Apologies to the Author
I wanted to take a moment to apologize for taking so long in getting this review done. I finished over half of it the day I volunteered to do it, and the rest only today. But I think I'm quickly getting a reputation for the LONG delays in getting things done ; )
Anyway, on to the show.
Intro
Victor, as in Frankenstein, but 1999 style.
My 2nd player model..tried to build and animate something a bit different. Right after finishing my first model I did a sketch of this one and dove right in. . Originality
This is Curtis ("Koz, DerKap'n" ) Kozielec's second model, but I never did manage to dig up the name of his first. Hopefully R13 will bless this review with his quaint little green editorial text, politely stating the name and link to the first model. This model isn't exactly a completely original idea for a model, being based on Frankenstein's monster (note...monster...not victor himself), but it certainly is a new interpretation of the idea. I have to give him pretty high marks for it in the creativity department, as it's definitely something new. I think the idea could have been pushed a bit further in it's design, though. The Model
At 652 faces, the model is well under the limit for the PMP requirements. Overall, it's decently constructed, and it's not based on any other PPMs. The first thing I did was import the model into Max and add a STL check to the stack. No double faces, no obvious errors in the model overall that I could find. I then moved on to the individual parts.
The head: I first looked at just the mesh without the skin. My first thought was that the jaw was way too small. After looking at the skinned mesh, I realized why. He doesn't have a jaw. Not a bad head, it could've used some more tweaking though. There were a few edges that could have been turned to further define the contour of the face...whether they were done that way on purpose to make it look a bit deformed or whether it was just sloppy or inexperienced work, I can't say.
The right arm was well and efficiently built with a sound diamond over square approach to modeling. Getting into the gun at the end of his arm, the center vertex at the end of the barrel could have easily been moved to the edge and welded, knocking 2 faces off the count. I realize you lose that concave dip...but it doesn't read in the game anyway, and it's something that you can do better in the skin. The joining between the upper arm and the gun is a bit strange in the model, with the skin on, this area suffers a lot more. Just looking at the mesh, I thought the author had done some interesting merging of flesh and machinery. But with the skin you can clearly see that it's not. This area is kind of muddled with no clear structure of operation. I think some more time could've been spent here cleaning up the geometry.
Hmmm...he has no left arm. Moving on.
The clavicular area is well built. Diamond over square shows up again...for those of you who don't know what this means, if you're doing a 4 sided cylinder it's generally better to turn it so the cross section looks like a diamond instead of a square. It's a cute little trick that will help your low poly cylinder look rounder. The heart is really nicely done, very elegant in it's simplicity. Just the fact that you can see his is nice...I think it may be a first for player models?
The shoulders are just simple 8 sided primitives. Probably could have been done with much lower count, maybe even as low as 5 sides. They're ok, but that's about all. Curtis might have tried different shape to convey shoulder area, but that's just a suggestion on my part.
The spine is simple, sweet, and to the point. It serves it's function and nothing more
I did the same thing with the hips that I did with the jaw, one of the dangers of examining the model without seeing the skin. My first though was, "Where are they? It looks like beaver chewed him down to the spine." They made a bit more sense once I viewed the skinned model, but they're still strange. I really think there should be some hips there
The thighs are probably too complex, could have easily trimmed some faces off with no loss of structure. The front of the knees are strangely built and a bit complicated. The lower legs have a nice general shape, but could have been simplified a bit. The feet are constructed with a fairly decent shape, no major complaints here.
Since the weapon is built into the arm of the model itself, the author employed the single face weapon.md2. I'm really glad to see that he also went with a 16 by 16 pixel skin, but I'm not sure if he couldn't have gone even smaller with it. It is linked to the skin properly, thank god, so Curtis didn't slack here. I guess if I wanted to be a real pain in the ass I could complain about the 91% wasted space, which comes out to be about 233 pixels not used. ; )
Overall, the model is of decent construction, could've been done with fewer faces, could've had more detail with more.
Above average work. 3 1/2 stars. The Animations
First off, I have to say that Vitctor99's exposed heart really beats in some of the animations. Not a really big deal, but it really impresses the hard-core modeling geeks in this community, myself included.
In the idle animation, the feet go sliding all over the place. I know it's hard to prevent this in the Q2 engine, but in victor's case...this isn't due to .md2 limitations. Granted, it's something that's very time consuming to prevent (unless you're using character studio or a nice IK system and can nail those puppies to the floor) but it can be done and it's definitely worth the extra effort. Otherwise, it's a merely decent animation.
The run animation is our first glimpse of real character with his lumbering, limping step. It may have been accidental, but you'd be wise to keep that to yourself and say, "Yeah, that's what I mean to do." Only problem is there's no sense of weight conveyed. His hips don't bob, no shifting to counterbalance that honkin' huge gun, something to strive for in animation. As a side note, the head bobs in unison with the body...not quite right, if you shift the key frames for the head movement a couple of frames after the body, you'll get much better results. Try it, it's a really easy way to convey the sense of that head having weight. In fact it works for any body part. The rule of thumb I use is, the further something is from the center of mass, the longer it takes to follow the path of motion. That make sense?
The attack animation is just not very strong, which is a shame as this is probably the one seen the most. However, there is a sampling of really nice secondary motion carried through the shoulders into the chest and head, it all should have been exaggerated a bit more. The biggest problem carries through the hips down into the floor through the feet. There's no weight at all on back foot, which would be the load bearer in this animation, instead it floats/slides around. Would have been nice to see a shift in weight from the front leg to the back, that's a big damn gun sutured to the end of his arm...it has to packs a lot of oomph!
The pain animation could have used a lot more exaggeration in the range of movement.
The jump is strange. I can't figure out if he's jumping straight up and coming straight down, or if he's actually jumping up and forward. The landing seems to indicate the latter, as his feet are way out in front of him, suggesting forward movement...but if that were the case, his body would continue in it's forward motion so that he actually ends up over his feet during the recovery. Instead, he stands straight back up. So either way, it's not right...instead we get a mix between straight up and down, and up and forward. On the good side, the bulky gun arm finally moved the way it was supposed to, trailing behind the motion of the body. So not well done, but well done.
I think the flip animation is an attempt at the classic, shaking the fist in anger thing. It doesn't read very well, mostly because the timing is way off. Might have tried getting the arm up and back down a lot quicker. As it is, it's just weak and lacks any sort of dynamic movement. Same thing for the salute, plus it has the added bonus of having a serious problem with the front foot of just sliding into place and back out. The thing about this type of animation for the salute, is that in order for it to read...there has to be that moment in when he's at attention and there's a pause in the movement.
The taunt confused me for a while. I finally came to the conclusion that he's doubling over chuckling and stamping his back foot. Once again, big problem with the feet. He actually hovers in this animation for a bit as he lifts his front foot, then lifts his back foot to stomp. The illusion of weight doesn't even have a chance when this sort of thing happens. The hips once again fail to move at all, although they do drop a bit in the wave animation. Unfortunately, the feet go with it this time, dipping through the floor. The arm just comes straight up and straight back down, which was a bit of a letdown as I thought I was finally going to get to see some twisting in the spine.
Once again, we're plagued by the sliding feet in the point animation. The same timing issues as the salute and flip crop up here as well. He does point though, dead ahead. I think the best use for this animation would be to do a mafia style execution where you get up right in front of someone, point, and press the fire button. It would take some incredible timing, but it would really impress the victim I think. Well, it would impress me anyway.
The crouch idle is actually not bad, it really does a good job of conveying the character. I think it could have done well with a bit more exaggeration in the movement...but it works fairly well as it is. The crouch walk falls short though. I can't even figure out what's going on in it, and I don't know of anything that could have been done to fix it other than starting over. The crouch pain works well, and the crouch death leaves victor in a very uncomfortable looking bridge position. So we know he's dead, cause monsters just don't hang out that way. Unlike the death1 and death3 animations, where it looks like poor victor just gives up on the running around trying to shoot things and flops down to watch instead. Death2 puts him in a REALLY uncomfortable position with victor supporting himself with the side of his head and his feet, leaving his hips dangling in the air. I guess since he's already dead once, having died again would cause rigor mortis to set in instantly, right? He also has a very disturbing habit of dying in slow motion...so there are some more timing issues that needed to be addressed.
Overall, the animations were just not really well done. They weren't horrible by any means, but they certainly lacked in many areas.
I have to say a bit below average in this area. 2 1/2 stars.
I can't skin.
I admire and envy anyone who can not only work with the Q2 palette, but manage to make it look right in the game...especially flesh tones. So kudoos to the author for getting a skin on the model.
It's a hardware friendly 256x256 skin, unfortunately the wastage is a bit high at 37%...which leaves us with 24,248 pixels that aren't doing a damn thing.
There's one skin included with the model, so CTF fans won't be able to use this one right out of the box. And good luck to you finding a place to slap that CTF decal on, the ass comes to mind although it might be neat to see CTF skins with a red and blue heart. Some areas have some decent detail, under the head where it's been hacked off comes to mind. You really get the idea that this guy was stitched together with no concern for aesthetic value. One thing that's really lacking however is overall shading. There are some very nicely shaded pieces in the skin, but no overall shading of the whole form. This is especially noticeable in the spine. Couldn't figure out the hips here...dunno why the author didn't just go with the same gory detail with hacking the hips off into this bloody stump, like under the head...why's he wearing spandex biker shorts anyway? The head is the best part of the skin with the detail being really sharp and the underside of that head is disgustingly good. But I got to tell you, I'd have loved to seen a bit of skull showing through somewhere in that gory mess.
The layout of the mapping coordinates is ok. It's not the most efficient way of doing it, but it is overall pretty easy to follow. There were a couple of faces that look like they were missed when laying out the boots, and were later thrown in all the way on the other side of the map, which would make skinning the boots a real pain in the ass. There's also some really sloppy or lazy things that happened with the boot sole edges, where they've just been piled up in the layout. It works for the purpose of this skin, but it's just sloppy work. Shame on you! The author also severely hindered himself by not only mirroring the left and right shoulders, which is forgivable, but by laying the fronts and backs on top of each other as well...which completely prevented any possibility of giving them solid form through the shading. Same thing happened here with the barrel, the heart, the spine, and the vein and artery. There's some really bad warping at the joint of the arm and the gun. I don't have any problem with mirroring parts, as long as it doesn't detract from the quality of skin that you can do, which it does in these cases. There's a lot of parts here that could have been broken up and re-arranged to make more room, especially the clavicle. Sounds
Victor99 does not come packaged with any custom sounds. Visible Weapons Support No visible weapon support, and as the weapon is actually built into the model, it's a very very unlikely that Victor will ever have it. The Wrap Up
Creative and new concept, Decent model, decent skin, and passable animation. In deathmatch play, Victor99 is ok. His scrawny shape might throw some people's aim off...but it didn't bother me too much as my aiming method is more the "point it that way and pray" method.
Overall, the bad things are balanced out by the good things. Which comes to a solid average I guess. 3 stars. BUT, because it's such a good idea, and not just a conversion of the well known Borris Karloff monster...I'm gonna throw in an extra half star. Pack Inclusion Other than skin wastage, Victor99 meets all the requirements for pack eligibility. But I really think the mapping layout isn't the fault of sloppy or lazy work. So he gets a nomination from this reviewer.
Here's some in game shots of this freakish monstrosity doing it's thing.
review by
Wrath
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