Wizard Model

Wizard Model


The wizard model is not quite ready for community release, although the model is already fully unwrapped and rigged ready to be animated.

I wanted to invite feedback from the community at this stage so that as I complete the model over the weekend I may be able to accomodate any worthwhile suggestions.

The intention is to release this model to the community for free in return for getting some help with multi-materials and shaders...

Anyway, please post C&C over this weekend:

I would like to know what mesh animations I should include?

The Hat and Cloak are seperate models, what other accessories should I add? I intend to add a staff, but what else? Any other visual feedback would be much appreciated.

{Please note: Only the head and beard have final textures applied]

pretty cool!

Maybe more wider arms and wrists?(i mean the cloth.)

flame-wizard version is cool eneough (maybe a little red may look better). And a glacier-wizard skin would be cool.

The cape doesn't seem to fit. Maybe it would be better to make the robe all one mesh. The face texture looks good and proportions look right. Look forward to see the final textured version. GS out.

About the accessories, maybe some kind of Magical Ring would be cool.

Wow, thanks for the quick comments

I agree with you Gaimesaint762, the cape is not looking like its well tied into the model, I may omit it at a later stage. Will revisit this a little later.

@Quadraxas: I also agree, his cuffs needed to be larger, both to make the wrists look better, but also to be more 'wizard' like. I will see what I can do with them.



When I am completely happy with the model mesh I will revisit the main diffuse texture and will definatly generate alt-skins like: humble mage, fire mage, ice-mage and so on. Maybe even a few of you guys could have a go at painting some interesting robes...

The final model will include multiple diffuse and normal maps for each component and I also forgot to quote the current poly count: [Tris]

Body, Head & Staff = 2616
Body, Head, Hat, Cloak & Staff = 3170

I like the style, but the hat should stay off, and the flames need some red, also i would give him some more hair on his head, maybe long hair, kinda merlin-like, typical wizard, or go to the extreme and and go bald, and give him a dark skull cap. great model, looking forward to the contribution, i want to see him in wed.

The staff looks cool... Im thinking that a bald head and maybe a hood option instead of the hat will work better. Keep up the good work. GS out.

Saturdays Progress



So I reworked the main body UV-mapping as I was unhappy with it, not to mention the handful of rogue vertex's that seemed to be kicking around.

With that done and taking onboard suggestions here, I realized that there was something of a 'Red' element required, so I hope the new skin is pleasing to the eye

I am now happy with the undergown, so I am going to focus more on the main cloack. I am keeping the hat in at the moment, I just have a very specific look I am trying to get. Note: The Hat is a seperate model

I'm also pretty happy with the biped rig and have begun to experiment with some animation, starting with a simple old-man walk.

Once the model is released, those of you who whish, can edit the skins for the model and create their own unique wizard outfit

I hope you like the screenshots of the work in progress and I am looking forward to hearing what kinds of animations I should include and to hear what you think about MED-Bones being added to the model?

I will upload a short video of the animated model when I get some time.

TIA for your comments

EDIT: Animated Streaming Video Here

beautiful, is the ambient occlusion baked? or will that only show in these renders. If i were you i might add some details such as wrinkles to the robe, but i realize thats a little difficult, and it looks fine the way it is.

Great work.

Ambient Occlusion is baked into the diffuse skin for now, but could easily be baked into an AO map, should a shader be available

I am hoping I will get a little shader help in return for this community donation model. Although no expectations ...

Oh that reminds me. Please let me know if the video works ok, first time we've tried this method.

yes, that i-am-a-fighter-and-a-knight-and-a-wizard video works

hahah

great animation. incredibly smooth work, i wish i could rig that well, but im lazy :P

Thats amazing, wonderful work. A hooded robe would look good too.

Great looking model indeed!

If I may make a suggestion, little observation regarding the video:
While the animations look smooth they make little sense from an effective combat point of view.
The wizard has his hand much to high on that staff and ends up in some kind of knot.
Fighting with the staff is, imho, meant to increase the radius of attack/damage and thus the hand should be around the middle of the staff for effective attacking/blocking etc.

What I would really love to see is some animations with only staff as weapon, and some animations only with sword, and of course some with both.
That would offer the possibility to have that wizard in a game with either different techniques or skills which the player has to learn.

Great work indiglow! Keep it up!
Oh and about MED bones: I personally don't mind and think it is best to have bones which are recognized by the engine to be able to use them in C-Script/Lite-C

cheerio
Xarthor

edit: Making the animations looking not like from a pro-fighter is imho not a bad thing. I mean after all this is a wizard and not a champion fighter

Thanks for the kind and positive comments.

@Bot190: My intention is to deliver a good set of extras and accessories with the wizard, these are likely to include:

- Head Gear: Hat, Hood, Skull Cap and possibly a Sorcerers Mask
- Equipment: Backpack, Wizard Pouches and a Mage's Spell Book
- Weapons: Basic Staff & Basic Sword - I hope to include a sheathed sword with the equipment pack.

Other items such as rings and smaller items I suspect will be added to the model skins instead of as geom.

Please feel free to suggest other items to include in the above.

@Xarthor: Thanks for the feedback. After posting the video and watching it a few times played back, I burst into laughter at the end. All I could see in my mind, was an old man, desperatly trying to look like he was a martial arts extpert, only to get in something of a twisted knot at the end.

So yes, I totally agree, the actual animation is about as effective a fighting style as flailing your arms wildly in the air might be.

Still the animation itself was very useful to test the rigging and ensure that all the verts are correctly mapped. The high kick certainly stretches the cloak and leg mesh beyond the usual range that will be used when animating this model.

So the upshot is that I am now happy to begin construction of a Gamestudio set of animations.

I've already begun work on some fighting animations and have taken your input directly here. I am presently working on :-

- Attack with Staff Anim 1 (Right Hand Swing)
- Attack with Staff Anim 2 (Right Hand Stab)
- Magic Attack with Staff

- Attack with Sword Anim 1 (Left Hand Swing)
- Attack with Sword Anim 2 (Left Hand Stab)
- Block with Sword (Hold at middle frame for struggle-block)

I will upload some vids of these when completed, hopefully later today

Regarding the bones, I have been giving this much though these past few months, as it means a great deal to our development workflow over at indiglow.co.uk. We certainly wish to support ragdoll, if its simple enough to implement. However we do not like the workflow pipeline in MED for creating animations and especially not for animating complex mesh with bones.

Until such a point as 3DsMax Bones export/import with MED are supported (Which I doubt we will ever see) we are aiming to generate a large percentage of the animations with more traditional mesh animation. Using Max rigging to generate the mesh transforms and exporting/importing them in MED.

However we would then need to include Bones rigging, if we want to have ragdoll or any kind of IK footplanting in our game.

So how we achieve this is yet to be proven, hence the generation of this wizard model.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Hi, there seems to be two different models at two different skill levels on the wizard, the face is great, has a great texture. But when you compare it to the rest of the model it doesnt fit, did you use a base human mesh made by someone else and just add the robe? I dont mean any offence, I'm just curious.

@indiGLOW:
did you try the fbx file format, which MED can import?
I'm not sure if it supports bones and I don't know if max can export to fbx, but this could be worth a shot.

@ryangregorey:
I guess thats because the face+beard is completely skinned, while the body (robe etc.) is not showing of the final texture afaik.

@Xarthor: Yes max can export FBX and it works perfectly with med.

Yeah ryan, as Xarthor points out, the texture on the head is complete, high rez 512 skin, based on a photoshopped head photo. The rest of the model is skinned using simple 3D paint techniques, except for the underrobes, visible in the front-middle of the wizard robe.

The model is all hand created:

the robes were first made in 3DsMax and then imported into Zbrush2. This enables me to paint detail on to a subdivided mesh. The final mesh is then re-exported over to 3DsMax for rigging.

As the robes should flow more evenly, the mesh is more triangulated than the other body parts.

Here are some screens that better show the topology / poly-structure:





Meanwhile I continue with the fighting animations, I already have some generic walking / running animations built.

Edit: We are actually using the .ASE format, which includes the seperated materials. TBH: I've not experimented with .FBX as I appear to be missing the required max plugs. (Note: Currently only running Max7 at home, can't afford the upgrade at the mo).

The more I work with this model, the more I find myself, revisiting the core robe mesh, and the unwrap. I have already unwrapped the robes twice, with the above images showing the fruits of this labour.

Yet I find myself once more tweaking and re-planning it! lol

I've even got the Mrs offering up jems of wisdom for how I have managed to combine the classic 'Wizard' with the classic 'Sorcerer' image and have managed to miss both! lol

So the mission continues...