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I'm trying to do a new model for Open Arena. modeling is almost finished, I will just add fish-like fin in blender (I can't do real planes in Wings3d).
I hope I'll be able to finish it. :s

(http://enkithan.free.fr/web/openarena/merman/merman-screen002.jpg)

(http://enkithan.free.fr/web/openarena/merman/merman-screen003.jpg)

(http://enkithan.free.fr/web/openarena/merman/merman-screen004.jpg)

the face seems small, maybe the jaw is doing that

and of course those front edgeloops

Now the "bad" edge-loops are gones. :)
For the face, it's only resized in the vertical axis, to make his cranium looks heavier, like on my sketches, I've resized the cranium and enlarged shoulders too, that's why the face look even more smaller.
it was on purpose, to make it look less human. I'll try with a big face too to be sure it's the good choice.
I'll post a new screenshot later, when it will be done. :)

I'm doing the skin now :)
The shape and style are now a bit different, more like a classical merman (thx leileilol for the goods advices).

(http://enkithan.free.fr/web/openarena/merman/merman-rendu005.jpg)

I had the bad idea to make the tails UV symetrical, so it's hard to make a scale pattern without an ugly effect in the middle (it's not too visible in this render). But.. I may have a solution.

hope you like it :D

Wow, fine, fine!
Can't wait for it :P

:)
now I'm figuring out how to animate it. That may take time ^^ (but I guess the model will be finished before Christmas).
I'll probably redo the fish-part textures or use a special shader, to add scales.

one more screenshots, in-game test :

(http://enkithan.free.fr/web/openarena/merman/merman-screen011.jpg)

great work, enki.

i spent quite a while looking at the difference between the mesh and the skinned model. i hadn't realised how much the shading on the skin smooths out the look of a model. if i'd only seen the final result i would have imagined it to have had a lot more polys than it really did.

the animation of the lower body looks like more of a challenge than the usual biped, but it has loads of possibilities. you could have him jumping around like a landed fish, gliding along with the fin pushing the ground or have the tail udulate like a snake. i'm interested to see what you come up

white haired boy.

Yeah I discover many thing while doing this model (I'm still a beginner at game-oriented modeling).
Textures can hide many problems in the mesh, it's like make-up for women :p.
A clean/simple mesh make rigging/animation a lot easier too. Sometimes it's better to do a mesh that is not correct or too simple, but easier to anim/texture. My model is a bad exemple though, it is not enough "regular".
Every steps (modeling, Uvmapping, texturing, rigging, animation), if did well, make the next step a lot easier.

If you didnt yet, you can looks at the .blend in the svn, to see how are made models :
http://openarena.ws/svn/source/assets/models/

"the animation of the lower body looks like more of a challenge than the usual biped, but it has loads of possibilities."

Yeah I though it would be easier..but it's not !
 
The tail being not long enough, it'll be more a left-right movement of the bottom of the tail than a real snake movement. (I could move the torso lower to have more tail on the ground, but it would looks weird I guess)

i'm new to game modelling myself. i'm reasonable comfortable with the modelling and i'm working on uvmapping now.

thanks for the link, looking at some of the other models will be a great help.

white haired boy.

I think the animation works out pretty good, but what about the teamplay skins?

err..I tottaly forgot to do them lol

there is still many thing unfinished with the model though: deaths sequence are to redo partially,  medium and low res model, an icon for the menu.. but this will wait a bit, I'm busy with severals projects at the same time.

oh and sorry for the pics, I've cleaned up my ftp without thinking about the links ^^. I'll reupload some later.

it's no biggy, but people are in for some oddities if they use the model as seen here:

ah weird, maybe because of the alpha map ? or a bad shader ?

new version, maybe it will fix that bug:

(edit : see link in the bottom for the file)

I redid a part of the UVmap, CTF skins, and fixed a death sequence were the merman would remain standing up.

OK, reuploaded the .zip:
LOD models are now done & Ive corrected the paths in the .md3, so this time textures should be showing correctly for others. :)

EDIT: update again, there was several duplicated vertex that were causing little glitches in the shader.
01102006-merman.zip (http://enkithan.free.fr/web/openarena/merman/01102007_merman.zip)

The model looks much better in teamplay now. 

Not sure what the previous problem was, the engine is supposed to default to sarge when a particular model can't be found and I wasn't able to reproduce the effects as seen in the shot I uploaded before.

How do I use this model? It's not in a usual MD3 file or whatever they are. Is it as simple as zipping everything and renaming?

Check out the latest version from the svn and run the batch file.  (Keeping backups of your current *.pk3's of course).