…with guest appearance from G3d's model painter?

Anyway, I recently made a nice little program - a human model animator. That is, it shows you a human model and allows you to twist and turn the joints any way you like. You can then save the combined model to file and use it in your games. You can also import your own "parts" for use in the animator. The joints movable are:

* Head (3 axis)

* Right Upper Arm (2 axis)

* Right Lower Arm (2 axis)

* Left Upper Arm (2 axis)

* Left Lower Arm (2 axis)

* Right Upper :eg (2 axis)

* Right Lower Leg (2 axis)

* Left Upper Leg (2 axis)

* Left Lower Leg (2 axis)

The animator makes use of an updated version of my "d3d_addModel" script, which combines two models with individual-model rotation and scaling. The end result is that all the individual part models are compiled into one model.

Unfortunately, I can't release even so much as a screenshot to you as yet - the interface is currently nonexistent, and the program is quite barebones. However, as this is the program that will be used in the creation of human models for DoC, it will probably be coming out in a "GM Modeling Suite" with Modeler2 and maybe Gamer3d's model painter as an extra.

[DoC] Demo plans

With the animator in (somewhat) working condition, I can begin to work on the animation of the two First-Era units: the Militia (clubman) and the Bowman (self-obvious). When these are complete, I'll add a rudimentary AI and pathfinding mechanism, polish the game mechanics, disable all 2nd-era plus buildings, and… RELEASE A DEMO! *cue fanfare*

To put things in perspective, each unit will require two attack animations, a "been hit" animation, an "idle" animation, and a "die" animation. Each will take about 1 second, or 15 frames. (I will be using two steps per frame so as to keep filesize down (4.65 mb of models per unit!)) I might also want to save my models in a special, greatly-compacted format.