tommyboy2002's Mesh/Skin release thread:

[Bruce Bixby]

Avengers Movie skins of Thor, Captain America and Iron Man:
http://www.mediafire.com/?mdh3jzg3aah3nux

photo upload

To install, unzip (use winrar or 7zip) files to the "actors" directory, renaming them to whatever numbers you are replacing or adding.
I hope that you enjoy these as much as I am. It's a blast having them on the Helicarrier, and the ultron bots even look a little bit like the Chitauri (though perhaps we need a Chitauri mesh/skin to replace them and make the "I'm playing the movie!" feel complete...)

I found a Chitauri model

Link: http://www.mediafire.com/file/dyyral212n9mv9b/Chitauri.rar

[thetommyboy2002]

Hah! I managed to export my first working MUA model in years this morning.
I mean, the rigging is still substandard, but the geometry and textures are...no, wait, those are substandard too.
But that is kind of my trademark.
It will be a while, if ever, till I release anything new, I lost ALL my recent MUA stuff in a hard drive crash in 2012 or so (and yes, I did have it all backed up on an external drive, which my pisshead "friend" destroyed a week before my main drive failed).
But I do have some slightly better textures I created while trying to develop my own game in Panda, so I may see if I can update some of my older meshes with those.
But mostly, with all the stuff ripped from MUA, DCUO, etc, I feel like my original models and textures are redundant, next to the stuff the pros have made. Even I prefer to use MUA models rather than my own.
Maybe I can create a new team_back or something.

[andersonbrazil]

Hello thetommyboy2002, it's good to see your post after all this time! Your skins have contributed a lot to my MUA experience. I thank you so much for that! I must say that your work impresses me because it is indeed complete. If I'm not mistaken, you make the models, right?
This is a higher level than simply exporting the model.
Have you ever tried to create furs for Angel?
I've never been able to animate his wings successfully.
It is indeed one of my great challenges.
Well, welcome again! Our forum is what it is, because of your contributions. Thanks!

[thetommyboy2002]

Hello thetommyboy2002, it's good to see your post after all this time! Your skins have contributed a lot to my MUA experience. I thank you so much for that! I must say that your work impresses me because it is indeed complete. If I'm not mistaken, you make the models, right?
This is a higher level than simply exporting the model.
Have you ever tried to create furs for Angel?
I've never been able to animate his wings successfully.
It is indeed one of my great challenges.
Well, welcome again! Our forum is what it is, because of your contributions. Thanks!

Thanks for the kind words.
The problem with Angel is animation is not something we can easily do.
We can only have a model with static un-moving wings, because none of the MUA character animations sets have moving wings.
And we cannot really export our own animation sets, still.
I thought that there was an old Xmen-Legends model and animation set where the wings moved, but I could be mistaken.
I vaguely recall making Angel...

Here it is:

Right,
here we have Angel_4-pack:




Now, Angels wings were basically impossible to rig. Without seeing where the wing bones are in the original, and how big they are, and what they attach to, I cant get mine to behave like those of the original mesh.
So after much trial and error, and teeth grinding, I settled for the definitely Not Perfect versions here.
Makes no odds if you are only using it as a mannequin, but in game they dont look as good as they might.

The meshes can be found here:
http://tommyboymeshes.freedomforceforever.com/MUA%20Stuff.html

There is a small possibility that a pair of wings could be made as a bolt-on, a separate model from the character, to be attached via a herostat entry.
If these were animated to flap that might work, but they would flap ALL THE TIME, which would look terrible when not flying.
So if there were a second set of wings, folded up for walking/running/combat, those could be swapped in via a script if we can detect if a character is flying or not.
It's a bit of a crude way to do things, but I could perhaps put it on my list of things to try, though I cannot promise it will happen soon.

[thetommyboy2002]

Another Idea I just had:
Has anyone ever "ripped" the XML Angel model(s) from inside either XML or MUA?
Because in theory, that might also rip the Bones as well as the model, at least enough for me to set up the bones on my models such that they would look better using the Angel animations from XML2

[Jaybird]

I know next to nothing about this, but why can't you use death-birds animations for angel? Don't her wings flap.

[BaconWizard17]

Why can't you just use Angel's XML2 animations?

[thetommyboy2002]

Why can't you just use Angel's XML2 animations?

As I mention in the post I quoted from myself 11  years ago, we can use those, but the problem is not knowing the length and initial orientation of the wing bones in that model.
With humanoid models it's pretty easy, theres a "t-pose" that you start in, and we know where arms, legs, hand and feet etc bones go, so we can rig models to follow the bones easily.
But with wings its much harder to work out how long the bones are, and what direction they point in during that initial t-pose (up? down? following the arms? folded? how much folded? parallel to the arms from above, or pointing backwards, and if so by what degree?).
Bear in mind there is 180 degrees of rotation on 2 axes in where the wing might be pointing, then at each joint in the wing the same again. That is an impossibly high combination to guess and be even close.
If my model is not rigged with the bones in quite closely the same position as that xml model, it wont work well.

With the 3 bones (and I think there are 3 from looking at angel in a hex editor, but I'm not 101% cerrtain of that number), is one a short bone to just connect wing to back, or does it go from back to wing "elbow"? How long are the other 2?

Think about how an arm could be thought of as 3 bones (upper, lower, hand). Now imagine you don't know how long each of those is, and how badly your model will look moving if you get it wrong when using animations based on different length bones.

It's easy for people to assume we can "just" do lots of things, but actually doing them is a lot harder.

[thetommyboy2002]

OK, I tried ripping the xml model using 3dripper and it doesn't rip bones (or bips), only geometry.

Looking at angel in a hex editor there are what look like 4 wing bones on each side (Wing_L_1, Wing_L_2, etc.).
So for the first bone there are about 180 degrees by 180 degrees possible angles it can stick out from the back, = 32,400 possibilities, multiplied by the next bone gives 1,049,760,000 possible combinations of angles, multiplied by the next bone gives 34,012,224,000,000 possible angles, and throw in the last bone and you get 1.1019960576e+18 possible angles for the bones in one wing.
Now throw in some likely possible lengths for each bone and calculate for me the odds of me being able to guess how the fecking wings are rigged.

And to the person who suggested Deathbird, their wings are attached to their arms, and Angel's are not, so that's of no use whatsoever.

And looking at my own old Angel models in 3dsmax shows I had to rotate the wings through 90degrees to get them to work right in game for some reason.

All in all, this one is a real back-burner for me.
I might try the bolt-on wings idea at some point, but I will not be spending any time trying out 16billion combinations of wing-bone angles any time soon.
Sorry.

[thetommyboy2002]

Today's moaning: I found an IGB of Swordsman I'd made in 2013 just before I lost 90% of my max models.
It was better than the old one, but I hadn't done the red/blue flip on it, so I can't use it in-game, and the max file I exported it from is No More.
So I used the finalizer to extract the texture, flipped the red/blue and then find the fecking game wont read it.
I suppose I could use the texture finder thing and skinnerui but it's all so fecking tedious....more and more I remember why I gave up on this game, it's just a maze of dead ends.

[thetommyboy2002]

So here's a thing:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/2e921pe82yfo3iy/darkhawk.zip/file


A new model of the classic Darkhawk.
I may do some other versions of him.
If you like it use it. If not, dont.

Oh, it can also be use as a mannequin, if you like that sort of thing...

[BaconWizard17]

Back in business I see. Very cool!

[Outsider]

Well done, TB. I have updated Darkhawk as a result. However, is there a way for the wings to expand (i.e. skinsegment, bolton) so that the first move doesn't look like he's just bowing? I also mentioned the double claw thing. Other than that, great work. If you do wish to offer more Darkhawk skins, be my guest.

[thetommyboy2002]

Well done, TB. I have updated Darkhawk as a result. However, is there a way for the wings to expand (i.e. skinsegment, bolton) so that the first move doesn't look like he's just bowing? I also mentioned the double claw thing. Other than that, great work. If you do wish to offer more Darkhawk skins, be my guest.

I'll look into it. I am not massively familiar with the character (I read the original comics bit that was decades ago), so expanding wings was not something I expected him to have or need. I didn't recall it from the original run, but it may well be there, it was a Loooong time ago.
I am doing a version with longer wings (about half an arm length beyond his hands), maybe I can put those into the classic version as a bolt-on, or just release them as a stand-alone bolt-bolt on.

[thetommyboy2002]

TRy this out:


http://www.mediafire.com/file/mhywc36r974sir1/darkhawk_longwing.zip/file

I'm also using the animation set I used in my Falcon mod, as it flies arms outstretched.
I prefer that, but it may mess up your carefully selected powers.