Halo 3 Marine and Bravo-Kilos

[morthon 152]

Howdy,
 
So I've been wanting to practice zbrush some more and I figured I'd make something for arma and being a sci-fi nut and halo fan, making something for the operation trebuchet mod seemed like a natural choice :P I really love what they did with the mod, but I couldn't help but feel I really miss the halo 3 marine (which is my favorite UNSC marine design of all of them) and the covenant (notably jackals and the brutes). So here I am, starting on this small project to help expand the roster of soldiers (and possibly factions) for the Operation Trebuchet mod. If I manage to finish it and if they'll have it, it will be donated to the Operation Trebuchet dev team to be featured exclusively in that mod.
 
Some references and some videos for inspiration

 

 

 

 

 
 
So here's where I am right now! (Last album update: 19-02-2018):

http://imgur.com/a/a9xUr

 

Cheers!

[somesangheili 111]

Great job so far, these models look superb. Are you going to fully texture them too? And are you planning on making more OPTRE assets when you are finished with these two?

[Prototype556 11]

Excited to see the progress :)  Looking good.

[haleks 8212]

Nice, I'm always happy to see people working on sci-fi stuff!

 

One thing I'd like to comment : while it makes sense to donate those models to OPTRE, I wouldn't mind a stand-alone release for those big hairy bad dudes. ;)

[morthon 152]

Great job so far, these models look superb. Are you going to fully texture them too? And are you planning on making more OPTRE assets when you are finished with these two?

 

I might, who knows! Yes, I plan to fully texture them. Whether I will make more OPTRE assets depends on whether I succeed at making the Brute the way I want to, with the same movement set and flexibility as vanilla soldiers but 2.8 meters tall and with shields and the ability to track units on the map using their nose and stuff like that xD. Imagine how terrifying that would be! If I manage to do that, I might do custom skeletons for Elites or Jackals or do a Phantom or Halo Wars Marines (seems more lore-friendly for the mod's time period) or something. I mean I love fighting innies, but I grew up fighting the covenant and have grown quite fond of that haha

 

Though I'm also dying to do Command and Conquer or Star Wars addons (I have ideas for addons themed around the post-revenge of the sith era), so I might do that instead. I might not do anything at all after this, I guess time will tell.

 

Nice, I'm always happy to see people working on sci-fi stuff!

 

One thing I'd like to comment : while it makes sense to donate those models to OPTRE, I wouldn't mind a stand-alone release for those big hairy bad dudes. ;)

 

We'll see ^^

[icmspectre 32]

I might, who knows! Yes, I plan to fully texture them. Whether I will make more OPTRE assets depends on whether I succeed at making the Brute the way I want to, with the same movement set and flexibility as vanilla soldiers but 2.8 meters tall and with shields and the ability to track units on the map using their nose and stuff like that xD. Imagine how terrifying that would be! If I manage to do that, I might do custom skeletons for Elites or Jackals or do a Phantom or Halo Wars Marines (seems more lore-friendly for the mod's time period) or something. I mean I love fighting innies, but I grew up fighting the covenant and have grown quite fond of that haha

 

Though I'm also dying to do Command and Conquer or Star Wars addons (I have ideas for addons themed around the post-revenge of the sith era), so I might do that instead. I might not do anything at all after this, I guess time will tell.

 

 

We'll see ^^

If you were to do starwars addons, why not the clone wars era?

[morthon 152]

One reason; because that would be an insane amount of work. I don't think I could commit to a project of that scale! Just having a couple of rebels fighting episode 3 imperial clone troopers in a guerilla-style conflict with some small garrison-style vehicles would be more than enough for me.

[Macser 776]

You're doing some great work. Just take it slowly. The animation side of things can wait until you have some game ready models. It's hard enough to do that without the added pressure. Even though there aren't all that many examples of what you want to do, it's still something you can achieve. So good luck with the project. :)

[morthon 152]

Thanks! I'm definately trying not to overreach. As such, I'm focusing mostly on the Marine right now.

 

I take McRuppertle's work and the BI documentation on custom skeletons as proof that it's all 100% possible, though! So I'll probably consult with him when I get to the animating part.

[haleks 8212]

...and feel free to give a shout if you need help with the scripting & configs. ;)

[morthon 152]

...and feel free to give a shout if you need help with the scripting & configs. ;)

 I definately will, ARMA modding is way too complicated for me to grasp easily.

[morthon 152]

Little update: Managed to get some work in on the shoulder pads and the knee/shin armor.

 

 

[LykosMactire 298]

Amaziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing, do you plan on adding a rolled up sleeves variant? 

edit:

We can finally recreate Halo Legends Prototype's beginning!

[morthon 152]

You plan on recreating the slaughter of an entire platoon of marines?? XD

 

I plan to do all the versions that are in halo 3.

[LykosMactire 298]

You plan on recreating the slaughter of an entire platoon of marines?? XD

 

I plan to do all the versions that are in halo 3.

well its either prototype or the mona lisa

[scorch_052 127]

The brute can just use the human skeleton, as they are basically the same.

 

BTW, if and when you finish these, we would be more than happy to add them as official content to Operation: TREBUCHET/First Contact, with your approval of course.

[morthon 152]

The brute can just use the human skeleton, as they are basically the same.

 

BTW, if and when you finish these, we would be more than happy to add them as official content to Operation: TREBUCHET/First Contact, with your approval of course.

 

Yeah, that'd be great! I have thought out what I plan to do with the brute, I have alot of gameplay ideas. I will elaborate on that soon in a more detailed fashion, but I can say that the main reason I want to make a new skeleton is because I want the brutes to be their lore size, so like 2,5 to 2,8 meters tall ingame.

[Paladin_ 0]

Dude I love you so much for doing this, if its too much to ask when do you think there would be a alpha for this?

[scorch_052 127]

I want the brutes to be their lore size, so like 2,5 to 2,8 meters tall ingame.

You can just make the physical model larger, you dont have to make a whole new skeleton

[Macser 776]

I don't know whether you've already tried it. But If you make the model larger, you'll need to adjust the animations to suit it. Otherwise it'll get pulled apart by distortions. 

 

Either scaling them up, or creating new ones are the only options I know of.

 

You might be able to do the scaling via Object builder. In either case, it'll be a fair amount of work.

[morthon 152]

Little update! Torso plate and elbow guard.

 

 

Now it's just the rib guard and neck/backplate and all the hard body armor pieces will be done. After that it's just cleaning the helmet and the combat shirt, and sculpt the details on the gloves, boots, get some straps here and there and some pouches and it'll be ready for texturing.

 

Honestly, I haven't really looked into it thoroughly yet, as I'm focusing solely on finishing the marine first. If you say that you can just scale it up without there being problems, then that sounds like a great alternative to animating a complete new set.

[LykosMactire 298]

Little update! Torso plate and elbow guard.

 

 

Now it's just the rib guard and neck/backplate and all the hard body armor pieces will be done. After that it's just cleaning the helmet and the combat shirt, and sculpt the details on the gloves, boots, get some straps here and there and some pouches and it'll be ready for texturing.

 

Honestly, I haven't really looked into it thoroughly yet, as I'm focusing solely on finishing the marine first. If you say that you can just scale it up without there being problems, then that sounds like a great alternative to animating a complete new set.

Looks amazing, and in regards to the brute animations, honestly i think the vanilla animations would do them justice anyways because if you see how the brute patrol walks in the video below( H3: ODST trailer)  its pretty much human movements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WroxHMo6B_k

[morthon 152]

I guess we'll see when I start experimenting with it.

[Macser 776]

Sorry for labouring the point. Just so I'm clear. I don't mod for A3. But..

 

A lot has changed over the years with the configuration of animations. But the actual rtm files haven't. I know some modders like OFP2 who have ported characters and animations straight out of OFP/CWA into A3. This wouldn't be possible unless the rtm format had remained unchanged.

 

With that in mind, if you simply scale up the mesh, and continue to use the default animations your character will be mangled beyond recognition. As far as I'm aware the A3 engine doesn't have any automatic way of adjusting the rtms to account for your custom mesh. So it rotates the "bones" according the positions contained within the rtm file. These positions are specific to whatever character they were created for. In the case of default content, the basic human male.

 

Here's a small illustration to show you what I mean:

 

The stick figure represents the joint locations/bones in a default rtm. The larger mesh if using that rtm will have it's selections rotate at the red points. Not where you expect, or want them to. You have a little room for maneuver with scaling your character, true. But past a certain point the joint locations and your custom mesh diverge. The more you scale, the bigger the offset.

 

I'm not saying any of this to put you off. As I love to see people going "outside the box", so to speak. But I think it's worth being clear, so you know about potential issues early on.

 

If I'm wrong, and there's some quick and easy method to achieve what you want, I'm sure someone will correct me. And hopefully outline it.   :)

[morthon 152]

Well, I haven't looked into the possibilities thoroughly, but I expected as much. Scaling skeletons is rarely an acceptable practice XD. However, there is the option of possibly retargeting the animations of the original skeleton onto a new skeleton. Though, that would still be alot of work and all things considering it would possibly be better to just make them from scratch. Like I said, I'll see when I start experimenting with it and that's a long ways off, to be honest. As a 3D Animation student I'm not afraid of having to go "the long way", it would be good practice, really. I actually have access to a motion capture studio, but I'm not satisfied with the tests I've managed to do so far. So far I managed to adapt a Sangheili rig to a biped and with some wizardry made it to mimic the motion capture data. It's really bad, but I'm experimenting, trying to find the most efficient way of doing this. Will report on that later.

 

Anyway, thanks for the info on RTMs!