Even though you're grossly overreacting, I can offer help on whatever issue is really so urgent. Also without a phong mask attached you're probably gimping your possibilites of getting an item in (as your model will have ridiculous amounts of shine), though that didn't seem to stop the brass beast from getting in. I don't know how good your items are, though I only really offer advice on really good items as then there's very few things to critique. Having to say "scrap it and do all these things differently next time" is a bit bothersome to write out. Also Valve owes you nothing, sense of entitlement, blah blah, etc.
I hate Valve, I waste so much of my time creating weapons a crap for them. I've submitted at least 30 items of good quality, not one of them bitches got in. I swear, they don't give a crap about the community. Swizzle of course gets all her/his weapons in most of the rest of you do too. None of you ever ever help me with what my weapons need, like "hey your texture needs _____, and the model needs _____. NO. I still can't figure out specular maps for the life of me, all of you are saying "just add a $basealpha......." NO HELP I say, and you never respond.
Those of you who have your weapons in are fucking lucky. I try, but Valve doesn't give a shit about me. Selfish jerks.
Wow, this is such a misguided post I don't even know where to begin...
1. Swizzle doesn't get all of his weapons in there because Valve has a boner for him and it's the same for everyone else. Swizzle had worked harder than you have on your items for months and didn't get anything in other than the Pain Train until the last update. He submitted TWO high quality submissions to the Polypack and neither of them won the original competition when many people thought they would. To my knowledge FOUR of Swizzle's items are currently in game out of the 12 or so he's submitted.
2. Valve doesn't "give a crap" about the community? The entire Mann Co. Store and adding community submissions into the game is a HUGE sign of them caring for the community. No other game has done anything close to what Valve has done for the TF2 community. There have been countless free updates over the years since it's been out. They've quadrupled the filesize of their game with the free updates. Also can you name another game or studio that gave the community a chance to have their items put on an in game store and had them make thousands of dollars in sales from people who want to support them?
3. Don't say that people's items got in the game based on luck. They had a good idea for an item and they executed it well. That's why their items have been put in the game. Not because of luck.
4. Stop whining and just keep at it. One of your items will get put in the game sometime if it's of high enough quality.
5. I doubt that people never respond to you or help you. In the 3 years I've been at Polycount I've always seen help given to people who ask for it.
6. Here's the Valve Wiki article on specular maps. You should be able to find out everything you want to know about specular maps for Source here. If you can't, then I don't know what else to say. People aren't going to give you a step by step of everything when there are huge amounts of free resources at your disposal on the internet to find out pretty much anything you want to know.
I hate Valve, I waste so much of my time creating weapons a crap for them. I've submitted at least 30 items of good quality, not one of them bitches got in. I swear, they don't give a crap about the community. Swizzle of course gets all her/his weapons in most of the rest of you do too. None of you ever ever help me with what my weapons need, like "hey your texture needs _____, and the model needs _____. NO. I still can't figure out specular maps for the life of me, all of you are saying "just add a $basealpha......." NO HELP I say, and you never respond.
Those of you who have your weapons in are fucking lucky. I try, but Valve doesn't give a shit about me. Selfish jerks.
You do realize that when Valve opened up to the community they probably became flooded with models and are still recieving a steady stream of models possibly daily from people all over the world who want their stuff in tf2. Heck from the polycount contest alone there were around 30 good packs that valve wants to use, but wont because they still have to figure out what the items will do and balance them, so they will keep them in their library and release them whenever they can. Also these things take alot of time.
First they have to sift through all the models see what works and if it doesn't they may even try and fix it or generate it in game (on the contribute site they say files for generating the weapons in game are appreciated but not needed) so then they have to program the model for 3rd and first person use as well.
Next they have to decide (if it's a weapon) what it's going to do and make it balanced so it wont break the game that also takes alot of time.
Also they cant release everything they want to at once a patch that huge would take alot of time to develop and install and would probably take along time to download it is best to do that in small intervals with just a few packs at a time
Next they have to asses items for legality some contributed items or hats look similar to copyrighted property from another company (ie. the vita saw looking like the Little sisters needle from Bioshock or The Tyrannus hat looking like the brainslug from futurama) they have to go to legal departments and get permission to use those items otherwise lawsuits breakout and getting legal permission can take some time or not occur at all because the other company wont comply.
Finally and this is not to be mean, the developers can be picky. Just because they allowed the players to contribute doesn't mean that everyone will have their stuff in if they will contribute, or at least right away anyways they probably reject stuff on various reasons. They may think certain models don't fit the tf2 style or maybe they like an item but feel it needs refinement and would probably be best released later. Just because we think it should be in and other forum members think it should be in does not mean Valve will agree and they have the final say.
And lets not forget the development part of valve also is making their own stuff for ingame use as well as program and test it, if they didn't do that they would be out of a job they cant just rely on the community.
Hey im developing my own stuff. Will it get ingame maybe yes, maybe sometime in the future, maybe never who knows it's all up to fate and Valve. Will I be mad, maybe a little but i'll try again and i'll try and make it better, cause it's better to know that i tried than not do anything at all. Also drink heavily.
Now on the terms of the forums help. I agree a that they could be a little more helpful, but you also have to realise it's not their job to teach you or anyone else how to model, they are modelers (or part time modelers anyways) they are not required to help anyone. they will point you in directions to help but unless they have your models there isnt much they can do.
Im pretty sure im going to be sounding like a hypocrite when i start loosing it when my models and texture maps aren't working for some reason, but in this moment of clarity lay this argument.
With that diatribe out of the way i now post my updated models, i widened the beak and made brows. I dont know how i can reduce the polycounts on they eyes though cause when i merge the vertecies to make fewer polygons it flattens out parts of the eye also im not sure if the beak blends with the head. so as i said up above if anyone can help it will be appreciated.
Hey guys sorry for the attack there, got a little pissed off...Better not get on forums when that happens.
Also, I know Valve has their hands busy. What I was saying was that basically they need to communicate with the community more, say every week they blog for about five minutes, say they just said a few minor things about what they are doing ATM.
I am on your side, I am trying to speak for all of us. Also, I've been on this forum for about 160 pages ago, and I hate still being noticed as the "new modeler that needs everyone's help" I've been modeling for the past year and a half, almost 2 now. Hey, I may sound like a noob when I ask about spec maps but before the source engine, I worked with UDK, and lemme tell ya, They have a much much better engine (not to hurt anyone who is in favor of the source engine). I made the mobster pack for heavy. @zipfinator: I have asked for help, swizzle has helped but nothing works, and then when I re-reply everyone just ignores me.
I think Valve should give you a notification email after you contribute saying "we got your contribution..." That way it lets you know that you contributed it right. And the email links up.
Does anyone know how to have a weapon switch to another version of that weapon after hitting someone, similar to the Demoman's Bottle and Swizzle's Grenade? If it's done through submodels like I think it is, can you post the .QC commands to set it up? Thanks.
Is bodygroup used to set up submodels? http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$bodygroup - Looks like submodels are swapped in the code, but if it's numeric (as it is) you could try direct replacing the bottle or whatever with a $bodygroup'd mdl.
Is bodygroup used to set up submodels? http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$bodygroup - Looks like submodels are swapped in the code, but if it's numeric (as it is) you could try direct replacing the bottle or whatever with a $bodygroup'd mdl.
Ah I think that's it. Thanks.
Here's what I'm trying to set up the submodel for. It's a golf club melee to go with the hat I submitted a few days ago. Going to suggest they use it as a 2 item set. The submodel will be a bent verison that will activate after you hit someone with it.
You could maybe do a little more work shaping the head of the club. There's usually a sharp corner on the upper corner of the head.
Just submitted it and I'm not sure I'll go back and change it. Looking back at my reference you're right that the top has a sharper corner there. I'm happy with the way it turned out though. I'll go back to it tomorrow and mess around and see if it makes a big enough difference. Thanks for the critique.
@BenHenry, I agree that they could be a bit more vocal with contributors. They should e-mail you when they receive your submission just to double check that everything is linked up right. It'd also be nice if you received an e-mail saying it's going to be put in the game. Now that the store is here you get the e-mail about payment info and that's at least better than before because you'll know something you submitted is put in. I didn't even know my hat Sober Stuntman was in game until a few hours after the update was out and I saw it on the wiki.
i really want to show you guys what im working on. but its only 50% done. Its my first project ever. I'm not too good at 3ds max or modelling in general. I'm learning it as I go. no where close to some of the professionals off here. The theory of what im working on is very impressive tho. Wish i could show you guys it, even tho its only 50% done. A long way to go. but if i show it off so early. someone might steal the idea. so i guess i can't show it too soon into the project. maybe when its 99% finished.
I seriously doubt you have to be paranoid about someone stealing your idea.
If you post it here people will know you are working on it, thus great shame would be brought down with a vengence on anyone who copies it (or something like that). Seriously, this forum is much more respectable than most of the interwebs.
so i've been messing around with the eagles eyes but the only way i see of reducing poly's is merging the vertices and that just makes parts of the eye flat and kind of screws up the eye model. any suggestions. at least in how to reduce poly's
@Rada: Whats the count on your hat right now? I would simple suggest either getting rid of the eye and paint it on or just reduce the amount of divisions it has. Also the ear guard thing looks high poly too, it doesn't need that many edges, you could reduce that to about 10 and it will still appear circular.
Also, it looks like you have some weird smoothing issues near where the beak joins the head
@Rada: Yeah that ear guard is WAY to round. I think 10 edges would be a bit on the blockey side, 12 or 14 should be enough, depends on how big it is.
Scrapped the Horsemanspick and started something, "again" for the medieval update. Basically its a mixture of the eyelander, a Karambit knife and the snipers machete.
@ColonelBD: How big is the Bushwacker compared to that thing?
@Zipfinator: I was wondering how long it was going to take before something like that turned up somewhere... I like the rusting effect.
@Rada: I'm not a blender user so I'm unfamiliar with how it handles things, but if collapsing detail isn't working maybe outright making new spheres at a lower detail level would help. I'm not entirely convinced you'll need to bother with the pupils though given that detailing will probably be very hard to see.
@Jman: Actually I never did since I'd been testing it in game while texturing and the tone had never really seemed off even in maps outside the testing one. However, since the phong for the wood is set up to be removed completely (having any looks really weird on the large, flat surface) I can try out a few variations with minimal fuss. I'm not really inclined to go for something close to the regular rifle since I want to differentiate the colours, but we'll see what happens.
Incidentally, which picture bugs you more, the model viewer shots or the in-game? I've found that since I've switched to windows 7 pictures viewed in the image previewer or browsers get a colour distortion - to me the model viewer shots pic has a slight green tint which isn't present when I view it in an image editor.
@BenHenry: [snipped after a PM. What I wrote was based on what turned out to be an honest mistake. Balls. ]
I seriously doubt you have to be paranoid about someone stealing your idea.
If you post it here people will know you are working on it, thus great shame would be brought down with a vengence on anyone who copies it (or something like that). Seriously, this forum is much more respectable than most of the interwebs.
wish i could take your word for it, good chap. but its too risky to take a chance. lot of modellers on here that are a thousand times better than i am. would love to show it to you guys. it looks really impressive. maybe in about a week or two's time : P
@Rada:
The only name that's stuck with me is "The Professional Standard", though I'm open to suggestions if somebody thinks they have something better.
That sounds great.
Or the 'Plan B' (have a plan to kill everyone you meet.)
The Crazed Gunman (Eh...)
Maybe it's another health granter gun. Health for each accurate headshot. (seems the norm for new weapons)
@Elbagast: Im guesing it would roughly the same withdth, slightly shorter than the bushwacka. Just out of interest why are you asking?
@Rada: If you want to lower your tri count but don't want to merge the eyes then I suggest you use the delete edge loop tool. I really cant see losing the roundness to be a problem, the brainslug has about 3 verticle rings by 4 horizontal rings showing for each eye and unless your really close you aren't gonna notice. I'm gessing that your hat eyes are round the same sized.
Also that dint in the eyes should definately go as its nothing you can't just paint in.
As for the beak is it connected to the main head or is it seperate? Because if you want to get the cleanest results than I sugest merging them together and using the edgesplit modifier to get rid of any smoothing errors.
@Rada: Whats the count on your hat right now? I would simple suggest either getting rid of the eye and paint it on or just reduce the amount of divisions it has. Also the ear guard thing looks high poly too, it doesn't need that many edges, you could reduce that to about 10 and it will still appear circular.
Also, it looks like you have some weird smoothing issues near where the beak joins the head
I extended the faces of some of the polygons at the bottom of the helmet before i joined the beak to the hat i guess i'll get rid of them, i wanted to make it more like the aztec gold plating that sometimes rims their hats.
also yeah the beak is joined with the helmet now. im gonna have to find where the edgesplit tool is on blender. i think i will delete the eye since after looking at my references the eyes look painted on anyways but i have to figure out how to unjoin them first since they are bound to the hat now. ill try and reduce the edges on the cheek plate.
The club is great, but you can barely see the two grooves near the end of the handle; they only become apparent when a shadow passes over - perhaps add some manual AO and darken them a bit?
The club is great, but you can barely see the two grooves near the end of the handle; they only become apparent when a shadow passes over - perhaps add some manual AO and darken them a bit?
I somewhat agree with you, but I think I'm done with these two items. I've already submitted one revision to Valve and I don't want to do another for something so small, especially in the same day. The grooves are more apparent in motion though as the shadows/phong changes constantly.
On the next items I do I'll definitely post them on here a bit earlier so I can get more critiques before submitting and have a bit more time to experiment with all of the smaller details like that.
The club is great, but you can barely see the two grooves near the end of the handle; they only become apparent when a shadow passes over - perhaps add some manual AO and darken them a bit?
They often pick those grooves out in a different colour. My old clubs had black handles with yellow grooves.
They often pick those grooves out in a different colour. My old clubs had black handles with yellow grooves.
Hmm I hadn't thought about coloring the grooves. Maybe I'll experiment with the AO and coloring them a bit. I said I was probably done but I hate knowing that I can still improve on the item.
@Emeriastone, looking great. I would love to work on a map in that style. I'm sure you probably have something planned for the assets map wise though.
@Zipfinator: agree with what others say about the grooves not standing out and i think the club could generally use more colors. the clubhead doesn't have to be the exact same color as the shaft and even the face can be a different color than the rest. also have you tried a black grip? it looks a little light / similar to the palm color, and maybe a wrapped pattern will give it more of a distinct look in 1st person view
@Emeriastone: wow looks amazing! the low frequency specks stood out to me in the last shot but with the different lighting they aren't bad at all
---
buff pack is textured
now all i need is a hat to tie everything together. i was thinking of somthing similar to:
k so i deleted the eyes for now i am working on the beak ( the icosphere is triangles and has less polygons so im trying to figure out how i can manipulate that) for the beak i just started merging vertices to make them one figure and this is what i got hope i havent royally screwed myself.
Just a quick question guys, probably showing off my amateurism, does anyone know if the hats have to be one object or can they be made of multiple parts?
I'm asking because I'm trying to make a cricket helmet and it'd be easier and a lower polycount if I had the helmet and the faceguard as two separate parts.
This is fantastic! I can't wait to see what the finished product will look like!
Also, just wanted to let you know I pitched an idea to Valve on their Beta-Testing Forum, based on this model. Y'know, just on the wild, crazy, Snowball's-Chance-In-Hell they ever consider adding this to the game.
(hashing out ideas like this seems to be the only thing I'm good at, since I can't model worth a dang and only have passing attempts at texturing... )
@thelastdesperado: Yes, they can be different pieces. but you might want to attach them together after you model them separately (just make sure they use the same texture.)
@Zipfinator: agree with what others say about the grooves not standing out and i think the club could generally use more colors. the clubhead doesn't have to be the exact same color as the shaft and even the face can be a different color than the rest. also have you tried a black grip? it looks a little light / similar to the palm color, and maybe a wrapped pattern will give it more of a distinct look in 1st person view
@Emeriastone: wow looks amazing! the low frequency specks stood out to me in the last shot but with the different lighting they aren't bad at all
---
buff pack is textured
now all i need is a hat to tie everything together. i was thinking of somthing similar to:
@Emeriastone: A map like that with a load of yellow quarry machines would look awesome...
@crazy-g: Great find on the helmet, it looks like it would work well.
@Noors: I hope we'll get to cut up tiny baby men some time in the future! I particularly like the rust work going on, I don't think I've managed to get that quite right yet.
I had a look through a lot of the weapon textures to see what sort of saturation wood has, and it seems it generally varies between 40 and 55%, though some go into the 30s or up to around 60%. At 77% mine was indeed, way higher... I did a full sweep of saturation values, and decided to change mine based on what I saw:
To keep some colour there's a little more red in it, which seems to be how it's done on the textures I've been going by, namely the one for the grenade launcher.
@Noors: an absolutely beautiful piece of machinery, and it would bet so fun to use!
@Elbagast: looks like you got nailed it -- the color looks great. good that it's different than the stock sniper hue too
i have some questions for anyone who has done kill icons or has knowledge of them. first, how do you go about making the icon? i'm guessing its is a vector trace of a screenshot that is shrunk down. also, is there a file that corresponds to the dimensions and locations of the kill icons? i would like to know what the boundaries of the icon should be.
@Noors: an absolutely beautiful piece of machinery, and it would bet so fun to use!
@Elbagast: looks like you got nailed it -- the color looks great. good that it's different than the stock sniper hue too
i have some questions for anyone who has done kill icons or has knowledge of them. first, how do you go about making the icon? i'm guessing its is a vector trace of a screenshot that is shrunk down. also, is there a file that corresponds to the dimensions and locations of the kill icons? i would like to know what the boundaries of the icon should be.
In team fortress 2 materials.gcf in I believe tf/materials/hud, you should find a file called d_images. Each image on there is in a grid of however many units (you should be able to figure it out). Just make sure to edit the alpha channel as well.
If you want to make kill icons. I really suggest looking at this tutorial, it's what I use to make my ones.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB4qNfmwyvQ[/ame]
As for the locations as Jman said they'rein the materials GCF, d_images for "personal" kills and dneg for other peoples kills. T
here are two of each VTF, anything from the engineer update upwards is in the V2 vtf, the rest is in the normal vtf. You just have to replace the alpha channel.
Try to keep the proportions simular to the one you are overiding. Otherwise you are just wasting time as it will look ugly ingame as the icon clips with other icons and/or itself.
Haha, oh man. This shot here totally sold it for me. I love this theme, it's silly but still believable. The values do seem very uniform overall and it would be nice to see some darker parts on the metal or AO to break that up, but that's a small thing and you've already submitted them. Still awesome.
I have a TF2-related model to share, though I can't submit it to the Community Contribution system since it's a character replacement. Hope it's okay to post it here, I had a WIP thread for this months ago but it has long since died.
It still needs a few touch ups like some clipping fixes, specular masks, and maybe some custom hats, but it's been a long time in progress and I wanted to finally release it.
Replies
Wow, this is such a misguided post I don't even know where to begin...
1. Swizzle doesn't get all of his weapons in there because Valve has a boner for him and it's the same for everyone else. Swizzle had worked harder than you have on your items for months and didn't get anything in other than the Pain Train until the last update. He submitted TWO high quality submissions to the Polypack and neither of them won the original competition when many people thought they would. To my knowledge FOUR of Swizzle's items are currently in game out of the 12 or so he's submitted.
2. Valve doesn't "give a crap" about the community? The entire Mann Co. Store and adding community submissions into the game is a HUGE sign of them caring for the community. No other game has done anything close to what Valve has done for the TF2 community. There have been countless free updates over the years since it's been out. They've quadrupled the filesize of their game with the free updates. Also can you name another game or studio that gave the community a chance to have their items put on an in game store and had them make thousands of dollars in sales from people who want to support them?
3. Don't say that people's items got in the game based on luck. They had a good idea for an item and they executed it well. That's why their items have been put in the game. Not because of luck.
4. Stop whining and just keep at it. One of your items will get put in the game sometime if it's of high enough quality.
5. I doubt that people never respond to you or help you. In the 3 years I've been at Polycount I've always seen help given to people who ask for it.
6. Here's the Valve Wiki article on specular maps. You should be able to find out everything you want to know about specular maps for Source here. If you can't, then I don't know what else to say. People aren't going to give you a step by step of everything when there are huge amounts of free resources at your disposal on the internet to find out pretty much anything you want to know.
Well that's about all I have to say right now.
You do realize that when Valve opened up to the community they probably became flooded with models and are still recieving a steady stream of models possibly daily from people all over the world who want their stuff in tf2. Heck from the polycount contest alone there were around 30 good packs that valve wants to use, but wont because they still have to figure out what the items will do and balance them, so they will keep them in their library and release them whenever they can. Also these things take alot of time.
First they have to sift through all the models see what works and if it doesn't they may even try and fix it or generate it in game (on the contribute site they say files for generating the weapons in game are appreciated but not needed) so then they have to program the model for 3rd and first person use as well.
Next they have to decide (if it's a weapon) what it's going to do and make it balanced so it wont break the game that also takes alot of time.
Also they cant release everything they want to at once a patch that huge would take alot of time to develop and install and would probably take along time to download it is best to do that in small intervals with just a few packs at a time
Next they have to asses items for legality some contributed items or hats look similar to copyrighted property from another company (ie. the vita saw looking like the Little sisters needle from Bioshock or The Tyrannus hat looking like the brainslug from futurama) they have to go to legal departments and get permission to use those items otherwise lawsuits breakout and getting legal permission can take some time or not occur at all because the other company wont comply.
Finally and this is not to be mean, the developers can be picky. Just because they allowed the players to contribute doesn't mean that everyone will have their stuff in if they will contribute, or at least right away anyways they probably reject stuff on various reasons. They may think certain models don't fit the tf2 style or maybe they like an item but feel it needs refinement and would probably be best released later. Just because we think it should be in and other forum members think it should be in does not mean Valve will agree and they have the final say.
And lets not forget the development part of valve also is making their own stuff for ingame use as well as program and test it, if they didn't do that they would be out of a job they cant just rely on the community.
Hey im developing my own stuff. Will it get ingame maybe yes, maybe sometime in the future, maybe never who knows it's all up to fate and Valve. Will I be mad, maybe a little but i'll try again and i'll try and make it better, cause it's better to know that i tried than not do anything at all. Also drink heavily.
Now on the terms of the forums help. I agree a that they could be a little more helpful, but you also have to realise it's not their job to teach you or anyone else how to model, they are modelers (or part time modelers anyways) they are not required to help anyone. they will point you in directions to help but unless they have your models there isnt much they can do.
Im pretty sure im going to be sounding like a hypocrite when i start loosing it when my models and texture maps aren't working for some reason, but in this moment of clarity lay this argument.
With that diatribe out of the way i now post my updated models, i widened the beak and made brows. I dont know how i can reduce the polycounts on they eyes though cause when i merge the vertecies to make fewer polygons it flattens out parts of the eye also im not sure if the beak blends with the head. so as i said up above if anyone can help it will be appreciated.
i think i got it to look like the beak and helmet are one, this ok?
still dont know what to do with the eyes for as i said before when i merge the vertices the eye looses it's round shape.
Also, I know Valve has their hands busy. What I was saying was that basically they need to communicate with the community more, say every week they blog for about five minutes, say they just said a few minor things about what they are doing ATM.
I am on your side, I am trying to speak for all of us. Also, I've been on this forum for about 160 pages ago, and I hate still being noticed as the "new modeler that needs everyone's help" I've been modeling for the past year and a half, almost 2 now. Hey, I may sound like a noob when I ask about spec maps but before the source engine, I worked with UDK, and lemme tell ya, They have a much much better engine (not to hurt anyone who is in favor of the source engine). I made the mobster pack for heavy.
@zipfinator: I have asked for help, swizzle has helped but nothing works, and then when I re-reply everyone just ignores me.
I think Valve should give you a notification email after you contribute saying "we got your contribution..." That way it lets you know that you contributed it right. And the email links up.
Ah I think that's it. Thanks.
Here's what I'm trying to set up the submodel for. It's a golf club melee to go with the hat I submitted a few days ago. Going to suggest they use it as a 2 item set. The submodel will be a bent verison that will activate after you hit someone with it.
Just submitted it and I'm not sure I'll go back and change it. Looking back at my reference you're right that the top has a sharper corner there. I'm happy with the way it turned out though. I'll go back to it tomorrow and mess around and see if it makes a big enough difference. Thanks for the critique.
@BenHenry, I agree that they could be a bit more vocal with contributors. They should e-mail you when they receive your submission just to double check that everything is linked up right. It'd also be nice if you received an e-mail saying it's going to be put in the game. Now that the store is here you get the e-mail about payment info and that's at least better than before because you'll know something you submitted is put in. I didn't even know my hat Sober Stuntman was in game until a few hours after the update was out and I saw it on the wiki.
If you post it here people will know you are working on it, thus great shame would be brought down with a vengence on anyone who copies it (or something like that). Seriously, this forum is much more respectable than most of the interwebs.
Also, it looks like you have some weird smoothing issues near where the beak joins the head
Scrapped the Horsemanspick and started something, "again" for the medieval update. Basically its a mixture of the eyelander, a Karambit knife and the snipers machete.
Should get some in game shots in soon.
Just a suggestion, but i'd be guessing that valve would be interested in using it on yet another cross-promotion if possible.
@Zipfinator: I was wondering how long it was going to take before something like that turned up somewhere... I like the rusting effect.
@Rada: I'm not a blender user so I'm unfamiliar with how it handles things, but if collapsing detail isn't working maybe outright making new spheres at a lower detail level would help. I'm not entirely convinced you'll need to bother with the pupils though given that detailing will probably be very hard to see.
@Jman: Actually I never did since I'd been testing it in game while texturing and the tone had never really seemed off even in maps outside the testing one. However, since the phong for the wood is set up to be removed completely (having any looks really weird on the large, flat surface) I can try out a few variations with minimal fuss. I'm not really inclined to go for something close to the regular rifle since I want to differentiate the colours, but we'll see what happens.
Incidentally, which picture bugs you more, the model viewer shots or the in-game? I've found that since I've switched to windows 7 pictures viewed in the image previewer or browsers get a colour distortion - to me the model viewer shots pic has a slight green tint which isn't present when I view it in an image editor.
@BenHenry: [snipped after a PM. What I wrote was based on what turned out to be an honest mistake. Balls.
wish i could take your word for it, good chap. but its too risky to take a chance. lot of modellers on here that are a thousand times better than i am. would love to show it to you guys. it looks really impressive. maybe in about a week or two's time : P
That sounds great.
Or the 'Plan B' (have a plan to kill everyone you meet.)
The Crazed Gunman (Eh...)
Maybe it's another health granter gun. Health for each accurate headshot. (seems the norm for new weapons)
Awesome model, sir. I like the compactness of it.
@Rada: If you want to lower your tri count but don't want to merge the eyes then I suggest you use the delete edge loop tool. I really cant see losing the roundness to be a problem, the brainslug has about 3 verticle rings by 4 horizontal rings showing for each eye and unless your really close you aren't gonna notice. I'm gessing that your hat eyes are round the same sized.
Also that dint in the eyes should definately go as its nothing you can't just paint in.
As for the beak is it connected to the main head or is it seperate? Because if you want to get the cleanest results than I sugest merging them together and using the edgesplit modifier to get rid of any smoothing errors.
Thats just my two cents. though.
here's a paint over I think would help the shape of the eagle. Right now sitting up on his head like that and having his ear showing just seem odd.
I'd also get rid of the eye and just pull out some geometry.
I think a lower jaw would look cool, but I wouldn't make it go around the face, just an extension on each side
I extended the faces of some of the polygons at the bottom of the helmet before i joined the beak to the hat i guess i'll get rid of them, i wanted to make it more like the aztec gold plating that sometimes rims their hats.
also yeah the beak is joined with the helmet now. im gonna have to find where the edgesplit tool is on blender. i think i will delete the eye since after looking at my references the eyes look painted on anyways but i have to figure out how to unjoin them first since they are bound to the hat now. ill try and reduce the edges on the cheek plate.
The club is great, but you can barely see the two grooves near the end of the handle; they only become apparent when a shadow passes over - perhaps add some manual AO and darken them a bit?
I somewhat agree with you, but I think I'm done with these two items. I've already submitted one revision to Valve and I don't want to do another for something so small, especially in the same day. The grooves are more apparent in motion though as the shadows/phong changes constantly.
On the next items I do I'll definitely post them on here a bit earlier so I can get more critiques before submitting and have a bit more time to experiment with all of the smaller details like that.
Hmm I hadn't thought about coloring the grooves. Maybe I'll experiment with the AO and coloring them a bit. I said I was probably done but I hate knowing that I can still improve on the item.
@Emeriastone, looking great. I would love to work on a map in that style. I'm sure you probably have something planned for the assets map wise though.
@Emeriastone: wow looks amazing! the low frequency specks stood out to me in the last shot but with the different lighting they aren't bad at all
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buff pack is textured
now all i need is a hat to tie everything together. i was thinking of somthing similar to:
I'm asking because I'm trying to make a cricket helmet and it'd be easier and a lower polycount if I had the helmet and the faceguard as two separate parts.
This is fantastic! I can't wait to see what the finished product will look like!
Also, just wanted to let you know I pitched an idea to Valve on their Beta-Testing Forum, based on this model. Y'know, just on the wild, crazy, Snowball's-Chance-In-Hell they ever consider adding this to the game.
(hashing out ideas like this seems to be the only thing I'm good at, since I can't model worth a dang and only have passing attempts at texturing...
yes
I have finally "finished" and submitted the view model. This is my last TF2 contribution, time to move on some anatomy drawing
(i like that medieval buff banner)
@crazy-g: Great find on the helmet, it looks like it would work well.
@Noors: I hope we'll get to cut up tiny baby men some time in the future! I particularly like the rust work going on, I don't think I've managed to get that quite right yet.
I had a look through a lot of the weapon textures to see what sort of saturation wood has, and it seems it generally varies between 40 and 55%, though some go into the 30s or up to around 60%. At 77% mine was indeed, way higher... I did a full sweep of saturation values, and decided to change mine based on what I saw:
To keep some colour there's a little more red in it, which seems to be how it's done on the textures I've been going by, namely the one for the grenade launcher.
Old colours ingame
New colours ingame
I guess this means I'm going to have to keep an eye on how I pick wood colours in future...
@Elbagast: looks like you got nailed it -- the color looks great. good that it's different than the stock sniper hue too
i have some questions for anyone who has done kill icons or has knowledge of them. first, how do you go about making the icon? i'm guessing its is a vector trace of a screenshot that is shrunk down. also, is there a file that corresponds to the dimensions and locations of the kill icons? i would like to know what the boundaries of the icon should be.
Thanks for looking! Also I love the rifle, the shapes are so awesome Elbagast!
In team fortress 2 materials.gcf in I believe tf/materials/hud, you should find a file called d_images. Each image on there is in a grid of however many units (you should be able to figure it out). Just make sure to edit the alpha channel as well.
[ame]
As for the locations as Jman said they'rein the materials GCF, d_images for "personal" kills and dneg for other peoples kills. T
here are two of each VTF, anything from the engineer update upwards is in the V2 vtf, the rest is in the normal vtf. You just have to replace the alpha channel.
Try to keep the proportions simular to the one you are overiding. Otherwise you are just wasting time as it will look ugly ingame as the icon clips with other icons and/or itself.
Haha, oh man. This shot here totally sold it for me. I love this theme, it's silly but still believable. The values do seem very uniform overall and it would be nice to see some darker parts on the metal or AO to break that up, but that's a small thing and you've already submitted them. Still awesome.
I have a TF2-related model to share, though I can't submit it to the Community Contribution system since it's a character replacement. Hope it's okay to post it here, I had a WIP thread for this months ago but it has long since died.
Here is my female Spy mod, you can download it here if you're interested in trying it out sometime: http://www.gamebanana.com/skins/107782
It still needs a few touch ups like some clipping fixes, specular masks, and maybe some custom hats, but it's been a long time in progress and I wanted to finally release it.
It also has a completely badass soundpack recorded by DustyOldRoses, I couldn't have asked for a more perfect voice for her. [ame]
Hope you like it! I'm now torn between the Sniper, Demoman and Engineer for the next class to start on.