Samus model

Cool looking Samus dude.. not a bad model at all.. however I do wonder how it would animate.. especially in the shoulder area.. I remember from playing the game that the armour is in segments and as you progressed through the game you got more of your armour etc.. Perhaps you should keep this in mind and detach the mesh into parts so that when you rig you can use Rigid binding more effectively... :D

Still looks tops all the same..

and
Go Nintendo!

currently the arms are seperate segments to the body, so that it can function as a ball joint. i want to put the model into UT2k4, however that means using biped i would like to do a custom rig but then i would have to do 40 or more custom animations, which i dont have time for at the moment.

i would like to rig the sholder so one bone controls the ball and another controls the uper arm - as it is done in the game so that i can rotate each independantly. with biped though i cant do this cos the clavical dos'nt rotate. so all i can do is rig the ball and arm to the one arm bone. this means it wont function 'right' in how it rotates, but that's all i can do.

that said, i'm going to do a test and see if i can figure out a work around for it, even if it means adding extra bones to the biped and re-doing some animations. i plan on redoing the taunts and major animations anyway, so if i can get a way with the minor ones screwing up a bit it shouldnt be too bad.

oh, and if i do figure out a way to rig each speratly i'll remodel the arm/ball connection slightly so they actualy can move independantly.

Its got potential if you fix up for deformation and kill those glutenous excess polies but my biggest crit would be the anatomy, front on its alot better but no one is that straight side on.

Humans curve all over the place, even in mecha bodysuits.

And for good rigging you need the arms and legs bent at the elbows and knees just a little anyway.

Good start though man, keep us posted.

samus makes abosolutly no sence anatomy wise (just think how small her head must be to fit inside the helmet and where her sholders are), and that has troubled me from the start. so i figured just do it as it's done in the game model. the spread sheet i was working off are actual orthographic renders of the game model, and it matches up pretty well.

i agree about the glutenous polys, but again i was trying to capture the detail of the game model so i'm at odds with what to do? do i strip it down to a levl i would normaly model at? or do i keep it at the detail it is (or even put more in)?

you're right about bendig the arms and legs - i should have noticed that, i'll get right on it.

here's a scaled down version of the spreadsheet i was working off. i didnt want to post it without permission, but it's no longer on the artists site so i cant direct you to it.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/LiveWire/2005223195113_aam.jpg[/…]

EDIT: actually looking at it again now the back could maybe curve in a little more. i'll lok at that.

Jebus, no wonder I never liked that game [:P]!!

Oh well in that case your spot on.

You could use normal maps for alot of her detail.

just a quick note, samus isnt human. im sure someone who actually likes the metroid games (as apposed to myself :P) could tell you the actual name of her race.

nice mate

Actually, Ive seen pics of her without the mask on and if shes not human she damn close (blonde hair and all [:)]) anyway I'm guessing she shares similar anatomy.

And I doubt any bipedal race would be straight up and down, its just not natural for balance unless of course she lives on a 0-gravity world in which case she also wouldn't need anywhere near as much muscle mass that is implied by that suit [:P]

Im not really a fan of the straight up and down stuff either - But the model is accurate to the existing model - good job on that [:D]

Dont be afraid to take an existing concept and skew it a bit - if you had taken that design and built it in a relaxed pose with some non bolt upright positioning I would have said you'd one-upped the one thats been built for the game by a long shot.

Nevertheless the model is quite tight - nice poly distribution and flow but like Malus mentioned you could grab alot of that detail with a normal map if you felt like it [:)]

That design just looks strange to me heh - personal preference tho.

Hey he/she looks cool :) Could use some more tightening up but its comming along well!

The hands look oddly small though. You might want to make them a bit bigger because next to the feet they just look tiny. (feet and hands are roughly the same size)

MoonUnit: I'm a fan of the series and i can tell you that [;)] she's human but with Chozo blood in her veins, so all things considered her proportions should be human.

HazarD: i would like to model a version from the original saums design pre-gamecube. a bit more realisticly proportioned and a lot more gritty. i think i'll just work on matching the design with this one and then do the original design. but with that i'll have a look at posing her in my own way and probably normal map it too (the grittyness of it lends itself to normal mapping i think).
i agree about the design looking strange - the first time i saw it i was so excited cos it was 3d metroid, then i looked closer at the body structure and thought, wtf??

Anuxinamoon: i see what you mean. i'll look into that thanks. i actually made the hands slightly bigger than the game model cos i thought they looked a bit small.

EDIT: originally the original GC samus was very much like the earlier games, but nintendo wanted it changed to the shiny design that game out, apparently. here they are side by side:

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/LiveWire/2005224212156_saums-com…]

i reworked the mesh a bit late last week, and have since unwrapped it and started on the texture. i've decided to go for the 'bugger it' approach with reguards to the polycount. i figure it's not everyday i get to do a model as detailed as i want, so i'm bloody well gonna do it now dagnamit! so ive changed the arms to move better, and added a face behind the visor, as well as tweeking a few other areas. all up it's now 5101 tris.

the hands (and in fact the whole forearm) is a little bigger now
the elbows are bent
legs are not - that would require a bit more tweeking to move, and since i'm rigging with biped for unreal, they can be straight so there's no real point in bending them in this case anyway.

as for the unwrap - it's entirly symetrical, which i somwething i never wanted to do again, but my reasoning is this: it's a syemtrical design, its a clean tezxture (few scratches, etc) and it will have a reflection map on it, so that will elliminate an small scratches from showing up that well anyway. hopefully i'm right. the next model's texture will be asymetrical!! i swear! (to myself as much as anyone else)

as for the two textures: one is for the body, the other is for the visor cos that will have an alpha map. i decieded to put it on a seperate map rather than use an alhpa for the entire body which dosnt need it. also i put the eye on the visor texture cos i could.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/LiveWire/200531201129_samus-wire…]

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/LiveWire/200531201214_wiresbody…]

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/LiveWire/200531201253_wiresvisor…]

looks brill dude, did you say your riggin it for unreal as in to be deathmatch character? you might want to get a hold of the skeleton before your call it a day for modelling because unless you want to make all of your own animations, it really needs to fit the proportions of the skeleton. You can run into so many problems otherwise.

hmm, i posted a reply to your comments yesterday, but for some reason they're not here today. strange. here's basically what it was though:

i did some quick tests and the deformation does bugger up a fair bit. however i'm re-doing most of the major animations anyway. any minor ones that srew up to much i'll rework a bit too, and any minor ones that anrt to bad i'll leave as is. in the end though i'll try and redo as many as i have time for basically.

been riggin her and i've hada weird problem. i've had a simular problem before which was fixed simply by resetting the Xform, but that hasnt helped in this case.

basically i have a box linked to the clavical bone of a biped to control the sholder guard. when the clavical moves (or i move the box) the shodler guards moves correctly, however when i rotate the box it and the mesh distorts in a weird way. it's worse on different angles.

i'm using physique, and i tryed skin too and that made no difference.

anyone have any ideas what's causeing this or how to fix it or work around it? i really need to be able to rotate the sholder guard freely in this rig (and still have it compatable with unreal and without doing a compete custom rig). i havn't done much rigging before (i've been "gunna" learn custom rigs for a while now) so the answer might be obvious.

examples pics:
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/LiveWire/20053433236_weird.jpg[/…]

here's an short AVI of the problem in motion:
[url]www.primedgames.com/files/weird.zip[/url]

Have you had any luck fixing the problem yet? Since no ones responded, I thought I?d chip in, though not sure if it?ll help much.

I?ve had this problem before too, though always with custom rigs. I think it?s something to do with rotating a piece that is linked in the middle of a chain, so it?s rotation axis is going off the start or end of the chain, and not that pieces own centre. Or something like that? not really sure, so I was hoping someone would explain the problem.

Anyway, I?ve solved it in the past by adding dummy helpers between the offending pieces and recreating the hierarchy with the dummy?s in place. So then the piece rotates normally and the invisible dummy node distorts instead.

Not sure if that?ll help at all, since I?ve never had the problem with a biped, only with custom rigs that I?ve set up to animate mechanical parts (so it?s not even using a skeleton structure). But maybe if you play with linking dummy nodes around the offending area you might be able to solve the problem? If all else fails, it might be time to explore custom rigging? [:)]

Good luck, let us know how you go.

thanks i'll have a look at that. i havnt had a chance to go over it again yet cos i've been to busy with asessment. however i'm thinking the problem mightbe having the box rotate at it's centre, rather than at one end. i'm not to sure how this could effect it badly, but i figure i'll try re-creating the biped and set up new sholders bone with it's pivot at the base - though still located in the centre of the sholder mesh, and then see what happens (thank god for physique's save/load weights).

I tryed riggin it to a bone with it's pivot at the base, and as i thought, it didnt work. i gave your way a go palantir and it worked. fantastic! i simly added another bone between the clavical and the sholder box and now it's fine. when i rotate the connecting box it distorts - so it seems your right about connecting something to the middle of a chain - but if i rotate the sholder box it works ok.

excelent, one step closer to getting this finsihed. but, now it's back to assessment for a while...

i wanted to incude teh final textured model in my demo reel so i spent the time last weekend to finish it up:

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/LiveWire/200532923957_samus-rend…"[/img]

having a bit of trouble getting the shadders to look right in UT (cos without the glossyness the texture looks kinda flat - as i intended cos the shadder is suppsoed to fix that). i'll get it working eventually though. all that's left now is that animations, but they can wait a while yet.

nice work. Looks like metroid.:)

If you could. My partners and I are working on a Metroid Prime map for Halo: Custom Edition. We want to use your model because it seems the most realistic to use out of all. We have all the tags and stuff. We just need a good Samus model. Well... our current one looks as gay as Michael Jackson at Chuckie Cheeses... :P. If you could please let us use it. When are you going to release this publicly.. if not? - MrChief

once i get some time i want to finish it for ut2k4, until then i wasn't intending to release it anywhere, but a few people on polycount want a copy to do some alternative textures for, so i'll probably hand around an sdk eventually. as for use in your mod, maybe. i sent you a PM aswell.

Thanks... you're an awesome modeller... we saw your work. Good job... :) By the way. I didn't recieve a pm from you, or does it just take long?

oh sorry, it wasnt you. you dont know someone calling themselves Lightning do you? they asked the same question at the same time about using my model in a mod, so i got confused. either a coincidence or your both on the same team.

Yeah... we're on the same team. :P No need to worry...

can u make only the beam,with no body plz???Like for a first-person shooter???