Gratuitous Eye Candy Thread

To have another head texture means another head model and some more texture space. I was running out of space on the texture and had to limit how many head variations I had. This is still better than RTW, when ALL the models looked the same!

Shields are going to be added for the upgrade models.

Eufarius ... if you are trying to add a skin for a model that was never meant to have that skin, then the UV map will be all wrong. You can't do it and expect it to work. Do a google search and look up UV mapping.

thank you very much YOU ROCK WARHAMMER!!!:yes:

Is the helmetless chaos warrior using a head texture made by you? Whenever I think of a chaos warrior I imagine someone bald with pale skin. Not that big a deal really, the current guy just looks a little normal.

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Originally Posted by Bwian

The thickness of limbs is relative...and I think the later versions of GW miniatures just went way too far. These are humans after all!

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Sorry to disagree but they're not actually, the fluff says that their armour is fused to their bodies and cant be removed, sortof an exoskeleton if you like. That'd be my main gripe with these guys, they look too much like normal guys wearing armour. Its the helmets I think, they look a little oversized compared with the rest and faces shouldnt be visible through the visor, a black slit would be much more menacing.

true they do look thin maybe making them buffer will help?

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Originally Posted by Eufarius

true they do look thin maybe making them buffer will help?

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The thing is Bwian says that if they look buffer, annimations and joints begin to look sloppy, I think. But this also leaves me to think, what will you guys do with creatures like orcs and Lizardmen that are either much taller, buffer, or both more then a man? Can you rework skeletons to make it less sloppy?

OK .... reality check time:

1) Yes ..we can make the skeleton change to broaden the shoulders and make the model look beefire. Downside is... you would need a COMPLETE set of animations for the movements. I will be doing this for the greenskins and will re-use the change for the Lizardmen and a few others with some scdaling. I will also do it for the Dwarf race, since there is no other way to do Dwarves. I have already planned to treble the number of animations in the game, and this has a resource overhead....both in terms of the size of the mod, and of the speed of gamepley. I don't want to further up the size of the animations file unless I absolutely have to.

2) If you make limbs too thick, they do not bend well on a skeleton like the game has. The subtlety of movement goes unless you ramp up the polygon count and sculpt the msucles to hide the effect. I have gone for a compromise that allows us to get something workable without looking too bad.

3) The head is already underscale to give the illusion of a bulkier body. I can take that a bit further ... but again....there are limits before things start to look a little odd when seen against the other models in game.

So...where does this leave us:

First off, I can change the face texture of the helmetless variant easy enough. Something more pale and unhealthy will be the order of the day. I wanted the faces to be visible on the ordinary warriors, but not on the more elite units. These guys would probably want to keep their faces hidden! The upgrades will also be featuring mutations on some of the visible bits.

Secondly..I have some ideas how I can bulk up the arms and legs with some added plates to uncrease the size of the pieces, but leave the knee and elbow joints untouched. There will be some issues ... but I think I can hide most of it. Whatever I do here, I must work with the stock skeleton for now. If it is possible to introduce a scale factor without the need for multiple versions of the animations, then I would fiurther decrease the size of the head and up the overall scale by about 5-10% ... but only if I can do it without animation pain!

thirdly ...don't worry about the greenskins or the Lizards ... they are sufficiently non-human to need a rebuild anyway. I just don't want to overdo the new skeletons ... there are limits if we are to keep it playable.

Casuir raised an issue about the armour on a Chaos Warrior. I double checked the text, and the ordinary Warriors are definitely human. They are the best of the warrior Northmen, who survive long enough to rise in the ranks. The Champions have the Chaos Armour that never comes off ... not the ordinary guys.

Finally ... we are constrained by some of the game mechanics and underlying hard-coded features and functions. There will inevitably be comproimises, and we will do what we can to work around it .. but there will be times when we can't do exactly what we want. For those of you familiar with modding this game, I am sure you have been there! For those of you who have never tried to mod an TW game ... welcome to reality!

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Originally Posted by Bwian

Uanime5 ... have you ever BEEN to Denmark? I have.

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I mentioned Denmark because one of the Chaos soldiers is carrying the Danish banner.

https://img244.imageshack.us/img244/5107/cw2rx0.jpg

yeah ..I am using that faction for one of the Chaos factions ... seemed to fit :laugh4: Copenhagen is a pretty chaotic crazy place. The others are slotted into Hungary, Sicily and Milan ... for no reason at all.

I only have one comment...or two. 1) is that I think Slaaneesh chaos warriors should have bright pink armour and not purple. It's a matter of taste. 2), great work. These are fucking awesome. This mod will kick so much ass. Good work.

Bright Pink!! You got to be kidding me :clown: Blue, Purple and pink are the colours favoured by the warriors of Slaanesh... but I would use pink more as a highlight or a colour on a banner....not on the armour...... please....not on the armour ;)

OK ... for all of you who thought the old Warrior was a bit wimpy ... meet:

The Chaos Warrior Buffed a bit!

https://img73.imageshack.us/img73/852/cw5bu5.jpg

The picture shows some standing in amongst a group of Marauders to get some idea of scale. It's not perfect...because the feet are stuck in the ground some..but I might be able to fix that with a bit of work. The basic mesh is scaled up by a factor of 1.2 , and the head was left at it's original size.

ok,now.these are rocking,good work again Bwian..........:egypt:

Yeah! They're awesome! And about before with my questions about Greenskins and Lizardmen, thanks for answering. It may be like a dumb thing to answer, but it's all something hard to me!

My apols bwian you were right, I took the chaos armour blurb as being for the ordinary armour. The new guys look better, more like the artwork in the army book. Mind if I take a look at them close up? Not going to nitpick or anything but I had wanted to take a shot at these guys myself and wouldnt mind seeing how your version compares against what I had envisioned.

No problem Casuir .... I will have one more go at getting the upsized skeleton to stand on the ground properly tonight. I am not happy with the 'feet underground' effect!

I figured I would have a go at scaling ( it's a bit picky....but it's not as bad as I feared ) as that was the only way I could make the models look and feel big without overstretching the mesh. Making the physical mesh bulkier just ruined the way the bones and mesh deformed. They were already pretty bulky.

What the crowds were saying was right though...these guys were the elite of the Marauders, who had surviived their 'pilgrimage' to the Northlands and were the toughest of the tough. They ought to be the finest physical specimens. The 'upgraded' versions of the troops will feature mutations and deformities in accordance with their own faction. Nurgle troops will be 'diseased and rotting' and so on.

The nexst challenge is the Chaos Champions. I want the units to be as small as we are allowed to make them, but scaled up by another 1.2 factor. The armour will be as varied as I can get away with, and they need to be really NASTY!

Last challenge for me here will be getting mounts to work. I tried putting a skeleton horse in, and it failed badly. I don't know why :wall:

Checking back through the MESH thread, there was another guy who posted the same kind of problem. No rider, and the mesh all screwed up. I'm waiting for GOM's converter to expand to cover mounts before I push on in that direction. I do plan to re-skin the horses for the Chaos factions though.

Can't recall .... do the Chaos Warriors come in mounted form.... or should I reserve that for the mounted Knights ... who are basically mounted super warriors?

So the upgraded versions will be seperate units then rather than an armour upgrade? If you dont mind I'd like to take a crack at one of the faction variants, I really wanted to take a crack at these guys after seeing the Mark of Chaos intro. I think from the screens you might get away with 1.1 scaling on these guys and 1.2 on the champions. Dunno about the mounts thing, my milkshape trial ran out a while ago and I havent been much use on that front since, KE did say it hasnt been extensively tested though, probably a few bugs that need ironing out. He released a new version a couple of days ago, make sure you have it.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=92321

No, theres no mounted warriors, only the knights, who are really warriors with +1 to strength, and their chosen upgrade.

There is the facility to make upgrades show as different models. The stock units do this quite a lot, though they are actually using mostly re-skinned versions of hte same model. It's still a new unit in modeldb and referenced in the units text file as an upgrade. I figured we could use this for Chaos to take a stock model and 'warp' it some, add some unhuman body parts and end up with a unit warped by Chaos. Drop me a PM and let me know what units you want to work up... I will send you the bits to work on.

I am also going to experiment with some officer units.... the officer slots are available, and I will add both horn-players and standard bearers for the Tomb Kings that way.

Oh yes...and the Ushabti and bone-giant will be underway as soon as I get the trick of scaling spot on.

Already building a Chaos Knight too :2thumbsup:

Faction specific upgrade models arent possible that way though, you'd have to use the same model for each faction. Stats change seems to be limited to a +1 armour upgrade as well, although there looks to be some confusion over this. You wouldnt be able to add a bonus for shields for example. You could use a seperate entry in the edb for each faction, theres only 4 and the limits 500.

I think it would be 4 units well used :D

The various factions hsould have their own unique mutations. We can consider them to be Veteran Warriors, and just make them a bit tougher and more combat worthy....and just make them from a more developed settlement. As the book says, the longer the warriors serve, and the more often they visit the far north, the more deformed they become. The 'gifts' of the gods are given.

The army list allows one unit of chaos warriors to be upgraded to a unit of Chosen equipped with chaos armour so I guess that would be these guys. Also allows for a unit of knights to be upgraded as well.

Great work you guys are doing here, its awesome!
i've got a question; shouldnt the empire units have more armour on there selfs like similar to the mark of chaos cinematic?

i had the some question like you but it not the right to have too much armor.the empire soldiers are light armored troops,we don't copying what mark of chaos has but in the tabletop game the most of them have some kind of armor protection in the torso and in the legs,nowhere else(except the head with the helmet).so i think we have to put a little more armor when we will made those troops.:egypt:

We are basing our work on the Armybooks, official GW approved miniatures and the supporting supplements and officially approved stuff. What we are NOT doing, is using Mark of Chaos as a guide. It's someone else's impression of Warhammer, and there is much in it I do not like. If it had been all that good...I wouldn't be bothering with this mod :yes:

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Originally Posted by Bwian

It's someone else's impression of Warhammer, and there is much in it I do not like. If it had been all that good...I wouldn't be bothering with this mod :yes:

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Damn shame that game.:bomb: It failed miserably. Let's hope another comes soon (After this mod, of course!))

man beautiful the chaos warriors look amazing.

cant wait to DL this mod.:yes:

Looking at the texure you sent me bwian it looks like the guys in the screenshots are wearing mipmaps, you at the highest level of detail you can get? Not really doing your work justice there.

Not sure .... but I thought so! I need to double check my settings. I always save the DDS and let it generate mip maps.

Some of my screenshots come out really well .... but others just don't! I have been trying to get the really nice close ups you get when the enemy general falls in a custom battle....some of those come out really nicely.

I know SOMETHING is scfrewy, since I set the game to run at 1440x900 on my widescreen, but the screenies were coming out 1024x768 in the TGA folder....

That happens to me as well, dont know how to change it. Mip maps work by selecting the size map which is closest to the actual pixel size on screen, so for best results the larger the figure onscreen the better the pic. Widescreen would be limiting your onscreen size a good bit wouldnt it?

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Originally Posted by Bwian

https://img73.imageshack.us/img73/852/cw5bu5.jpg

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"oy boz, oo iz wae pillugen nex?"

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This came to mind looking at the screeny. I can't wait for the mod guys, good work and keep it up.

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Originally Posted by Bwian

OK ... for all of you who thought the old Warrior was a bit wimpy ... meet:

The Chaos Warrior Buffed a bit!

https://img73.imageshack.us/img73/852/cw5bu5.jpg

The picture shows some standing in amongst a group of Marauders to get some idea of scale. It's not perfect...because the feet are stuck in the ground some..but I might be able to fix that with a bit of work. The basic mesh is scaled up by a factor of 1.2 , and the head was left at it's original size.

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Now they look much more impressive, well done Bwian.

If you like these guys ...wait until you see the Chaos Knights! I might have toi tone down the scaling to 1.1 rather than 1.2 to get the proportions acceptable for the nights. I will try them at 1.3 ...and see. If they look too big, then 1.1 will be put in for the Chaos Warriors, and 1.2 for Knights. Champions might come in as leader units, and they would have to be bulkier still!

I also want to add some standard bearer units

outdated shots removed

very nice. man the shield design look great. but giving them the voulgier weapon dosen't fancy wit me but they look great. also are you working on the knights?:juggle2:

Thanks for the complements!

The GW models have voulgiers, so I figured it was appropriate, as shown in the box art:
Men at Arms box art

They are great, it's a bit of a shame that we have to mix different shield designs, but heh, that's better than having only one design :)

Edit : A helm variation would have been great IMO. Don't know if it's possible, but that would add a bit more variation, apart from the shield designs.

And yeah, voulgiers seem to have replaced the basic spear as Men at arm main weapon ;)

The variety of shield designs does help to make such a minor unit seem more distinctive. A second or third helmet design, similiar to the ones worn by the men on the far left and right hand side of the Bretonnian men at arms box, would be neat.

Hmm.. sad about the armour thing.. would really have liked empire with atleast some medieval looks, but anyway..
arn't you gonna use anything from MoC? Because i was wondering if not.. where will you get the voices from(are you even going to have voices)?
And about thoes Bretonnians men-at-arms why does they have different colour/signs on the shield? Should they be similar to the orginal? They look a bit colourful to me.. :S

No nothings going to be used from moc, for a start its against gw's ip usage policy. Then theres the problem of not being able to extract the files even if you wanted too, and besides all the the voice acting in it is crap.

Nice work krazysigmarite, I'd weather the shields a bit, they're a bit too bright. These guys are responsible for buying and maintaining their own equipment so it probably would be abit worse for wear.

btw I hope thats not the final colour scheme for the empire

Those Brettonians are great!

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Plus, all the different heraldry of the lords looks great, very Bretonnian, and its a nice contrast to the neutral colours of the infantry's armor.

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My thought exactly! The Bretonians are a very diverse army, in terms of appearance. And I wouldn´t tone down the shields too much, the coat of arms is, after all, their lord´s pride, and he´d be eager to show it off.

Hm, I´m looking forward to the Bretonian Knights. And the Imperial ones, too.

Anarion ... Nothing will be used from MoC. That is a copyrighted commercial product, and we do not have permission to use it. Any sounds and voices we use will either come from the stock MTW2 game, or be done ourselves.

If we start using material from Mark of Chaos, we will end up an ex mod with a cease and desist order, and I will have to hit the delete button on all the teams hard work. Not going to happen!

Besides ... I firmly believe we have the talent and the tools to do our own.

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Originally Posted by Casuir

btw I hope thats not the final colour scheme for the empire

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Could you elaborate?

Well, if we're not using state specific units the talabheim colours mightnt be the best scheme for the whole army. Blue and red of Altdorf maybe. If that is the scheme we're using then maybe desaturate the red a bit and dirty up the white, the contrast between the two is a bit jarring.

I agree about making Altdorf the primary uniform for the Empire, as it is representative of Reikland, and is the capital of the Empire, as well as the seat of Emperor Karl Franz. I only started with Talabheim because it's the uniform commonly associated with the models. As far as state-uniforms go, my hope is that we can allow for at least one unit to represent each province/city-state, on top of the standard army.
Examples like:
Nuln: Helblaster Volley Gun (With nuln-uniformed crew)
Middenheim: Knights of the White Wolf
Ostermark: Ostermark Halberdiers
Hochland: Hochland Long-Rifles (Extra Long ranged skirmish gunpowder unit)
Stirland: Stir River Patrol

And so on. Just some ideas. As far as the white on red goes, the uniform is supposed to be jarring - I wanted the unit to look like the tabletop models. I still want to touch up the textures a bit and mess around with different model variations for the empire infantry, so there's plenty of room for improvement as of now.

Some constuctive critisism (hopefully :wink:)

IMO the empire textures so far are to saturated, and too uniform. De-saturating them a little, and adding some texture would be a great improment.
To make them look perfect, follow that up with adding some creases to the material, and they'll look life like :bow:

Nothing wrong with wanting units to look like the tabletop models but bear in mind those are pretty limited in how good they can be made look. If you look at the artwork in the empire books the troops have a much grittier look to them.

Awesome work. Ppost more pics :clown:

https://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9484/dwa1am5.jpg

New set of Dwarves is built and textured ( almost! )

These are the Miners ... with pickaxe, shovels and hammers. Also done is a stripped down version which will become the Troll Slayers. Hair will gingerised, and the arms and bodies will be bare and tatooed.

Then I will add some armour and helmets to make the warriors.

Thunderers are also underway.

Looking awesome mate keep it up.

troops are always made of several different ''pieces'' to make them look unique.

how about you make this for the dwarfs too but then have different shapes and beard colours ?

dont know if you already were planning on doing this but i thought it would be cool :yes:

All of our units will be given plenty of variation, we're taking advantage of what we have for the M2TW engine :yes:

Currently this model has 4 variations on the head with different styles and colours of beard, 3 weapons, 2 leg options and 3 different bodies. That's pretty much normal for the stuff I am making.

Everything looks really good and I like the little details and such that you are adding that really give them that Warhammer feel. My favorite unit is probably the bretonnian men at arms, I love the armor and those shields are just perfect.

I also think that is it cool that you are making four chaos armies, one for each of the gods. I think that in the future, this is a great idea because then you could easily model various god units, such as plaguebearers and then just put them in for the correct army, among other things. I am not sure if you had planned this already, you probably did but I was just adding an idea. I also like that the chaos warriors are actually larger than the mauraders, it just looks right. Keep up the great work my friend.

I almost forgot, those skeletons with coffin lids are really cool looking as well and those zombies, you asked about the color, well, I think the color is good and if you even wanted to add that extra touch, you could add in a bluish hue for some of the models and maybe even a brownish hue so that they were varied. I still really like them though, just adding in an idea.

:2thumbsup:

Might try varying the colour of hte zombies a bit ... they do need something ...I'm just not sure exactly what!

But...yes...as Blood Claw said, the Chaos units will be getting faction specific specials to round out their armies. We just couldn't do that if they were one faction. You would end up with issues about Khorne Berserkers rubbing shoulders with Nurgle Plague-Bearers, and that just doesn't seem right to me.

I've had a couple of days off, but will be getting the Dwarf in game to test it's rigging, and if that goes well, I shall start work on the more serious variations.

I think that the Chaos Warriors heads aren't quite as deformed. The heads in the miniatures lean forward a lot, almost with no neck. I took some pictures of mine that show this well.

https://img404.imageshack.us/img404/...0664bo7.th.jpg https://img404.imageshack.us/img404/...0663mc0.th.jpg
https://img404.imageshack.us/img404/...0661sp9.th.jpg https://img404.imageshack.us/img404/...0665hz6.th.jpg


Any chance of the no-neck version? They seem a little more Warhammer like. :yes:

(Note: The fuzzy grey seen on the miniatures is dust, they are a tad old. ^_^)

I dunno, I prefer the new version of Chaos warriors, they look a less like quasimodo.

http://us.games-workshop.com/games/w...rriors_box.htm

They still dont have much of a neck, but arn't quite as hunched over as the old warriors.

Pfft, it's only because they have a cape. :laugh4:

Making the head jut out like on the old style of minature would need the head bone to be moved, meaning new animations. The new minaures are a bit chunky looking but they're a bit more in line with the artwork. The khorne variants I'm working on are delayed due to problems with my monitor but looking like this atm:
https://img126.imageshack.us/img126/...ornezw4.th.png

nice man

Wow. That does look good!

Casuir's guy is intended as an 'elite' or veteran version of the basic chaos warrior. These are the chosen warriors, and are the first chaos units that are really faction specific. There will be Knights and champions above this, who will get progressively more extreme.

As Casuir has pointed out, the 'neck' bone determines where the head is and where it pivots. To move this would require a complete new set of animations and all the resources that go with it. Not going to be practical for the results. All the artwork in the armybooks shows heads sitting on shoulders.... and I think that is how it should look. If we end up with heads jutting out the front, then they will be fixed and part of the torso, not animating.

I'm stuck between making more Dwarves or filling out the ranks of Chaos ...ahh...what a dilemma! :juggle2:

you can do it mate this mod is turning out to be pretty frikin awesome:juggle2: :yes:

https://img61.imageshack.us/img61/65/skelhzd9.jpg

Methinks they have not been feeding their horses well enough.....

textures are rough and ready, and are definitely NOT the finished article, but the mesh and rigging are done and working well. MY first attempt at putting this in game failed miserably...so I am just glad to see them running about :beam:

Huzzah, Bully for you! Very nice horse skeletons, segmented or organic?

I've tried to make them as bony looking as possible...and the same is true for the animations!

haha. Those are awesome Bwian!

Nice work

This picture is making me think that this mod will be very amazing even though I already thought that. I am so glad to see and hear that they are working better and that isn't even the final product. Great work and keep it up, would love to see some of those in action too if you get a chance.

holy Sh!t

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Originally Posted by Eufarius

holy Sh!t

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I'll second that. I just came in my pants when I saw the horses.

Bllod Claw wanted to see the mounted skeletons in action ...so here they are!

https://img222.imageshack.us/img222/5232/skelh2ki8.jpg

Can a skeleton go Yeehhaaww? Thats what I would be screaming cutting those marauders down. brilliant work.

Bwian these look awesome.can you put to the skeleton horses armor or even on the skeletons,or you think that is good for an upgrade,what do you think? :egypt:

Yup ... there will be more armoured skeletons and armoured mounts too. The Tomb Kings don't really have much by way of armoured cavalry, but the undead horses will be used by the Vampire Counts too, and hte more elite undead will need powerful mounts :skull:

ok,thanks for answering,you are the man,you roll..........:egypt:

Wow. Those look great!

They look really good fighting and thanks for posting the picture of them in action. By the way, good to see the mauraders more up-close as well, I especially like that purple tattoo on the one guy towards the left.

Bwian, they look absolutly awesome:2thumbsup: ! good work and i look forward to seeing more:clown:
best of luck!!!

Great job!!! But if MTW2 is realistic game why you convert it to game like Heroes with skeletons, zombies, tombs...?? I don't want to offend your work... This is only my opinion...

Well, in my opinion, he decided to convert it because he has the power too and because he likes Warhammer. Those are just my thoughts and personally, I am very much looking forward to playing this mod more than any other.