Post by jdude on May 26, 2010 22:45:12 GMT -5
I've always been a Tremors fan, and after helping to make a TRex enemy in Garry's Mod, (a pure sandboxing mod for the Source Engine from which Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress and Half Life originated) I got the ambitious idea to take modding a step or so further, and create enemies and weapons from Tremors with which to mess around with.
This would not be a full mod, merely an addon to GMod with the canonical Tremors film creatures realized to the furthest extent that Lua coding and the Source Engine can provide. As in, Graboids turn into Shriekers, Shriekers multiply and turn into AssBlasters, AssBlasters fly around and lay eggs, eggs turn into baby Graboids (I've dubbed them "Grablets") and Grablets grow up into Graboids. The ultimate idea is to have a full-functioning life-cycle with the potential to completely overwhelm a GMod map. Leave them to their own devices, and they WILL take over.
I'm well into development on this. Aside from the eggs, all of the creatures have been modeled and rigged with ready UWV mapping coordinates. I've finished animating the Shrieker, which in theory can function in the game. Both the Shrieker and Graboid models work as functioning ragdolls in-game too.
The problem? Texturing. For the uninitiated, 3D models depend on more than mere geometric detail. They HAVE to, because computers even now can only handle so much physical detail. There are cheats of course, but they all have to do with basically painting a model to look more detailed than it really is. This process is called "texturing", or "skinning" in certain circles.
Now, as you'll tell based on the images I'm posting below, we HAD a Texturer before, and a darn good one. But in the past few months his work stagnated and eventually he basically disappeared leaving none of his fully finished work in my or anyone's hands, and as long as I waited, I realized I'd need a replacement.
However, the wait was long enough that a lot of people lost interest or figured the project was dead, and requests looking for talent for one reason or another have garnered next to nothing. And this might have something to do with Tremors being a cult-hit niche-audience guilty pleasure. Thus, I've decided to come here, to a Tremors fansite, where such a factor doesn't exist.
Also, for those skeptical of how feasible it is to code such things for these creatures, I've managed to interest the best and brightest of the GMod coders, the Lua-prodigy "Silverlan", who had put out a great percentage of the worthwhile addons Garry's Mod boasts today. He helped me revamp my original TRex recently within days, utilizing every function and animation to the best use they could be put to given the content at hand, after having suffered with an enthusiastic competitor of Silverlan's, who it transpired wasn't even in the same league, much like the "competition" between Dreamworks and Pixar. The man is incredible, and I wouldn't put it past him to not only find the complexities of Graboids and their mutations possible, but positively easy.
Either way, if you're just REALLY good at Photoshop but don't understand texturing, that's okay. It's basically nothing more than painting over a paper of cut-out shapes intended to look like something via origami-style folding. A UVW map is the geometric layout of a model's surface, as if someone cut it in places, flattened it out and arranged it in a congruous way. The important thing is to know that things like shadows or highlights are unnecessary given the game's rendering engine provides that dynamically based on something called "bump mapping", which you needn't worry about.
But for anyone interested, all the info and materials you'll need are in this link below:
www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=915477
But of course, to texture with some insight, you'll likely need to see the texture on the models as you work. Anyone who wants to try can be linked by me to a .obj of the models for download, to be imported. For those without 3d modeling programs, GMax, the free lesser version of my own program, 3D Studio Max, ought to be competent for viewing the models with their textures applied, though it won't be capable of much else.
But without further ado, here are some pictures, both in-game and fully-rendered, of the Tremors models in the works.
This would not be a full mod, merely an addon to GMod with the canonical Tremors film creatures realized to the furthest extent that Lua coding and the Source Engine can provide. As in, Graboids turn into Shriekers, Shriekers multiply and turn into AssBlasters, AssBlasters fly around and lay eggs, eggs turn into baby Graboids (I've dubbed them "Grablets") and Grablets grow up into Graboids. The ultimate idea is to have a full-functioning life-cycle with the potential to completely overwhelm a GMod map. Leave them to their own devices, and they WILL take over.
I'm well into development on this. Aside from the eggs, all of the creatures have been modeled and rigged with ready UWV mapping coordinates. I've finished animating the Shrieker, which in theory can function in the game. Both the Shrieker and Graboid models work as functioning ragdolls in-game too.
The problem? Texturing. For the uninitiated, 3D models depend on more than mere geometric detail. They HAVE to, because computers even now can only handle so much physical detail. There are cheats of course, but they all have to do with basically painting a model to look more detailed than it really is. This process is called "texturing", or "skinning" in certain circles.
Now, as you'll tell based on the images I'm posting below, we HAD a Texturer before, and a darn good one. But in the past few months his work stagnated and eventually he basically disappeared leaving none of his fully finished work in my or anyone's hands, and as long as I waited, I realized I'd need a replacement.
However, the wait was long enough that a lot of people lost interest or figured the project was dead, and requests looking for talent for one reason or another have garnered next to nothing. And this might have something to do with Tremors being a cult-hit niche-audience guilty pleasure. Thus, I've decided to come here, to a Tremors fansite, where such a factor doesn't exist.
Also, for those skeptical of how feasible it is to code such things for these creatures, I've managed to interest the best and brightest of the GMod coders, the Lua-prodigy "Silverlan", who had put out a great percentage of the worthwhile addons Garry's Mod boasts today. He helped me revamp my original TRex recently within days, utilizing every function and animation to the best use they could be put to given the content at hand, after having suffered with an enthusiastic competitor of Silverlan's, who it transpired wasn't even in the same league, much like the "competition" between Dreamworks and Pixar. The man is incredible, and I wouldn't put it past him to not only find the complexities of Graboids and their mutations possible, but positively easy.
Either way, if you're just REALLY good at Photoshop but don't understand texturing, that's okay. It's basically nothing more than painting over a paper of cut-out shapes intended to look like something via origami-style folding. A UVW map is the geometric layout of a model's surface, as if someone cut it in places, flattened it out and arranged it in a congruous way. The important thing is to know that things like shadows or highlights are unnecessary given the game's rendering engine provides that dynamically based on something called "bump mapping", which you needn't worry about.
But for anyone interested, all the info and materials you'll need are in this link below:
www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=915477
But of course, to texture with some insight, you'll likely need to see the texture on the models as you work. Anyone who wants to try can be linked by me to a .obj of the models for download, to be imported. For those without 3d modeling programs, GMax, the free lesser version of my own program, 3D Studio Max, ought to be competent for viewing the models with their textures applied, though it won't be capable of much else.
But without further ado, here are some pictures, both in-game and fully-rendered, of the Tremors models in the works.