New character models for "Hoist The Colours"

[Jack Rackham]

I have made that extra face skin color (brown). Cannot avoid the form completely as it's not hair but heads that are added.

How do you get Anamaria's animations look normal in the TOOL. Mine looks like this:

 

[Grey Roger]

By default TOOL picks "man.an".


Apart from a few which have their own animations, almost all female figures work with "woman_sit.an".


The problem is that during certain parts of the animation, the underlying head pokes through.

 

[Jack Rackham]

Yes it's a little visible during swimming. If you see the front of her. I would say we can live with that.
The alternative is to skip one of the 2 heads (hairs). But I added it to make a better link between the new hair and the body
(on her back).

woman_sit.an aha!

 

[Grey Roger]

I've put the new model into place and played the storyline, particularly that part in which Anamaria joins you as an officer for a while, which gave me the chance to put her through her paces in the field.

Test 1: running ahead, turning round, and watching Anamaria run towards me: if the glitch did happen, it wasn't obvious.
Test 2: taking a running jump off St. Pierre dock, then watching Anamaria in the water: the affected part is underwater and effectively invisible.

So the new model is tolerable here. There could be a problem if someone buys the outfit from a pirate tailor and applies it to an officer while playing "Tales of a Sea Hawk", which has a scene in which your officers are sitting - an officer in that scene using the "Anamaria" model would show the glitch. We could get round that by making the model have nation "BROKEN" so that it can't be bought, which has the side-effect that Anamaria is no longer a playable FreePlay character as she would be with nation "PIRATE". There is also the potential problem if someone creates a new character using the new "Anamaria" model with a new texture and then uses that character in a quest or story involving the character sitting.

On the whole, I really do want to use this model. I'm inclined to leave it as nation "PIRATE" and see what happens. If we start seeing reports of characters with faces appearing out of their chests, we'll have to either set the nation to "BROKEN" or revert to using the "33_TG5D" model. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, Anamaria is now operational.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sounds like you have met with success in the end, @Jack Rackham and @Grey Roger!

 

[Jack Rackham]

Good to hear!

 

[Grey Roger]

Hold the celebrations.

The problem appears more widespread than we first thought. I'd been trying to get a beauty shot, partly to show what has been achieved and possibly for use in future publicity, and at first it seemed fine:


This is my standard technique for getting screenshots now - position myself to one side and wait for the character to look to the side. But when Anamaria turns to the other side, the glitch starts to appear, and when she yawns, it's blatantly obvious:


Even if she just stands back a bit, there's a trace:


Is it possible to fix this?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I had to squint a bit to see what you mean, but indeed that does looks a little bit funny!

 

[Jack Rackham]

I can remove one of the 2 extra faces. I think it can be the lower upside down one that
shows up sometimes.
I have tested and the glitch is gone. But from behind it looks two layers of hair. (which it is)
The bottom one more like a black collar.

Alternative is to skip all extra hair but then she looks less like the photo of anamaria the pirate.

 

[Grey Roger]

Can you upload the model without the lower head? The existing model also looks like two layers of hair, the only difference is that the "black collar" is longer:


Without any of the extra hair, it's effectively back to the "33_TG5D" model, and one reason I prefer your model is that "33_TG5D" has a ribbon in the hair, very ladylike and not very pirate-like! That ribbon is obscured by the extra hair.

 

[Jack Rackham]

I wonder if there could be a chance to retexture the lower back part of the 'black collar'
into white skirt texture.

 

[Grey Roger]

It does not seem likely. That part of the hair comes from "Anamari1.tga". A bit of experimenting indicates that the same piece of texture which covers the rear lower hair also covers some of the hair at the front - if it's changed to white then she's going to have white hair next to her front real collar. Anyway, Anamaria's hair is a bit scruffy, so the double layer doesn't look too bad. Neither of us regarded it as a problem earlier, so unless there's a simple fix, I'd be inclined to leave it.

In any case, that model certainly seems to cure the glitch, at least according to preliminary tests with TOOL. Now I'll need to get back to that part of the storyline where Anamaria is an officer so I can see how the model looks in the field...

 

[Jones]

@Grey Roger
I'm trying to improve models for Elizabeth Swann and William Turner.

 

[Grey Roger]

Bearing in mind we already have decent models for both of those (two for Elizabeth Swann!), what improvements have you in mind? Possibly Elizabeth Swann's red dress for the cave scene?

You may also want to look at post #2 of this thread, which has a list of models which could be useful and which we don't have. (Except for Elizabeth Swann in trousers, as I mentioned in post #3. )

 

[Grey Roger]

I can remove one of the 2 extra faces. I think it can be the lower upside down one that
shows up sometimes.
I have tested and the glitch is gone. But from behind it looks two layers of hair. (which it is)
The bottom one more like a black collar.

Here are the results of the field test. Look left, look right, yawn. (I was a little late pressing F8 during the yawn, but it took her ages to do it and I wasn't going to wait for a second shot. )


The two-stage hair is only visible from specific angles, otherwise it looks like this:

I think it looks better without the extension dangling down the back, and since the extension presumably comes from the extra head that was causing the glitches, Anamaria definitely looks better without it. Job done.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Congratulations, @Grey Roger and @Jack Rackham! Sounds like you're getting somewhere.

 

[Jones]

@Grey Roger or @Pieter Boelen could this go like Barbossa's skeleton?