B1 Battle droid Revamp

[Rmvsallen]

    For the longest time I've been dissatisfied with the battle droid model that is currently in-game. I believe we've had the same one that was made for Jedi Outcast, and although it works, there are a lot of issues with it like the shading groups and overall detail. I've been tinkering around and made this up in spare time over two weeks and I think I've about finished with the model portion. It has no textures as of yet, but that will come later.

    Surprisingly a lot of the battle droid models I find online have inconsistencies or parts that are wrong, so I mainly used footage from The Phantom Menace as my quality check for the whole thing. From what I saw in the movie there are three types of droids. The security / pilot droid on the control ship which has a special shoulder pad, the regular battle droid used for combat with the bulky backpack, and finally the commander droid that has his own little backpack and shoulder style. I don't know when I'll finish it up, but I thought I'd throw it up on here for people to see and comment on

    Also, if any of you know of any other variants of droids that aren't too different to make, I'd be open to adding on extra parts an pieces. I know there is that famous "Mr. Bones" battle droid, but he seems to have a lot of different parts, so I won't do him as an add on piece like a backpack. I might make a battle damaged or modified droid, but beyond that I'm not sure of other variants to make besides those three.

[Lancelot]

The eye for detail is just incredible. Simply fantastic.

 

If you need some more inspiration, I have a simple suggestion: Initially, it was planned to give the Battle Droids a black and white color, just like the Stormtroopers. Maybe this could be added as a color variant.

[JAWSFreelao]

Wow! Excellent work so far.

[Torki]

Nice, there has been a lot of new models lately , about variations, a simple one just occured to me, battledroid with 3po's head, so we can taunt "Die jedi dog!"

[Barricade24]

I have been wanting a new version of this character for years! So glad that he is getting such a long-needed updated.

 

As far as other parts go, there are a couple of Clone Wars variations you could consider.

 

Those being the Rocket Droid:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/8/8a/Rocket_battle_droid.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090310052309

 

and the Fire Fighter Droid:

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/theclonewiki/images/b/bb/Firefighting_battle_droids.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140310180512

 

Regardless if you decided to pick these up or not, this will be a model that will eagerly wait for!

[AshuraDX]

Looking good @rmvsullen

What are your tri and vertex counts for this?

[PreFXDesigns]

The models and the level of detail are amazing

[Lancelot]

Nice, there has been a lot of new models lately , about variations, a simple one just occured to me, battledroid with 3po's head, so we can taunt "Die jedi dog!"

Speaking of 3PO, I think we need a new model of him. And for R2-D2.

[Jolly]

Looks awesome!

[Rmvsallen]

The eye for detail is just incredible. Simply fantastic.

 

If you need some more inspiration, I have a simple suggestion: Initially, it was planned to give the Battle Droids a black and white color, just like the Stormtroopers. Maybe this could be added as a color variant.

Adding in alternate non-canon colour schemes might me awesome!

 

 

Nice, there has been a lot of new models lately , about variations, a simple one just occured to me, battledroid with 3po's head, so we can taunt "Die jedi dog!"

But then I'd have to make a whole new 3PO Head! And then we'd clearly need the 3PO body with a droid head

 

 

I have been wanting a new version of this character for years! So glad that he is getting such a long-needed updated.

 

As far as other parts go, there are a couple of Clone Wars variations you could consider.

 

Those being the Rocket Droid:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/8/8a/Rocket_battle_droid.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090310052309

 

and the Fire Fighter Droid:

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/theclonewiki/images/b/bb/Firefighting_battle_droids.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140310180512

 

Regardless if you decided to pick these up or not, this will be a model that will eagerly wait for!

Rocket droid might be something awesome to add, firefighting droid is.. hilarious at best XD can't imagine anyone needing that as a model ever

 

 

Looking good @rmvsullen

What are your tri and vertex counts for this?

As of this moment: 4,399 Polys, 4,382 Verts. Not sure how to get a tri reading?

 

 

Speaking of 3PO, I think we need a new model of him. And for R2-D2.

I'd agree. I was honestly going to make a new R2 and add in R3's, 4's, 5's, etc but those would only be useful as SP mods or NPCs sadly

[TheWhitePhoenix]

You SHOULD still try to make the R2 unit cause having a new one and a new 3PO as well would be a nice touch.

[Ramikad]

I'd agree. I was honestly going to make a new R2 and add in R3's, 4's, 5's, etc but those would only be useful as SP mods or NPCs sadly

 

I remember that there was a mod with R2 and R5 units rigged to the _humanoid skeleton, so one could play as an astromech. So I guess it could be done that way, even though it would only be limited to a pose.

[AshuraDX]

 

As of this moment: 4,399 Polys, 4,382 Verts. Not sure how to get a tri reading?

 

 

which program do you use?

[Noodle]

I'd agree. I was honestly going to make a new R2 and add in R3's, 4's, 5's, etc but those would only be useful as SP mods or NPCs sadly

 

As a SP modder I'd find that very useful!

[Rmvsallen]

which program do you use?

3DS max. I know 7 brings up those counts

 

As a SP modder I'd find that very useful!

 

 

I remember that there was a mod with R2 and R5 units rigged to the _humanoid skeleton, so one could play as an astromech. So I guess it could be done that way, even though it would only be limited to a pose.

 

 

 

So maybe I'll tackle that next. It's not that hard of a model, I mean it is just a cylinder XD

 

Also update, I think I'll add a rocket droid pack as mentioned above. I think it was in one of the early episodes of the Clone Wars show where Plo Koon was in space and pods were getting cracked.  However, since that show was very stylized, I'm going to redesign it for realism to fit with the battledroid I have. Thinking about connecting it on the shoulders the same way as the regular droid backpack works.

[AshuraDX]

3DS max. I know 7 brings up those counts

 

fantastic, if you right click the small [+] in the viewport and go to customize view, you should find the "Statistics" Tab.

Enable the Tri count in there.

 

anyway - is this mesh supposed to be gonig straight into the game as is, or is this the basis for a highpoly soiurce mesh that you plan to bake some additional maps from?

I'd get rid of some of the smaller details and only texture them on, if this is your game mesh.

[Circa]

I'd agree. I was honestly going to make a new R2 and add in R3's, 4's, 5's, etc but those would only be useful as SP mods or NPCs sadly

 

Would be useful for my current project (currently on hiatus)

 

https://jkhub.org/forum/112-star-wars-saga-mod/

 

 

I'm loving what I'm seeing here of the B1. Perhaps I'll have to also finish my Prequel Conversion Mod 2.0 when this gets released.

[Rmvsallen]

fantastic, if you right click the small [+] in the viewport and go to customize view, you should find the "Statistics" Tab.

Enable the Tri count in there.

 

anyway - is this mesh supposed to be gonig straight into the game as is, or is this the basis for a highpoly soiurce mesh that you plan to bake some additional maps from?

I'd get rid of some of the smaller details and only texture them on, if this is your game mesh.

I have 9,600 tris, but that's with everything at once like both backpacks and the new hat I just made. I know that JKA has a limit of 1000 per mesh part, so I should be within that and I'll chop some polygons where I need it to fit

 

Speaking of which, I made the hat for the space/rocket guy mentioned earlier:

 

 

 

 

I think I'm going to have the hat without the light be a secondary add on because it looks like a construction or a baseball cap XD could be fun to paint in silly ways.

[AshuraDX]

@@Rmvsallen are you aware of the transform space limit in JKA?

 

On Export all of your hard edges will be split, creating duplicates of the vertices around them. The same goes for the UV seams. This may catapult your models vert count to a level that will definitely trigger a transform error.

 

I ran into this same problem with my clone trooper model, which forced me to practically rape it and reduce the detail a lot after it was allready rigged for the game.

[Rmvsallen]

@@Rmvsallen are you aware of the transform space limit in JKA?

 

On Export all of your hard edges will be split, creating duplicates of the vertices around them. The same goes for the UV seams. This may catapult your models vert count to a level that will definitely trigger a transform error.

 

I ran into this same problem with my clone trooper model, which forced me to practically rape it and reduce the detail a lot after it was allready rigged for the game.

Yeah, I've been working with KhorneSyrup on this model while he's making his scout trooper here: https://jkhub.org/topic/3378-wip-look-out-for-that-tree/

He's managed to get it in-game without crashing, so as long as my droid is less detailed than his scout it'll work out fine. I haven't UV'd it yet, but I'll do my best to break it into as few pieces as possible like a pelt map

[Psyk0Sith]

I haven't UV'd it yet, but I'll do my best to break it into as few pieces as possible like a pelt map

 

If you're going to manually paint it, you should square everything as much as possible, straight edges = much faster to paint highlights than a bunch of zig zags.

[AshuraDX]

Yeah, I've been working with KhorneSyrup on this model while he's making his scout trooper here: https://jkhub.org/topic/3378-wip-look-out-for-that-tree/

He's managed to get it in-game without crashing, so as long as my droid is less detailed than his scout it'll work out fine. I haven't UV'd it yet, but I'll do my best to break it into as few pieces as possible like a pelt map

The game won't instantly crash on loading the model, the crash is related to the collision detection, you have to shoot or attack the model by other means to verify wether the error will occur. The error is also effected by the vertex count of the equipped weapon.

 

Also keep in mind that the base JKA Transform space limit is half that of the multiplayer limit.

 

Your droid also seems to have far more shading breaks/hard edges than his Scout model.

 

For your UV Unwrapping you could try to align as many of your seams along hard edges as possible, that way you van further reduce the amount of edgesplits your mesh will recieve on export.

[minilogoguy18]

Fun fact, game uses lowest LOD to calc collision, having LOD's will help with stopping that error on higher poly models but too many of them on the map at once will still cause problems so the vertex count should probably be tried to be pushed down to around 3k. The game counts vertex's btw.

 

Looks pretty good though so far.

[AshuraDX]

Fun fact, game uses lowest LOD to calc collision, having LOD's will help with stopping that error on higher poly models but too many of them on the map at once will still cause problems so the vertex count should probably be tried to be pushed down to around 3k. The game counts vertex's btw.

 

Looks pretty good though so far.

Fun fact: my initial version of the clone model was ~11k verts on lod0 and about 2500 verts on lod3 and it still saw the Transform space error.

[minilogoguy18]

Really? Adding LOD's to my AT-ST is what got that error to stop, was told by one of the long time coders here that the lowest res LOD is the collision mesh. That model only has 1600 verts on it's lowest LOD though so it's a good bit lower.