff about the game engine I was talking about though. Likewise bounding boxes and so on though in their cases I just stay with the copy properties from donor method so I don't have to fine comb everything.

[Randomdays]

SA,

Copying the boxes from a donor is working well, but since some of the imports are odd shapes I'm having to manually adjust some them to fit the mesh better.

I'm sure if I hadn't of figured it out you would of put me in the right direction.

[SuperPoweredYank]

Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.



I put this together with a C6 base, Tomato's suit base which I modified to fit normal male_basic meshes, A hair base by Deadhead, the fur from Pan, and bits of the Irrational male_suit default. Finally, I removed the hat, hair, and backpack bits from the Van Helsing mesh by Texas Jack. Haven't made a unique extras texture, might do that later.

[Randomdays]

Nice work! And something unexpected instead of the monsters I was thinking of.

[Randomdays]

Below we have an anime-looking witch from Atlantica Online. I had also wanted to maybe rig gni's witch to it, but its a very complicated armature - about 80 bones!

She does has a nice set of animation set up for her.  The black on the broom is due to me not figuring out how to set up alpha on the tga. It came with dds's that were set up with working alpha, but they had other problems - in this case the original dds make the broom vanish! Except for that, she's ready to go. If someone can help with the alpha, that would be great.

Every witch needs her (very) black cat. Next to her is one imported from NWN2, and rigged on the WP2 domistic cat armature. The original was also very complicated with moving mouth/ jaw, ears and whiskers. I lost most of that in the rigging process due to mesh differences.

So far, the cat only has its idle and walking kfs done, so its still in progress. Hopefully no issues come up with the rest of the rigging. If so, I've got an alternate black cat from DAoC to try.

RD

[SickAlice]

Great stuff people. I don't know what I like more but maybe Peter Cushing just for that nostalgia note.

Some samples from a huge project I've been working on for years now. Really hoping to finish and release this thing this winter finally:

[Panther_Gunn]

Lots of awesome Halloween content.  Didn't expect a proper (dapper?) vampire hunter to go along with a fancy vampire.  And I totally want to Rumble Room some Jason action now.

SA, is that last dress Morticia inspired, or was it something LD actually wore?

So much cool, serious content here I'm tempted to poke Mikey to inspire some nipple-hose silliness.

Speaking of which ...

Three shapeshifters walk into an alternate dimension.....  (I wanted to tweak these a little more, but never got around to it)

[SuperPoweredYank]

Figured I'd post the download link for Van Helsing in this thread in case people missed it. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/449928937699541002/894730626798845982/Van_Helsing_coat.zip

[SickAlice]

TY Panther Gunn. It is both Morticia inspired and something Lady Death wore. A big project as I said and I am covering all her famous in comic and on cover looks. The fourth is a variant cover called Trick Or Treat for the issue Lady Death: All Hallows Evil. I also made the Morticia dress for another texture based on the Cara Mia variant of Lady Death: Merciless Onslaught #1 by Michael Dipascale which is an art depicting Lady Death cosplaying as Morticia.

[Randomdays]

Two more in progress - a dire rat and a wraith from NWN2. I haven't figured out kfs from that game yet, so they'll probably go on FF1/FF2 keyframes.

Alpha is turned on for both - the rat for his whiskers and the wraith for his skin - transparency could be turned up on him to make him more transparent.

[SickAlice]

That rat sure is spooky. It is not getting candy from my house.

@Panther_Gunn: Here, a sample preview of the Lady Death project I've been on. No weapons in the preview sorry though I've working my nubs off getting her signature stuff modelled in detail. Morticia is at the very end after Lily, also a cover art done by Michael Dipascale.

[Randomdays]

Wow, SA

That's a lot of hard work done!

Much appreciated and looking forward to release.

[Randomdays]

Done  - all checked in game

The Rat - Rigged to Bearded's rat. It breaks up some in character viewer but seems alright in game.

Alcina the Witch - checked her in game with flight turned on. Still has the alpha problem for the broom skin

The Wraith - transparency at about 50% - rigged to the FF male_swimmer kfs.

The Black Cat - rigged to the domestic cat kfs from WP2. Now Agatha Harkness can have her Ebony.

  The original WP2 cat has some different skins for that mesh that might work with Teekl or Chewie

They'll be going up shortly with some items to the mega site sometime today.

[SickAlice]

Ty. More than two years worth granted off and on between work and travel. It started as an idea to provide skinners with a method to make complex female clothing just using the textures since they aren't widely represented. Doing art study one night led me to find Lady Death is a well known subject among both the traditional art circles and fashion ones and as it came on the anniversary of the character I decided she was the perfect subject for my project. I've expanded since then of course and also added other things for modders like new animation types and so forth. The hopes is down the line this will open the doors for people here to make a lot of ideas they have in real time and with little resistance.

Likewise it's why the Spider-mobile is taking longer to meet the request. I'm setting it up in a way that anyone with no knowledge of modelling nor keyframe animations will be able to make any vehicle with drivers or no from it with little work put in at all. When I was doing this for you all that popped into my head as well and all the different vehicles out there people might want to put into the games eventually.

[BentonGrey]

Guys, I can't tell y'all how happy it makes me to see this thread and the level of (awesome!) participation it's receiving!  I love it, and DG would be so happy to see it. 

Lots of really great stuff!  Nait, that werewolf is just gorgeous!  PG, nice work on the DJ version to start us off!  SA, wow, what variety and detail!  Those are amazing!  RD, what great spooky-themed stuff!  I really like those skeletons, very Jason and the Argonauts!  SPY, I've already told you how much I love your photoskin work on Van Helsing, but it is worth repeating!  He looks just plain amazing!