Bong
Rating: 1
baseq2/players/bong
Intro
[ from readme text ]:
This is the 3rd release of this model and by far the best...."
I guess every modeler has to start somewhere, although others should learn that they're just not cut out for modeling. This model has been sitting around for months because nobody thought it worth a download, so is it worth a review? Not really, but I hope people can see this as an example of how NOT to make and model.
The Model
The model for the Bong is very simplistic. I've seen many bongs in my time and none where as boring as this one. Even a bottle with a piece of garden hose out the side would look better than a plain cylinder. Although it is original, a little more imagination would have gone a long way. The Skateboard the bong rides around on could also have had a more detail with a rounder shape as well proper wheels and trucks etc. One Major problem with the model is the front wheels are duplicated. It seems he accidentally pasted twice there, so it's actually got 3 sets of wheels, lots of faces wasted there. More faces could have been saved by welding the vert from the center of the cylinders to the edge, every modeler should know that. Over all the model is pretty poorly done, and with a little more time could have been much better.
Score: One
The Animations
Keeping consistent with the rest of the model, the animations are poorly done. Admittedly there's not all the much you can do with a cylinder and skateboard, but there is much room for improvement. Firstly during the stand animation the bong does and ollieflip, then a spin, while this may look cool it really is best left for the taunt frames. A stand animation should be a stand animation, and be generally still or looking around, not jumping all over the place. The Run animation looks ok, but would have been better if it was tic-tack'ing to give the appearance of movement. The attack frames show no recoil at all, other that the cone of the bong bouncing a bit it's completely still and looks unrealistic. The crouch frames for the bong are all identical to the equivalent standing frames, the only difference being the bong is scaled down to about half size which really is a lazy way of doing it.
Score: Two
The Skin
The Mapping and linking: The mapping on the tris.md2 model is actually very good with only 9% wasted space (8.8% actually). It's not that hard to get such simple object as theses to map well though so it's not as impressive as it may seem. One thing that really does deserve a beating is the 100% wasted space on the weapon model skin. With just 1 poly that isn't even mapped properly, the skin is 320*200 in size.
If you have any problem with linking a skin, have a look at the Quake2 Modelling F.A.Q. There's no excuse for a wrongly linked skin. However this model has the skin linked to C:\Windows\Desktop\Bong\base.pcx. Player tris.md2 models aren't supposed to have a skin linked at all, and even if it did have a linked skin, it sure wouldn't live on the windows desktop.
The Skin: The Skins on the bong are pretty average. All three look like varies high color images pasted onto the skin. The result is pretty ugly and very basic. Little effort has gone into making the skins look good at all.
Overall half a star for good mapping on the tris skin, and that's about all.
Score: One
Sounds
I was surprised to see sounds where included with the model, then I heard them. It's amazing what you can do with a microphone and a chipmunk voice, although they really don't know what the effect is for. It sounds like the player is getting high in helium, not marijuana. They really don't add anything in the way of quality to the model.
Visible Weapons Support
None, and I doubt there ever will be.
Pack Inclusion
There's just way too many problems to bother. While the models scale is ok, the skin is linked wrongly, the weapon skin is a total waste of space, and the model is just not up to the standard we like to see out there in DM land.
review by Dave "HotFat" Biggs
author name MadMike
tris.md2
Vertices 265
Mapping Vertices 294
Polygons 492
Skin size 256x256
Skin Wasted Space 9%
weapon.md2
Vertices 3
Mapping Vertices 3
Polygons 1
Skin size 320x200
Skin Wasted Space 100%
relevant links
(none)
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