Hi. Some of you may remember Az from DarkCreations -he had been working on a very promising project called Josef's Tear. He had given me permission to host a collection of mdl's a few years ago. Some time after I gave up my old site he lost his files and so they haven't been available. I started going through my backups today and found most of the collection.

The models were divided into categories with different licensing restrictions for each. I am only posting models listed as free to use in personal and commercial games. I may eventually post the other categories but have to do research first.

Here is the first batch. I dug out all the plants and one set of books. He did these at various times over a few years so some are better than others. I can't program in PHP so haven't been able to modify the site CMS enough to save the file descriptions and images in the database so you'll have to open them to decide if you like them.

http://stormvisions.com/pages/art_design/3d_game_studio.php

If you do use them then please recognize Az from these forums (I don't even know his real name). No credit to me is needed, this was all Az's work.

As for help I mentioned ... if any of the more competent modelers/skinners improve, or add new skins (or even add to the collection) I'll be glad to host them as I'd like to see the collection updated. I also have at least one pack of potted plants where Az made models but used commercial textures when he was learning. I can't post these with those textures but if someone with proven modeling experience wants to look at them, tweak them and add original skins so we can add them to the downloads just PM me.

I am going to keep on trying to contact Az so I can post these free use ones to Acknex to make sure they remain available. I expect there may be anywhere from 25-35 additional free use models after I go through all the folders and I'll be adding them over the next few days as I have a chance to verify the licensing based on his original instructions.

I've only checked some of these models and I think they are awesome!
A very handy contribution indeed.

Thank you bupaje (thank you Az )
I'll be looking often at your site in hope for... more!

Good deal. Burt, you by any chance no what happened with Az? A few months back (or maybe more, I don't remember) one of his partners posted saying he had run into some issues, and most of JT was lost - but he mentioned something about him coming back maybe. Oh well... Thanks for putting these up, and thanks Az!

@Nadester - That was the same last news I had but haven't heard back from him since. Going to fire off some mail again this week.

Josef's Tear was probably the best looking game put together with 3dgamestudio. I have some old shots of some of the building models it would be great to see what resources others might have of Az's even just to look at it is inspiring. I'm sure these models will be well appreciated.

Good luck with your project bupaje.


Guardian

Bupaje,

Do you know how to make those alpha channel textures in Az models? I was trying to change the colours but I couldn't do it.

Thanks.

@Guardian - I agree. I was working with him for a little while and so he sent me screenshots of the city -and untextured top view- and it was massive and well detailed. He also had been experimenting with rolling clouds and fog banks and other weather effects, had some 'closed' house with open windows that you could see people engaged in various daily activities rather than many rpg people are just standing waiting for you to talk to them. Lots of awesome scenes and effects ...

@nunofontoura - I'm not the guy to ask on that. I had poor results with alpha transparency (maybe cause PSP has 24bit tga?) but you might ask Loopix as I see his plant sprites look perfect.

Thanks, bupaje. I'll do it.

Az was hit by the Tsunami afaik, but everything was fine.

The bad thing was, that someone boke into his house and took away all the electronical stuff...

You should tell Az that you have found a backup of all the models. He probably doesn't even know that they are NOT lost after all. That might make him very happy.

I had told Az before we lost touch that I had backed up his models. Going to take my old Zip disks to Kinkos and burn them onto CD's as I think there were some on those. I think RichD may have his textures backed up and at least a few buildings that he worked on. Remains for Az to decide what he is going to do.