Blogs - Kalimando

Recently I have spent some time making a new version of the hl2 buggy, updating the mesh to be higher detail and to take advantage of layered texture effects.

Figuring out why my aimblends weren't working was harder than I initially thought, so I elected to do things the dumb way and have versions of all the walk/run directions with aim. Works well from testing in game and will probably allow for more versatility in the long run, but I might get into trouble with the reload animations at some point since I cut all the IKchains out of this model.

Unhappy with the eyes shader I took the plunge on making eyerefract work. I spent a lot of time screwing around with texture scales only to realize that the implementation literally warps the base eye texture to simulate both parallax and the dilation of the pupil. With a bit of "eyeballing" I got the normals to match up to the edge of the scalera. Really like the way this turned out. It look pretty eye-catching in low light and even at a distance compared to the standard.

Between fixing animations and cleaning up the QCI files for the many lines I have, I made an additional character for the rig (the second of a planned 22). The idea going forward is to have each character share the extremities but have unique armor and helmet pieces. Because these are parts which are mirrored, and can share a single master texture it should keep the filesize down with multiple variations in a scene, though that will require further testing once more are at my disposal.

My initial goal was to test my abilities to the limit and create an unorthodox rig which could easily be expanded upon with completion. The above image is rendered using the same assets which ultimately are used for the source engine version of the character, though its an early version with limited texture work.

The blender rig contains around 116 bones though significantly less end up being used in the final model as they are helper bones for IK targets and such. I wanted to essentially create a dark fantasy version of a cyborg. Given the setup of the rig it could easily be used for less mechanical creatures as well later.

This marks my first attempt at integrating flexes into a model and the process was far less painful as I had anticipated. In truth I had the most trouble setting up the eylid properties successfully.

In the end what surprised me most was how good the normal maps for both the organic and inorganic parts ended up looking in the game ready version. The textures are far too high resolution currently, but I wanted to retain a certain level of detail. They hit a scene for about a gb of texture memory but I plan to make some comprises as I get further on.

After a lot of screwing around I finally got the animation blends to work properly. Most of the files I need to reference to learn this stuff makes me jump through six or so files hunting down what macro does what to where. Because of the non-standard bone setup I haven't been able to get IKChains working yet. Additionally the aimlayer system is giving me some headaches for the move-aim combo. If I can at least get that sorted out the only thing stopping me from completion will be time.