19 replies to this topic

[Xuphor]

Unfortunatly, a glitch botched my inventory up, and removed half of my inventory, including this free Asura. It is no longer available.

Spoiler

Released! Please send me a PM here or in Second Life if you want one.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: 6/24/12
Sorry for the lack of a recent update. The hair on that model was acting oddly, so I replaced it with another hairstyle found in the game for Female Asuras. Also the pants were expanding enormously at the feet region, so I had to make them shorts.

Still, despite those two setbacks, it's in the phase where I NEED other people's opinions in Second Life on how it can be improoved, feedback, etc. I have yet to get a single person to PM me about this.

Again, progress will NOT CONTINUE until I can get at least two other people in Second Life from these forums to give me feedback on it. Once I actually get some other people to help, it'll easily be done in less than a week. But, again, this could take several more weeks. It depends on you guys. The sooner someone helps give me feedback, the sooner it comes out now. Even if you don't know how to do Second Life, but want to be nice and help this, PM me, I'll help you get into Second Life to see.

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UPDATE: 6/13/12
http://www.guildwars...ost__p__1517678

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UPDATE: 6/6/12
I have fully rigged the model, and made the texture and it's Normals Second Life compatible. I skipped step 2 because I'm going to wait until I know for sure Second Life won't mangle the rigged model, which would make this entire project end/useless if it did. AKA, I'd rather not waste about 5-6 hours fixing up a texture until I know it will actually be used.

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Hello, During the May 14th's stress test, I was busy ripping models, textures, etc from the game. They are nothing more than capture devices, and they are just as legal to use as FRAPS or the like, but instead of pictures and videos, they record models/textures. Why am I saying this and how can I play Asuras sooner, you may be wondering? Read on.

While I was looking over the models and textures, something occurred to me that was very good news. For the NPC's at least, the character models only use one texture. This is significant because this means that it's possible to edit the mesh/texture to be compatible with Second Life, and once fully done, you'll be able to play using the exact same 3d mesh/model and texture that Guild Wars 2 uses. I've already been working on this since May 14th, so about 3 weeks, and progress is coming nicely.

Here is the straight up untextured model, showing the mesh faces (aka polygons):
(Click the picture itself to enlarge)

Spoiler

Gone, see http://www.guildwars...ost__p__1517678

For those whom are wondering, this is actually a very high face count for a MMORPG. True, it's WAY behind quality PC/PS3/360 games, but when compared to Tera or most other MMORPG's, it's actually very high polygon count.

Here is the working texture:
(Click the picture itself to enlarge)

Spoiler

Gone, see http://www.guildwars...ost__p__1517678

There is quite a lot of color noise in it, but that's the uncompressed in-game texture. I'll likely touch that up before actually using it for Second Life.

Finally, here is the texture applied to the 3d mesh model:
(Click the picture itself to enlarge)

Spoiler

Gone, see http://www.guildwars...ost__p__1517678

As you can see, applying the texture makes it look loads better.

Here is what's left for me to do until it's fully usable in Second Life:
UPDATED to reflect the 6/24/12 change:

• Make the texture Second Life compatible
  
  
  
• Touch up the texture to make it less "noise" looking
  
  
  
• Add full rigging to the model
  
  
  
• Make the full rigging Second Life compatible
  
  
  
• Adjust all of the vertices so Second Life won't interpret them wrong
  
  
  
• Animations cannot export, so I'll need to make some on my own *see FAQS*
  
  
  
• Touch ups to hopefully get it better looking than in Guild Wars 2 itself

Only 7 things, yes, but only 2 of them are easy, the 2 involving the texture. The other 5 are pretty difficult and very time consuming. Still, I am willing to bet that I will have a nearly 1:1 replica of Asuras playable in Second Life before ArenaNet lets us publically play as Asuras in Guild Wars 2. The only chance this could fail is if ArenaNet announces that Asuras will be playable (either BWE 3 or release) sometime in late June, which I find very unlikely.

EDIT: Making it and all that is done! The only thing left is to get at least 2 other people's eyes on it before saying it's done, to get extra feedback. Think of it as a Closed Beta test

FAQS:
Q: Why did you choose Second Life?
A: It's the only entirely free downloadable "game" thing that lets you make truly customizable characters with custom riggings, meshes, all that.

Q: Why are you doing this? Don't you have something better to do?
A: Not really. I'm house bound due to a medical condition I have, so computers is pretty much all I do.

Q: I don't like that armor the Asura is wearing. Can I have a different appearance?
A: Due to the fact every single one of them needs to be individually rigged and made SL compatible, I'm not taking request right now. This will be the only one at the moment. If this proove popular enough, I'll take requests for any NPC character of any race.


Q: When it's done, will you be giving these for free to those that want them?
A: It'll be entirely free to anyone that asks me for it when it's done.


Q: What's with "See FAQS" for the animation thing?
A: To be direct, I'm terrible at making animations, and they'd look terrible if I made them. You will need to either use Second Life's built in animations, or find any of thousands of AO's (Animation Overriders) available from other people, Second Life's market, etc. The free ones build into Second Life are not bad by any means, though.


If you have any other questions about this, feel free to ask, I'll add it to the Q&A if it's not already answered. Or if you just want to comment saying "nice work" or the like, I'd appreciate that too.
Also, please press "Like This" in the lower right corner if you like what I'm doing,
I always appreciate it when people do that.

Edited by Xuphor, 04 May 2013 - 05:05 PM.

[Anastaziel]

I do not think you can charge for this. You may be able to "legally" obtain them but using them in a commercial project is something else. As far as I know what you have done is only legal for educational  or non-commercial use.

Edited by Anastaziel, 04 June 2012 - 11:11 PM.

[Xuphor]

Anastaziel, on 04 June 2012 - 11:10 PM, said:

I do not think you can charge for this. You may be able to "legally" obtain them but using them in a commercial project is something else. As far as I know what you have done is only legal for educational  or non-commercial use.

Considering I wasn't charging real life money, it's iffy. Still, I don't want to risk it, it'll be entirely free with optional donations. I changed the Q&A to reflect that. Thanks for the warning, making it free removes the commercialism aspect of it, and falls under "Fair Use". I really do think that that law only applies to real-life money things, but yea, it's not something I'm willing to risk.

Edited by Xuphor, 04 June 2012 - 11:15 PM.

[Silver]

It's a nice little project you got here, but charging for it is just wrong. Imagine if every modder in the various gaming community started charging for their projects.
It's your thing, and you can do what you want with it, but if you want to give something to the community, don't expect any respect doing it this way.

[Xuphor]

Silver, on 04 June 2012 - 11:15 PM, said:

It's a nice little project you got here, but charging for it is just wrong. Imagine if every modder in the various gaming community started charging for their projects.
It's your thing, and you can do what you want with it, but if you want to give something to the community, don't expect any respect doing it this way.

See my update.

[Silver]

Xuphor, on 04 June 2012 - 11:15 PM, said:

See my update.

That's ok. Optional donations are acceptable. Good luck!

[Xuphor]

Silver, on 04 June 2012 - 11:17 PM, said:

That's ok. Optional donations are acceptable. Good luck!

Thanks, I was sceptical to force charge in the first place, but Anastaziel brought up a good point too. It's just a lot smarter to do it for free.

Edited by Xuphor, 04 June 2012 - 11:19 PM.

[Little Bird]

Ahhh Second Life, memories.

Best of luck! Looks like a good start so far.

[AlexaNightingale]

Very cool, though the texture should probably be two sided to stop the armour from becoming see through from different angles. I'm not familiar with Blender, I use 3Ds Max myself.

Is there any way of viewing the mesh without those orange dots all over the place? It would be awesome to see the topology that ANet uses.

[Xuphor]

AlexaNightingale, on 06 June 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

Very cool, though the texture should probably be two sided to stop the armour from becoming see through from different angles. I'm not familiar with Blender, I use 3Ds Max myself.

Is there any way of viewing the mesh without those orange dots all over the place? It would be awesome to see the topology that ANet uses.

Yea, edge select mode:

Spoiler

If you want the yellow lines and smoothing gone as well, I can do that too:

Spoiler

Also, Second Life does not support two sided textures, and apparently Guild Wars 2 doesn't either. This NPC can be found in Lion's Arch, if you find her, you'll see that under her shoulder pads, gloves, and shoes is entirely see through too. It seems like Guild Wars 2 would have fixed this, but I guess not. Or maybe it's part of the reason we still can't play as Asura, I don't know. Either way, for Second Life, it's just a matter of flipping the Normals on the faces to show the correct side of the texture, it's part of the first step I mentioned, making it Second Life Compatible.

Edited by Xuphor, 06 June 2012 - 06:48 PM.

[AlexaNightingale]

That's awesome, thanks for sharing

I really would have expected that GW2 would support two sided textures. It seems rather odd. I think that they were two sided in GWO, if I recall all my adventures with angling the camera inside NPCs.

But yeah that's brilliant. I can lend a hand if you need one, but it looks like you've got it all under control.

[Xuphor]

AlexaNightingale, on 06 June 2012 - 07:53 PM, said:

That's awesome, thanks for sharing

I really would have expected that GW2 would support two sided textures. It seems rather odd. I think that they were two sided in GWO, if I recall all my adventures with angling the camera inside NPCs.

But yeah that's brilliant. I can lend a hand if you need one, but it looks like you've got it all under control.

Well, if you want to help, I'd like it if you'd click "Like This" on my OP, no one's done that yet. Also the Second Life in-game donation thing, but I'm not expecting any from anyone tbh.

Still, if you're in Second Life, let me know you're name, I'd like others to give me in-game feedback when it's needed.

Edited by Xuphor, 06 June 2012 - 08:46 PM.

[Xuphor]

Update 6/13:

Bad news - Unfortunatly, the model shown in the OP was not compatible with Second Life, it was impossible to get the verticies to work correctly. This caused the character to always look like uh..... "head up your ass" is the best expression that matches what it looked like.

Good news - During BWE 2, I got a different model, and it does not seem to have the vertice problems the other one did. So, while the one originally pictured in the OP does not work, here is a picture of the one that does:

I do not know it's gender, unfortunately. That hairstyle is available to both male and female Asuras, and it's voice is unbelievably adrogynous.

Also, with no BWE, stress test, or any similar thing even announced yet, I've been working on it a lot. I'm 100% sure that it'll be completely done before we can publically play as them.

Edited by Xuphor, 14 June 2012 - 01:37 AM.

[Xuphor]

Important update today, progress has halted until I hear form at least 2 people to give me feedback in Second Life. See the OP for more details.

[Azure Skye]

Xuphor, on 25 June 2012 - 02:32 AM, said:

Important update today, progress has halted until I hear form at least 2 people to give me feedback in Second Life. See the OP for more details.

Send me an im with your avi's name. I have an account.

[Xuphor]

Azure Skye, on 25 June 2012 - 03:56 AM, said:

Send me an im with your avi's name. I have an account.

My AVI's name in SL is in the OP
Also, It's Aditi Test Grid I'm refering to in order to test it, so it doesn't cost me $L to test it. I've already saved over $5000L by not using the real Grid so far, and will only upload it on the real Grid when it's done, to save myself money. I can't send you an offline IM on Aditi, you'd literally never get it with the way it works.

This is why I said to PM me, it'll take a while to go over all this stuff on the forums themselves. I'll send you a PM though.

EDIT: Sent. Reply there, not here.
I'll still need at least another person to give me another set of eyes for feedback.

Edited by Xuphor, 25 June 2012 - 04:09 AM.

[Archduke]

oh wow. Amazing work. I can tell a lot of time is going into this. Props to you! A lot of dedication. Looks like fun, keep it up.

[Xuphor]

Released! Please send me a PM here or in Second Life if you want one.

Edited by Xuphor, 06 July 2012 - 06:25 AM.

[cabaretmesmer]

Wow, I love walking with a runway walk with the av on! Everyone that has an sl, you need to see this!

[Harpsong]

I'd love to get one as soon as possible. I just hope I'm not too late! Anyone know how and where I can get a hold of this?