Elite w/o armor WIP

1194 Tris, 1 cube, 1 sphere- Which I will go back and optimize it after the body is done. Clone trooper is for scale.
Making the body first, then armor will be done in sections for faster production speed of variants.

I might redo the side mandibles, I kinda dont like them, but they're a pain to do.

Just a note, the Elite model is probably one of the only models that we don't absolutely have to do since there is one for JKA we can convert over with the author's permission.
But great job in any case
I don't really see what's wrong with the side mandibles, aside from too many poly-eating teeth.
I'd say keep it as it is, though deleting a few teeth here and there may save you some polygons.

There are actually no teeth, the Jaggedness you see is no anti-aliasing, teeth will be textured in because its a small detail not worth doing polygonaly for a player model. Mostly the curves around the eyes and mandibles are eating up polies, so I might have to make it a bit blockier.

I'm making this as a personal project not connected to the Halo: Battlefront thats being talked about. Plus if its my model, I don't need to convert it, and I can optimize it better for battlefront.

Wow nice Elite

Main body is done, redid the side mandibles. Just need to optimize the mesh a bit, texture it and start on the armor. Hopefully rigging it to the base skeleton wont be tough, but I might have to make a custom one.

2178 Tris total w/o Armor. Armor will probably add 1000-1500 tris depending on the level of detail.

wow, thats nice!!

dont you want to post a wireframeor hiddenlineremoval of it?

Armor is now done, started laying out the UV map which promises to be loads of fun. Also did a practice envelope to a Skeleton with the same layout as the Unit Template, which looks to be viable to use with stock animations.

Started out as 11 objects total, merged into 2. 3650 tris, so it is a Mid-Poly model, good thing Elites were not numerous on the battlefield, otherwise it'd strain the Zeroengine too much.

VF501 wrote:Armor is now done, started laying out the UV map which promises to be loads of fun. Also did a practice envelope to a Skeleton with the same layout as the Unit Template, which looks to be viable to use with stock animations.

Started out as 11 objects total, merged into 2. 3650 tris, so it is a Mid-Poly model, good thing Elites were not numerous on the battlefield, otherwise it'd strain the Zeroengine too much.

Hidden/Spoiler:

Nice elite! Reminds me of the space pirate model from mp1...or was it mp2?.....

it reminds me a little bit of a trandoshian anyways great model

Almost said "THEIF! You imported the Arby model and put it in XSI and put the view in Shaded!" Then I realized it was you. Nice job!

aw crapa i still need to learn much from you guys making that with only 2 primatives???
mines usualy take up 10 or 15 primatives maby more maby less

VF501 wrote:Armor is now done, started laying out the UV map which promises to be loads of fun. Also did a practice envelope to a Skeleton with the same layout as the Unit Template, which looks to be viable to use with stock animations.

Started out as 11 objects total, merged into 2. 3650 tris, so it is a Mid-Poly model, good thing Elites were not numerous on the battlefield, otherwise it'd strain the Zeroengine too much.

Hidden/Spoiler:

VERY nice model man

We can all see the model is high-poly/quality enough; I'm sure you can make a texture at least as good.. Great work

my work is nothing compared to this model

VF501, I would love to make the texture for that...

Woot, Rigged and ingame, Just need to fix the hp_weapon, make a custom anim set and scale the model up by 1/4th or -scale1.25 in msh option and anims. Plus a better texture.

Energy Sword just needs a better handle texture and I'm gonna try the trick Culvar did with the light saber to get a good proper glow on it.

That looks fantastic!!

VF501 wrote:Woot, Rigged and ingame, Just need to fix the hp_weapon, make a custom anim set and scale the model up by 1/4th or -scale1.25 in msh option and anims. Plus a better texture.

Looks great man, but since you made it from scratch I don't understand why you didn't go ahead and make it the scale you wanted it to be in XSI then export a new basepose as well, it could prevent potential headaches later.
I'd like to see this rig you put together for it.

Thats Incredible!

Thanks Ace. In the case of the one shown, I actually used the stock skeleton from the template, hard to believe from the looks of it huh. I still have the original rig I made, but ran into animation problems. With the way I had it set up, I needed to make entirely new sets of animations which I was not particularly inclined to do. I think the animations problems were related to bone rotations, because when I set it up and had it ingame, the animations would run like normal, even with a custom basepose. This caused the head to stare straight up and the arms to flip backwards.
For the sake of speed and simplicity I decided to use the stock skeleton, some clever rigging and adjustments of the model, then go ahead and resize it via option, odf and resize the animations using fragme's tut. Also it has the added benefit of being able to be dropped right into SWBF1 as I mod and provide stuff for a SWBF1 Mac site.

I'll post a picture of the Old Rig later. Its kinda messy but exports properly, I've yet to figure out exactly how the exporter interacts fully with custom created skeletons (ie. Freezing transforms on skeletons if I need to scale to change stuff).

EDIT: Forgot to mention, it does have a Shadowvolume, and a low1.msh for Low res LOD drawing too, Just need to do collision if I want to optimize it.

EDIT2: After Extensive testing, I have several revisions to do.
1. Get the hp_weapon hard point to stay in the correct spot.
2. Make the hands a bit smaller and tighten up its grasp.
3. Optimize the Model for SWBF. I am noticing several clipping issues, which while may go unnoticed in game irritate the crap outta me, so I have to fix them. Which consequently means I might have to redo the UVs for the Body.
4. Redo certain parts to be more friendly to animations, meaning less model distortion when it moves. Again the redo the dang UVs is part of this.
5. Design Choice at this point, but Make the Armor more accurate to the Halo Game. Its UGh when compared even to Halo:Combat Evolved.
6. Tweak the crap out of the Energy Sword Texture (thank you Culvar for that awesome idea with the saber blades) so it looks exactly like the Halo 2 one. After all, Elite+ Energy Sword = Massive Ownage.

This means more work and Dev time, but in the end it'll be a much higher quality model with few if any errors for people to deal with. Which is what I strive for, Quality, I'd rather do a few very high quality items, than deluge you guys with scores of mediocre models which is possible if you guys wish so. However I see this more as art for the sake of art.

Thats awesome!