Well, there's plenty to be done. You've mentioned some of it yourself already. Of course, a lot of it is "whatever you can spot that needs doing, that you feel capable of doing and feel like actually doing". It's voluntary. Don't work on anything you hate, unless everyone hates doing it and you're feeling heroic.
If possible, it'd be really useful for me if you could carry on through to the rigging tutorial and see if you can make sense of it all, spot some errors or give some feedback. Lots of things need rigging, and some of the rigging can actually be very simple. It's also unlikely to need changing in future, though can be very quickly adjusted and re-exported if necessary.
Other things that may need doing :
Experiment with a few armour models - the "desert nomad" one is up up for grabs if you want to try that - I'm not going to finish it any time soon. There's a few concept art shots
here and
here. Also, have a look through the general
NEW armors/clothes suggestions thread. If there's anything which is generally agreed as a good idea by discussion, it should probably be done. If there's anything which has been "yessed" by Solar or Lexx or another dev, then that should almost definitely be done. Try rigging them if you're feeling confident. If it doesn't work, don't worry about it.
Bear in mind you can try some really simple stuff, like this little test I did the other night :
That's just a little shoulder pad and a strap, like in some of the screen splashes. It's not very good - I was just testing the combination of model against "sprite texture" to see what it did. I think a non-shit version of the same thing would be pretty nice though.
Slightly easier modelling and rigging tasks may be a few more basic hairstyles, hats and face stuff for variety. Hairstyles definitely need looking at. Longer hair will need partial rigging to the "ponytail bones", but short static hair will rig exactly the same as the hat in the tutorial. Big afro hair, mohawks in different colours, weird tribal hair with bones through it. Perhaps a "rambo-style" headband, a handkerchief-as-a-facemask etc. I think there's a lot of free reign for imagination with these. Basically, we've got the basic man / woman hero haircuts only. The wasteland needs a barber.
We are also in dire need of beards.Lizard's given you the base t-pose models as obj for the different body types on there - though we can't test them in game easily yet, you can still work on some stuff there. At the very least, it might be worth putting your test texture on these, so you can understand the subtle differences in them. Some of the fatter characters might need a slightly different texture on them - you might have to adjust the curves on the sash, reposition things a little - but they should mostly translate pretty well. Once you get a little understanding of those shapes and how the texture wraps around the different models, you'll be able to help a lot in the near future. Once we work out what / how to do the textures in the best way possible, we can hopefully start "mass producing" them.
It's probably worth making a few more practice textures - even if they're not to be used in game, it'll be very advantageous to learning. Try a few things out, experiment with the "specular layer" and see what happens when you change it. You'll probably find you suddenly know a lot
There's a few other bits which need doing - if you look at the first post in the
tutorial thread, there's a "how you can help" bit. That stuff mostly still applies.
Also, do not underestimate the value of just reading, looking at stuff and giving feedback on what other people are doing. Generally though, I must admit we are slightly lacking an "overall plan" at the moment as in "what to do next". I keep half-finishing things and wandering off and messing with other stuff all the time, and I know that there's some things that need finishing to let other things happen. Maybe look at my recent posts from the last 3 months, look at every instance where I've said "I might try this" or "I will try and do that soon", then tell me what those things are
Sometimes it's genuinely hard for me to tell which thing needs doing next. I'm tempted to shitly rig the other character models into a vague idle pose and churn out a full set of the "projection map" sprite textures, so we've got a coherent guideline to work from. However we end up doing the textures, I think they'd be useful reference materials. However, perhaps it would be more useful for everyone if I actually DID manage to finish that extra rigging tutorial, or typed up some reference stuff about Karpov's recent object / model linking works and where all the files are stored?
