why no modeling section?

i seen someone asking this before, and no-one really responded to it. it may not be such an important part of mapping for hl, but from the clip i seen about lightmapping on walls for hl2, modeling is going to play a much bigger part in the future.

hmm, i just had a thought. maybe modeling is a taboo subject here, and thats why no-one responded before, and why the 'upload model' type feature thingy in my profile editor page place isn't working.

i only started using milkshape recently, and i believe i've barely scratched the surface of what it can do, but it's still so much fun once you've learned the basics.

the pilot is the 'kermit' player model that a lot of you will have seen, and i dont know if it would be bad form to include in any release of the dr-1 model.





after reading (well, skimming then) through gollums tut on the rolling boulder, i see that there are a lot more possibilities for this than i thought while i was making it. if anyone wants it for anything just say, and ill upload it somewhere. (with or without kermit :rolleyes: )

not many people here can model & those that can arnt very confident in doing so. They will have to after hl2 but itl be a stuggle im sure.

I was planning on learning to model recently, And I will do again soon, I just got distracted by the possibility to map for call of duty & learn a new editor.

cough I used to do some modelling/animation when I was younger; then I got addicted to mapping. Post stuff in this forum for now - the more people showcase their work, the more attractive a modelling section will appear.

[simg]http://www.snarkpit.com/pits/gollum/Forum screens/PF.jpg[/simg]

Okay, so it's a crappy Babylon 5 rip-off, but it looks rather better when animated. Sadly I don't have any high-quality media as at the time I was running a Pentium 60. I have a low-res animation too but it's too large to be worth the upload.

[simg]http://www.snarkpit.com/pits/gollum/Forum screens/Cruiser.jpg[/simg]

Here's the only small enough animations I could find: a quick test to see if I could make fire, and a basic explosion sequence.

What program did you use to make the avi file? I'm interested in making animation, but I don't know what sort of file to make (I want to make 1-5 minute length files). I couldn't find any usable flash programs that were free to download (no expiry). I don't really want to use illegitimate programs or cracks, especially as information about the program could be embedded somewhere in the file. So I suppose what I want to know is:

What program did you use?
What is the best type of file for animation + do you know of any free flash programs?

Models will get more attention here when HL2 comes out, or if lots more threads like this turn up :razz:

I used LightWave to build and animate the scenes. I also used LightWave, with an animation codec "plugin", to output the AVIs. However, there is no need to do this if you have plenty of disk space - just export the uncompressed frames to a folder, and use a free program like VideoMach to splice them together with a suitable codec.

With regard to codecs, I suggest using some variety of DivX AVIs. If I ever do getting back into animating, it will be much more satisfying since back then I didn't have any way to make high-quality movies at all.

nice stuff gollum. looks a tad more complex than anything i'd be taking on in the near future. i've been trying to get the transparancy effect to work to try and make some fire. i even dl'd dod as the tut suggested (dod is supposed to update some dll's to make the transparancy feature work), but i still couldn't make it happen.

btw, i thought that babylon5 done a much better job of explaining the cause/effect time loop thingy than star trek ever did.

One thing to remember is that in shots like the ones I posted, it doesn't really matter how many polygons you have. The spaceship in the first picture comprises nearly 50,000 polygons.

Modelling for games requires an awareness of how to create or transform a model so that it works well within the game. My understanding of that is limited to making a rolling sphere in MilkShape :biggrin:

I've always been interested in modeling, but never taken the time... maybe after HL2 comes out...

Tracer Bullet said:
I've always been interested in modeling, but never taken the time... maybe after HL2 comes out...

i've always been interested in multi-managers, anything more, would really fry my ol circuits :/

i will prolly continue my tradition of, counting on my really good friends to provide the stuff i cannot make :heee:

Leperous said:
Models will get more attention here when HL2 comes out, or if lots more threads like this turn up :razz:

There is a HL2 Editing Forum with 2 Topics in it. Why not make it Hl2Editing/Modelling? Make use of good space.

Gollum, some nice stuff, very detailed.

With regard to including "Kermit" in your model release, it's probably best to e-mail the author and ask. If you can't get a response, include it with a credit to him.

And BTW I forgot: nice modelling, I can see you've made the prop. properly for example :smile: