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. 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.
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. 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
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