The Model Pot
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/The Model Pot
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| Earlier last week I proposed an idea that was pretty well-received. If a few of us put down some money, we can hire a professional 3D artist to produce a generic human fully-animated model. A few people suggested that we just get an untextured, uv-mapped, animated model, so that it can be textured to look like nearly any human character, and I thought it was a great idea. I have been contacting artists, and so far, the only one that really meets my approval can be found at www.worldpowerstudio.com. I am submitting the link here for your review of the material. Please feel free to look for more potential hires yourself, and report back with any good finds you get. The result of this would be that we would have a fully animated high-quality human character for all our games, that could be added to, skinned, or tweaked pretty easily. This is something a lot of people I have talked to need, and something I need myself. Once an appropriate artist is agreed upon, we need to talk about money. I'd rather have Blitz Research set something up, as I wouldn't feel entirely comfortable handling it myself. I am guessing a pro animated model will run us about $1,000. The price per person will depend entirely on how many people go in on it, so if you are interested, now's a good time to speak up. |
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| At that price, will we get motion capture of multiple poses / anims? |
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| I don't understand. Actually, most of the offers I am getting are around $500. |
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| If you can get a license with the models that gives you reseller rights it would be great to see someone like yourself setup as a vendor to the community rather than the a-commercial approach you have so far suggested. I assume such generic models would complement your other product offerings rather nicely. |
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| What I mean is, for the models to be useful they'll need to have at least running, walking, shooting, sidestep, death1, death2 etc... You get the idea. Will the said poses be 'hand-animated' or (if we're talking pro models) will they have motion-captured sequences applied (which would obviously be better). I'm not suggesting that anybody would get custom motion-captures done at this price, but there should be plenty of generic ones already made that they could use. |
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| For answers to your question make sure to read the original "model pot" thread in "Off-topic." |
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| Sorry, missed that post j. This sounds exciting. We could make simple modifications to the characters to make them 'our own'. Halo - how many people have offered to put up money for this? This might not be completely in line with your idea, but if just a few people pay for it, why not publish the thing (charge say $20) and split the profit? We (those who pay) could even make a whole bunch of skins and modified character models and include them in the package too. It would be nice if 200 people all payed up, but not very likely. I AM interested in contributing cash if there is some kind of potetial return. Don't forget all the DB cutomers too. :) |
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| 1. We made a list of animations that is pretty complete. We can discuss it again before submitting our guidelines. 2. The problem with selling it at $20 is that a bunch of people will just wait until a few of us put down a lot of money, and then just get off the hook for a mere $20. 3. I will hit up DB people, and I think they'll be willing to pay for a good chunk of it, but want to see who we have from Blitz. Whatever we do, let's make sure it ends up being more expensive for people who don't help initially, and make some sort of benefit to the original investors. Let's make the standard contribution $100. I'll put that much in, and a few other people said they would. It would be good to say for sure if you intend to, so we have a better idea of how much money we can offer them. Maybe we could charge $100 for anyone who wants to license the model after that, and split the money between the original investors. And if you think $100 is a lot for a fully animated character model, consider that it costs five to ten times as much to get one made. |
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| People who have explicitly said they would be willing to put up some money: 1. Batman 2. Skitchy 3. WendellM 4. Dev 5. halo So, at $100 each, we can offer $500...which isn't bad, but I think it's the bare minimum we can expect to pay, and we should probably make room for a little more if we want top-quality work. If you're down for this, SAY SO! I am going to go hit up the DB forums. |
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| I was more hinting at the fact we could actually MAKE money on this if we did it right. If we sold the model as an online download through sharit at about $25 (the extra $5 to cover their fees) and the original model cost $1000 we'd only have to shift about 50 copies to break even - thus getting our character for nothing! Anything after the 50 copies would be profit that we could split on a % basis decided by how much of the original investment we put in. Considering the fact that we could SELL to DB users as well, 50 copies doesn't seem too much to hope for, and $100 (~£66) doesn't sound too risky. The investors will get the model no matter what so it's a no lose situation. It needs to be one classy model though. ;) |
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| That's a rather bizarre plan Skitchy. Buy a model so that you can sell it to other people... if people were interested in that the artist could have just sold it to them in the first place. Are people interested in that? Maybe I should set up a Blitz/DarkBasic/3D Gamestudio shop with royalty free animated low-pol models. Hm... |
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| Skitchy, not a bad thought, but three things come to mind. 1) If I were watching this situation, I'd rather just wait and pay $20 rather than make a larger investment, with additional risk, or at least a time lapse between when I put money in and when I got it back. 2) We only have five people willing to put $100 in, which isn't enough, unless you each want to pay $200. Saying that the model will be available for $25 sure won't help that situation. What you're suggesting encourages people to just sit back and see what we come up with, after we spend our hard-earned cash. 3) The artist might not take too kindly to us putting his model on Turbosquid and collecting the profits, which is basically what we'd be doing. I think for now we should just consider it "You're in or you're out." If someone doesn't plan on participating immediately, then they can be assured that if and when they do decide to get in on it, it will end up being MORE costly for them to join up after we have the model done. There's a HUGE market for media. However, not being an artist myself, I don't want to be the manager or middleman for the production of a media pack. |
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| My point is, what's going to make this happen is when five more people say they'll go in for $100. If that doesn't happen, this is dead. Simple as that. |
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| how you really gonna control it though? what stops me putting in my share and then selling the model to anyone i want without telling you guys and vice versa. Or what stops me releasing the model in a demo i release? That is its purpose right. |
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| The same thing that stops you from using the models from Half-Life or any other copyrighted media. |
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| "1) If I were watching this situation, I'd rather just wait and pay $20 rather than make a larger investment, with additional risk, or at least a time lapse between when I put money in and when I got it back." I look at it the other way. If I saw a business opertunity with absolutely no risk then I'd go for that. Like I said, we'd get our model regardless - even if we sold zero copies. And £66 really isn't going to bankrupt anybody ;) "2) We only have five people willing to put $100 in, which isn't enough, unless you each want to pay $200. Saying that the model will be available for $25 sure won't help that situation. What you're suggesting encourages people to just sit back and see what we come up with, after we spend our hard-earned cash. " Give it some more time. And possibly mail some of the people from the other thread (there were quite a few who liked the idea). "3) The artist might not take too kindly to us putting his model on Turbosquid and collecting the profits, which is basically what we'd be doing." What we do with a model we've paid for is our business (providing they've signed over the rights, which in this case would be necessary for us to use the thing in our games). After all the artist has already made their money. "Maybe I should set up a Blitz/DarkBasic/3D Gamestudio shop with royalty free animated low-pol models. Hm... " If they were good and cheap I'd buy some. :) how you really gonna control it though? We get the model even if the whole sales thing falls apart. BUT, we have the POSSIBILITY of making some cash as well. :) |
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| I've got an artist lined up that I think is good. Check his work out at www.worldpowerstudio.com . If the four others think it's good, I can email him with an offer as soon as we all agree. What do you think our baseline offer should be? $600? We've got $500 now, if everyone follows through. I'd like to have some more cash ready in case we need to go higher, up to about $1000. Your thoughts? |
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| Hi halo, just saw these two topics and it's really an amazing idea. Please count me in for give approx. 100$ into the pot. |
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| "What we do with a model we've paid for is our business (providing they've signed over the rights, which in this case would be necessary for us to use the thing in our games)." That's not exactly true. Obviously legally that is true, but ethically you would be really screwing the artist. In the short term perhaps that fact doesn't matter to you but taking just the short term view is a good way to screw yourself in the future. Unless you specify ahead of time that you intend to resell his work doing so would be very much violating the spirit of the deal. What happens if your game is successful and you attempt to contract artists in the future? It doesn't even matter whether or not you attempt to contract the same artist; the 3D art and game development communities are pretty small to chances are that any artists you'ld be interested in working with know what you did. ****** Since you guys aren't interested in my work for this project I may pursue the idea of setting up a Blitz specific art shop. The main advantage over something like Turbosquid would be the specificity; I'ld be providing art which will work perfectly in Blitz. I will try contacting Psionic as well because his work would complement mine well to round out the shop (I am best doing organic modeling such as characters, whereas he does some incredible mechanical stuff like vehicles.) |
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| Joe, I did say I was interested in your work, and would like to see some more. If any selling of the model does occur, we will make it clear to the artist that it may be a possibility, and make sure he is okay with it. It certainly wouldn't be a good idea to screw over someone who we might want to work with again. MRaven, cool, that makes six of us. |
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| Oh, I guess I misunderstood. It sounded like you were more or less settled on that fellow whose page you keep linking to. If you are interested in my work I'ld appreciate direct contact via email. I will polish that walking animation I made (www.3darteest.com/dmatch.zip) to demonstrate my game animation skills. For examples of my modeling and texturing skills I refer you to the "interactive" section of my website (not you of course halo, I mean anyone who hasn't already seen my site.) The top row in particular highlights my abilites as far as modeling and texturing human characters. That said, the idea of a game art shop for the Blitz community intrigues me. This thread indicates to me that there is demand for such a resource. |
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| Joe, it's not just my project. I don't want to talk to you privately, and exclude the other five people from the discussion. My thoughts on the walk cycle I saw were it looked good, but the transitions were instantaneous. |
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| "$100 each ... If you're down for this, SAY SO!" Just confirming. I visited worldpowerstudio.com and the human models look pretty good (I'd prefer a slightly different look to the faces, but that's a level of tweaking that I can handle). The running and jumping animations look good. |
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| Makes sense. I uploaded an updated version of the walk cycle; same URL. Still not perfect but I did smooth out the movements quite a bit. I ease into/out of movements so that there's less snap. Everyone, I encourage you to see the samples I pointed in my last message two posts up. |
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Use this code to view the model in a more natural motion:
Graphics3D 640,460,0,2
SetBuffer BackBuffer()
WireFrame True
camera=CreateCamera()
PositionEntity camera,0,40,-250
RotateEntity camera,10,0,0
light=CreateLight()
RotateEntity light,10,10,0
dmatch=LoadAnimMesh("dmatch.b3d")
EntityColor dmatch,150,150,150
RotateEntity dmatch,0,130,0
ExtractAnimSeq dmatch,3,29
period=1000/60
time=MilliSecs()-period
While Not KeyHit(1)
Repeat
elapsed=MilliSecs()-time
Until elapsed
ticks=elapsed/period
For k=1 To ticks
time=time+period
If KeyHit(200) Animate dmatch,1,.3,1,20
If KeyDown(200)
MoveEntity dmatch,0,0,1.7
Else
Animate dmatch,0,1,0,10
EndIf
If KeyDown(203)
TurnEntity dmatch,0,2,0
ElseIf KeyDown(205)
TurnEntity dmatch,0,-2,0
EndIf
UpdateWorld
Next
RenderWorld
Flip
Wend
End
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| Now my download has modified sample code to look more like halo's code. The arrow trigger for the animation to see it in a more game-like way makes sense but the character remains fixed in front of the camera for better viewing. |
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| I have got a graphic artist friend of mine who works in the industry on very high end commercial titles. You have probably all seen his work. He already has a humanoid model that he has worked on for a game that we are developing. If you want very high quality commercial stuff from an artist in the field and be in for a lot less then $100 a piece then drop me an e-mail in a less public forum and I can address specific questions and pass along his e-mail. Joseph joe@... |
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| I'll take a look, but for that to replace this, it would have to be absolutely pro-quality, and about 4000 polys. |
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| I just want to clarify that the animated model I've made available as a sample is only that, a sample. Specifically the model is an old throwaway; among other things the geometry of the face is terrible. Naturally I didn't want to just give away a high quality model. This was to demonstrate animation. For an idea of my modeling skill refer to stills on my website. |
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| Yeah, totally...I am looking at the anims, not the mesh itself. I got one more person from the CShop forums. That brings us up to $700...just three more before I feel like we can seriously pursue this. |
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| Got snother...now at $800. |
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| Halo - sorry if we've misunderstood each other on this, but I'm only in for the $100 if we're gonna be selling it as well. Call me greedy, but I feel that's the way to go (and all it involves is setting up a SharIt account). Most people are going to get their hands on the model one way or another eventually, so the least they could do is pay a small amount for the privilege. |
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| Check these out (ALL FREE) :- http://www.3dfestival.com/story.php?story_id=580 http://www.3dfestival.com/story.php?story_id=619 http://www.3dfestival.com/story.php?story_id=672 http://www.3dfestival.com/story.php?story_id=728 http://www.3dfestival.com/story.php?story_id=824 I haven't looked at all of them, but I'm pretty sure there's some humans in there. |
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| I almost slapped you when I saw the cartoon characters on there, but then i saw group five, and it might have something useful...although it will certainly require more pro work. Thanks for the link. |
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| They won't load in max 4, so I can't look...if anyone finds anything useful in there, let us know. |
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| I've fine-tooth-combed those models. You're right, most are cartoony. And none are animated. There's a couple of human heads in there that might come in handy, as these are an extreme pain to model accurately, and whoever did them is very good. As for non-cartoon humans there's 'midpoly_04.max' in pack 5 and 'gunslinger.max' in pack 4. You'll need to put a smooth modifier on the latter or it looks wrong. I might try animating one of them just to see. If you can find out who did them, they'd be worth contacting. Halo - did you read my last-but-one post. Just wanted to be absolutely clear on that :) |
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| Makes less sense to me, I'm afraid. You'd each spend $100 and only end up with one (or maybe two) models that will be used by more than one person for 3D games. Well for such a large number of polys it would have to be the main character in a game with very few other large-triangle-count entities. And because of that it will be obvious when other people use the same model in their games. But nobody wants to use the same model that gets used by other developers, it takes the originality out of your game. It's like the "Poser" series of animated meshes that gets used time and time again: everybody tires of it, because everybody uses it. And surely you can't suggest using it as a placeholder! $1000 for a placeholder? :O So I won't be donating money to halo's "grant". I'd rather work alongside a 3D artist who would supply a steady stream of original material. |
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| That's why the plan is for an untextured but UV mapped model, so that you can give it custom textures to give it a unique look for you specific project. I would agree that 4000 polygons is a lot, especially considering the likely addition of small accessories (eg. clothing) to further customize models for specific projects. |
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| This doesn't seem like a particularly good idea to me either. $100 for a very generic, all purpose character? You've got to be kidding. Sure, you could give it a custom texture, but that's not really going to make it look all *that* different. Plus, if you've got the artistic talent to create a top quality texture then you should be able to make your own decent models with a bit of practice. It's not that difficult to do. Perhaps you could remodel the character a bit to make it suit your needs, right? Well, that takes almost as much effort and skill as modelling a character from scratch, particularly if you made significant changes to the model geometry. Besides, you're probably going to need a whole bunch of characters for an average game, so even if you only contribute $100 dollars for each character you're going to end up spending a significant amount of money (for the average amature developer that is) and end up with a bunch of really generic characters. Another point that bears mentioning is this: As an amature game developer you can't really compete with the big boys as far as production values go, but you *can* compete by creating games that are original and unique. This aaplies to your game's visuals. Plunking a bunch of models into your game that lots of other people are also using isn't exactly going to achieve this. And if you are willing to spend a significant amount on money on your models then you are making commercial games, right? Nope, this just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Still, it'll be interesting to see how it works out for you guys. :) |
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| I can just about handle modelling myself, it's the texturing and animating I need to buy. So I'm not going to get in on this. However, Joe's idea of a Blitz media store is a good one. I'm not against the principle of using models that may be used in other projects. Sound effects have been re-used in games for years. Just the other day I heard a sound effect in Splinter Cell that was used in Doom. True sound effects are less recognisable, but I think the trade-off between using quality models and using original models is one I'd be prepared to accept. Psionic's stuff is very good, and he'd be a good person to approach. You might also want to PM GameCat on Blitzcoder to see if he'd be interested, as his stuff is also very impressive. There is definitely a market for this. In my opinion lack of resources is the single biggest reason why projects don't get finished. |
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| If you don't like the idea, don't participate. Nobody is knocking on your door asking for money. |
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| If you don't like the idea, don't participate. Nobody is knocking on your door asking for money. Skitchy, I gotcha. To the people who want to participate: Should I make an offer to the artist I mentioned from worldpowerstudio.com for $600? We could now do it. We could also wait and see what Joe comes up with. Right now, he's my second choice, until I see anything that looks as good as the animations the first guy had. |
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| Fair enough, but... Hang on, I think I hear someone knocking at the door. "Hello? You're selling what? I'm not gonna give you money for that bland all-purpose model. Get out of here!" Sorry about that. It just goes to show how wrong you are, Halo. |
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| Halo, before you offer the money to any artist, it is (at least for me) absolutely necessary to know how we will handle the payment? You mentioned something about asking Blitz Research for it, because I won't send any money to someone I hardly know from this forum, I'm sure you'll understand. |
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| Ask the artist how he'd like to do it. In my mind the easiest payment solution would be for every person to send the artist a check for their contribution, and the artist wouldn't deposit any checks or start working until all checks had been received. You are trusting the artist to do the work so you might as well all send your money directly. |
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| That sounds like a great idea. |
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| Here's some animations he sent me. This is the best stuff I have seen to date. The first one is motion capture, and the second is freehand: http://www.leadwerks.com/storage/run.avi http://www.leadwerks.com/storage/shoot.avi Thoughts? |
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| i think 500 bucks is a lot to pay for an untextured allpurpose model. If you guys want, i could model one for you for like 50 bucks, but im not too good at animating it, so someone else could do that. that would save you money |
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| Animation is what this is all about. |
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| bite me |
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| That's a rude response, especially considering he didn't insult you or anything. |
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| it was a suttle insult ;) |
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| You spelled "subtle" wrong. You also spelled "don't" wrong. |
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| WTF happened to this thread? |
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| Anyways, so definitely check out these videos and tell me what you think: www.leadwerks.com/storage/run.avi www.leadwerks.com/storage/shoot.avi |
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| A nice idea, but...Well, DarkMatter already has done a similar thing. Due to my complete inability to create models (until Quill3D I hope!) I have used the models from DarkMatter and re-textured them myself - and it only cost me around 30 quid! (Just my own personal preference although I know Darkmatter models are.....****!) |
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| So what you're saying is that for much less money, we could get crappy, unusable models? |
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| I missed an older email this guy sent me. He'll do it for $400. |
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| Be careful. Be sure you get a contract from the artist(s) giving up their rights to the models and insuring that all that have paid get to use them royalty free. Take another few hundred and get a lawyer to write something up for y'all. Speaking from experience - those that can screw you, will (most of the time when you least expect it). |
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| I'd recommend you go to turbosquid (www.turbosquid.com) and see if there's anything there that doesn't already fit your bill. Geo-metricks has a whole bunch of animated human figures of very decent quality on sale with good ranges of animation. |
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| Halo's idea started mostly as a reaction to both Turbosquid and Geometricks. The former is no good for a variety of reasons, including that animated models from them are not exported to b3d file format or even able to be exported to b3d file format, and the latter is no good because of severe licensing restrictions and the models are ugly. Not to derail interest in halo's idea but due to this thread I've pretty much decided that I will be opening an online art store where I will sell high quality animated characters specifically designed for use in Blitz3D games. I expect it will be a couple months to put together enough quality content to launch with. |
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| Hope it goes well for you Joe =] |
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| Thanks, you and me both. |
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| Cartography Shop The Download is down. I want downloading the Demo of Cartography Shop. Please tell me where i can found this Demo. Thank and the best Greats form me to all. Dr.Hyde |
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| Hey, so what ever happened with this idea of halo's? Is the model completed? Things have been delayed considerably for my art shop. |
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| Why's that? |
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| Several reasons, including several other projects having reached an action stage simultaneously, plus I'll be starting grad school this fall. I still want to start an online art shop but frankly it is a lower priority than the games I am developing and I doubt I will have time outside of classes for more than just those projects. |
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| That's a shame. Seems Beeps has been working with some ppl for model packs though, so it's not all bad. =] |
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| if by some miracle i had known my hdd would've crashed and lost all my character models and meshes i would've have released them for free. I may still release some models and animations, just rebuilding from scratch now though. They wouldn't be textured/come with textures as i can't make those and they wouldn't be mine to use. |
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| "Seems Beeps has been working with some ppl for model packs though" Anyone know if they are doing animated characters? Their first model pack seems to be just static models like buildings. |
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