[OpenMaw]

As many of you know I created a little pitch and trailer some time ago for a live action big budget Hollywood adventure starring our favorite hero. Well, many people made the obvious suggestion that since Vinny and I make Duke the series, we should stretch our legs a bit further and do it ourselves.

That's what's going to happen. Consider this, essentially, the first spark in a fuse for the project. I've been experimenting with some new techniques and trying to get my sprite creation skills up to snuff. The key element i've wanted to inject into Duke Nukem The Series since Vinny and I started was character. The ability for characters to interact, interact with the world, and in general be animated. Of course with most of the episodes (those to come and those already released) i've settled for just having characters stand there, and at best talk to Duke. Which serves what we've done thusly. Obviously with a film where there's a bit more plot, there's going to be more character interaction, and if you've read the synopsis and seen the pitch then you know there is a cast of characters that would need to be performed. I'm creating this thread essentially as an area to throw progress reports down.

Tentative release date, assuming nothing goes horribly wrong, or the Duke Curse ™ strikes us again, i'd like to hit the release date of Christmas 2013, or, if we miss that mark, hit July 1st 2014. The birth of Nukem.

This is a prototype of some sprite work i've been doing.



Obviously this needs a lot of work (around the belt, the neck, so on) but the intention will be to generate many angles, postures, and animations so that Duke can actually be seen to do various things. (Working out, drinking, eating, using various weapons and equipment.) This was inspired in part by Brutal Doom. Indeed, I used the Hellknight from Doom 2 as a base to create the Duke seen here, as much of the Doom Marine's fatalities were made using those. I think it worked pretty damn well!

If anyone has any thoughts, feedbacks, or criticism - let it be known!

QUICK BONER BONUS:
D'awe, innit cute? Again, just a quick prototype, but this is something like what Dr. Proton would look like.

[Player Lin]

The sprites looks so nice...

For some reasons, after WGR2, I would like see a mod/TC has a version of Duke Nukem that looks like a knight or something...

[Komenja]

Those sprites are awesome! Looking forward to how this turns out.

[DavoX]

Those looks great man! I believe you should make different arms for proton though

[Hank]

It ain't none of my business, but if you want Duke to act in front of a camera, would it not be easier to get the model Tea Monster finished, and use its very good animation abilities, make snapshots of desired poses and then turn those into sprite sequences?

All the best, either way.

[OpenMaw]

Hank, on 16 July 2013 - 03:24 PM, said:

It ain't none of my business, but if you want Duke to act in front of a camera, would it not be easier to get the model Tea Monster finished, and use its very good animation abilities, make snapshots of desired poses and then turn those into sprite sequences?

All the best, either way.

...Potentially. I have considered playing with it. It depends on a few things. One - I hate Blender, so i'm trying to get the model in a T frame pose so that I can move it over to the tools I prefer to use and get it rigged up again myself. Which is a bitch. Two - I also want to maintain the look of the original game. So, that's why sprites from, say, Duke 2013, or from the community stockpile, or from similar looking games ala Blood/Shadow Warrior/Doom work well to create things from. I'm certainly not against it.

It's also down to whether Tea Monster wants it used that way or not. I don't see why he'd have an issue, but I should probably get an okay from him first.

[Hank]

Hopefully I am not too pushy tonight, but I think Blender is a very good software making models, but the renderer is not the best to make those shots - I would look at DAZ Sudio, it's free now, and relatively easy to use; all that if you want to go that route and Tea Monster gives the green lights.

I am just excited to hear you guys making more stuff with Duke.

[OpenMaw]

Although I haven't gotten the okay from Tea Monster to use the model yet, I thought I would experiment with the idea just to get a head start on it if he says it's okay.

This is another prototype, obviously. The first thing that's bugging me is in the downsize process... Well, Duke's head, though realistically proportioned to the model, seems to end up lacking size.


Normal
X4


Looks okay, ish. Needs a little work in the lighting department obviously to get it looking more vivid. Also, obviously, in a very uninteresting pose.



Another test. This is at normal size here for both. I'm considering the idea of maybe doubling the resolution to get a little more detail on the human characters. I very much doubt i'd be using Vinny as a physical actor for Project X, because there would be SO MUCH swapping of art graphics, or con code, when I could just physically composite/edit things once the elements exist. Just so it's clear. The Duke sprite's on the right are about the same size as those found in WW2 GI. They're much crisper. The trouble this will cause is I will basically have to be a lot more clean with sprite edits for things like I mentioned in the first post. (Having him gloveless or bare chested will probably be a matter of rough texture edits and then smoothing over the art in PSP.)

[Fox]

Commando Nukem, on 15 July 2013 - 04:57 PM, said:

This is a prototype of some sprite work i've been doing.

He got some abs! Does he throws green fireballs too?

[OpenMaw]

Fox, on 17 July 2013 - 10:11 PM, said:

He got some abs! Does he throws green fireballs too?

Indeed! The Hellknight opens many possibilities.


However, I did get Tea Monster's permission to use the Duke Nukem model. I've been playing around over the last bunch of hours to recreate my shirtless Duke (along with several other variations including battle damage, oh yes... )

[DavoX]

Nice man!

[Mark]

I was one of the beta testers for the model. Before it was released and just for fun I made about 35 or 40 sprite frames of Duke and was going to do a bunch more. Then I realised I didn't need yet another reason to get sidetracked from the various projects I had been working on and so I made the dumb mistake of deleting them. It might have saved you a bit of time. Arg, stupid me.

I have a rigged Milkshape 3D version of the model. My program of choice, the lowly Misfit Modeler 3D can use that format for the animating and converting to md3.

[OpenMaw]

Mark., on 18 July 2013 - 04:46 PM, said:

I was one of the beta testers for the model. Before it was released and just for fun I made about 35 or 40 sprite frames of Duke and was going to do a bunch more. Then I realised I didn't need yet another reason to get sidetracked from the various projects I had been working on and so I made the dumb mistake of deleting them. It might have saved you a bit of time. Arg, stupid me.

I have a rigged Milkshape 3D version of the model. My program of choice, the lowly Misfit Modeler 3D can use that format for the animating and converting to md3.

It has a skeleton? Would you be willing to send it my way? That would really... REALLY, save em a long time. I'm trying to get Tea Monster's version from Blender, to 3DS Max, to Milkshape, but I somehow doubt i'll get the skeleton out of the deal no matter what I do.

[Mark]

If you want to PM your email address to me, I can find it and send it. It was a lot of work. I want a batch of home made chocolate chip cookies. Hot and fresh from the oven.

[Hank]

butting in - Blender is not good with 3ds shtuff
I am uploading duke as Collada and FBX format - mediafire
here
http://www.mediafire...6raeqjbph92p3t9
but this link will work for only 24hr !

Hopefully, one of those will work in your Milkshape and or Maya/Studio. I tested both with Blender and my own software and the bones/ skeletons/joints or whatever you call it, are in it. Just make sure the texture files are in the same directory when opening either of those. Good Luck

[OpenMaw]

Hank, on 18 July 2013 - 07:05 PM, said:

butting in - Blender is not good with 3ds shtuff
I am uploading duke as Collada and FBX format - mediafire
here
http://www.mediafire...6raeqjbph92p3t9
but this link will work for only 24hr !

Hopefully, one of those will work in your Milkshape and or Maya/Studio. I tested both with Blender and my own software and the bones/ skeletons/joints or whatever you call it, are in it. Just make sure the texture files are in the same directory when opening either of those. Good Luck

I appreciate it, Hank. Unfortunately it seems as though Milkshape basically barfs all over it.

[Tea Monster]

Check your PMs. If FBX dosen't work, I may be able to export milkshape. I did it for Mark, but its a pain in the bum. Tried to export as milkshape, and it was a disaster. It won't read all the weight painting and it wasn't pretty.

How about an IQM?

[OpenMaw]

Tea Monster, on 19 July 2013 - 04:43 AM, said:

Check your PMs. If FBX dosen't work, I may be able to export milkshape. I did it for Mark, but its a pain in the bum. Tried to export as milkshape, and it was a disaster. It won't read all the weight painting and it wasn't pretty.

How about an IQM?

Yeah, the FBX just ain't working out for Duke. Comes out looking like a The Thing creature when I click the animate button. I don't think IQM is a format I can do anything with, honestly. I appreciate your efforts, sir.



Hopefully, Mark will be able to come through tonight with that MS3D copy he has re-rigged. If not i'll just have to redo the skeleton myself. No big deal, just tedious. I have to rig up so many models as it is, what's one more gonna hurt.

[OpenMaw]

"Maybe I have wrong apartment!?" Lo Wang screen test. Hanging around outside of Duke's apartment complex. This is a new way to composite sprites and backdrops. This is only half within the game. The background is from a Season 2 episode of Duke The Series. Where as Lo Wang is a rendered image that has been re composited in after the fact. This method basically will allow for a lot of different sprites to be moved about on screen with a much higher level of fine tuning. Thanks to Mark for the Lo Wang model. He's groovy.

Another notion at work here is the idea of doing specific sprites for close up shots. I'm thinking I may indeed use this in a few spots just to be able to get a little more cinematic quality for some shots.



Lo Wang, Elexis from SIN (Will be doing heavy editing to create female characters.) and Duke, ready (as always) to kick ass and chew bubblegum.

[Mark]

I've got Elexis rigged too if you need it.

[OpenMaw]

By all means.

[Mark]

I'll send it shortly.

ADDED: Its been sent.

[OpenMaw]

Mark., on 19 July 2013 - 03:07 PM, said:

I'll send it shortly.

ADDED: Its been sent.

You the man!

[Mark]

I just took a look at the suits I included. They may not be for this specific version of her. They didn't seem to match up properly.

[OpenMaw]

There's some weird anomalies with the skeleton in that Duke mesh you sent me Mark. Unfortunately I don't think I can use it as it is. I'm gonna have to do the skeleton's from scratch. It almost looks like Milkshape's format interpreted the skeleton and the skeleton weights as two skeletons, there are duplicate bones, but one set does not actually form a solid skeleton. I tried to fix it, but it appears there is some vertex distortion. Needless to say, this is a bit of a bummer. Just a minor set back, ultimately, but it's just going to take that much longer to get the skeleton rigged and working.




"We are not amused!"

[Tea Monster]

Supposedly milkshape will read iqm. Try using noesis and see if you can convert it to something you can use. I think I put an unreal psk as well as an iqm in that package I dropped you.

Those sprites turned out well.

[Mark]

The possible merging problem in Milkshape I mentioned in the email is why I included the older Duke model too. In my case I merged all seperate ms3d models together and saved them in Misfit Modeler's own mm3d format. Then performed any animations and re-saved. And lastly, I converted the model to frame animation and saved it as md3.

[OpenMaw]

Tea Monster, on 19 July 2013 - 11:53 PM, said:

Supposedly milkshape will read iqm. Try using noesis and see if you can convert it to something you can use. I think I put an unreal psk as well as an iqm in that package I dropped you.

Neither in the program or on the website is IQM a listed format:

http://www.chumba.ch...ms3d/index.html


And here's what the FBX does out of that zip file. Lol.





Yeah, i've already got half the skeleton rebuilt myself. It's not a big deal. Just kinda bleh. Thanks for continuing to try and help guys. I appreciate it.

[Hank]

I played around with Blender. MDX is the format for Half Life stuff, and MilkShape should be able to handle those scenes. At least it is listed.

You can test the files below (when you are bored), and see if the meshes and bones work, if yes, I will add the UVs and details, if not, there is the old smd version ...

b.t.w. it's not just for you, I will eventually try to peddle my own models, and Valve is a huge community, so it's in my interest to understand what works and what does not, so you are doing me a favour.

Duke in MDX

[Hank]

double post