[Edit 2017-12-19]
The character has been made playable by edoantonioco with my permission! You can find the files on the Steam Workshop.
Note: If you have issues I very kindly suggest you contact edoantonioco for assistance, since I haven't worked or played OG for a long time.
[Edit 2015-11-07] Project is on indefinite hiathus. I still have interest in finishing this someday, but as I actually landed a job as a game artist (!) it'll be a long while until I can muster enough time and energy to get accustomed to this project again. Sorry.
But I can't deny that this project likely helped me land my current job, so I want to give a BIG thanks to all of you who spurred me on.
The project is opened to the public in its unfinished state. You can download the files HERE [2013-03-20]. It is however the old project files, the new ones will be a while longer yet.
Included is the .blender-file, the correctly named folder structure (just put into the Custom-folder) and text describing the tweak to make the character available in-game.
This is the idea I produced when creating the concept art, it's by no means final but it's a start. One thing that might strike as odd to people is that they are relatively calm, and I'm sure that's going to change eventually (due to general request I expect).
General description:
They are in comparison to the rest of the races in the world not keen on grouping up in communities as they rather roam the wilderness, gathering medicinal herbs.
They are quite friendly but due to their sheer size they are for the most part left alone for a good reason, as they tend to grow anxious and easily irritated when they visit the villages to sell their wares.
Recently all races have found them to be invaluable merchants due to the frequent battles as the medicinal herbs do save many lives; which have in return made them very wealthy. They do try to hide this by not buying or wearing anything too flashy.
However many of them who get ahead of themselves go down in ambushes, often in vain as they never carry all of their money with them at any time. The herbs they carry in their backpack are valuable though, but since it's very difficult to sell them across the races it's considered too risky to be worth it, and therefore often let to wither along with the corpse.
Social structure:
They do socialize but they rarely meet each other in person as you would expect perhaps neighbours to do. They build cottages that are submerged under ground-level and usually very well hid from even the trained eye.
Each individual can have several of these hidden cottages and they are used from time to time by basically anyone who happens to be nearby. There have been more than a few stories that tells how desperate survivors find themselves saved after by a sheer stroke of luck banging their foot on a hidden trapdoor.
However as common courtesy goes they do expect the visitor to leave something behind, plentiful of money or food can usually be found in these cottages. If someone steal from this supply or don't leave a token of their gratitude of equal value as what they took, they will track down whoever was inside with their sensitive nose and make sure they pay back several times over. In money or blood.
They have a council, which are most of the time not politically influenced by other races, but there have been times in the past where they have sided. Such as the one time a few generations ago that left the race in shambles.
They gained a new ally after such a treaty since the trade was almost too good to pass up on, but in the process they also gained many more enemies that each day burned down more and more of their cottages, forcing them to stick together just in order to survive. Then when they finally had to retreat to the army settlements of their ally - far out of their comfort-zone - fights soon started as they grew restless and intimidated.
It all ended up with them being hanged out to the enemies as traitors and basically left to die, and after that event their numbers have been extremely low and the council are sworn to never take sides for all of them ever again. The current council for that time of course was punished, as each and every survivor after that ripped away pieces of their fur (and skin in the process) and then banished them to die in the wilderness. Many of the cottages still have these patches of the "Old Council" as a reminder of the deed that almost made them extinct. Some council members are said to even now still be roaming in the outskirts of civilization.
Combat:
It's not unusual for forests where a bear tries to mark his territory and scaring away others by practicing with the sickle at cutting down smaller trees. And usually, they succeed at doing just that. Certain individuals have been said to cut down full-grown trees as well, but it's widely regarded as tall-tales.
They train rigorously in using their larger frame to exert deadly force in just a few blows, which results in a brute force that is often enough to cause even a single blow to be fatal or when wielding a sickle to easily dismember the enemy.
The form of the sickle as well has proven ideal for disarming enemies, as spears gets shattered and swords twisted out of its owner's hands. Therefore in most single encounters against a bear the attacker find himself with a broken wrist and ankles, but life still intact. However - quite logically - the chance of ever being able to buy his goods are effectively reduced to zero.
They prefer to handle sticky situations in a non-lethal manner in order to avoid being persecuted, they want to stay in the background for a reason. But if a situation truly gets too out of hand, they are ferocious.
But they have a very apparent weakness.
They aren't even close as nimble as the other races, and are easily outmaneuvered when there's more than one attacker. And since they work alone you can always count on that there never is another one that will back him up once you attack. However, usually one does not want to slay a bear as even though they help the enemy, their own kin will usually fare just as bad. And the worst thing that can happen is when a village gets blacklisted; a decision usually carried out by the council if there's been assaults for no apparent reason.
Then it doesn't bode well for the future of said village in the long term.
Therefore the larger military forces have branded them as neutral under all conditions (same which can't be said for the rogue bandits of course).
Artwork:
To motivate their outfits I figured they wear these huge backpacks that they carry the herbs in.
Also I just went something on their armour, but I figured that making their armour out of wood and leather made sense and works with their size. Haven't bothered looking for better alternatives on the design on the armour yet, so the helmet looks pretty wonky for a good reason I guess.
The sickle felt right since it's somewhat contradicting for them to carry something that look this delicate for battle, but it does make sense for them to carry one of these.
The paint on the face is a simple white color that they just smack with their hand across the muzzle. Simple enough.
[✓] [2] Creating the mesh for sculpting (using only quads) in 'Autodesk Maya'
In-engine, but oddly lit. ((Edit: Y and Z channel is not swapped in this image.))
This is how you should configure xNormal to generate its object-space normal map (just uncheck "Tangent" in the pop-up menu), as well as an indication on how the channels should look. If you don't, the normal map will behave weird in-game.
[✓] [7] Add the eyes, mouth cavity, teeth and tongue to the model then normal map them
Using the set of fangs and eyes from the wolf-model by Aubrey, saves me some time. Will have to implement it correctly into the bear's own UV-map next though. Sorry for the theft Aubrey but it saved me a lot of time! And yes, I will change the eyes to look different from the wolf ones, I'm not that lazy. 15/10/11
[✓] [8] Begin texturing in 'Autodesk Mudbox' or '3DCoat'
21/10/11 - Very busy with studies and learning Blender, have not made any real progress yet with this step since I need to know more about the program before I can attach the rig to the character.
22/10/11 - I'm making progress on the Blender skeleton. I have been watching tutorials and taking notes diligently of the absolute ton of shortcuts and hotkeys you'd need to know before going into the program seriously. I've been very swamped with work at the university as well, doing another character and then learning how to process motion-capture data made from actors in Germany. Not all that easy!
I think I understand Aubrey's rig better now as I've been able to modify the deform skeleton as well as placing the controller skeleton and reverse skeleton (I think) where I want them to be (ish). It still looks like a morphing blob that is far, far away from where it should be. But feet, head, arms and hands are actually following the Wolf's movement. I just need to create a better skinweight (the way the mesh follows the skeleton) since it's only auto-created so far, properly aligning the controller skeleton to the deformer skeleton, and if possible add some joints for the stomach so it can be animated as well.
30/10/11 - No real progress have been made since last (above) update, a lot of work have fallen down on me due to unfortunate circumstances with the course I'm attending at the university. The previous week was filled with work to get a short animated movie turned in for the presentation, and this coming week is dedicated to paperwork to summarize the course and is required for my grade :/
I am considering skipping the rigging part of it for a while and do texture work so I can ease my mind of all the technical work I've been doing lately.
2/11/11 - I have finished weight painting the model, and I think I have completed the skeleton to be placed where it should be placed. However, I don't have a clue how the animation system works so I can't really create new keyframes or even know how to handle the curve editor. You'd think that part would be similar to Maya but apparently not, it's such a complicated mess it feels like. I have been able to borrow an "essential" book for Blender 2.4 so maybe that'll help.
30/1/12 - Officially gave up on rigging the character until there's more documentation to go by. If someone is interested to try and rig it before that happens I'll help out.
[10] Create the tailored skeleton and add rudimentary animations
15/02/12 wrote:I've been working on the rig a bit, in between other larger scale projects. I'm mainly trying to get some basic animator-friendly functions in the rig and get a good distribution of bones before I really worry about weighting it. Plus because he's such a big boy I have to try to find a way to make his bulk deform nicely. The advantage of keyframes here is that you can make a rig as complex as you want with no overhead in engine, so I'm trying to make it all very functional and easy to use before I get into the nitty gritty.
16/2/12 wrote:Hmm, I think I've heard of them but I've never had anything to do with them. Sounds very scripty... I'll stick to just the rigging for now. Anyway, PROGRESS!
I'll have to figure out a way to put an IK target on the end of that while retaining the keyframes from the action constraint. Mañana.
25/2/12 wrote:Some progress on the rig. Going to add some more fancy stuff to it yet.
[...] [11] Implement the animations for the character after figuring out the purpose/style of the character (PC or NPC?)
[???] 12] ???
[!!!] [13] Profit!
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I want to try and get to the same quality as the current models in the game, just since I think the existing ones are pretty badass. I expect it to take quite a while to finish, but hopefully it'll look as a part of the game if so, maybe I'll even learn the animation system if I ever get that far and add some cool animations specific for this character.
Last edited by Andrige on Tue Dec 19, 2017 3:14 pm, edited 103 times in total.
1) Aubrey hinted that he thought the modular armor system might be coming up soon. SO, you can make a clothed model, and add armor later or you can just add the armor to the mesh. Big bulky stuff like plate and helmets aren't great for this, but leather sections, thick cloth, and little metal sections are reasonable with that.
2) Actually, the new rabbit model has four toes. It's under Data/Models/Rabbit. I think they were just doing three for a while, but then switched to four for whatever reason. I doubt it was to further skirt the uncanny valley, as they're characters are doing a great job of that as is.
As for the quality of them, I'd say do your best. When I made my four characters I didn't make great textures, the normal maps were blank because I didn't do anything with a highpoly sculpt. Thing is, I got one working fully(Fox), one is unplayable but will fight(Raptor), but the two otters never worked >:[ I still have no idea why they failed. I haven't figured out all the little nuances of the process, but it can be done.
Thanks for the information Korban!
I'm going to keep the armour in mind for sure, seems my character is not exactly ideal for this. Lots of loose, hanging parts such as the helmet, coat, backpack and loincloth.
I'll try and make the base without any extra accessories and then see which one of the variations are doable.
And I haven't updated my build in quite a while so I'll definitively take a look at the updated model (downloading atm). Maybe I should make it five-toes... hm.
And regarding the import process I'll need to look up some tutorials but it's a bit of a search I've noticed. Hopefully that will come later on in the process as I'm quite... intrigued by Blender's interface, unless there's something very critical I must take into consideration right now when making the mesh?
Brilliant work Andrige, i really like the bear so far, i just think he is a bit too cute
I tried to import a character of my own in the game but i could not get it to work, the rigging tool of the editor seems currently broken too.
So if you could document your steps to get a working character in the game it would be totally awesome
btw. don't hesitate to touch blender, once you get over the first hurdles it becomes a great tool for almost anything 3d related
Hah! Yes he is a bit too rounded and cuddly :p
I'm currently in Mudbox doing the detailed sculpt that should make it look better and more "sharp".
I'm also going with him naked to begin with, hopefully I can re-use the foundation and add the accessories on top of the naked character rather than having to recreate the high-poly every time.
I'm documenting the steps as well as I can so don't worry. Although I guess the technical hurdle is going to be when the model is done and needs to be adapted to the rig so it's a long way away I think.
Here, I started a tutorial on what I did for mine. My process saw mixed success, but the link for it is on this thread's first post. I also posted a lot about issues I ran into, so some of them might pop up for you too.
As for Blender, use it. The two scripts for exporting the rig and animations are both for Blender, so you might as well get used to it now. Those export scripts have been problematic though. viewtopic.php?f=13&t=12101
It's slipped to the second page because I decided to start making a mount character and decided that i needed to learn more code first. I started a game project then, and haven't done anything with OG characters for a little while. I'm considering starting that mount up now though, because I know a lot more about coding now, especially C++.
Cheers Korban3, it's the end of the day for me so I'll have to do it some other time, but I'm heavily considering just trying to import the model I used as foundation for the high-poly and apply an Overgrowth skeleton to it. See how it turns out.
Thanks for the links, reading it for sure
No problem, and the tutorial is a read at own risk thing. It's unfinished and really really vague about use of the tools. It just covers the basics of the steps needed. Thanks for inspiring me to start my mount character up again.
Yeah, I know all about vague... try making 3D-models for Hammer/Source Engine... *shivers*
But I'm certain it'll be helpful, if not; I can always write on the forums about it :p
Thanks for inspiring me to start my mount character up again.
Ugh, Source. So difficult. I never went past playing with the Hammer editor.
As for posting questions up on here, a lot of folks can help with models and texturing I think. I'm not much of a resource for normal maps though, as I never started making them for my characters. I'm the only source for info on the rig export scripts other than David I think. I know some folks have gotten custom animations in, but I haven't gotten that working yet. There's usually a ton of help to be had here and the IRC.
New update, does it look unnatural? I kind of think it does.
Going to update several times over the weekend, hopefully getting the highpoly complete and then go ahead to retopologizing it with baked normal-map til' sunday.
Detailing fur, not exactly looking glorious but mesh resolution is making it hard for me (6.4 million but still hard to achieve right detail) 30/9/11
Last edited by Andrige on Sat Oct 01, 2011 3:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
I don't know, I think its looking pretty good. I can't really analyze it with the image so small though. When you finally import it are you going to start off using the rabbit rig and then try modifying it? Or create a custom one?
Ah, sorry about the small image, I've hotlinked it now so just click it for the correct resolution.
I'll probably start off with the rabbit/wolf-rig first and see if it even can be modified sufficiently without breaking, but since the character is quite vastly different from the rest (especially the proportions with the legs) I suspect I'll have to create a custom one.
Another problematic thing is that I think it can't be nearly as acrobatic as the rabbits, which is quite bad for a game like Overgrowth as a playable character, but it could work out as an NPC for a mod or similar.
Yeah, you're going to need make a custom rig. Animations will carry over from the old characters ,but I'm not sure how to change what actions a specific NPC type can or can't do.
Update!
I haven't gotten as far as I'd like to, but I've been playing games for a change over the weekend quite a lot. It is however close to finished now, and I'm going to go forward to the next step which is retopologizing the model from highpoly to lowpoly.
