Lady Death
Rating: 9.5
baseq2/players/ladydeath
Intro
As part of the Chaos! Comics PPM Contest, Paul Steed (id Software), Jade "Nemesis" Moffat (creator of the Necromicus and Morticus models) and Alan Yen have teamed up to create a model based on Lady Death.
The Model
I was looking at this model for the first time, when I saw that the feet looked familiar...kinda like the...Crackwhore model!!! In fact, the base frame of this model is nearly identical to the Crackwhore. There are differences, of course. One notable change is the head, where the hat has been replaced with flowing hair. Also, the somewhat awkward hands have been replaces with simple fused hands not unlike those of the id female model. The most notable change, though, is that Lady Death, while still having generous proportions, is not nearly as top heavy as her predecessor.
While overall the base frame is an improvement over the Crackwhore, it is not without its flaws. As a Lady Death fan pointed out, while the comic book character hind quarters are rather trim, the model has the Crackwhore's oversized rump. Another inherited problem is the shoulders, which I feel could use a few more polygons. I have heard comments that the breast are misshapen, but they look fine to me.
Score: Nine
The Animations
Initially, there were some problems with this model. First of all, they offer a separate version of Lady Death with a sword, yet the tris.md2 animations for both versions are identical, so she handles the sword like a shotgun. I've been informed by Nemesis that he had never intended for there to be two separate versions of Lady Death, and that the sword was supposed to be for screenshots only. Another problem was that the large VWEP models were overlapping with the model's face in the stand animation.
Nemesis fixed the VWEP animation problem using what appears to be the same animation in the Chastity model... Both models appear to have the same slight "hiccup" near the end of the stand animation cycle, a small artifact of a troubled past. Still, the fix is a definite improvement. Another slight "flaw" is that the ankles twist at very odd angles in the death animations. This is actually intentional on the part of the animator, as it was intended to look painful and being in high heeled shoes does tend to make it easier for a person to twist their ankles. (Er...though I don't speak from personal experience... ;) ) Personally, I think he went a little overboard, but it's mostly subjective in this case.
A person on the message board said I needed to be a little more positive in my reviews, and in this case it's easy. There's a lot of things to love about this model's animations, and I came out of this review with a much higher opinion of his animation skills. Lady Death clearly has one of the best run animations I've seen, and I suggest that anyone making a female model study them carefully. The taunts are standard but well done (although I'm not sure I get one of them), as are every other animation. Jade decided to take route more subtle than Paul Steed's Crackwhore animations, making the style less controversial while still managing to give a life like quality to the model. In fact, I dare say that Lady Death could become rather popular as a generic female model, should some clever skin artists decide to make some non-comic-book skins for her.
Score: Ten
The Skin
Alan Yen did a fine job on Lady Death's four skins. Each one mimics her comic book outfits very well, and the skin size is mercifully the standard 256x256. (We've had a few models that use non-standard skin sizes recently.) There are two problems that need to be noted, though. First, Lady Death's white completion tends to be too bright in OpenGL, making it difficult to see her features in good lighting. Secondly, there seems to be a higher than normal skin waste: 40 percent. At first glance, this looks like a serious oversight, but upon closer inspection, you will find that the skins contain some texturing that doesn't show up on the model. I believe this corresponds to a part of the model that was removed. My theory was that Lady Death was originally modeled and skinned with a cape, but that it was removed to ease animation and to lower the face count.
I would like to have seen them redo the skin size and mapping for her weapon model. Although it's based on the id shotgun, they really should have given it a factor of 2 skin size. They did a new skin for it, and the model's MD2 is separate from the shotgun model, so there's really no excuse.
Score: Eight
Sounds
Cat Gilbert was an excellent choice at the voice of Lady Death, and the sounds fit very well with the model. There are a few points where I have a slight problem making out what she's saying, but otherwise Dolomite did an excellent job.
Score: Nine
Visible Weapons Support
Lady Death has full id standard VWEP support, with the exception of the blaster, which is a re-skinned shotgun. At the time this review was written, there are some problems with skin linking, but I couldn't really figure out what was done wrong, as the linking shown by NST was the same as the Chastity model's VWEP, which works fine.
Pack Inclusion
She's a little on the tall side, and the skin waste is a big excessive, but it's not a big deal. She'll be in the next pack.
review by Space Dog
author name Paul Steed - Modeling
Jade Moffat - Animation
Alan Yen - Skinning
Dolomite - Sounds
tris.md2
Vertices 354
Mapping Vertices 2160 (Bug?)
Polygons 684
Skin size 256x256
Skin Wasted Space 40%
weapon.md2
Vertices 42
Mapping Vertices 70
Polygons 72
Skin size 136x60
Skin Wasted Space ?
relevant links
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