Darkness
Rating: 8
baseq2/players/darkness
Intro
"This is the Darkness model, arch-enemy and principal character of "The Darkness" comic book. Also known under the name ok Jackie Estacado, young mafioso of 21 years old. So, at this age he takes possession of the Darkness power and, in the same time, learn that if a women gets pregnant of him, he'll die ...Poor guy!"
Personally, I've never read the comic book, so I don't know much history on this guy... neither do I know what that whole pregnancy thing is about... but nonetheless, it's still a good model that the author obviously spent a lot of free time on. With his Mp5 and bad-enough attitude, Darkness is ready for anything - even a review by me, as scary as it may be. So hop into the badwagon and let me tell you a story about a man named Darkness, and all of his good - and bad - qualities. (A.K.A. Let's start the damned review already!)
The Model
First of all, let's talk about proportion. I've seen some models here and there with some very good proportioning - this, however, is not one of them. This guy's got some huge hands - not to mention his ass. That's right, take a big, long look - he;s got a big butt. As appealing as it may be to the feminin side of things, it just doesn't look right. If you ignore the hands and his butt, it's pretty well proportioned. I don't want to go into too much detail on proportioning, so let's just hop on over to the... details. In the model, that is. I, personally, like the detail in the hair. Very few modelers put that kind of attention into the model's hair. The "spikes" coming from his back are a nice (not to mention neat) touch. Now, children, let's discuss the poly count. It's under the legal amount (800... it seems that the Q2pmp has created a new law that models can't be over 800 in poly count ;-). It's actually 624, to be precice. The gun model dumps an extra 120 on it, however, which is a pretty high load for a weapon model. Overall this model is an above-average model, and deserves three and 1/2 stars. Three and 1/2 stars it is, then.
Score: 7
The Animations
A lot of animators say that the two most important things in an animation are quality and creativity. And dammit, I agree with them. Both have been achieved in the Darkness animatins, which also happen to be overflowing with personality. Since quality comes first, we'll review that part first. You can tell each animation was handled with skill here, from the death, to the jump. From the run, to the taunt. They weren't at all choppy, and were all very life-like and realistic. Although, I would have liked to see a bit more... "OOMPH" in the run animation, like swinging the torso left and right. The taunts were especially good, partially because of their creativity. Speaking of which, let's move along to that now, shall we? I especially loved the salute and wave animations. When he "salutes" you, he really drops his gun on his foot, balances it there for a few second, then launches it back up in the air and catches it. When he "waves" at you, he spins his gun around in a circle. To go along with that, in the point animation, he points at you, and slides his finger across his neck, as if to say "You're gunna die, punk". Enough creativity there for you? There's more, but I don't want to spoil it for you :) You'll have to wait and see for yourself. These great animations deserve five stars.
Score: 10
The Skin
One word is needed to describe these skins: wow. I heard they were scan-ins from a comic book, but either way, they still look great. The armor shines, there is a perfect amount of shading. From the hair, to the arms, the detail is amazing. There is barely any wasted space, and the skin positioning / setup was great. However, they do have their share of problems. Although there are 3 skins, there are no CTF skins *gasp!*, and each of these three is basically the same thing with a different face. Yes, the skin is 220 x 256, but I stretched it out to 256 x 256 myself and there is no noticeable change done. Another thing I noticed with the skin setup is that two of the hair polygons are plasted over the face. This was done because most of the face is blue (the same color of the hair)... but for only one of the skins. With the other two, those two hair polys appear brown or peach. Ouch. You cannot spot those two polys in the screenshots because they're on the underside of the hair, but still noticeable. Overall, the skins are quite breath-taking, yet have their share of problems (don't they all?), so me thinks they deserve four stars.
Score: 8
Sounds
There is no current sound pack for Darkness.
Visible Weapons Support
There is no current visible weapon support for Darkness.
Pack Inclusion
The Darkness model will be in the next pack. Have fun now, kiddies, the bad man is here.
review by BloodRedJack
Addendum 1
The Model: The reviewer didn't mention how badly the model is segmented. The knees are split, the butt is a separate object and just thrown in there, and the arms also have the same problems but aren't quite as noticeable. In the pelvis\groin area there's a lot of overlapping going on with the legs that won't look too good ingame. An appropriate score for the model would be 3.5 stars, but not 4.
The Animations: Five stars is a bit much, 4 maybe. The model's segmented-ness shows out even more here. When the arms and legs move they split open VERY noticeably. In one of the pain animations the torso splits also... I realize it's hard to animate segmented models (unless you're experienced with puppetmaster for lightwave) and it's even harder to model using trueSpace, which the author used for the model. (poor guy..)
The Skin: The reviewer was incorrect that there were no CTF skins, there were red, green, and blue skins, but they were VERY cheap, as the author apparently just shifted the colors to make the entire skin the color he wanted. The skins weren't shaded all that well, as the author filled in many parts of the skin with a solid gray color. The skin looks a little funny on the model to me, like someone I know said, it looks like he has war paint on. The skins probably shouldn't have gotten more than three stars, certainly not 4. That score may have irked some skin authors that have gotten the same (or lower) scores for what they actually spent time working on.
The model is probably only a 3 to 3.5 star model.. I realize it's the author's first model, but all complaints aside, it' s a decent start.
addendum by Jon "shine" Jones
author name Jlbr
tris.md2
Vertices 354
Mapping Vertices 459
Polygons 624
Skin size 220x256
Skin Wasted Space ?%
weapon.md2
Vertices 62
Mapping Vertices 100
Polygons 120
Skin size 128x128
Skin Wasted Space ?%
relevant links
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