PadKing is the first player model I have done for World of Padman and actually the first playermodel I have ever done period.
However, I had done a number of static models and their textures for the game, so the model creation wasn't the real problem. We just didn't have any team member who could have animated it. The few animators that were interested in helping WoP out had no experience with the md3 file format we use, so I looked a little deeper into that to find out what they had to know about animating it.
I got two or three different animators to the point of correctly exporting those animations, and then...never heard of them again. Since I knew the theory now at least and had very basic animation experience I thought I'd try my luck to animate a model myself. I decided to create my own character to test animation with because we were still looking for animators and I wouldn't want to throw my half-done work away or block someone from animating the main WoP models. If my animation wouldn't turn out that great I could still release the character as an unofficial download since the character wasn't known yet.
PadKing enjoying himself on PadCrash
Now, the standard Quake 3 animations are a special case, there is no skeletal animation system in the game so all animations are predefined in the model. Which also means every model only plays one animation at a time. Each model could only play a running OR shooting animation in a practical way and for that reason the player characters are actually made up of three seperate models. Legs, torso and head. This way the torso plays the shooting animation while the legs play the running or any other of their animation. It is not a perfect solution because it means torso and legs don't interact. Arms don't move with the running motion and hands couldn't touch the foot because they lack the information of the foot's location.
For the WoP models this means Padman's cape doesn't float while running and PiratPad can't pull his saber. Since I can't allow technology to beat me that easily I designed my first model in a way that allowed my character to do both. This lead to the PadKing design, who sports a longer cape than Padman which is seperated by a belt put above the cape. This way the lower part of the cape can be animated with the legs. I also put a sword on his back which his hands can grab because it is part of the same model.
Once the model was done Ente was coincidentally working on a new version of his PadCastle map, so PadKing made his first cameo as a statue on that map.
For the animation part I started of with Quake 3 animations as reference, because I had never really done animations like that before and I needed a starting point. I didn't import the Quake 3 animations onto PadKing though. I just analyzed them and then did some from scratch, because a) I wasn't sure about the copyright b) I don't see PadKing doing backflips really and c) I want to create content not just copy it. Some of the animations might be pretty similar to Quake 3 animations others not.
When I was done and thought the animation was good enough for WoP I presented it to the team. I wouldn't have forced PadKing into the game if the team didn't like him since it wasn't my job to do animations before. But the team did like the model and animations and now you can look forward to Mr. fancy cape in WoP 2.0. Hooray!
Taken from my new WoP development blog at: Wopdev.blogspot.com
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