Just for fun- Basilisk redesign

[Pazuzu]

I'm working on a slightly-altered model of the basilisk. The biggest differences are that the color scheme is more of a dark grey, and there's now a (non-functional) lower jaw. I'll update the thread as it progresses.
Model sheets (click for higher res):

First bit of the mesh (headless!):

Mesh, second pass:

Mesh, last pass:

Unwrap pattern:

Basic texture:

[swamp-cecil]

If you give it a lower jaw, it wont be able to eat soup any more!
Anyways, what you're doing is great. Giving it a lower jaw is awesome and make it kinda dark and dark-juicy-red.
Just advice.

[Pazuzu]

If you give it a lower jaw, it wont be able to eat soup any more!
Anyways, what you're doing is great. Giving it a lower jaw is awesome and make it kinda dark and dark-juicy-red.
Just advice.

There's no way this will make it into the actual game. It might (maybe) be high-enough quality, but I think the devs have plans for the models. Just sayin'.
Anyway, I have a tentative palette set up, but it's going to mostly be dark gray, with a slight tint of red. I'll try to see if I can make that redder without it turning pink.

[jm82792]

heheh.  
I was thinking how the heck you got it to look so good(it's pretty good so far) so quick.
Then I realized you have 4 views

[Nux]

I would like to say that I love the basi as it is and think the lack of a jaw does a good job of making it look alien AND gives it a sinister, zombie-likeness.

That said, keep up the good work!

[Pazuzu]

Thanks for the positive feedback! The great thing about just doing this for the hell of it, is that I can screw up as badly as I want (or just generally make it less evil-looking than the original), and not have half the community after me for crimes against Friend Basi.
jp: That's actually not bad. I'd recommend making the legs taper off to points (scale the end vertices down to 0, then W -> Remove Doubles) for starters, and have the head not do that, but that's a really good mesh for not having 2D views. For what it's worth, I made the 2D views after I uploaded the perspective view, based on it.

[jm82792]

Thanks for the positive feedback! The great thing about just doing this for the hell of it, is that I can screw up as badly as I want (or just generally make it less evil-looking than the original), and not have half the community after me for crimes against Friend Basi.
jp: That's actually not bad. I'd recommend making the legs taper off to points (scale the end vertices down to 0, then W -> Remove Doubles) for starters, and have the head not do that, but that's a really good mesh for not having 2D views. For what it's worth, I made the 2D views after I uploaded the perspective view, based on it.

Yeah I wanted to keep it all quads no tris until later on, I think I got too scared to "jump" to tris..
I'm horrific when there is no "solid" concepts that I can follow
My modeling is poor for being a person who's be using 3D apps for 4 + years 
I see what you mean about the head, far too cow like in the way of being fat.

Keep at your work, as far as I know the Trem HD people (Cron) is looking for good models that have a high vert count.
Your work should suffice, as far as the mesh once it's complete.

[Pazuzu]

My modeling is poor for being a person who's be using 3D apps for 4 + years 
Keep at your work, as far as I know the Trem HD people (Cron) is looking for good models that have a high vert count.
Your work should suffice, as far as the mesh once it's complete.

About 5-6 years here. Just keep practicing and you'll get it, you're not far off at all. I'd recommend checking out some tutorials on sites like BlenderNation and BlenderCookie.
I talked to cron about this beforehand. He says he's not looking for alien models, or even new models in general (it's mostly textures and normal maps, which are generated from super-high-poly models), so this is just going to be for fun. My goal is for it to be fully functional and more detailed, but under the 1k-vert limit.
One more protip: For modeling organics, try to mostly use quads. That way, you can add detail easily by adding edge loops (Ctrl+R) and scaling them up/down to size (Alt+S). You've probably figured this out already, though.

[jm82792]

About 5-6 years here. Just keep practicing and you'll get it, you're not far off at all. I'd recommend checking out some tutorials on sites like BlenderNation and BlenderCookie.
I talked to cron about this beforehand. He says he's not looking for alien models, or even new models in general (it's mostly textures and normal maps, which are generated from super-high-poly models), so this is just going to be for fun. My goal is for it to be fully functional and more detailed, but under the 1k-vert limit.
One more protip: For modeling organics, try to mostly use quads. That way, you can add detail easily by adding edge loops (Ctrl+R) and scaling them up/down to size (Alt+S). You've probably figured this out already, though.


Yeah I know that quads are the way to go, in some cases you have tries in certain ares, for the human face(eyes and nose?) and such.
Modeling sounds fun, I've done it but it's not my current focus(what I like, I am good at it etc...) plus I lack the ability to fill in the blanks for modeling.
I've been more into comping, animation, lighting, vfxs, other fluff, and such.......

I migrate from project to project....
Every once in a while I try to finish one (lighthouse is going/has fail/failed, honestly how stupid can you be to have a ton of water and crap that chokes your computer out(hours of rendering time), plus it being an organic scene that Maya could do with a couple mouse clicks) but getting a wicked still together doesn't work easily.

Anyways why doesn't Cron want new models?
Animating the basi won't be hard, texturing... I dunno I've never bothered to leap into that black box yet.

[Pazuzu]

Anyways why doesn't Cron want new models?
Animating the basi won't be hard, texturing... I dunno I've never bothered to leap into that black box yet.

You'll have to ask him for an "official" answer, I'd imagine it's because he thinks the game models are good enough already (in terms of mesh), they just need shaders and HD textures. Besides, he says the alien models are "in the flux", so the dev team is probably working on replacements of their own. And I'm just a newb modeler, there's no way I'd want to compete with them!

[jm82792]

I don't venture in the IRC or anything, I'm a nobody when it comes to knowing devs or whatever.
If the official devs (please elaborate ) are working on it let them do it.

[Pazuzu]

Latest news: The mesh has been finished and unwrapped. Pictures at the top. Also, it turns out Blender doesn't like unwrapping quads, so I had to convert the mesh to tris first (which is easier than it sounds).

[Pazuzu]

This is weird. I'm getting completely blank renders, and here's what my mesh looks like textured (top is material only, bottom is with UV):

Help!

[jm82792]

Your normals are screwed up.
Select all of the mesh in edit mode then select calculate outside normals.

[Pazuzu]

Your normals are screwed up.
Select all of the mesh in edit mode then select calculate outside normals.

Thanks, that fixed the mesh, but it still doesn't show up in a render.

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

About 5-6 years here. Just keep practicing and you'll get it, you're not far off at all. I'd recommend checking out some tutorials on sites like BlenderNation and BlenderCookie.
I talked to cron about this beforehand. He says he's not looking for alien models, or even new models in general (it's mostly textures and normal maps, which are generated from super-high-poly models), so this is just going to be for fun. My goal is for it to be fully functional and more detailed, but under the 1k-vert limit.
One more protip: For modeling organics, try to mostly use quads. That way, you can add detail easily by adding edge loops (Ctrl+R) and scaling them up/down to size (Alt+S). You've probably figured this out already, though.


Yeah I know that quads are the way to go, in some cases you have tries in certain ares, for the human face(eyes and nose?) and such.
Modeling sounds fun, I've done it but it's not my current focus(what I like, I am good at it etc...) plus I lack the ability to fill in the blanks for modeling.
I've been more into comping, animation, lighting, vfxs, other fluff, and such.......

I migrate from project to project....
Every once in a while I try to finish one (lighthouse is going/has fail/failed, honestly how stupid can you be to have a ton of water and crap that chokes your computer out(hours of rendering time), plus it being an organic scene that Maya could do with a couple mouse clicks) but getting a wicked still together doesn't work easily.

Anyways why doesn't Cron want new models?
Animating the basi won't be hard, texturing... I dunno I've never bothered to leap into that black box yet.

WE don't want your life stories. 

[Pazuzu]

About 5-6 years here. Just keep practicing and you'll get it, you're not far off at all. I'd recommend checking out some tutorials on sites like BlenderNation and BlenderCookie.
I talked to cron about this beforehand. He says he's not looking for alien models, or even new models in general (it's mostly textures and normal maps, which are generated from super-high-poly models), so this is just going to be for fun. My goal is for it to be fully functional and more detailed, but under the 1k-vert limit.
One more protip: For modeling organics, try to mostly use quads. That way, you can add detail easily by adding edge loops (Ctrl+R) and scaling them up/down to size (Alt+S). You've probably figured this out already, though.


Yeah I know that quads are the way to go, in some cases you have tries in certain ares, for the human face(eyes and nose?) and such.
Modeling sounds fun, I've done it but it's not my current focus(what I like, I am good at it etc...) plus I lack the ability to fill in the blanks for modeling.
I've been more into comping, animation, lighting, vfxs, other fluff, and such.......

I migrate from project to project....
Every once in a while I try to finish one (lighthouse is going/has fail/failed, honestly how stupid can you be to have a ton of water and crap that chokes your computer out(hours of rendering time), plus it being an organic scene that Maya could do with a couple mouse clicks) but getting a wicked still together doesn't work easily.

Anyways why doesn't Cron want new models?
Animating the basi won't be hard, texturing... I dunno I've never bothered to leap into that black box yet.

WE don't want your life stories. 

You don't. Those of us with brains might be interested. Of course, if you don't want to read all that, and maybe learn something from someone who's better at it than you, then you don't have to. And nothing says you have to poke your nose into a conversation that doesn't concern you with nothing to say but "tl;dr". Now go back to watching YouTube Poops or whatever you attention-impaired kids do these days.
On a lighter note, I finished the rig, complete with a few IK handles. Animation is going to take a while, though, and I want to do the textures (and maybe normal maps) first. And it still doesn't show up in the render! RRGH.

[jm82792]

I really should read slowly,
I got all hot and bothered over you post Pazuzu
Thought it was aimed at me.



What are you trying to render?
Textures, etc?
If so toss me the blend(pack everything you want first) and I'll give it a check over.
I've been using Blender too much, too many hours, as it's Blender(85% of the time) or Trem, nothing else on the computer really.

[Pazuzu]

I really should read slowly,
I got all hot and bothered over you post Pazuzu
Thought it was aimed at me.

Hah, not at all. In fact, you were the "someone who's better at it" that I was referring to.

What are you trying to render?
Textures, etc?
If so toss me the blend(pack everything you want first) and I'll give it a check over.
I've been using Blender too much, too many hours, as it's Blender(85% of the time) or Trem, nothing else on the computer really.

I'm trying to render the un-textured mesh for now, but I'll add a texture at some point anyway. For now I'm just checking to see if it'll work when I'm done.

[jm82792]

You've got to get it into the material area by getting it to uv project it.
Also the uv editor needs to use it so that you can see it texture face.
Rendering it might be a waste, a simple GLSL shader exceeds trem as it is.

Texture painting in blender can be nice(although all I've done is paint a high res displacement maps for my lighthouse rocks),
you can paint procedurals, images and plain old strokes with an assortment of brushes.
Although it seems somewhat slow even in 2.56, maybe it's just me.
Since you unwrapped it properly(I think?) blender should be able to handle the rest,.
After you got the color down, sculpt while viewing your texture painted mesh(since the texture will hint where you want depth) then bake it(normals, maybe AO? dunno) and apply it to your low res mesh as a uv image.
Since you already unwrapped it you should get two images, one for color and one for normals.
Hopefully I'm not rehashing what you know........

But then again I've never touched organics and have never texture painted organics......
I've learned enough in other areas I know the motions, not how to perform them well

[cron]

Anyways why doesn't Cron want new models?

It's outside of the stated goals of TremHD.

If anyone wants to model, rig and animate new models in IQM format, I am 100% for it, but that's gonna be a very tough and time-consuming process.
 

[Pazuzu]

Updated with the basic colors. I think it's a bit too dark, personally, and maybe a bit too... Wait, why is it purple? I didn't make it purple.
EDIT: HA HA HA DISREGARD MOST OF WHAT I SAID BEFORE. At some point, the mesh's "render" button in the outliner got turned off somehow. It works fine now. Lolz.

[Pazuzu]

My model officially hates me. I had to re-wrap the mesh, and now half the vertices have come unglued. Even though the weight paint editor says they're the same. And even though they're still in the vertex groups. What's wrong with them? More to the point, how can I fix it? Will the world ever be the same?
Find out tomorrow on... Will It Blend?

[jm82792]

Did you cut it up or is it one continuous mesh?
I'll look at it if you want.
I know trem needs to have it cut for unwrapping, it should be easy to rig even if it's a single object that has a cutup mesh.

[Pazuzu]

One mesh. I'm really perplexed about this, and Blender-Artists is down. Woe is me.

[jm82792]

There is an issue.
It's (sorry for being blunt) idiot proof to rig(well not well but to get it to work) a continuous mesh.
 Blender Artists has been down for a week or two for some reason.

[freezway]

try asking on #blender on freenode

[Pazuzu]

Yes, it blends! I mean, deleting the Armature modifier and adding it again did it.

[jm82792]

Armature modifier?
Just parent the mesh to the skeleton.

You need to get with the textures
I can't stand each polygon has a material approach.

[Nux]

Armature modifier is automatically assigned when you parent.

I have to say, that skeleton could do with some work! The whole point of rigging is to simplify animation, so let's keep it simple! Decide which parts of the basilisk are actually going to move separately and make a bone for each of those parts. This should really only be legs, tail, head and torso with each segmented into at most 3 bones.