[Daraius]

Hi guys!
http://www.geocities.com/michaellankes/KantorDraft2.0.jpg

I finished a Space Marine model (WH40DK) and tried to find some tutorials dealing with
the topic: skinning (especially armour). Unforntunately, I did not find any tutorial that goes into detail…… maybe you can help me out……Unreal Tournament stuff perhaps……..

By the way: Feel free to critizise the model

Best regards,
Daraius

[ April 27, 2001: Message edited by: Daraius ]

[joep]

looks pretty awsome, light it up more tho so we can see it better, to dark

[Anthony]

Very nice modeling. Since he's not a game model, I think texturing would be an appropriate term. Basically you most likely want to create color, diffuse, bump, and spec maps for each part of his armor seperately, instead of making one huge UV. So select one section of polys that would have the same surface(be continuous with itself), make a UV for that, paint it, etc.

[Lev]

Looks awesome, what modelling technique/prog did ya use?

[Staff Sarge]

Wow... this is great! Sorry, can't give no critics this time.

This is an Crimson Fist marine, right? Did you use any reference, or is this "Kantor" your very own design?

[Gimbal8]

Great model. I'd like to see a close up of the face and torso.

I play 40K myself and have a Sisters of Battle army. The only thing I could possibly say about the model is the..um..crap I forget the name for it, but the shoulder armor: I may be wrong but I always thought the shoulder armor thingies to be a bit more round. I'm not saying you should make them round though. I actually don't like the way space marines look but your model looks better then I think they are normally.

I wish I could help you somehow but I'm afraid your skills far surpass mine. Here was my attempt at a Seraphim jet pack:

[immi]

wow, very nice model. Maybe head over to www.skindom.com . There are a bunch of tutorials on skinning and also a dedicated bunch of skinners willing to help (see Bobo the Seal, Rorshach esp.) maybealso post the model on the forum, and see whether other people would be interested in skinning it for fun.

[Daraius]

Thanks a lot for your replies!

The model is part of an animation and was
created in Maya (Subdivision Surfaces).
I`ll make a web site to keep everybody
informed on the current status of my project
(2 or 3 months). I took a closer look on
the skindom site and gathered useful information......thanks!

Oh, yes...... Chaptermaster Kantor is a
Crimson Fist Space Marine (actually he is the big boss of the fists) and I didn�t
have any reference......it was a very
hard task to convert the "tube-like" shapes
of the original Sapce Marine form into a result that looks great in a 3D Animation.

[Staff Sarge]

Daraius, you might want to check out the Warhammer 40K Eldar piece at my b/w thread.

Whatwhat?? An animated space marine? I want to see that.

[Sumaleth]

Very nice model.

Texturing for a game requires a very different approach than if you're texturing for rendering.

In rendering, shadowing best comes almost exclusively from the lighting of the environment, so it's best not to add too much shading into the texture (fullbright), so that the moulding and bumpmaps produce all the shading.

But in a game engine only the most basic shading comes from the environment lighting, so you need to put a lot of shadowing into the texture to make it look good.

So values are vastly more important in doing a game texture than for a rendering texture. In fact it's probably the most important part in making a texture look good in a game. If you get the values right on every part of the texture then it'll look great even without color.

For this reason a lot of game-skin artists these days do the whole texture in grey-scale to begin with, and then once that's looking good they colorize it. It's not essential to work this way (eg. I don't), but it separates some major steps making things simpler in a way.

With a detailed model like this the process of shading values is fairly easy because you just need to follow the forms of the model. You could even create a render with the light source above and slightly in front (the optimal placement for a game model), and see exactly how the shading should be done. (for shading the back, the light should be above and slightly behind)

(a radiosity rendering would be the best to work from)

That's just some ideas anyway.

Row.