The Alpha Commander

I think it's very hard to extrapolate what something is supposed to look like when it's just a black mass.

The problem with the shoulders being locked to being in line with the arms is that when you're in a more neutral pose(is it will be to a fair extent int eh game) you end up with the shape facing upwards and the joint being exposed from the front, I liked the more dynamic orientation of the shoulder pad but seeing as the way the rig works the shoulder pads are linked to the shoulder joint as opposed to the upper arm joint I had to make sure it could maintain that orientation while still covering the joint itself.

Basically my goal was to retain things like the shapes and proportions of the concept while trying to make sure it would still be functional and aesthetically pleasing in motion.

If you look at the Model put forth by Uber it seems like they intended for the shape of the shoulder that we see as the 'front' in the concept to actually be the 'Top' of the shoulder, and while that's not unreasonable, I feel it leads to a situation where people would say "hold on the shoulders are wrong" when it's just more of a case of the correct orientation being 'poorly communicated' by the Concept. Even then if you look at the Alpha's Right arm, the angle of the shoulder and Arm don't quite line up like that either. Considering the level of penetration the Concept design has(it's on T-shirts and possibly more) I felt it was better to have the model more closely visually compare to the Concept in situations like that.

Mike

I still think a face/head bump out, some slightly different slopes, and another crease would go along way.

knight should also make the guns asymetical. that is a major cool factor for commanders.



his current central upper torso/head area shape is way to cat carrier.

I don't disagree that there could be some changes that could be made to certain aspects, but the primary point of this incarnation was primarily focused on re-creating the Concept.

Uhhhh.......

Yeah don't worry about that.

Mike

by asymmetric I mean that one is a pew pew gun and the other is the nanolathe gun.

As I said;

A] I said specifically that the identical Arms wasn't permanent, as in I will be doing something else.

B] I said the Intent of this incarnation was to create the Concept, the concept was asymmetrical arms, thus mine will as well when it's done.

Mike

I felt the need to make a quick post to say:

Now that I've actually been able to play as the Alpha Commander, and seeing him properly in gameplay, I'm actually okay with the design. It doesn't match the concept precisely, but it's rare that you're paying enough attention to him for it to really be noticeable in-game.

If the current design is indeed the final version, I won't be too upset.

That's not why we're worried. Our concern is not only for The Alpha, but what is to come after...

This is what I expected to see in game, I was crushed when I saw the model in the Alpha. Mike has already nailed down exactly what I feel is wrong with the current alpha model. I just wanted to post to show my support for reforming it. I understand the need to keep the overhead of all the custom commanders down, but I think that you should take a bit more time on the four commanders that will define the game. At the end of the day people are not going to notice the level of detail in the construction bots, and units but they will notice the commanders because they are looking at them for a big chunk of the game.

Yeah this is looking way better than the current one. It almost looks like a lazy design. No offense, it is just how I feel about it.
Uber should really take some of the design choices of Mike's Alpha into consideration.

I think the new alpha would look fine if it wasn't compared to the Concept. It looks kind of like a frog.

And I'm not going to complain about a little corner-cuttin on rigging. If I had to do 100 *extraordinarily* similar models, all with a relatively similar structure, I would want to at least use a similar rig each time.

My curiosity over the rig persists though. It shouldn't be too hard to recompile the anims for a slightly different rig...

Unless Uber is scripting the animations directly...

That's pretty much the issue, based on what Garat has said, I think it's a fair assumption that the Alpha was changed because of the rig, and the Rig is an Exact duplicate
of the one used for the Delta. So you'd actually be making 100 Commanders with the same 4 Rigs, and what will happen to the Progenitor and Theta? they don't exactly perfect conform to the existing rigs either based on what we see from the current game files.

If the system was flexible enough to use slightly different rigs, I don't see why they could have done the Alpha exactly like I did it, there aren't any new bones or anything, the existing ones just moved around a bit. I even kept the same proportions to the legs(just shrunk them a bit) so the walking stuff would still work fine.

Mike

animator here

"just moving around a few bones" means that most of your animation curves won't transfer properly to the new rig.

Shifting how tall the torso is, or how far apart the arms are, mean that lots of animations will have crashes or will not contact as intended

however I'm thinking of this from a character animation for TV angle. Maybe for games it doesn't matter as the only actions are walking, turning, shooting...

Look at how it was handled in SupCom, all that mattered was Walk anims, Anything beyond that didn't really matter, on my Basilisk we have the whole transform sequence running along side the walk animation.

Aiming and such aren't handle by animations at all.

Obviously PA isn't the same game as SupCom, but honestly so far seems like we might be taking a step back here from what we had before.

Mike

I think any black ops fan that sees sorian got hired should feel Knight should as well. Everyone uses sorian AI when fighting AI. and almsot everyone uses something blackops when fighting AI. Not one thing I dislike black ops wise.

Well, aside form replacing the awesome aeon T4 sniper bot with the siege bot... :lol:

It's a nice sentiment, but frankly I'm not a very good fit for Uber, or even the Games Industry in general IMO.

Mike

I know what you mean but i am not sure the issue. Are you a ragful unbound perfectionist?

Uber seems like a nice company. And there is always commissioning out for commander and art work. why do something for free when you can get paid. Plus. we all know you are going to make all your own commanders and such anyway. You already are.

As for people who are fit and such. Why worry about that. Look at Kerbal space Program. All their artist are Ex mod makers for the game. all of them different and probably initially "unsuited" for game industry work but all of them seem to be at it and doing amazingly well.

Hell the makers of it were an advertisement company. not a game development company lol. Now days nasa and spacex and such are acknowledging their existence on redit and such. Why cut yourself short.

but enough thread hijacking.

The issue is that companies like Uber look to get the single most talented, intelligent and experienced employees possible. Not that I'm saying Mike is unintelligent, but as far as I know, his primary talent is modeling, and he seems to usually hand off work like coding, balancing and texturing to other people.

Most of the employees at Uber are digital artists AND code monkeys AND balancers AND textures AND mathematicians AND producers. Not all of them mind you, but if you're going to work for a small elitist bastard game company, you have to be worth your salt.

And be able to make good coffee!

I Like the Alfa the way he looks in game just fine. Don't forget concept art is just a concept. I do hope they aren't going to try to stick the same arms on all the commanders though. People would then identify the commanders by there arms and hardly notice the rest of the model. :roll:

I'm an animator as well, and the only animation you really need that uses key frames and Curves is walking, deploying and undeploying. Assuming they're using IK for the legs, and regular kinematics for the feet and toes, changing the hip spacing, torso-to-leg ratio, or even thigh-to-foreleg ratio shouldn't effect the overall look of the animation, assuming the IK targets were adjusted to fit (just modify target start location).

Uber this is the one thing that baffles me about your models, it has no rhyme or reason.