Nexuiz 'Nexus' player model.

To start things off, I've renamed this player model from Ivan to Nexus. The reasoning is that this model is supposed to replace the old one (which was the intention from the very beginning).
Now, there are some stuff that has happened, oh where to start, where to start?

I've continued with the animations and have created several new ones and even posted links to videos for people to see. However, it may turn out that I will have to redo everything again (I'm not sure I wanna go there). The thing is, Nexuiz is using a format called .zym for player models, but the devs wants to get rid of this format and introduce another .dpm. They are essentially the same and the workflow is very similar, however, dpm-format can have several influences (4) while zym only can have 1.
What this means is that zym can only have rather rigid animations, each vertex has to have it's own bone to 100%. The dpm format allows for smoother transformations for it's animations, resulting in a nicer look. Because I've animated with 1 influence I would need to re-paint the weights for the skeleton, and the animations will probably change some.

I've I'm lucky and find a good way to paint and distribute or copy those weights to other meshes I won't have to reanimate everything but just tweak the current animations so they fit better.
If I'm however unsuccessful I either will have to redo all of them or just let everything be 1 influence for this particular model, then in the future use 4 influences.

Only time will tell what will happen. I will probably step back a bit from this and while I re-evaluate the situation and the procedures I may work on something else in the meantime.

Animation test 3:


Animation test 2:

Nexuiz player model update.

I believe that I now have fully understood the process or creating player models for Nexuiz, at least in theory. I have spent a lot of time orienting and reorienting the joints of the player model so that the weapon (and animation of the model) will correspond to the world of Nexuiz.
It was a agonizing process where I basically had to orient the joints, export it, compile it and test it out in-game. It took a long time (around 2 days) to finally get the perfect base position.
Note that this is my first serious rigging and animation project (I'm a modeler mostly) so I did learn about skeletons and stuff that you have to keep in mind. I of course had some basic knowledge, but now I understand this even more.

So, where am I at now? With the base pose done I am now creating animations, in this particular case the 'idle' animation. This is the animation that is played when you enter the game and don't move at all, so while your player is standing still it 'idles' and moves a little.
This is a fun process, I like animation. I'm almost done with this 'idle' animation and will soon try it out in-game.

Cheers.

PS. I might later (when it's done, might be a few days, depending how much time I get) upload a video or something to show the animation in-game, mostly to get feedback and such.

On approach to Nexuiz player models!

Yay, I finally am starting to master that art! Unfortunately, the people able to create player models for Nexuiz wasn't that helpful. Sure, they helped occasionally but I had to pretty much go for a 'trail and error' approach.
However, in recent days I got a new energy boost from 'glennxserge' (on the Nexuiz forums) aka Joshua Mills (I think that's his name). He is also an experienced Maya user and popped in on the forums wanting to create player models. He also knows perl and thanks to that, he created a script which apparently is necessary for Maya users in order to get the bones correct for each vertices. The 'Valve SMD Exporter' for Maya messes that up :/

Anyway, Joshua shared his script with me and thanks to that I have been able to make progress. I will post up some images here but if you wanna read a more thourought explanation as to what I did you can go here (Nexuiz forums, that specific post).

BIG thanks to Joshua, I wouldn't have done this without his help!

PS. This model is not mine, it's not me who created it. A guy named 'Ivan' (from Nexuiz forums) created it and donated it to Nexuiz, he also created the textures, he's a great 2D artist as well as 3D.
However, at that time no one was able to rig it. Now it's been collecting dust on the forums but I always thought that that model was too good to not be included in Nexuiz. I personally took it upon me to somehow get it into the game. Now I'm finally making progress!

I tried getting into contact with Ivan to see if he wanted to give out some personal info so I could credit him properly. But I haven't succeed yet, for now he's only known as Ivan. :)