Kualan

I went back and did a page one rewrite of the script for Volume Four, so that's knocked back 'production' somewhat. In fact, the rewrite has given a bigger role to your Elecrian species over the course of the whole volume, rather than just being the setting for the initial issues.

Very nice stuff. When this is released I'd really like to try my hand at a Bo-Katan reskin of that female Mandalorian model.

Not sure if it would look very good though, great as it would be.

Just realised Depa Billaba is also not in the game yet, but I'm going to work on a skin for her. I think I've found a good model for her.

Dayum! I hoped to go through life without ever saying this but...that fat old man looks nice!

Yaddle and Even Piell don't have models, but they do exist as Yoda reskins. The Yaddle one is pretty actually good: http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Yaddle_Remastered;98661 And yes, the animations for Rancisis would be too much work for too little gain, so I don't expect a fully rigged model for him to ever materialise. As for which pose to have him in - sat down with his tail curled around him would be ideal, yes. Though having the chair as part of the model wouldn't be necessary, to allow mappers to use him with more flexibility (i.e. they can choose to place him on Council chair, or on a meditation pad, etc).

Hi, I have a somewhat unusual request for our community modellers. My direct experience with modelling is limited, but the impression I get is that for a talented modeller, the actual modelling of a new character mesh is comparatively straightforward next to the task of animating a model, ensuring it avoids clipping, weighing it, rigging it to a skeleton, etc. So I was wondering if I might prevail on someone to fulfill this request. Over the years we've pretty much had every prequel Jedi created for JKA. @@Psyk0Sith 's recent Pablo Jill submission actually leaves us with one sole Jedi Council member from the films unaccounted for in the game. Master Oppo Rancisis: No surprise there, he's an odd-looking fellow. And given that he has a great serpentine tail in place of a pair of humanoid legs, his inclusion as a player model in JKA is never going to happen. It would require too much work getting him to work smoothly with animations (think the Hutt model) for too little gain. Even if the old guy can apparently kick ass when called upon: But would a modeller on the forums consider creating this Jedi as a static object, for use by mappers (in terms of function, he'd basically be a piece of furniture, heh) and machinima-makers (this being where my personal interest lies). It would be nice to be able to round off the full roster of the Jedi Council across the prequel era with this last missing character. He wouldn't need to be animated at all - simply posed in the same position as featured in the picture above, minus the chair.

How many of them died to bring us this information? Awesome work, I love the fur detailing along the side of the face/snout.

My first thought is TOR Revan? Looking good regardless.

Reference pictures are very hard to come by of this location - I made a version of it in the Empire at War map editor for the most recent issue of my webcomic and I couldn't find concept art or anything. I literally just had to keep watching those two minutes of AOTC in which it appears over and over. For any mappers considering taking this up, concept art and stills from the cancelled (postponed?) Level 1313 might be your best bet, as well as some of the design work done for the 'Coruscant Underworld' in the Clone Wars TV series. Say what you like about the show, but a lot of its design work came straight from expanding existing designs and unused concepts from the films. It won't give you an exact blueprint of the Works, but it will give you more of an idea of the 'feel' of that part of Coruscant.

Not sure why this needs pushing any further to be honest, mate. You seem to be expecting the staff to adopt a policy where they officially condone ported content of any kind - even partial ports like sounds would, if the rules were worded as you suggest, put the site directly in the firing line. The current policy outlined by SiLink above gets you the exact same result, except without pre-determined legal liability on the part of the site. The way it is right now gives uploaders the freedom to host what they want, gives original content holders a means to get any ported work they own taken down, whilst simultaneously protecting the site from being held as legally responsible for anything that slips through. If the site has an official policy outlined that says 'some ported content is okay, just not excessive', then they would effectively - from a legal standpoint - be throwing away their right to say "You can't blame us for what this person uploaded!". At best they could hope for shared responsibility, but ultimately the site would have removed a legal shield needlessly for the sake of pleasing someone's semantics. As for removing the 'Acknowledged Rules' tag on file pages...you have a point in that it's kind of pointless from the downloader's perspective. But equally, does it impact negatively in any way? It seems like a non-entity.

I haven't worked on these for a couple of weeks, I'll really need to find the time and just sit down and package them all for in-game use. I still haven't resolved how to make part of a texture transparent in-game, which is needed for those clones with antennas (since they use the antenna from the Phase 1 helmet). Because a lot of my skinning is for my web-comic, I never actually taught myself anything further than textures and .skin files, since for the comic I just need them to show up in Modview and that's it. Shaders, npc files, bots, etc I still need to learn.

Those are some sweet gunship skins!

I didn't - the shuttle was simply added to the comic in Photoshop. It hasn't actually been imported into Jedi Academy I'm afraid. I have toyed with this idea in the past, will probably revisit it at some point. @Everyone: I hope to have the first issue of Volume Four uploaded by the end of the coming weekend.

It is a model made for Empire At War by a talented ship modeller named Warb Null: http://empireatwar.filefront.com/file/Ministry_Shuttle;115863

Which NPCs in particular are you talking about, Dead-eye? Also, feel free to reply in the Tales From The Clone Wars thread here: http://jkhub.org/topic/1658-tales-from-the-clone-wars-jka-comic/page-3 rather than this one, in order to make sure the threads stay on-topic

Great model altogether, and so quickly put-together. Nice job.

I always assumed it was a sort of play on 'Lando's robot'. Only just learned that it's actually a reference to the guy being lobotomised. And no problem @@Psyk0Sith

Just one quick fix: .skin files link the computerb surface with a computerb texture that doesn't exist, resulting in half the headpiece not being textured. Editing the line to link the surface to the same texture as the computera surface fixes this.

I'm coming to this discussion fairly late, so chances are I'm missing a little more here but...I'm not sure how this counts as 'stealing' compared to any other JKA machinima? The folks behind this little movie don't seem to be claiming any of the assets are their original creations. They don't seem to be making any pretense about the process of putting this together - where they're sourcing files from, what format they're using to make them seem more cinematic, etc. They're not offering any ported/stolen content (delete where applicable) for download. Now, whether or not they're making a good product is a matter of pure opinion. I happen to be curious as to what the final movie will look like, others in this thread seem enthusiastic at the prospect. Likewise, folks such as yourself and @@MoonDog seem firmly against it on principled grounds. That's fine. Saying that you don't like it because of the lack of original work in it, or because you feel it 'stems from a lack of ambition' or any other reason you care to list is entirely valid - you can't have a wrong opinion. It doesn't contain a lot of original work, in terms of models, designs, and so forth. But whether or not re-packaging JKO assets in the UDK engine for the purposes of a machinima video counts as plagiarism is a slightly more elastic issue. In the wikipedia link Moondog gave to the term, it specifically defines the term as the appopriation of someone's work for the purpose of presenting it as your own. The folks behind this don't seem to have done this. They've not said "Look what we made all by ourselves!", but rather, "Look what we've made by putting all these different pieces together!". It's an advanced form of kids playing with action figures.

Doesn't the porting/legality issue only come into effect when people try to distribute those assets publicly? So long as they are being kept by those who have performed the porting (and presumably legally own both games involved, in order to do so), I'm not sure if there is any real legal question mark involved here. They're showcasing their ports, but not distributing them? Lucasarts/Raven getting up in arms about a YouTube series seems as likely/pointless to me as Hasbro launching a lawsuit over a child posting a video of his action figure customs ("Thou shalt not place thy Obi-Wan figure's head on Boba Fett's body!"). If the team behind this were releasing the maps/models/textures/etc as publicly-available downloads, there would be more traction for opposition.

That just adds more weight to the need to clarify JKHub's stance on whether we ban ports because they're judged to be morally wrong, or do we only ban the ones where there is someone still out there who cares enough to protect the copyright of the asset in question? Or to really summarise it in blunt terms: "If you can get away with it, should you?"

@@eezstreet RE - your point about SW sounds/music that doesn't come directly from Lucasfilm, but from individual studios such as Bioware. In the point I was making (that you quoted), they wouldn't come under any policy allowing Lucasfilm-sourced sounds. They would fall under the same logic as 3D models; property of the game studios. Though to use the KOTOR example in particular, there is the potential for a 'loophole' in that for a large number of the audio effects / music tracks from that series, they feature in both KOTOR 1 and KOTOR 2. But those games were developed by different studios, whose link was Lucasfilm. So in reality, anyone seeking to cause legal trouble over the use of KOTOR sound assets would find it very difficult to prove whether or not they came from Bioware's property or Obsidian's, and thus effectively negate an already unlikely 'lawsuit'. Does that make it any less 'illegal'? No, of course not. But it is near impossible to actually get punished for it. Which raises a new, more moral-based question: Are we banning ports because we, as a community, believe they are inherently wrong? Or are we banning them because we believe the risk of legal consequences, however small, is a possibility? Neither is a wrong answer, but clarifying which one JKHub is siding with might help determine to what level of discretion the admins might utilise when it comes to maps/mods/models making use of ported content such as sound effects.

Any update?