Character Modelers

[D'Lanor]

where the hell did you get that ?

Google? That is the site of Mark Stenersen, character modeler at Cyan in 2002 - 2003. Those links are publicly available from his resume.

[Paradox]

Indeed. Thanks to GPNMilano for asking if I knew who the avatar modeller was at Cyan

[GPNMilano]

Here's the unfortunate part of all this. The Max Rigging released by Cyan is missing key components to get the avatar stuff related to the documentation and macroscripts working. HOWEVER. I've begun creating my own replacements to try and create custom clothing, and had some success. Based upon the info on the site, the documentation and macroscripts I'm going to try and create the missing components in the meantime while we wait for Cyan to release their official versions.

[GPNMilano]

After a few attempts today, i got much farther in creating clothing. I still need to do a ton of work on figuring out how to properly skin and create the target morphs for the clothes. However, as a proof of concept I provide you with the first fan created clothing without the use of hacking:

Show Spoiler

As you can see it's quite ugly. I just whipped up a quick texture from a picture I had laying around, uved it onto a poorly done mesh and followed as best I could the documentation. There's problems with the arms, but the torso itself seems to move properly, with the exception of the gaps in between the neck and the pants.

[mookow]

Excellent work GPNMilano!

[N. Sigismund]

This is really great news. Adding extra clothing into the game is a simple and effective way of adding content! If you perfect the process, we could create a big clothing pack to hand to Cyan if they hit Cavcon 5.

[GPNMilano]

This is really great news. Adding extra clothing into the game is a simple and effective way of adding content! If you perfect the process, we could create a big clothing pack to hand to Cyan if they hit Cavcon 5.

This is entirely what I'm hoping to do. I'm hoping to create at least a small clothing pack for stuff that people have been asking for (T-shirts related to specific groups like the SR, a couple of additional accessory items like hats etc) Once they're perfected we can send them to Cyan to test them out and hopefully include them for an update at some point. The great thing about this is that Global Clothing is mostly independent of the system. So the work on the part of Cyan would basically be, test it out so it doesn't crash the server is and family friendly. Then include them for a download from the dataserver. The work on their part wouldn't even need for the cavcon meter to reach any higher as it's basically just a few man hours to do the work necessary for an update.

[N. Sigismund]

No man hours until Cavcon 5 or security fixes. Cyan are being strict as heck about it... all spare manhours aimed at OSing everything, with the server software next.

Still, more high quality content = More stuff to get the community salivating over = More people being active = More high quality stuff. Circle of joy.

I'm now thinking about the possibilities for server operators to create custom avatars for important people in their shard. I mean, as long as it's not on the Cyan server it's fine to do whatever, so...

Man, OS is becoming more conceptually amazing every day.

[kaelisebonrai]

not entirely true, Nye. =)

I'm currently talking with RAWA re: Seret, so, yeah, they are doing some man-hours stuff. =)

As for more high quality content, most people won't really care until it goes into MOULagain, which may be a while. And it won't really have any effect on activity, until it is actually in moulagain, either. so, the "circle of joy" can't happen until stuff starts getting implemented.

That said: Chloe, that is /awesome/, pure awesome, any chance you can share some of the technical info on how to get this to work? =)

[GPNMilano]

That said: Chloe, that is /awesome/, pure awesome, any chance you can share some of the technical info on how to get this to work? =)

I plan on making a tutorial at some point, once I can accurately create new clothing on the fly without problems in the morphing. Mostly though, as far as techincal stuff goes there's just way too much to get into a single post. However to start you need to create three meshes for your clothing item. So if you have one shirt, you have three meshes for the shirt you need to create. a low poly, medium poly and high poly shirt. You then apply a standard plasma material to each of them and uv map it accordingly. For clothing like a shirt or a hat you'll need to have the material be multisubs in order to properly uv map it to the right textures. Then you attach a avatar clothing modifier to a Dummy object. You link the shirts to that dummy, and attach a few modifiers to the dummy. (Four, one for the page, one for the clothing and two to get the morphing right) you also need to create a plasma clothing material and work out the correct textures and tints etc. starting from the clothing material and modifier it gets really complicated. As i said the morphing itself is what i'm currently stuck on and the documentation paradox located is pretty in depth accept for that part.