UT2004 Player Model - Nali War Cow
Hi all, I was registered here years back but can't remember what it was and doubt I had anything meaningful posted back then. 
Anyway, decided to have a go at remodlling the NaliCow for UT2004.
It's early days yet , and I'd apreciate some criticism. I'm reasonably happy with the proportions, though the legs are something I'm in two minds about, whether to make them thicker and shorter like the original cow, or keep them long, thin and splayed like they are now to give it more scope for animations further down the line.
I'm aiming for a superdeformed look with the small body and large head, and hopefully it works.
Wires
Smothing Groups and comparison with original UT cow..
Anyway, decided to have a go at remodlling the NaliCow for UT2004.
It's early days yet , and I'd apreciate some criticism. I'm reasonably happy with the proportions, though the legs are something I'm in two minds about, whether to make them thicker and shorter like the original cow, or keep them long, thin and splayed like they are now to give it more scope for animations further down the line.
I'm aiming for a superdeformed look with the small body and large head, and hopefully it works.
Wires
Smothing Groups and comparison with original UT cow..
Replies
I like the one already out, but this is much better.
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I think u could move back a litle bit the legs. And if u are aiming for the animations give her a longer tail. And dont forget the gun support. Good work!
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Move the legs futher back on the body towards the tail?
Yeah, the gun support, I'm going to play with some sketches maybe - I'm trying
to think of ways to accomodate the akimbo weapons. I was thinking of maybe
having them extended to the sides, or stacked on top of each other vertically.
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I rather like the original sillouette better, he seems to carry his weight more believably, whereas your interpretation looks cartoonish. You'd do well to shape your head a bit more like the original, as now its very blocky. Also, tilt those ears back! The legs lack any definition as they come out of the body, giving it a play-doh effect. Its a good start, but for the amount of polys you've got, you should be getting a lot more detail.
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Stylewise- this is my big inspiration -
http://machall.com/gallery/index.php?galleryID=2&artID=9
I love this model/texture - and am aiming to do something half-way between this
and the style of the original cow - hence the big blocky nose.
I'm still new to modelling organics stuff, so I'm probably not doing this in a
correct way - I basically started with very low polygon model to get the basic
dimensions, then meshsmoothed piece by piece, I made probably far too my
polygons with the seam in the middle from where I'd modelled one side and
mirrored it.
One thing though, and this applies to the legs / ears, when you're modelling
something , do you model it in the 'bind pose' or adjust things later? I've
kept the legs fully stretched and dangling, and the ears all perky and upright
ready to put bones in and manipulate them to the correct places in animation- so
should I keep modelling them fully extended as they are , or pose them to where
they would be so I can get the 'weight' of the model right?
I've had a quick go at optimising some ares of the head - where would you draw
the line normally with game models - say if you got some detail that's only
raised the equivilant of 2px-4px off the surface, would you flatten out/use
bigger/less polygons and add the detail on the texture instead?
My only problem now is rigging him, I had a look at how all the original UT2003 models were done, and they're all based of the pre-made 3dsmax biped.
I must've spent an hour this morning trying to bend , scale and rotate the biped into place, but it seems wasteful to have all these extra bones flying round that can't be used (or deleted). I did a quick experiment also with breaking an IK chaing using boxes as bones, and that worked quite well, but didn't export via Actor X.
For example:
The knee (or knee area) joint has only one edge loop. So it wont deform very well and will have a very pointy/pyramidal knee when it bends. You could easily remove a loop or two from the neck area to use for the knees if you're worried about the poly count.
While we are on the topic of the knee, the original cow has standard bending legs (knee joint at the front), yet in your version the cow has chicken legs (knee joint a the back). Was this intentional?
The head is very square as Sectaurs pointed out in an earlier post, which I don't think you paid much attention to. If you're happy with the blocky look, then you could easily remove a few loops from there to save on polys, but personaly I'd round it off a little and give the head some shape and character.
The way the leg joins the body looks wrong, have a look at some reference images, even the original cow model is great to get the leg looking right.
Here's a quick paintover showing the things I mean, plus a little more. Hope it helps.
Good luck with the model, it has a lot of potential.
-caseyjones [image]ttp://www.itsonlikedonkeykong.net/polycount/paintovers/SabbyCow.jpg[/image]
If you're basing your design on the version on mac hall (or even if not) the current legs aren't really functional and lack a knee joint above the ankle (thats the joint in the middle of the limb in this case).
I'd been reading Poops tutorial on loops and have added to the knees, I've also reworked the face.
A lot of the stuff you mentioned I'd not considered and will try work on over the weekend.
For anyone reading this - is it better to model legs/arms straight, and then bend/pose later for animations, or should I model the cow with the legs bent , then straighten them out for rigging later?
Keep it up.
Also built a rought shape for the back pack, but am still trying to think of a way to keep it looking like the original cow and allow for akimbo weapons.
Had decided to dig this out again to see if it would be possible to re-detail for UT3, however seeing how much work lay ahead fixing the flaws in the existing model, I made the decision to start again from scratch.
Side by side are the old cow, and the new cow.
For fucksake, do this
I added some ears.
Iso render -
some reference if found :P
http://www.vrijheids.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/cow.jpg
http://www.wallpaperbase.com/wallpapers/animals/cows/cow_1.jpg
http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~fbmac/Big/GokNeusKoe.jpg
are you gonna model the horns, or is he gonna be one of those poor bio-industry cows.. poor bastard
And we would like to see this finished sometime.
So yeah, it's sorta like a very stumpy, two-limbed velociraptor.
I am hunting around the interweb for someone to buddy up with for rigging this character, I doubt I can manage this alone , the normal mapping will be troubling enough for me!
Thanks for the ref Japhir - I'll use it, he is at least a little be bovine in shape of his stumpy, blunt-nosed head.
ROFL - just looked, awesome images!
With the ears - should I then champher verts and attach them to the head, or would it be best to leave them separate?
I'll be using this as a basemesh in mudbox - so is it best to have it 'watertight' or can I have the odd bit of geometry intersecting?
awesome.
Made the ears watertight, added some more detail to the legs.
The profile is already looking a lot more detailed that the previous one with half the polys, so taking into consideration all the crits of the previous one (especially the legs!), this should turn out far superior. Depending on final polycount, and if I can find someone to buddy up with to animate it, I might do both UT2004 and UT3 versions, as the difference in polycounts should be negligable.
Yeah, I'm leaning towards something like this I guess, maybe with slightly more protruding claws.
i would make the places where the ears meet the head a bit wider though.
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Okay, I had a play, made it a little wide, looks pretty nice now I reckon.
Feet progress with direction from leilei. Still trying to optimise polygon use.
Had a quick play mocking up colours and eye placement.
The colors are also nice, perhaps a bit darker of brown
Very very odd.
I've always been a fan of the "MOuthless" cow
Another quick play with a more dinosaur type head :
hahaha looks scary
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indeed
I gotta tell you that it doesn't really look anything like the nali war cow aside from the general form. Just look at the original model. The face was more bat-like, the hooves were taller and more bovine than claw-like, and the face you have zbrushed looks like it lost it's dentures.
http://www.mobygames.com/images/i/05/42/177042.jpeg
Tried importing to mudbox, and he grew an asteroid belt.
The cow from the original unreal (same model, different skin).