New Khutit heads

[Solitaire]

I'm just curious as to what people that have seen the new Khutit heads on Blight (or have copied the necessary files to a live server) think and if issues have been noticed with any of them.

I'm aware that the jaw moves funny on some but that comes from an issue with the skeleton and existing animations that is hard to deal with. I'm going to build a modified idle animation for the Khutit that will hopefully alleviate some of that.

Important note: If you have that mod I made for the teeth/claw/horn/mouth texture installed don't forget about the replacement def files I made for after the new designs were patched out. You won't see the new heads unless you replace the first set of def files with the ones inside the zip.

Thanks!

[Ashuran]

The jaw moves funny in the original Khutit too, it's probably just not as noticable. I noticed it though. Needs fixed.

[Thicklesip]

All my feedback is going to be for the crocodilian head, as that's the one I have to work with (and care about ).

1. Head and neck fins have a gap: in dragon form, the ridge of fins going down the middle of the head and the middle of the back overlap at the base of the skull.
   
   It's not the neatest overlapping, but it looks better to me than the heads that lead to the back fin coming to an abrupt stop there. That was one of the deciding factors in my initial like of it, I believe. Anywho, with the new khutit head, there is a gaping hole between the head fin and the back fin.
   
   The route where the fin is "supposed" to be is scribbled green. Actually, I suspect this issue is related to or an effect of....
   
2. Head is tilted very strongly downwards: this khutit head makes it look like I'm one ill-taken comment from headbutting something. Compare:
   
   If the khutit head is meant to match the angles of the dragon head, it does... but I feel it spoils the total effect. Looks way too sulky this way, or as if I'm trying to squint over some non-existent glasses. Please please please bring the chin up. Pretty please. Something more like this would thrill me:
   
   Incidentally that might be a solution for issue #1, depending on how the model pieces interact.
   
3. Mouth closes too far: this one is hard to see without a colored teeth mod, BUT:
   
   Teeth sinking that far into the tongue looks uncomfortable! This might fall under the broad heading of wonky jaw animations, but I wanted to point it out. (Having now stared at the dragon adult animations too... poor Thickle, no wonder it's grumpy all the time-- it bites its tongue each inhale! )

These quirks aside... a thousand thankyous from the depths of my heart. These models are absolutely gorgeous, and your khutit heads are such a treat. I don't think I've ever been so happy to stare at one of my characters before and point out the few flaws I could find.

[Solitaire]

Many thanks, Thicklesip. That is the kind of input that I was looking for.

1. I might be able to close up the fin gap some but I don't think that I'm going to close it completely. There are a couple of different fin textures and they don't start and stop at the same places. So if I match one up that would throw off the other or make it overlap like on the dragon form head. Which I don't like.

2. Agreed. I'll turn it upwards a little bit. That head is such an unusual shape that it is kind of hard to judge.

3. Which would you like more? Pulling the teeth or piercing the tongue to make holes for the teeth to pass through? j/k Changing how far the mouth closes will help with that some but that is just a part of the weirdness of that design.

[Thicklesip]

1. I consider the overlapping the lesser of two evils, but just closing it some would be great.

2. Thank you thank you thank you. That was the most distracting thing I noticed, if you tweak nothing else that would be the one thing I'd love.

3. Yeah, figured. Jaw tweaks sound like a good remedy, then.


Alright, that's my contribution for this round of testing. I hope other people with oddball head shapes take a couple minutes out of their playtime to pop onto Blight and have a peek-- given how few people use them and how few people tend to test things, if you don't catch something you dislike, there's a good chance nobody will!

[Shian]

Just looked at my two heads. They look great to me!

You probably already know this, but Ricar's jaw (uhh t-rex head?) when idle seems to close a little too far to me.





Regardless, they look so much better than the missing jaw we had before!
(sorry bad pic, it's the only one I have of this instance, but its common.)

[Ashuran]

I've successfully ported this over to live on my client. So far I've only examined one head style so far, the ear-frilled one, and other than the jaw closing thing the only little nit pick I have is it is proportionately a litttle bit large. It's still vastly superior to being stuck with the original default, and if the size can't be changed, I could get used to it.

[Nayuaka]

Out of curiosity, what files need to be changed in order to add this to the live client?

[Ashuran]

I ran the blight patch, then the live patch after it... when the screen popped up to delete files I made note of which ones were different. Before hitting 'yes' to delete the files I copied the resources/characters/characters/dragon_man folder into my resources_override folder.

Then I let the patcher delete the 'old' files and ran the game. Worked like a charm.

[Nayuaka]

That sounds easy enough, thank you very much.

[Solitaire]

I've successfully ported this over to live on my client. So far I've only examined one head style so far, the ear-frilled one, and other than the jaw closing thing the only little nit pick I have is it is proportionately a litttle bit large. It's still vastly superior to being stuck with the original default, and if the size can't be changed, I could get used to it.

It is close to the same size as the original spiked head. I suppose those frills make it look so big. There is a lot more geometry back there than the thin horns of the spiked. Skull to snout they are very close to the same size with maybe the edge going to the filled one's bigger nose.

[Ashuran]

Could be, also the frilled head doesn't taper to a tiny point like the six-horned one does.

It also has a lot to do with the Khutit having such leeetle tiny arms and hands, it makes the head seem even bigger by proportion. It feels like you're a t-rex with those teeny tiny hands.

For most animations the frilled khutit's jaw closes perfectly. But for /excite and /explain, where you appear to be talking, the lower jaw disappears into the upper one.

If other heads are closing too tightly in the jaw on idle, it may be tricky to fix it so most don't have too much overbite while some others appear slack jawed.

[Solitaire]

Exporting with the jaw in different positions is easy to do. Pose. Export. Test. Upload. Done. When I'm done tweaking some of the heads to look up more, I'll pose the jaws better with the new exports.

Many thanks for the input.

[Ashuran]

Head proportion on this one looks better... probably because of the lack of huge ear frills... and this is the head with the biggest snout and overbite. Head is tilted down a bit, but it looks good that way to me. When he runs he holds it straighter out. Looks great overall, I love it much more than the old one!

The jaw is also set perfect in idle and all animations except for /excite and /explain again, where it does the same thing as on the frilled.

I think I look especially awesome casting spells! lol...

[Racktor]

Well I was trying the new heads out and stuff, and I noticed one thing... they dont blink! XD I was staring at Racktor's khutit for like 5 minutes before I noticed. x3

You aware of this though, Solitaire?

[Thicklesip]

Do they need to blink? Can't they just have nictitating membranes?

(Sorry. No serious answer, but I couldn't resist.)

[Cynny]

Well I went on blight and I must say you did an excellent job. The jaw moves better now and it's way better then the way it looked before.

Also, i have a question. Since im not known as the most patient, I tried out what Ashuran did. I ran blight patch, copied the resources/characters/characters/dragon_man folder to my resources_override. it didn't work. Tried deleting the old tnc mod i use and put on solitaire's one, but only the file with the replacement def files for AFTER the khutit heads arrive.zip (unziped it before of course). I got the mesh but the texture wouldnt show.

Then I tried to just plain use the whole mod and without the files Ashuran used. (thats what racky did too...)
I got this: http://i55.tinypic.com/ir50sw.jpg <--- .....as funny as it looks it annoys me greatly...

Also I will keep using the old tnc mod for a while, and it's certainly not the old mod that is the problem because it works on blight.

So I ask, what do I do wrong and how can I solve it? In the worst case I will just wait till the patch.

Thanks for reading,
~Ceyra

[Ashuran]

I use solitaire's tooth & claw texture mod, that's probably why I didn't have any trouble converting my files over... his mod already has proper texture files for all the khutit heads while the live files do not. Cobal's mod does not either, I'm afraid.

In order to move it to live without Sol's texture mod, in addition to the dragon_man folder you'll also have to copy over the following from blight into resources_override:

dragon_u_claws.agh
dragon_u_teeth_mouth.agh
dragon_u_geo_head00.def
dragonj_u_geo_head01.def
dragonj_u_geo_head02.def
dragonj_u_geo_head03.def
dragonj_u_geo_head04_default.def
dragonj_u_geo_head05.def
dragonj_u_geo_head06.def
dragon_u_geo_head07.def
dragon_u_geo_head08.def
dragon_u_geo_head09.def

I think that's all but not positive, I am not a user_friendly interface.

[Solitaire]

Well I was trying the new heads out and stuff, and I noticed one thing... they dont blink! XD I was staring at Racktor's khutit for like 5 minutes before I noticed. x3

They don't blink because the bipeds don't blink. There are no controls in the biped models for eye and eyelid movements. Since the khutit is using the sslik skeleton I had to just leave them fixed.

[Ashuran]

Okay I tested the spiral horned head today, and to my eye it looks the best in terms of proportion to the body and clean graphics.

Idle animation is fine, but like the others, the lower jaw clips into the upper one in /excite and /explain. In addition, in /growl, /rage and /warcry the lower jaw projects oddly outward, jutting further than the upper one.