Good news, everyone!

Also bad news. So I'll start with that to get it out of the way:

My PC hit a snag and kind of ate itself. At the moment, I'm wrestling with a handful of different Windows installations, but they aren't playing ball. I'm stuck with my laptop, which was an econo-model when I got it many years ago. Needless to say it's hardly a viable workstation.

So, it's highly unlikely I'll get any real work done on anything until I've got the PC working properly again, which, if Lady Luck is smiling upon me (and the last few days have proven that no matter what tribute I pay her, she laughs at my ridiculous behavior), I just might have a solid foundation tomorrow morning, from which I can get started reinstalling all my normal whatnots.

That being said, here's the good news:



Faustwolf and Luminaire85 over at ChronoCompendium are letting me help with some of the grunt work in making their Chrono Cross battle model database. I'm just doing simple conversions in Blender, but it helps speed up the process, and I can get it done even on my woefully underpowered laptop. They haven't gotten into the animation data yet, so until then, all poses will be custom, which means more work on my part. Obviously the models need some editing, apart from the poses. I can get them into Sketchup on the laptop, but the textures come out looking better as .OBJs, which I can't play with because I don't have 3DS Max on the laptop.

All the same, the models and textures are in good enough shape to be manipulated and crafted.



There also seems to be growing enthusiasm for the idea that I should remake the classic Sane_Person and Jamis models. If I do make Cloud, Vincent, Sephiroth, or Reno, I'll want to make alternative versions. My aim is not to just stomp all over respected classics, but to provide alternatives for people who were a little frustrated by the layouts. Above is an example of a few different versions I could do.

The biggest question on my mind is whether or not I should follow S_P's lead in modifying Sephiroth. As you can see, the original model depicted him as right handed, with exceptionally puffy pants. With Advent Children and Crisis Core, Sephiroth was a little more developed. We got to see that he was actually a "lefty," and of course even high-res versions from the original game showed him as wearing a long coat with legging underneath. In the Sane_Person model, he was edited to have thinner legs with a skirt type piece hanging over them, to mimic the coat. Well I'd definitely want him to be a lefty, just because it's too easy not to be accurate in that way (and I'm kind of proud of my own esoteric nerdiness for catching that detail when I built S_P's model). But it begs the question: if you're going to modify something for accuracy, why not go the whole proverbial "nine yards" and just make him look as good as possible (i.e. with the long coat and thinner legs).

I'll leave it up to you to decide how much I should modify him. If it were up to me, I'd leave him with puffy pants, just because I like the look of them, but whatever. If you want to see him more accurately (and remember, there's always a full-size battle model, which would be much more accurate), let me know.




Apparently this is hilarious.