Tortoise 4 BM, by Zaneeba_slave ; pics

[Koniption]

Hey Guys,

Zaneeba_slave hath struck again!

He modeled this tortoise for me, for Blackmarsh:

http://img576.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=tortoise1.jpg

I have to decimate it, and I've already done a fair bit of optimizing on the turtle already. However, the screenshots above are its "unoptimized" state - images before I started to decimate it.

The tortoise might end up being used, like Deeza suggested in one of his PM's to me
(@ Deeza - it will be on a much smaller scale than the pic you sent me ;P )

It's another potential feature for Blackmarsh, when I get things sorted with Blender.

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Cute. =)

It looks like he's missing textures for the time being but this should be a nice addition. Maybe we can have him patrolling the coastal areas as a kind of mudcrab variation (a lower level creature).

[Deeza]

It does look very nice, and yes, I think it would be very well suited as a low-level beastie.

For the record, my suggestion (originally from TOYB) was that the largest tortoises in Black Marsh could have howdahs mounted on their shells for the purposes of carrying important argonians around. It wouldn't be necessary for these to be functional, it would just be cool to have some of them standing around the more powerful villages and Lilmoth.

[Koniption]

Originally posted by Deeza
It does look very nice, and yes, I think it would be very well suited as a low-level beastie.

For the record, my suggestion (originally from TOYB) was that the largest tortoises in Black Marsh could have howdahs mounted on their shells for the purposes of carrying important argonians around. It wouldn't be necessary for these to be functional, it would just be cool to have some of them standing around the more powerful villages and Lilmoth.

Yes, I agree the creature version would be a lower level creature.

I was gonna make the bigger "grand-daddy" tortoises just an animated activator, though, with several animations that can be called via a random percentage function. THey'd be so big and with large "hard scales as armor", that they wouldn't feel threatened by another puny actor, and so wouldn't waste their time attacking nor fleeing. After all, they just like to eat most of the time, and walking is what they do beat. So the big ones don't need to be creatures, imo.

This way, I can still allow howdahs on them, and maybe even allow a furniture marker on a parented howdah on them, so that the player/NPC can sit on them, just to enjoy the view and limited movement.

I still think some should have huts on their back, that the player can go into by activating a parented door, but one thing at a time.

I can't really use a creature version for being able to enter huts on the back, I think, because the living tortoises bounding box would probably get in the way. I dunno, I'll eventually think of a good, and maybe better combo of how to go about things.

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

=) That's so wacky and cool.

[Deeza]

I just love the idea of the hut activator...

[sHAdowgAme]

hey KP just out of curiosity how are you "decimating" these models?

[Deeza]

Shadowgame! You're back! How are things?

[Koniption]

Originally posted by sHAdowgAme
hey KP just out of curiosity how are you "decimating" these models?

Hi Shadowgame,

In Blender, when your mesh is in "Edit Mode", go to "Mesh" -> "Scripts" -> "Poly Reducer".

You'll get a pop-up window with various "decimation" options. Just tweak the options to your liking. Of course, after "Poly Reduce", I sometimes manually "decimate" by welding two or more vertices together if they are in a spot where they are side-by-side, and joining them won't hurt the mesh quality too much.

For creatures, I have to be careful, because I want the vertices to line up neatly around any bending joints. I still do Poly Reduce on creatures, but then I manually go in after that and weld select vertices and line them up best I can. I only have to decimate when I get a high poly model. I usually make my own creatures low poly from the beginning, if I model them from scratch myself.

I join vertices together, by selecting more than one by SHIFT + RightClicking (on each vertice separately), then pressing Alt+M -> "Center"

In Max there was an "Optimize" feature - literally named "Optimize". You select your meshs' faces or vertices that you want optimized while it is Editable Mesh (or you can select all faces or vertices), then you click on one of those top panel buttons (I forget which and I can't doublecheck), keep expanding the windows, and you'll see a feature called "Optimize". Click on it, and play with the settings, until your mesh reduces its polies to an acceptable and safe level.

Just watch the render window and your mesh as you do this - you should see the results in real time. It's best to watch this in "Wireframe" setting, as well as with solid mesh. I always optimize before I textured, else I found I had to go back and reUVMap the darn thing. I couldn't figure out how to make the UVMap auto-update as I optimized a mesh and had various pieces welded.

Koniption

[sHAdowgAme]

Just as I thought. There are better/faster ways to do it. One is just rebuilding the model from the ground up. The other would be to have Zeneba send you a lower subdivision of the zsculpt. Hope that helps