drake staff HD-remake

[talisa]

made a small update to the weapon which i did last night, played around with trying to improve the texture of the gems

used a nice ruby texture i found online as overlay for the gem-pieces of the textures so they look more fancy and less flat
also converted textures to tga cuz i noticed darkplaces kept giving some interlace error every time, no clue what that meant, and i dun notice any difference at all now in the texture, but whatever



gems look a lot more fancy now and not so flat and cartoony like before.
DOWNLOAD NEW STAFF WITH UPDATED GEM-TEXTURES

.

@webangel
oh yes of course, help is still always welcome on the texture, if you wanna help with it please do. right now i just used textures i found online and slapped them together mostly. if you wanna help with the texture in making it better that'll be more then appreciated

[MadGypsy]

Take all the time you need/want. I can help you with the QC for your weapon whenever you want. You can also "join me" when I do it cause it's gonna take all of about 5 minutes.

note: you shouldn't have to turn every frame into a keyframe (ie record it). Blender can "tween" your frames for you. Make the initial frame for your model a keyframe, then go down 5 or so frames and change the model to how it should be for that frame and make a keyframe. Obviously, how far down the timeline you go before adding another keyframe is wholly dependent on how extreme the movement is.

Consider a shotgun blast. The front of the gun moves up, then the entire gun moves back and is then moved back forward. You could achieve that with 4 keyframes. The initial one and then one each for the apex of each movement.

[webangel]

Hi talisa,
If you still need help with the texture, perhaps I can help you.
Your model looks very good so far....

[talisa]

about being able to see your screen, join.me can do that: https://join.me/
it has a few seconds delay cuz it shows your monitor at full resolution, but its perfect for stuff like that, cuz it has a chat window and supports using a mic.
the friend who tutored me in the basics of blender did it with that program. all i know about modelling i know from him


also, yeah ill want to mod the drake QC of course, so my modified model can be used with the drake mod. ill have to make the model first though, lol.
im not very experienced at all in blender, and animating ive only done this once, but i get the idea.
set one frame, move the model to how it should be for next frame, and click button to record the state of the model as next frame. and then move it again for next frame and record it as next frame, and so on and so on


but you'll have to give me some time for this, im a quite inexperienced modeller so it might take me a bit. i get the idea though of how to add the swoosh part, ive seen in quake models how they do the flash and i assum the swipe part is done the same way, make the piece be placed out from sight when the weapon is idle and make the polys move into view quickly when the weapon is used. like i could make the swipe piece be small and hidden inside the gem while idle, and quickly make it big and be moved it out of the gem and into place when the weapon is used

[MadGypsy]

Telisa, I can do whatever you want me to with the QC, but I need a finished model first (ie..new animation already made).

I suggested adding a flare animation within the model itself because then you wouldn't have to change the QC at all. Plus as the frames go to rapid fire and only play a couple, it would just seem like the flare is charging rapidly.

If you are willing to modify the QC, then I'll make it do whatever you want (as long as you provide the completed model). I'm guessing you will want to modify the Drake QC. Shouldn't be a problem, especially since the weapon is already there.

Do you know of a way that you can see my screen real time? Like, literally connect straight to my computer and see everything on my screen, including whatever I am doing? I am aware of "PC anywhere" but that is too much access. I don't want people to be able to take over my desktop, I just want them to see it.

I write QC and make lil mods for people. That may help them with their project but it doesn't help them with their education (independence). I'm thinking about making it a stipulation that people watch me make their mod, so they can learn my tricks and do it themself.

[talisa]

thanx xage and gdiddy


@gypsy
i unno, ill have to try. think qc would be the way to go though, it would make it much easier cuz a completely different animation could be used. no matter what i do theres still just 7frames the animation uses, and while constantly firing just 2 or 3 frames are used and itll most likely look bad anyway.

would be awesome if you could look into the QC and help me with allowing a different animation to be used. and perhaps if possible it would be cool if the weapon pose changes too when its charged. like if its charged itll have a glow around it and the staff will be shaking a bit to show the fact theres so much energy charged in it

and yeah i like the idea of a swipe, like the sword from hexen2. would be nice to have a constant side to side swiping while continously firing. the idea of a swipe effect withing the model itself isnt bad at all, i think i might add that to add some flair to swiping the staff. something like this

[xaGe]

Looks great talisa!

[gdiddy62]

Excellent work Talisa!

[MadGypsy]

Hmmm, you're right. Can you add an effect in the model itself? For instance, just skip animation of the actual staff altogether and instead add a "flare" animation to the tip, within the model itself.

idk...I'm just making stuff up, but if it's possible it could work.

[talisa]

true. but for constant firing i think it uses just 2 or 3 of the frames,
just look at the clip when i am firing constantly, it doesnt use anywhere near all of the frames.

and the entire animation is just 7 frames. so im afraid it might look bad while firing constantly and itll look weird

[talisa]

true. but for constant firing i think it uses just 2 frames. just look at the clip when i am firing constantly, it doesnt use anywhere near all of the frames.

and the animation is just 7 frames. so im afraid it might look bad while firing constantly

[MadGypsy]

yeah the effect is a bit lame, but fixing it would require custom QC

Bummer...but you do have an outlet. That version can be for SMC.

and fixing the animation would also require QC to use different frames

You should be able to just animate the same frames differently. If there are (ex) 5 frames for a recoil, well, you have 5 frames for a "wave/cast/whatever".

what i have done now is just copy over the same kinda animation..

Yeah, just don't do it that way.

-----

I like your art though! It looks like it belongs and it's an attractive model. I give it 2 woots.

[talisa]

yeah the effect is a bit lame, but fixing it would require custom QC to define a new effect,
and fixing the animation would also require QC to assign more and different frames

but yeah it would be nice, but id have to also practice some with animation too.

what i have done now is just pretty much copy over the animation the original weapon had,
which is just straight forward-and-back movement along the X-axis

[MadGypsy]

I just keep posting "good job" over and over. You are doing a good job, but I need to mix it up a bit.

Excellent Job!

I don't like the default effect (spike+particle dots) either. The wand almost seems like a replacement shotgun with the animation too. I know you intend to make the effect better, but what about making the animation more of a "wave" or a "spell cast" and forgo the "'recoil".

[talisa]

another update.... last night played around with blender and figured out how to animate the wand and made the HUD version of the wand, including animation

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbMfGwSU-g0]drake wand HUD - YouTube[/ame]

DOWNLOAD NEW UPDATED WAND WHICH INCLUDES HUD-VERSION

it doesnt have the flash effect, but i dun like the original effect much.
intend to make a new effect for the wand, wanna make an effect akin to the one of the wand of hexen,
bright spikey-halo like flash instead of the funky spikes the original has