Neofin v1.1

Neofin v1.1

A sort of dolphin mated to a hydraulic industrial style robotic arms and legs with jets and and air scoop like a harrier jump jet.

Type:

Unreal Tournament 2003 Multiplayer Pluggin Model

Name:

Neofin v1.1

Release Date:

11th July 2003 for v1.1

Changes for V.1:

Simplified/improved kamma skeleton

Adjusted skins colour to improve in game appearance

Removed of the copyright JCB logo

Added optional exoskeleton species

Author:

Ian Waugh

E-Mail:

[email protected]

Homepage:

G-net

http://freespace.virgin.net/ian.waugh/index.htm

(no longer updated)

Files:

neofin.ukx

neofinTex.utx

NeofinUPL.upl

neofin.ka

neofin.txt

ExoSkeleton.u

Instructions:

To install the model Unzip the listed files to you UT2003 directory:

\Animations\neofin.ukx

\Textures\neofinTex.utx

\KarmaData\neofin.ka

\System\neofinUPL.upl

\System\ExoSkeleton.u

If you already have any of of these files, from the neofin model version 1 or an ExoSkeleton.u from the exoslave model simply overwrite them with these new files.

Pluggin player models can only be seen during play of UT2003 if they have been installed on that PC.

This is a general limitation of UT2003, not specific to neofin.

If you wish for a bio for this character you manually have to edit some files.

This is only recommend for people who know what they are doing.

Edit the UT2003/System/neofinUPL.upl file in notepad and find the bit that reads

Portrait=neofinTex.Portrait, Sex=Male,

and change it to read

Portrait=neofinTex.Portrait, Text=Xplayers.neofin, Sex=Male,

Then edit the UT2003/System/XPlayers.int and add something like the

following line to the bottom of it.

neofin=Name: Neofin|Race: Geneboosted neodolphin|IQ: 327||Data:|A militant cetacean rights activist and tournament veteran, neofin is a genebosted neo dolphin modded with a neural lace graft and a Zeis-Hitachi KX21 cyber eye. Out of water he uses a rather old JCB type 14 Jump lifter for locomotion||

To make sure the model can work online, the species for neofin is set to SPECIES_Bot by default, but in that ExoSkeleton.u file there is a custom species called ExoSkeleton. This species Merch and Bot effects and gibs (not sounds for male exoskeletons), so you get sparks and blood when you shoot it and bot parts and human/dolphin organs when you gib it. You can change the species to the custom one by a simple edit (use windows notepad) of the UPL file UT2003\System\exoslaveUPL.upl and change the bit that says

species=xGame.SPECIES_Bot

to read

species=ExoSkeleton.SPECIES_ExoSkeleton

The problem with this is that unless the net server has the ExoSkeleton.u file installed on it, it will reject yours (a security measure to prevent possible cheating) and you will get the default model instead. So basically online play with the custom species is going to be impossible most of the time. If you are only going to use neofin for bot matches, use the custom species if you like, but if you want to use it online, leave it as Bot. You could even make 2 upls if you like, an offline and an online verion. The choice is yours, but changing the species is only recommend for people who know what they are doing. (N.B the exoskeleton species is shared with my exoslave model)

This model can be freely distributed as long as this text file is included, unmodified.

If you want to install the model on your server for pushing to clients follow this tut :-

http://unreal.epicgames.com/UT2003/tutorials/push/

Description:

A sort of dolphin mated to a hydraulic industrial style robotic arms and legs with jets and and

air scoop like a harrier jump jet. Neo is geneticly enginnered to allow him to spend extended amounts of

time outside water and he has a neural interface to allow him to control his robotic limbs directly

Influences:

Generaly influnced by cyborg and geneicaly enginnered dolphins from SF literature, such as Johnny Mnemonic

(the orginal short story not the film :)) and David Brin's Uplift novels. But the design is sort of original,

its not from any specific book or film. The mech parts are influenced by modern industrial robots and JCB diggers as much as anything.

The legs and arms where necessary for the movement and carry a gun thing, but I figued a dolphin would want three

dimensional movement, hence the jets.

Model Info:

Vertices : 2075

Polygons : 3452 tris

Skins : 1 head 128x64 with alpha (actualy this is just the teath)

1 body 1024x1024

1 jet thrust 128x64 with alpha

1 specularity mask 256x256 with alpha

1 Environment map 256x256

Red/Blue team Colour version of body are included

There is a light env map on the dolphins body to get a shinny wet look effect

Skeleton : Custom CS Biped plus additional bones for controlling the flippers,

jaw, thruster pods and afterburners, expressions used to control multiple bones.

Animation : Hand made from scratch (78 sequences)

Karma : Custom karma physics

Sounds : Standard UT2003 Bot sounds

Model Notes:

I made the original model ages ago for some modeling competition, it was planned for Q3, so it had about

1000 polies). I was thinking about what to do next around Xmas time and remembered it was still on my hard drive,

so It was dusted it down, had a couple of thousand extra polies added, mapped, textured, rigged and

animated it to get to here.

The polycount of 3452 should not unduly stress anyones system, as the highest standard model has 3419 polies, so

that only an increase of 33. Testing has not revealed any performance hit from using the fin.

UT2003 models get 3 extra LOD's automatically, so it isn't rendering all of those polies all the time anyway.

Although I did tweeak the LOD settings to boost the detail a bit on the 2nd LOD so some important poilies

where not removed, but this will mean your system will have more work to do rendering neo at medium range.

Skin notes:

It does use a lot of little skins, but in total they actualy make up less skin area than the standard 2x1024x1024

so there shouldn't be any texture memory space probs.

The UV map is highly mirrored. This is becuase the model has so much surface area, and space saving is necessary to get

sufficient surface area for the parts. But this prevents more interesting skins, and you cant put lettering on the

mirrored bits. Swings and rounabouts.

The skin started life as a greyscale baked using the luminare plugin from a fake global illumination rig.

This was then painted over to add extra detail and smooth things out. This was then overlayed with two layers, one for scratched steel (photos sourced)and another for dirty yellow paint. On top of that was detail and a rust layer.

The team skins are cheesy recolours. I tend to just run out of inspiration for when it comes round to doing team skins.

There's a simple Environment shader to make the body look shinny and wet. A mask is used to make sure the env map

only really effects the dolphin body. This is a good tutorial for UT2003 env maps, it helped me :-

http://www.chiq.net/ut2003specshader.htm

The end result isn't to bad but the lighting isn't quite right, and in places the UV's are horrible (fron of the

thruster pods for instance) amd this messes up a few things, for instace some of the bolts and panel lines don't

quite look right and are distorted. A lot of the detail is painted on and so looks a bit flat to.

Be warned the invisibility adrenline effect does not work on the afterburner, so when you dobule/jump or dodge they

can be seen. I thought epic had changed UT in the latest patch to make it so extra materials get these effects, but I can't seem to get it to work.

If you want to make a skin for neofin, download the skin development kit from here

http://www.btinternet.com/~gundam/neofinSDK.zip

Anim notes:

There appears to be some very strange things going on when UT2003 tweens between certain animations, especially the

idle anim to the crouch anim. The torso does a complete 360 turn for some unknow reason, but this only happens occasionaly. I haven't been able to fix this (its not my anim, its the way ut2003 tweens anims together) so I've left it as is :( Like anybody every stands still and then crouchs in a deathmatch anyway ;)

The taunts are a little unimagninative, mainly just being flips, but he doesn't have a thoat to cut,

an arse to smack etc. I had to do something else, and the flips where the only dolphin like thing I could think of.

The afterburner jet effect isn't really that spectacular, a mixture of poor anims and bad textures,

but I wanted something there and thats the best I could come up with.

Sounds Notes:

I don't really have the facilities to records custom sounds so I had use one of the standard set and the bot seemed

most appropriate. Pseudo science explanation :- this is because he needs to use a speech synthasiser to talk as

he does not have the human larynx necessary vocal cords to speak english. Plususing voice packs is very problematic for online play.

A consequence of the bot sounds is a purple spray when you hit him (if you use the Bot species

Pseudo science explanation :- The purple is a mixture of blood (red) and hydraulic fluid (green)

and red and green=purple ;) (althoug you could use the custom species mentioned above to get better gibs and blood).

Tools used:

Mesh : 3D Studio Max R3.1

Mapping, rigging : 3D Studio Max R3.1 and Character Studio 2.2

Skins : Corel Photopaint 8.0

Animation : 3D Studio Max R3.1 and Character Studio 2.2

Exporting : ActorX

Compiling and Tweaking : UbrealEd 3.0

Thanks to:

Many thanks to the posters who frequent the Polycount message board( www.polycount.com) who provided answers to UT2003 modeling questions and usefull feed back.

Also thanks to the Unreal developer network (http://udn.epicgames.com/).

Other:

I sometimes can be found as "Seburo", late at night playing UT2003 on various UK servers or on the European Planetside server.

Get the neofin wallpaper from here

http://www.btinternet.com/~gundam/neofinrenderJPG.jpg