FreeGameDev

I don't want to clutter the ideas thread anymore with her since she's in an existing form now.

She's a representative of OpenArena3 for the coming art shift. That game is licensed under the GPL V2 much like this character will be when i'm done with it.

She's an adult dark elf who dabbles in alchemy, magic, and now wants to add racing to that list.

FAQ:
Q:Why blue?
A:Bcause!

Q: TO SEXY
A: The original character was too sexy. This special STK version isn't, and would probably qualify for the hypothetical E rating.

So far:
Modeled & skinned Sorceress ~6hrs
Modeled a really rough random trike vehicle thing ~3hrs
Made an icon ~7 minutes
Learned the pipeline ~1 hrs
Creating a darn armature ~0.5hrs
Making the darn animations ~2hrs

What's next:
Make wheles
Find some decent color scheme for the kart itself
Probably reproportion her again so she's consistent with Sara's proportions. I actually modeled this first BEFORE playing the game

looks very good .
The kart is a 3 or a 4 wheeler ?

3. 2 in the back and one in the front. though it looks like a hoverbike of some sort at this point without wheels

Hi

I can add the bones. Can you post the blend with all textures included

Thank you

No love for a broom as a 'kart'?

samuncle {l Wrote}:I can add the bones.

I can too!

youtu.be/Sw830FzIRTA
Steering, winning/losing anims implemented. Wish the right analog stick could orbit the camera for a better view. and i think I exported the model a little too high.

O/T: I recognize a few SoundIdeas sounds used particularly the old WHEE sound from TuxKart which can be also heard in Windows Entertainment Pack, and that zap noise after I respawned after being blown by a basketball.

charlie {l Wrote}:No love for a broom as a 'kart'?

Pointed hat != is witch

Ahahaha that is soo cool. The animations could be a bit slower and the model a bit smaller (she looks like a giant compared to sara).

If you provide me the blend I can include her in the new mansion.

I also suggest you to create gloss map so her hat, her motorbike looks a bit shiny. To create gloss map you can read the documentation about them and look at sara the racer to see how they were done.

More information on the documentation

Looks awesome so far! Love to see new content is coming to STK, the add-ons page could really need some stuff

When I created a gloss map it felt more like a glow map and not any specular gloss. I didn't like how her skin glowed etc. so i left that out.

Anyway here's a blend. Note that this is not a game-ready zip though you can export a kart from it and it's still very unfinished.
http://leileilol.mancubus.net/crap/stksorceress1.zip

The tires were quickly put on and that had me stumped because there's some bad clipping with the vehicle. oh well

leilei {l Wrote}:When I created a gloss map it felt more like a glow map and not any specular gloss. I didn't like how her skin glowed etc. so i left that out.

From the wiki:

- Red channel: is the specular map. It means how shiny a surface is.

- Green channel: is the gloss map. It means how the shininess behave. For instance a wet surface will have a high gloss coefficient, while rubber or latex might be a bit more hazy.

- Blue channel: is the emission map. It means how much the material will emit light. If the light intensity is strong enough it will start to bloom (glow). (...)

So, if there is a just a little proportion of blue in your gloss map -> it starts to glow. Usually it needs lot of time finding the perfect balance of the colors to create authentic material looks.

So uh... My source is out there for a month now. Any changes? Feedback?

Sorry for the delay but we where busy with the release/personal stuff etc.

I downloaded your model and it looks good. I'm planning to include her in the mansion (which is a WIP track).

My only suggestion is just like Auria said her chest is very... prominent. The clothes are okay but it should be a little bit smaller.

I also strongly suggest you to check how to create gloss map (you can see the kart suzanne which has now gloss map).

I don't see an issue with the chest size since the proportions are supposed to be cartoony. It's to be equalized with Sara's ridiculous bigheaded proportions, but more mature - otherwise she'll be smaller than Sara. Also, the vehicle takes away the supposed chest prominence.

If the cameo in the mansion level means clones of her everywhere, then i'm totally against that. It's already bad enough Sara has a clone horde and paradox problem, I don't want Sorceress to have a clone horde either. She is a powerful magician, not a decorative object. or a witch

Regarding clones, we know it's not ideal but we're doing what we can with our limited manpower - we can't afford to spend time creating completely new characters everytime. But we do welcome contributions to help improve on that issue, the more contributions we get the less clones we'll need (Also please note that having more characters uses more VRAM and taxes the GPU more, given that our engine isn't as optimised as those used for AAA games we will not be able to afford as much diversity as they do)

What you need is a generic character you can just place everywhere without fear of the cloning looking bad. Like different tinted penguins or something.

In Mario they can spam different coloured Toads and Yoshis everywhere without it looking bad because the only physical thing that defines individuals in those groups is colour.

I feel that also could be helped with a shader that colorizes per channel. Saints Row 3 did it that way with a color mask, each channel being a color to mix (up to 3 pickable colors) and then these colors could be randomized or assigned by text and the shader would take care of the rest. It'll keep the texture requirements down and is probably the closest you can get to palettizing on modern hardware.

STK has lots of room to refactor for the assets IMO. Try to favor texture atlases and less use of unique textures. Sorceress herself is just one texture. Do it more like that and . Texture switching is something you want to reduce.

Also more on the proportions, here's a comparison pic of her original OA3 rendition and the STK rendition. You can see where I tried to chibify and where i've reduced (the relative chast size is actually smaller). NSFW for cleavage at the left

Hi, thanks for your explanation and post. The chest proportions are okay !
Here is some precision about stk's engine:

1) The randomization of cloth colors/etc is a GREAT and AWESOME idea. I would love to see this coded and put into action in stk. That would add a lot of variety for hair color, cloths, etc. We just need a programmer to do it.

2) Let me be clear, we don't particularly want to clone Sara or any other character 1000 times. If for instance we could have one model of a woman with a swimsuit and them the swimsuit can have randomly generated colors and also different hairs I would gladly accept that (also not just for characters but houses/objects etc). So each trees would have a slightly different green.
Everything that can easily add variety in the game is good. We have a new programmer for the engine we should see with her how it could be done

3) The engine has currently massive performance issue.

Try to favor texture atlases and less use of unique textures

We do something slithtly different with generic textures. Basically we try to share between object a maximum of textures. For instance there is only one wooden texture and then it's used almost everywhere we need a wooden object. Actually there is only a few objects that need a dedicated texture.

4) The engine uses instancing which means each time you reuse a character you avoid to fill the VRAM too much.
ALso it means if your model take let's say tux which uses 20 Mb in the VRAM, since you can't generate dynamically colors, if you want to create another model with a different color you will end up with TWO different model (from the engine point of view).

Tux Model with red color: 20 Mb
Tux Model with yellow : 20 MB

Which means 40 Mb only for a different color (and different color doesn't add much diversity). So I prefer to do something like

Tux Model with red: 20 Mb
Gnu Model with yellow: 20 Mb

You use more wisely your VRAM because they are different models. Visually they add more diversity.

ALso in the universe of STK and video games aren't necessarily logic. We try to make interesting and great tracks that are fun to explore.

5) There is no conspiracy about monkeys or Sara. The way this was done is very simple
-> I'm currently almost alone doing artwork for stk and I needed to populate the beach.
-> I didn't had the time to create a new human model (since I have the whole track to be made and thousand of other objects/details to do)
-> I took sara's mesh and changed the texture to make the swimsuit
It's simply a rational use of time/effort invested. BTW even big production do that to cut down the cost.

Here is an example made by Pixar


AS a conclusion, we want more diversity and various model but we don't have the man power. I do think your character can be included in the mansion as a bystander (maybe even with a different color from the kart). We desperately need stuff to fill this mansion. If for you seeing 5 time a character during a race is an outrage we can't force you.

Okay I just opened a ticket about randomly color change stuff in stk.

https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/issues/2338

I tried to make Sorceress as optimal as I could, but ran into an animation roadblock that worked against that-

I wanted a slow standing ovation animation for the victory, and the only way I could make that happen is to use a lot of frames because the default animation framerate is too high. This ended up bloating the model size to a large 12mb B3D. It would also be nice if only deform bones were exported, as I am assuming it's exporting every skeleton bone... or it's all vertex morph data. I don't know what's there since I can't import B3Ds in Blender. I can say an IQM export (animated skeletal format) of the same model is 505kb however.

leilei {l Wrote}:Also more on the proportions, here's a comparison pic of her original OA3 rendition and the STK rendition. You can see where I tried to chibify and where i've reduced (the relative chast size is actually smaller). NSFW for cleavage at the left

Just wanted to say that I find your model way cooler than the original

Seriously, I like the witch. The Art style is very nice, mesh looks well done and it perfectly fits for upcoming halloween!
No problem with the character itself. Maybe would like to see some gloss / reflections on the vehicle.

For the record she is not a witch. She is a sorceress. From an elf village. Not Salem. Not halloweeny. The similarities to a witch ends with the hat.

I think the model is well-done and I like it overall, but something seems a bit off to me... I think it has something to do with the proportions, perhaps the thickness of the legs and the size of the hat could be reduced slightly?
I definitely think the chest needs to be made a little more subtle, at least less outlined.

ardvark71 {l Wrote}:

leilei {l Wrote}:Feedback?

Hi...

While some might consider this off-topic, while a few of the other characters are not that great either, a character such as this would not be a benefit for folks for what it represents, which is satanic in nature. More about that here. Honestly, witchcraft and all of its forms is bad news bears for those involved in it and it only leads to one place: Hell. Please see my second link below to see the reality of that place.

God has a lot better things in mind for folks than that (not that witchcraft is good), I'm one who knows.

Regards...

Aardvark,
I myself am an open Christian, so I can understand where you're coming from. I have recently read a book by Francis Schaffer (a great Christian author of his time) called Art & the Bible as part of a college art appreciation class. I would recommend that you take some time and read it. One of the main ideas of the book is, just because we don't agree with the worldview or content of a piece of art doesn't mean that we can't recognize it as great art. Lielei worked hard and did an awesome job at creating a high quality model and character for STK and it easily qualifies as great art. Just because you don't like the fact that it's based on a sorceress doesn't disqualify it as good art. If you don't like the character, you can easily remove it from STK on your own pc. I understand that the Bible condemns witchcraft and wizardry, but I don't feel that this model is promoting those acts in any way. Also, the character doesn't look grotesque or evil. Please take into consideration what I've said here, and please don't disqualify this as good art just because you don't agree with the content.

I agree with 0zone0ne that the proportions should be leveled out. Especially the chest and legs. I think the hat is okay because it makes the model look more cartoonish.
Kind Regards,
ArDanWol

Note: I deleted the nonsense. We won't tolerate religious damnation on this forum. If your sky god is so great then prove he exists, then maybe we'll think about adjusting our rules to suit his preferences as decreed by ancient books written by ignorant men.