Still going?

[comrade_general]

Glad I could assist.

[DiGiTALZOMBiE]

Hey there, I'm a 3D Environment and prop artist for computer and video games. I checked out your mod over at twcenter.net, are you in need of any help at all?

[Jubal]

Yes, the more help the merrier. So would you essentially be volunteering to work on buildings, town walls, plants, and suchlike?

[DiGiTALZOMBiE]

Yes whatever environment, prop, weapon, creature pieces you want doing I'm willing to do.  I used to be an Eavy Metal artist so I'm quite familiar with the universe.

Just incase it's needed a few more examples of my 3D and texture work...







New studio email :- digitalzombie@hushmail.com

[comrade_general]

Very impressive!

[Jubal]

Right, we've got Del working on units at the moment, so I think if we get you to do a few larger unit models and scenery pieces?

A big challenge I've wanted to set someone for a while has been making a steam tank on the scorpion cart skeleton/frame. That could be quite a big ask though - getting some more "castle style" architecture to replace some of the standard building models is also certainly a priority.

So as a long wishlist;
- Steam tank
- War Wagon for Kislev (like a normal chariot, but needs to be big enough to fit more like 6 people on and have a higher floor)
- Castle and manor pieces to replace each of the central buildings (governor's house, palaces, etc) for Empire/Brets
- Any other medieval-style buildings you can make to replace current roman-style ones
- A few Elven towers etc to replace eastern buildings
- I'm not sure what we could do about Dwarf stuff, but I'd like to work out if we can make dwarf towns look more like actual dwarf holds. I'll get back to you if I have any ideas here.
- War machines (tons of these)
--- A proper Dwarf Grudge Thrower (currently just has the vanilla Onager)
--- A Dwarf Gobbolobber would be truly awesome
--- Empire Rocket (would need a rocket projectile model as well)
--- Chaos Dwarf Death Rocket (as above)
--- Chaos Dwarf Earthshaker
--- A new more warhammerish Hellcannon would be great, the current one is nabbed from an oriental mod and looks a bit odd.
--- Skull catapult thingy for the Tomb Kings

I appreciate that's a big list, but feel free to pick and choose anything you'd like to do; all contributions very gratefully received! The buildings are probably slightly lower priority than units, but anything will help. 

[Gen_Glory]

More Orc artillery! Even just ballistae or onagers

[DiGiTALZOMBiE]

Thanks comrade_general 

@ Jubal, thats a great list of stuff to choose from! I'm having a hard time picking where to start. I'm a total newb to modding RTW so are there any resources you could point me towards to help me get started? things like scale/file formats unpacking meshes and textures, your chosen art style...anything you think I need to know really!

Tell me a bit more about the steam tank your after, whats the scorpion cart skeleton/frame?

[Jubal]

Okay, I'm no modeller but I'll tell you what I do know.

- The basic skeletons in RTW are fixed. There's elephant, dog, pig, human, horse, camel, scorpion cart, chariot, and so on and AFAIK those are hard-coded so it's impossible to make things with different basic bone structures (though new animations are possible, and it's possible to up/down scale things quite easily). This generally means that unless you're building scenery, starting with a current model and editing is probably the way to go. So the game has a scorpion cart (in fact it's used by the Dark Elves), which is a rotating ballista on the back of a small chariot. Essentially the way we'd make a tank would be to use an invisible texture for the horses, attach a turret/gun to the skeleton "bone" that controls the ballista, and build the body of the tank over the cart itself. It might be quite a task if you've not worked with RTW before - it might be good to try a war machine, get that as far as being implemented, etc, first, since it's got less implementation challenges.
- The model files are all in .CAS format, there's an importer/exporter script for 3ds Max which I think is the usual way people edit them though I don't know if anyone's got other software working with it yet. The skins are in .dds format.
- The core models are in big data packs; there's an unpacker somewhere, this thread has most of the useful file editor tools people have built I think:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=59283

Here's Total War Center's tutorial sections for unit editing and general modding which might give some more useful advice than I can.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=374
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=350

In terms of art style, I think that going over-detailed rarely works well on RTW models, particularly on the textures. The stuff we've got at the moment is a mish-mash at best as we've had to beg/borrow so many models, but the High Elves, Empire, Dark Elves, and Hordes of Chaos probably best reflect the "core style" of the mod out of the factions in at the moment.

Sorry, that would probably have been more useful if I knew much about modelling. Hopefully bits of it made sense, do pester me for any more information I can give you.