New Gas Bag underway!

[Savage]

I was considering adding more geometry in the Low Poly mesh but after discussing it with a few friends I have decided to just make some adjustment to the Diffuse Map concerning the eyes. This sin't going to be the end result but the overall geometry is what you will see in game. More work must be done in the UE3 Editor that can't be done in Blender or GIMP so their is more work to be done. I still must rig the Gasbag in Blender and put an animation package together while in Blender and import into into Unreal and do a bit of coding and some more editing to the Material package. If anybody has any suggestions, I am open to any ideas you may have. I want to finish up this guy but I do plan to make a baby gasbag and some bionic type harder to kill gasbag out of the material I already have and still more monsters to come.
And just imagine, what you see above started out as what you see below... Wow, it amazes me.

[Savage]

I ran an in game test of the textures and materials of the new gasbag and it was actually helpful in figuring out what I was doing wrong with the Specular Map. It was grey scale and both Blender and UT3 need RGB values even though it is a black and white image. Whatever! Here is an in game test:
And Karma, you are right as usual, when running and jumping around it in game, it is hard to see all the little details and plus the Normal Map works much better in UT3 too so that is helpful. I will need to work on my Blender Normal Bake Method a bit for use in UT3 though for future endeavors. I will be using color ramps and other material noodles to give the eyes a strange insect look. This creature did evolve in the deep dark caverns of a strange far away planet, right? I may turn down the specularity a bit as well, what do you all think? Too shiny?

[DW_KarmaKat]

Hmm...think the specular map for the skin looks okay...after all, we're imagining that it's leathery..so who's to say it can't look a little moist and therefore a little shiny? Maybe they secrete an oil that's part of their chemistry that allows them to breath flame! ;)

Hard to comment about the eyes just yet...wait and see what happens when ya make 'em look more insectile.

KKat
:cat:

[Savage]

Yea, I actually like how it turned out so far. Not so bad for my first monster. Now it is on to the arms and eyes as far as materials go and I still must rig it up and animate it. Once this one is finished, I should be able to start knocking some monsters out really fast. This one has been a learning experience trying to develop my technique and methods and all that jive! Been reading a lot of books on using Blender and online documentation on UT3, doing tutorials, and more study. It has been a long run but it will make it that much more worth it when it is finished, right?

[Jon!]

I assume because it's work in progress they're not meant to fire yet...? They are great cannon fodder atm since they just follow you around, if they move at all.

[Savage]

Yup, we got a ways to go yet with all the coding to belch flame and all but we are getting there. The Gasbags in game will be replaced with the one above eventually and some more monsters will soon follow.

[HellBrYnger]

looks awesome, but make sure that the gasbags can actually shoot :geek:

[Savage]

Well why would we want to do that? Shoot? Then it could hurt us?

[Savage]

I must sit gassy aside for a little while to finish work on a few maps for DW members. I have been doing a lot of research on the UT3 editor and also furthering my knowledge of Blenders armature system just to find out that UT3 does in fact support character morph targets. Too little too late but at least now maybe I can stuff some TF2 heavys into UT3 as a monster in the future now that I know it can be done. Now I just need to find them in that mess of a file system called TF2. Anyways, as for gassy, I must put him on hold to get to a couple other projects that have been asked of me, including but not limited to the MM3 mana and globe.

EDIT: To get TF2 heavies as monster I must ask someone with windows XP for assistance. If you have XP and you want to help, PM or Email me. All one must do is download a converter and convert heavy to a file format I can use with blender. Some one with at least a beginning knowledge of Source SDK and the hammer editor and file formats

[Savage]

Hey Karma, what do you think of this for the eyes? I have a few more ideas in mind as well but this seems to be in the right direction... ???

A little animation I did with the Lugwig rig... Thought it was a bit funny.
Been doing a bit of programming too, that is why I haven't been getting a lot done...