An offer to get your models skinned for free

I want to provide a large library of content for users of 3D World Studio and the Leadwerks 3D engine.

Modeling is fairly easy, but it is skinning, or designing a unique texture, that makes a model really stand out. I'm willing to pay our artists to skin any good models that are provided to me. You will get your model professionally skinned for free, if you give me permission to use and distribute the model with 3D World Studio or my engine. You still can use the model and skin in your own game.

I recommend opening up the Half-Life 2 model viewer (in the Source SDK) or the staticmesh browser in UnrealEd. Just look at the mesh and use it as a guide to make your own. I made this train base in one evening, just by looking at a HL2 model as a guide:


-Models should be closed, for compatibility with stencil shadows. You can delete excess polys after we skin it, but it is important that we keep a copy of the closed, skinned mesh.

-Models from a commonly used theme will get preference. I'm particularly interested in modern city/industrial stuff.

-Polycounts should be comparable to HL2 or UT2004.

-3ds max files are preferred, but .x or other formats are okay.

-UV-unwrapped models are preferred, if possible!

-Models should be modular building blocks. Sizes should be multiples of a power of two. This makes it easier to line details up in the editor. The model should be positioned the way you want it created in the editor.

Thanks. I'll post screenshots of what we come up with here.

Just a hint: Skinning is often referred to as applying a skeleton to a mesh, and tweaking the weights. Texture mapping would probably be what you mean.
EDIT: Actually, Im a little confused with what you mean.

The term skinning is often used for texture mapping in the gaming world, so fair enough. Besides, who'd be doped up enough to think he means binding scenery models to skeletons?

This is an outrage. Nothing should be free.

You've got a point, but its mostly people mixing up these terms. In 3D model creation forums, everyone is familiar with Skinning as bones binding though, and you'll confuse most of your artists if you start mixing those terms.
I've noticed lots of sites mixing it, and it gets really confusing after a while.

.

hehe, at least his post is being bumped throughout the discussion.

=)

hmm, there's nothing here about texturing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinning
i think it is a slang word from the modding community.

Around here, texturing a model is known as "skinning" and rigging it for animation is known as "boning". This is consistent with every 3D artist I've ever talked to.

Suffice to say, I bone all my models.

hehe, alright alright! I give up. You can call it whatever you like :D
I say potato, you say potâto.

I finished my oilcar. I'll send it off to my artists to skin it now, and it will look really good:

Thats a good looking model there, halo.

Damn! I don't own any of my own models.

I think "halo" could also extend this to negotiate with these people to make their models available for purchase - "halo" still gets them and so do I - everyone is happy.

"Damn! I don't own any of my own models."

No way... you don't say!

Exactly 0 people have sent anything.

Well you can't really blame anyone. No matter how good that one model might look, it's going to be of a completely different style to everything else in their game. And what use is one model that doesn't match anything else? It's good for you, because the same artist ( presumably ) is skinning everything so all the models you get to distribute with 3DWS will have at least some consistancy, but it doesn't really work for anyone else.

I don't blame you for trying to get some nice sample models without paying for them ( though others might ) but I think you might be trying the wrong way. Why don't you try to nick an idea from Blizzard and run a competition. You get to use all models submitted, and the winner gets a free copy of 3DWS, or your engine, or I dunno, whatever you wanna use to tempt them and won't cost you anything.

I think that main problem is that Halo is after non-skinned models that need skinning... and problem being that usually realtime 3D people fall into these two categories:

1) coders that can't even model

2) artist that can model, skin (uv-map) and do all the textures

...So Halo is really after "evolved" coder that can model but hasn't learn to uv-map yet, or 3D artist that really can't do everything he's supposed to know and do. Changes of finding such ppl are slim.