Critters and stuff related to them

[Luther Blissett]

I read it more like just "consider other animals which may be alive and could add to the gameplay".

Particularly noting the last sentence :

For anyone doing fan fiction or campaign stuff for Fallout, my recommendation would always be to do whatever makes the story or campaign better - strict adherence to the Fallout genre might kill some good ideas for a story or (in role-playing games) lessen a cool playing experience for your players.

Not that I can really think of any myself right now, but it's quite a good point.

[zamp]

Just making a note here: Molerat and Pigrat can use the same model. Latter is just a scaled down version with a pink fleshy skin. So whoever is making one of them should do both since its just a skinning thing to make both.

[LagMaster]

well we will later need to retexture them

[zamp]

Rawrrr! Gecko! (Taking cover from fire or something)


The model has been armatured but still needs a texture and animations.
Never done a moving model before so it might take me a while to get animations done.
640ish polygons

Here's another pic, now showing few angles


Edit: Animations aren't hard to make but I have no idea how to export them so the game can use them.
Here's a test idle animation for the gecko

[Graf]

Gecko animation looks very nice As far as I know, all animations and models are stored in .X files (you need this plugin to export it from 3Ds max), but each have a separate file. This means, that there's a file with model and a file with each animation separately. And also you should set a mob animations in _VBMob.fo3d (in SDK, ofc)

If you're using blender, you probably have another way to export it, but also you can do it this way - export from blender to .FBX, import it in 3Ds max 2010, export it to .X from there. All animations should work after it (in theory).

[Haraldx]

Yay, gecko! Looks great Do you have any texture in mind or anything?

[Akiko]

my suggestion about gecko animation - make tail moving

[zamp]

If you're using blender, you probably have another way to export it, but also you can do it this way - export from blender to .FBX, import it in 3Ds max 2010, export it to .X from there. All animations should work after it (in theory).

I can export to .x directly from blender.

Yay, gecko! Looks great Do you have any texture in mind or anything?

Don't have a texture yet. Going to make it though.

my suggestion about gecko animation - make tail moving

I'll try to make the animations as close as what they are now. The animation you see there is just a test.
I still need references so if someone has a sprite sheet I'll gladly take it

Damnit.. just noticed that I forgot ears altogether

[spears]

Whats an acceptable triangle count for critters?
i made this as a first attempt

But i think i may need to go back and remove the smoothing to cut it down a touch.

[Graf]

Very good, spears. How much tris does it have? It shouldn't be over 1000-1500. If it is below this value - you can start texturing it.

[spears]

That one was something like 1k Fa which i think is about 2k triangles.
I reduced the faces on the eyes, removed the joints from the limbs and cutout most of the underside and some of the front. Got it down to 766 Fa. I think it still ooks okay as long as you view it from a slightly elevated position which as they are so small shouldnt be a problem.

[Bones]

maybe you could merge polygons in areas in which there wouldn't be any flexing, and in which more polygons don't add to the silhouette

From what I can see from that image, is that there are areas in which there could be 'larger polygons' with less edge loops. This could reduce the polycount a bit


Either way, the mantis look great 

[zamp]

Mantis looks very good. Btw if you want to know how many triangles the mesh has, select the whole mesh in edit mode and hit CTRL+T, this will make all quads into tris

[spears]

Thanks for the help, i think once i have fixed the animations so that the limbs dont distort i'l probably do the whole thing again. Should be much quicker now i dont need to google every button.

[BlindMaster]

I made the ant
Photo:http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/204/antd.jpg/
And download
http://uploading.com/files/7da9141d/ANT.rar/


PS:312 faces