New Positions, prone and flight

These are some new pictures of the skeletoid in prone position. I created them with the gun and a mine and a version with dual guns as this is one of the capabilities in the game.

And these are the flight poses.

Crouching Skeletoid, Hidden Texture

These are some shots of a better crouching pose of the skeletoid. As you can see it is holding the newly textured gun and mine.

This first shot I tried to do from a distance to demonstrate the maximum distance you would be looking at seeing when zooming in on a character in game. The original game itself didn't have any zoom because everything was 2 dimensional (yet isometric) but I would presume in today's standards of video games it would probably have the function tozoom in, and this distance is what I imagine would be the maximum zoom distance. (Because it is a strategy game and zooming in any further would be pointless and would ruin gameplay).

You're probably wondering why I wasted time on high textures if you won't see the detail in game, but again the character WILL be shown larger than this in the game but not during gameplay, only in menus and video clips will the larger poly and texture files be used (but they would be used).

This is to hopefully give you a more idea of what the characters would loo like in the game.

These other two shots are just shots to show the position in a closer perspective for closer inspection.

Textured weapons

So, as I said before I have been texturing the new boomeroid and have also textured the disrupter gun.

Here are the final textures.

I like these but I might redo the boomeroid at a later date as I'm not completely happy with it. It's turned out nice, but like the skeletoid, it could probably do with some texture (other than a bump map) to bring it to life a bit more.

Here are a few experiments I made before I had my finished texture for the disrupter gun.

A lot of the first ones just looked like paint on a wall, but again I was concentrating more on bump textures. I later textured the basic texture map and with both of them started to look a lot better. This proves how important it is to have a good texture and bump map in conjuction with each other, because without it it can look awful.

And here are the final textures for both low poly and high poly models.

Low Poly - 494 poly

High Poly - 1962 poly

The high poly model is 1962 polygons. This is too much for in game but menus and prerenders it is perfect.

Other weaponry

I have now created some more weapons. the mine is what was made before, but the new additions are the Disrupter gun (middle) and a brainsucker pod (right).

The disrupter gun is another alien weapon seen in the game. This is one of the basic popular weapons in the game and is a good choice for the demonstrated poses coming shortly. The brainsucker pod is ammo which goes along with a launcher which I haven't made yet. I shall come back to model the launcher later if I have enough time, but really only one weapon and a grenade are need for the time being to help demonstrate the different poses the characters will be doing in game.

The following are reference material from the game from which I worked from.

All these weapons will be textured in the near future to match the quality of the characters that will be holding them.

Boomeroid and Posing

These are pictures of a weapon from Xcom apocalypse. It is the 'boomeroid'. An alien weapon either the Anthropod or the Skeletoid would use. I have made this to help further demonstrate the purpose of my characters and will hopefully help make my characters look more like computer game characters rather than 3D pieces of art.

These will help greatly with the poses.. one of which I have created already.

This is a quick pose which is meant to portray a crouching position. A position possible for the characters in the game. As you can see I have placed the mine in it's hand to help demonstrate the characters purpose.

If you look closely on the third and fourth pictures you will notice that it wasn't a simple task of just smoothing the object (although I did smooth it) because noticeably on the third image you can see a lot of the vertices are messed up near the joins where the middle is more square and the outside is more round. I later fixed this (with some time) to kind of flatten the the rounder parts and make the middle bit more smooth, reconnecting them all together to create the finished piece.

Say Cheese

High poly character snap shot. "Say Cheese"

EDIT (Oops forgot to give the skeletoid the new texture.. oh well you get the idea)

Retexturing (again)

I know I said I'd be concentrating on posing, but I thought I'd redo the texture slightly. I tried changing it completely on the first three just to see if the overall colour could look better. I tried one more human looking skin colour, one more cream and one more orange.. looking more like the referenced image.

The last ones I experimented with a new texture on it. got a dirty looking texture and painted it on my texture for the skin and kept changing it slightly see how it looked. I think it made it look a lot more realistic. Tehy are only subtle differences but look closely especially around the belly/chest and you'll see what I have changed.

You see, I got the idea from another photo on the Internet of varicose veins (which I looked up before for the bump texture). This is different than the bump used before, just a normal photo but of the leg of a varicose vein subject.

In this photo the colour slightly resembles that of the skeletoid and is obviously very different than the normal healthy leg on the right. On closer inspection you can see dark patches where the body is obviously not healthy (other than the overall skin tone). In the latter of the experiments I tried to copy this look with the dirty texture I mentioned. but of course placed all over the body, rather than just the legs. I think this turned out quite successful, especially the very last image.