Authentic Model Improvement

[JamesS]

Hi, I've come out of lurk mode to try to help nudge this great project on a bit.

Chillo released models for the tarbaby and fish in his model collection a while back. AFAIK the models are complete, but need new skins.
I'm not sure if the fish is close enough to the original to be considered, but the tarbaby is quite nice IMHO...

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/mod..._beta_v1.7.zip

DOE includes a player model with an extra skin (can be seen in the last demo), capnbubs player model is not compatible with these skins, but his earlier version was, and Akira made a small fix to it and released a version with all the FvF skins included.

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/mod..._capbub_fvf.7z

I have replaced these skins with the DOE ones already, if you want it I can post it up somewhere. Another option would be to remake the skin for the newer player model...

The Plague DM model collection has replacement base keycards, they look a bit different, but are much nicer.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~plaguespak/

[osjclatchford]

absolutely.
TM's a real legend for throwing this out the park.
I too would love to see more from him for quake...
Hell, I'd settle for anything by anyone in trms of quake models! its real exciting to see anything happen fore Quake at all these days! LOL

[NightFright]

In general, the model is really good and if you say it's the way you intended it, I am buying it.

For a new release I still think it's too little, though. It'd be thrilling to see TM do maybe a bit more, possibly one or several easier entries of the to-do list I mentioned earlier. That DoE zombie for example just needs a few additional animation frames, no need to create a new model.

[osjclatchford]

well ive got to say that Im using quakespasm and have not noticed any of these anim issues in game.
but I know theres a lot of different engine ports so I guess this is needed.

as for the skin colour.
its true is a tiny bit brighter but there are good reasons.
its down to the quake pallete giving limitations. when scaling the tone of the skin in the strict pallete you get some very stange and ugly artifacts happening as you change the tonal range around. this was the closest I could get it without starting to loose detail in the darker regions where the pallete simply replaced several colours for the same dark one (as it just doesnt contain enough colour variants to replace them with).
with the colourscheme of this monster, there was an extremely small window for what colours would work and what would not. its not always that way in the quake pallete but this time it was.
too much slider left and it all goes greeny brown. too much t'other way and it gets pink. not enough either way and you just loose depth of detail (as explained above).
in the end I had to diffuse the whole skin, post alteration, just to keep any real detail in it at all...

But, take the "face" area.
This is taken directly from the skin of the original shub model and (apart from some extensive stretching, skewing and mspaint pixel punching) its all the original colours.
Now, that matches with my altered teamonster skin so Im satisfied with it.

however the tentacle and other bits are mapped very differently (also part of why it works so well) from the original oldone model so portng these parts over for continuity is a no-no.

essentially, as far as I can see, I think Ive taken this as far as I can where classic-reinterpretation goes.
its a compromise I was happy to make. miniscule colour difference against loss of detail was a no-brainer for me...

[NightFright]

It works now. To make sure it won't cause issues with some ports, I have named the frames. While doing that, I noticed that the second animation (shake) has a lot more frames than the original. Ingame it looks weird since the model seems frozen for quite a while. Deleting those unnecessary frames fixed it.

Data from the original oldone.mdl for comparison:
- Animation "old" has 46 frames (old1-old46)
- Animation "shake" has 20 frames (shake1-shake20)

Maybe the skin could also be darker in general.

[osjclatchford]

hmm...looking at it in qme, the skin and model are fine. I'd say that the animation thing is because the frames are not named.
see here: https://www.mediafire.com/convkey/4b...pd6jzec2zg.jpg

[NightFright]

When opening Tea Monster's last mdl version in q1mv, there are no animations present. Also, one part of the "feet" is not textured on its top.

[osjclatchford]

well that sucks.
still, it'll be worth the wait. I'm sure you'll love it! I think it came out real nice!

[NightFright]

Great! Will test it later this week, then. Haven't had PC access for the last two weeks.

[Tea Monster]

I consider it done.

[NightFright]

So this one now has the animation fixed or it's still beta stage?

[osjclatchford]

yep. thats just great. simple as...

[Tea Monster]

Don't know what happened there. I've retested it and and this one works. Sorry about that!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z4dpngab3c...OneV3.zip?dl=0

[osjclatchford]

i think you may have uploaded the wrong mdl? only the one in that above link has the same(?) animations as on the beta one youve already released. also its the same skin I released as before. theres no changes to any 'striations' on there. I compared this and the last one I released. they are identical....

[Tea Monster]

Osjclatchford - I've included your skin at the resolution you supplied in this new model. I've tweaked the striations on the tentacles to more accurately match the original. Use your original if you don't like it.



If all is good, I'll chuck it in the finished work thread.

Get it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rvqoy3ib00..._osjc.zip?dl=0