Heavy Mech (OGA/Skorpio) [integrated]

[Skorpio]

I'm currently working on my new mech. The shape is done already, but I think it needs some more greebles. Maybe I'll just bake some greebles onto the normalmap. Actually I wanted to model a medium or even light mech, but it looks pretty heavy now.

Here's my rough concept drawing:

Mech10_Vorlage.png (62.35 KiB) Viewed 41175 times

And some renders:

[charlie]

Wow, it looks fantastic.

Will the weapon mounts be built into the model or will they be subunits? (Actually, not sure how this works in LW anyway.)

[Skorpio]

You can replace the rocket launcher and the cannon if you want, they are separate models. The cannon in the left arm is attached to the shoulder atm and can't be rotated left or right, so the mech needs to twist the torso. The rocket launcher can be rotated because it doesn't touch the torso.

[qubodup]

Great mech!

The front/cockpit is kind of round, which doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the sharp-edges machine.

The rocket launcher makes the impression of being unbalanced/not effective. More holes would remove that impression for me.

Everything else: very nice!

[hc]

Great! Awesome! OMG!

What is it's name?

What's the polycount?
At a first glance this model demonstrates a good use of polycount.
Also I think a edged cockpit would fit, too, I like the flat-to-round contrast.
Of course round costs a lot - especially for small gizmos.

About weapons in LW:
Weapons used to be hardcoded 3d models in older versions.
That was before Skorpio's detailed mech model was included and Flopsy had it's own weapons, too.
So whole model variations are fine but weapon prefabs and mech parts are fine in the long run, too.
And maybe someday: A BaseModel+WeaponModels could be assembled somehow.

Torsor and Weapon movement:
The Torsor may yaw left and right and either weapon may pitch up and down - for this model.
In general the model may have one joint for torso yaw (eg. for hips) and one for torso pitch (eg. for shoulder).
They may be ordered yaw then pitch or vice versa, too.
And there is another pair of separated joints for the camera.
LW uses skeletal animation with special joint names for procedural animation.

[Skorpio]

Thanks guys. I'm glad you like it.

Great mech!
The rocket launcher makes the impression of being unbalanced/not effective. More holes would remove that impression for me.

Yes, maybe six barrels would look better, but I actually thought the case should contain the rest of the ammo (about 20 rockets), since it has no contact to the torso. However, there could be a mechanism that pulls the launcher to the torso, so that it can be reloaded.

What is it's name?

I think something like Thunderbird or Thunderhawk would be cool.

What's the polycount?
At a first glance this model demonstrates a good use of polycount.
Also I think a edged cockpit would fit, too, I like the flat-to-round contrast.
Of course round costs a lot - especially for small gizmos.

Ve: 3535 Fa: 3392 (atm).

Edit: Here's a screenshot with a sixfold launcher. It really looks better.

[hc]

Just for comparison and reference:

Flopsy: V 4146, F 4092
Scorpion: V 924, F 1732
Frogger: V 906, F 893

After triangulation, regrouping for sharp edges and removing invisible faces (ie. game-ready).

While Flopsy is a great model it put a lot of budget into smooth round barrels.
V49,F56 for each of the 16 barrels: Amounts to V2401,F896 for the whole model.
That's about half of the total vertexes and a fifth of the total faces - not for details but just for flat roundness.
So, in my opinion, it is best to be careful about round parts and spare that budget for extra details.

So the stealth-look is a good idea and square rocket-launcher-holes would be fine
And holes would be good for mounting any weapon, too.

[hc]

As for the name, both thunderbird and thunderhawk seem to be related to a famous brand, again.
How about Terrorbird?
That's a giant walking bird of prey that once lived.

[Skorpio]

Actually the Thunderbird is a mythological creature in the Native American culture. We shouldn't be so picky about names, because every name has been used before for other games or products. The big, evil car industry has stolen the name from the natives and now we claim it back for the people. But if you want to give it another name, that would be OK for me as well.

[charlie]

I think hc is referring more to a well known commercial mech game having a similarly named mech, rather than a different industry altogether.

EDIT: or not, I can't seem to pull it up on Google.

I would agree with Skorpio here (if I am not right about another mech game using the name thunderbird) as this has nothing to do with the car. Or the Mozilla-sponsored email client. Still, Terrorbird isn't a bad name either.

Note to self: google before making potentially embarrassing statements. Note to self: you always forget these notes to self.

[hc]

BTW trademarks are usually related to one industry only - so it would even be legally save - related to cars.
But charlie is (was) right: Thunderbird Battle Armor (google image search: mechwarrior thunderbird)
I'm just extra careful about not even barely touching that company's IP even if it's supposed to be save by common sense.
I'm not even sure it's an official mech (I'm not a knee deep fan).

[charlie]

It would seem to be a type of armour for a ground unit in a mechwarrior-based minatures [table top] game.

Still, I can understand the paranoia. The last thing you need is a cease & desist to do battle with.

[Skorpio]

Thunderbird is one of the few names that hasn't been used for a mech in the Battletech universe yet. However, an aerospace fighter with that name exists. I think reusing some Battletech names would be okay, since they've used up almost all good names for mechs already. Think of a cool name for a mech and then search for it on Mechground or in MegaMek, in all likelihood there's already a mech with this name.

[Skorpio]

The model is now unwrapped and rigged. I've created a procedural base camo for it which you can see in the renders. Now I'll have to paint a dirtmap.

Here's a render of the mech with the base camo:

And I also tried to render with Luxrender for the first time. Looks cool, but Luxrender obviously blurred the camo textures for some reason and the uv-map of the man was incorrect as well, and it takes A LOT of time to render with this program.

[Skorpio]

Here's an update. I'm still working on the dirt map, but I'm nearly done. Perhaps I'll add some more details per normal map.

[Julius]

That thing is massive... are Mechs in LinWarrior really that size? I I remember correctly it felt more like half the size or so (which is somehow cooler anyways).

Otherwise nice work, 3200 faces is a bit heavy but nothing major.

[Skorpio]

I think the model has the "normal Battletech size". If the man is 1.80m tall (1.8 Blender units), then the height of the mech is about 11m. BTW I forgot to rescale my first mech and it actually should have the same height as the new one. At the moment it has only half the size. That sucks pretty much because rescaling it in Blender messes up the animations. Can you rescale models in your engine without disarranging their animations?

[hc]

The short answer is:
I was rescaling the models for inclusion anyways (based on class, polycount, strength),
added a custom skeleton/rig,
all animations are in-game live procedural.
BTW could you include an OBJ-File when you upload your model to opengameart.org?

Julius is right LinWarrior Mechs are generally a bit smaller (walking tanks).
For comparison Overall sizes, including weapons, and sensors:

Flopsy: 7.64m (heavy)
Frogger: 5.27m (medium) [ joe average mech ]
Scorpion: 4.87m (light-medium)
Ant: 3.02m (battle tank)

I'd class this mech as "heavy" to "very heavy" (maybe 8-10m).
But size isn't everything when it comes to strength, this Mech looks heavily armored, too.

[Skorpio]

Procedural textures are really practical to design camos. I just created a new desert camo with a few clicks and the dirt map does the rest of the work. Speaking of textures, are you planning to use only procedural textures in LW or will you use dirt maps to give the mechs a more interesting, realistic look? And do you have multimaterials in your game? I'm using a different material for the windows.

BTW could you include an OBJ-File when you upload your model to opengameart.org?

Sure, no problem. Actually I could send you the model already if you create the animations on your own.

[qubodup]

very nice colors! the yellow might be too shiny, but no idea how this will be in-game.

[hc]

Eventually I'd like to support custom textures somehow.
Maybe some hybrid method because it's convenient to have automatic material variation.

For now I can implement multi-materials (some hard-coded at first)...
...just implemented multi-materials, I'll still have to fiddle some details but here are material names for object-groups:

glass, rubber, steel, camo

Rubber is actually meant for all darkish/gray/blackish undefined matter like carbon, dark holes, and of course dark rubber.
Steel is meant for shiny blank or polished metal.
Camo should be used for camouflage and will be replaced in-game with faction-color or chosen camouflage.
Glass just for glass, still unsure about actual color.

[ screenshot follows in the progress forum ]

[hc]

ps. nice texturing!!

[Skorpio]

I haven't worked a lot on the mech in the last days (had to play Quakewars and Team Fortress 2 to test my new, old hardware ). It has a simple normal map now with a few additional details and I created a walkcycle (there's a video attached). I wanted to create some more animations and polish a few things before I upload it to OGA, so I'll just attach the model in obj format for you to this post, without textures and armature. Or do you need the armature? And does the x-axis have to be rotated for LW?

Mech5Walk.zip is the video of the walkcycle.

[hc]

I will fixup the model anyway to get it in.
So orientation isn´t a big issue yet (have to figure a standard out).
Same with the armature: Can´t export from blender yet because the joint orientations are different I need joints axis aligned for animation - which is not a general requirement for md5mesh. Maybe I can realign them later at load/run time.

BTW I´ve added a yellow-black "warn" material.

(Note to self: have to write a tech/integration faq someday)

But I´ve got to stick to my own rules: I´ll only integrate and release models published somewhere. I`ll certainly have a look at the preview - but maybe you could upload the model on OGA as WIP? Say, static model, animations to come?
I know OGA isn´t well suited for WIP yet (eg. no news when contents change) but let´s show there is a need for OGA2

[hc]

Integration Status: Inofficial In-Game-Preview / Waiting for commit to OGA and official license for official integration.

@Skorpio: the axis orientation was just right.

Thunderbird Heavy Assault