SS2 Tacticool Weapon Replacements with hand model

[665b24bcdbb32Filibuster Rhymes]

Note: these are NOT finished (bad texture mapping, no shading on the hands), use at your own risk. anyone wanting to finish the job, feel free.

I've always loved the look of Mercurius' Tacticool models, but I could never really get past the whole shooting with one hand dealie. I also can't model for crap, so instead, I blundered about a bit and ended up smashing together the shotgun, grenade launcher and assault rifle with an arm from Arcaniac's models. I also changed the orientation of the assault rifle a bit and reduced the shotgun's size some.
All credit goes to Mercurius and Arcaniac.
...Neither of who I've been able to get in contact with, so if you guys see this and want it gone, just say so.

A bit of warning. When testing it, I did have my FOV increased from 90 to 95. It'll probably look fine at 90, but if not... There ya go.

[665b24bcdbe50voodoo47]

not half bad - let me split this into a separate topic. should be more practical in case you decide to update or whatever.

[665b24bcdbf73Join usss]

Brilliant! Only one question: Is there an animation for the cocking of the shotgun?

[665b24bcdc0c1Kolya]

There seems to be some UV problem with the sleeve close to the AR.

[665b24bcdc536RocketMan]

Another easily fixable issue is that the hand model does not use gouraud filtering.  You can see the lines between polygons.  That's an easy fix though in the import front-end.

[665b24bcdcbddFilibuster Rhymes]

Brilliant! Only one question: Is there an animation for the cocking of the shotgun?

Thanks! Negative on the cocking. Like I said, I don't have any modeling or animation talent. I really just dicked around with it until I got it looking half-good.

There seems to be some UV problem with the sleeve close to the AR.

Another easily fixable issue is that the hand model does not use gouraud filtering.  You can see the lines between polygons.  That's an easy fix though in the import front-end.

No idea how to fix that. I actually tried to replace the textures for the arm, but whenever I'd edit it and save it, the black would be transparent in game.

[665b24bcdcf74Join usss]

Thanks! Negative on the cocking. Like I said, I don't have any modeling or animation talent. I really just dicked around with it until I got it looking half-good.

Can we expect more dicking around? R & R & R's sexy EMP rifle/s could do with an extra arm.

And what of the one handed weapons? There will now be inconsistency as Archiac's arm model looks higher quality and has darker texture (the sleeve). I suppose it doesn't matter, there already is an inconsistency since Mercurius only applied his talents to half of the weapons.

Still, if you care for it I'd love to see an arm for the EMP rifle.

[665b24bcdd2b7Kolya]

No idea how to fix that. I actually tried to replace the textures for the arm, but whenever I'd edit it and save it, the black would be transparent in game.

The first colour in the colour palette will appear transparent. Set it to pink so you don't use it accidentally. Or use a PNG. I'm not quite sure what the process is then, but it should be enough to replace the GIF texture with a PNG as long as NewDark is used.

[665b24bcdd820Filibuster Rhymes]

The first colour in the colour palette will appear transparent. Set it to pink so you don't use it accidentally. Or use a PNG. I'm not quite sure what the process is then, but it should be enough to replace the GIF texture with a PNG as long as NewDark is used.

I never would have guessed that. I'll give that a try, thanks.

Can we expect more dicking around? R & R & R's sexy EMP rifle/s could do with an extra arm.

And what of the one handed weapons? There will now be inconsistency as Archiac's arm model looks higher quality and has darker texture (the sleeve). I suppose it doesn't matter, there already is an inconsistency since Mercurius only applied his talents to half of the weapons.

Still, if you care for it I'd love to see an arm for the EMP rifle.

I tried the EMP rifle, but the textures don't compile with it properly. I've noticed that most are .gifs while the EMP rifle has a few .bmps. I've tried them as .bmps and converting them to .gif, but this always happens. I saw that when compiling it from .3ds to .e, it changed the .bmp extensions for the textures to .gif. I tried changing them back before compiling to .bin, but no luck.

[665b24bcddb0dOlfred]

afaik the extension described in the model doesn't matter.
You could go to the folder for the textures and just replace any gif with a bmp for example. There is some order for priority, but I didn't remembered it.

[665b24bcddd74voodoo47]

The priority order is as follows, where the first has the highest override priority:

    .DDS
    .PNG
    .TGA
    .BMP
    .PCX
    .GIF
    .CEL

just use the png format for all textures and you will be fine. this will make the weapons incompatible with oldDark, but I wouldn't worry about that too much.

[665b24bcde304Filibuster Rhymes]

afaik the extension described in the model doesn't matter.
You could go to the folder for the textures and just replace any gif with a bmp for example. There is some order for priority, but I didn't remembered it.

just use the png format for all textures and you will be fine. this will make the weapons incompatible with oldDark, but I wouldn't worry about that too much.

Good to know, thanks. Tried it as .png, but it didn't fix it. For whatever reason, the top left of the texture is being applied to most of the rifle. I don't even know the first step on how to fix that.

I did whip up quick fix for the sleeve looking messed up, though. Just a bland, repetitive texture to cover up where it gets skewed on the model. Well, it's more like a rug to cover up the problem than a fix, but it at least looks better and kinda matches with the Rickenbacker's crew a little more.
Just drop it in "TC AR with hand\obj\txt16" and overwrite.

[665b24bcde444Tricky]

Great bit of insight there. I'm not sure why the lack of a hand never bothered me.. but now that I've seen these screenshots I know I won't be able to play the game without it.

[665b24bcde54eOlfred]

It seems like you messed up the UV map at some point.
Which tools are you using?
You could also upload your file (3ds or whatever) and I can take a look at it.

[665b24bcde665Kolya]

I'm pretty sure it was messed up from the start, that is from Arcaniac's weapons pack.

[665b24bcde756RocketMan]

Yo Filibuster:

http://vimeo.com/9211005

[665b24bcde858Primitive Primate]

Do I need the original Tacticool for this?

[665b24bcde922voodoo47]

no.

[665b24bcdeaadNameless Voice]

The black arm looks significantly worse, it would be better to fix the UV mapping properly.

As for the shading, that's an option on the material in the conversion tool.  Are you using 3ds2bin?  Just select "phong" (really gourard) or "gourard" for each material.

[665b24bcdebdbvoodoo47]

ok, just checked the models, and they are not in a state that can be considered ready for deployment. unless there are objections, I'll be moving this to Engineering within 24 hrs (hoping that someone will grab them and finish them up).

[665b24bcdeebbMoon]

Great bit of insight there. I'm not sure why the lack of a hand never bothered me.. but now that I've seen these screenshots I know I won't be able to play the game without it.

Well the lack of left arm/hand to me is just the 'retro' graphics design of ss2, and it fits.

Having a static arm mesh, even if they were had proper lighting/looked natural wouldn't fit. To me they would look too rigid, unresponsive and fake.

[665b24bcdefc8RocketMan]

Agreed.  I mean it "can" look good but you have to be really careful or it'll look like some prosthetic glued to the side of the gun.