Sentinel Armor Progress 2

Got most of the armor around the hips done. Now, it's just the big pieces: chest, arms, and legs.

A lot of the pieces are carbon copies of others. For example, the blue tassets are the same piece copied over and over. While there are quite a few pieces to this armor, the copies will make it a lot easier to texture. I might do sets instead of having all 6 of them use the same texture just because I don't want it to be repetitive. Also, since there's no unique bits across the mirror, I can unwrap half of the chest and not worry about seams like I did on BDA (not a big issue, but still).

Sentinel Armor Progress

As always, female body first because it's my character's gender (eliminates save swapping and summoning the character generation menu for the early stages). Sentinel Armor doesn't conform to the bosom, so I should be able to scale the armor to the male body instead of remaking it like I did for Blood Dragon Armor.

The gloves are almost identical to the Blood Dragon gloves. I took the base mesh, fiddled with exporting/importing their skin envelopes, and removed all but the hands. From there, I removed the knuckle guards and used the trace-spline-rotate method for creating the wrist guards. Massive Armors in Dragon Age: Origins are asymmetrical for the hands and pauldrons, so no quick mirroring for me. This is going to be interesting to unwrap later on.

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Since I haven't heard from the artist in a month and he isn't responding to me, I'm going to go ahead and post an image of the helmet I mentioned in my last post. Just note: Full credit to him for the initial sketch. I made the base model shown below.

The back of the head isn't complete yet. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with it. There's this ongoing theme of protrusions that look like receptacles for tubes, but not all frames have them. Given how this particular one is close to Excalibur's, I think I'll draw from that. Then there's the organic wisps, swirls, bumps, and such that comprise Warframe's art style. I have no idea how I'm going to do that, but it should be informative in either case (I might actually try to use Mudbox for more than painting UV seams away!).

I have no idea how I'm going to unwrap this. Everything is currently using Max's default color selection. It is also MeshSmoothed a couple times.

The Long Silence

I've been busy and distracted for a while. I put more time into playing Warframe, getting A+ Certified, and working on side projects.

As I said in my previous post, Warframe is getting really grindy for new players now. Since I've been playing for a while, I've already completed a majority of the game before scaling difficulty, lower drop rates, and additional "BUY PLATINUM" neon signs. I'm a bit upset at how I'm not nearly as efficient at leveling gear as I was before the scaling difficulty change and how this also messed up item farming (lower drop rates+ harder to solo areas = more risk, less reward). Then again, I have more "but this was how it used to be" comparisons now.

In other news, I am now A+ Certified and have 3 years to either take a newer version of the test, completed a higher level cert, or enroll in Continuing Education to keep my status from expiring. All those options cost money and I'm still unemployed. Bah. And yet, I still have access to a computer with a decent net connection through which I can play games. What? Needless to say, I'd be screwed on my own in my current state.

On the Warframe forums, there was a fan sketch of a Prime Warframe's helmet, so I did the sensible thing and made it in 3ds Max. I've since submitted it to the sketch's author and am waiting to see what kind of organic details he places on it. I should probably inquire as to its progress...

Some friends and I are planning a game about a year out and our artist drew a couple sketches of armor. As above, I've been making it in 3ds Max and trying to fill in the details where the sketches are just gradients or solid color. It's also front view only, so I'm improvising on the back. No images to show here until the game gets further along.

EDIT:
This is apparently my 100th post. I guess I'll have to make some media (read: Continue Sentinel Armor) for the next one.

Sentinel Helmet - Model Progress

I've finished the helmet's shape for now. I was considering chamfering all the edges on the wings to produce the smooth shapes from the normal map, but no one's going to be that close unless they've blown the model up several times or imported into a 3d package. So, I made some really close polygons resembling the shapes and assigned all the hard edges to the same smoothing group.

There is a sun shape on the forehead where the red glow dot is supposed to be, but I'm not sure if I want to make that geometry or not.

This is really the only unique thing about the Sentinel Armor, besides the texture. It seems like everything else is exactly the same for all massive armors in Origins/Awakening.



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I came across a thread on the Warframe forums with a sketch for a certain frames's helmet redesign and, well, decided to give it a go. The sketch is front view only, so I'm using a side view from the wiki to get a head size.

Starting the Sentinel Armor Helmet

I took some time to blast through Warframe and level a lot of gear, but it's time I got back into making things. So, I've targeted the Sentinel Armor set from Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening.

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Come to think of it, I haven't heard a POST beep in a long, long time. Errors, sure, but POST? I don't think they do that anymore.

Going for A+ Certification

After studying for over 6 months, I've decided it's now or never for getting A+ Certified. There's always more and more stuff to learn, but if I keep waiting, I'm never going to be "ready". That, and since 2011, all future A+ Certs last 3 years instead of for life. So I'll have to recertify or pay a monthly fee and demonstrate my "Continuing Education" to Comptia.

I know my way around most PCs, but I tend to get stuck in my assumptions. An example I keep using goes like this:

Question:  A client calls and says their headphones stopped working this morning, but were fine yesterday. After going through numerous solutions, you cannot fix the problem. What do you do?

1. Research the problem on the Internet
2. Scold the client for being an idiot
3. Escalate the issue
4. Recommend the client buy a new set of headphones

4, while a valid solution, doesn't address the problem of the current headphones not working.
2 goes against best practices as outlined in the A+ book I'm reading. Also, I don't do that. Additionally, it isn't good for getting return clients.
1 is something I'd do off the bat while running the client through solutions I could think up.
3 looks like the best answer here. I can't fix the problem which means it could be a) something I've overlooked or b) this is a symptom of a much larger problem, not the problem itself. If escalation will solve the problem when I couldn't, I'll escalate it.

So, I chose 3. The correct answer was 1. Why? The test assumes once you get the call, you run through everything you can think of AND THEN you research the problem on the Internet. Everything is in steps. There's probably more to it, but I'm no psychologist.

Warframe

I've been playing quite a bit of Warframe lately. I picked it up during the Global Game Jam earlier this year and, well, I've been having quite a bit of fun. I have a couple more missions on Pluto and have never been to the Orokin Void, but the grind is starting to set in. I've endured long grinds before (RF Online Shield Miller @ level 48), but every update seems to tack on more and more grinding.

Understand though, as of this writing, the game is in open beta so anything can change. I'm just not a fan of having to grind for items with a low drop chance against enemies that are simply bullet sponges. Well, it wouldn't be better if the enemies weren't bullet sponges, but still. Then you have the Dojo from Update 8 which added 20 weapons, a decent chunk of which take an obscene amount of time and resources to make.

Take Ignis, the flamethrower, for example (stats taken 5-30-13). To get the opportunity to make the weapon you need a chem lab:

Detonite Ampule     500
Plastids     10,000
Ferrite     20,000
Polymer Bundle     25,000
Credits   500,000
Research Time     3 days

Once you can craft it, then you need

Detonite Injector     2
Nano Spores     5,000
Ferrite     5,000
Forma     1
Credits     30,000
Build Time     24h

Now, this wouldn't be that much of an issue except for the following (no hard numbers here):
Detonite Ampule - 1 per drop. Uncommon
Plastids - 10-30 per drop. Uncommon
Ferrite - 50-100 per drop. Common
Polymer Bundle - 100-400 per drop. Common.
Nano Spores - 100-200 per drop. Common.
Detonite Injector - Crafted via purchasable blueprints. 12 hour build time after Chem Lab is built.
Forma - Randomly awarded from Void missions, Tier 3 login rewards, purchased with real money, or awarded as a blueprint for an Alert mission. 24 hour build time.

So, to get all the resources, you need to invest a huge amount of time. Now, the Chem Lab costs could be offset if you join a clan, but since I made my own clan, I can't leave (didn't know that beforehand) and there's no one I really play with to invite. This leaves me footing the entire bill if I decide to go for it. Since you have to build hallways, reactors, and other support rooms just to be allowed to build a Chem Lab, it effectively raises the difficulty of gaining those resources by what feels like an order of magnitude.

But I digress, since I have a whole arsenal of weapons to build, let alone use, I can at least keep the grinding interesting. And, before anyone goes off, Warframe is a Free-To-Play game, meaning they have to make money somehow. I understand it (well, not like an Economics professor level of understanding). The usual money crunch is when new gear is released in an update. Those new items are not available to non-paying folk for a few weeks; after which they'll start appearing as drops or Alert missions if the RNG gods smile on you.

One more thing, I have a strong...dislike towards Lech Kril. Stupid, camera flipping, drop hoarding, bullet sponge of a boss.