Can’t stop myself fiddling with these Characters to see them IG and thus get distracted from the Solace tileset … So here is Flint!
Those folders contain 2-3 approaches, as far as I can say: One full body version (files date around April 2004 ) and a body armor version, which is designed to be a robe part (files date around July 2004). In addition to that, there are 2 head variations: One with a helmet and one without one. Danglemesh is only on the head without a helmet.
There are no real texture approaches for the full body version (except for the finished head texture) - only UVW-layouts:
(Gmax screen)
For the armor only version, there is a pretty nice texture, which I’d call “finished”.
To get an idea of the maybe looks of and to better distinguish the parts, I applied very simple textures to the whole body version. Simple means real simple: I mostly painted single colors onto the UVW-layouts (and shaded them here and there a bit, so it doesn’t look too dull). At least for the armor I got an orientation because of the texture for the robe version (see further below). Here is a result of my first try:
(Blender screen - I’m not sure anymore, why I chose green for the gem. I remember finding hints for green in my early checks, but I can’t find it ATM.)
So, why are there no textures for the whole body approach?
My guess is, that the reason to this is a problem with the lower (pelvis) parts of the armor: If this is designed as a belt or pelvis part or even is a part of the torso, it will move into the tights while eg. walking, because it’s not moving with the legs. Designing it as a part of the tights makes it difficult to have a nice connection between the upper legs and the pelvis/torso. So, a solution is to make the armor a skinmeshed part. And the armor only version is skinmeshed!
I believe, that the tendency somehow went into the direction to make certain parts available as parts, so the player or module builder has more freedom in designing the looks of a character via different body parts.
I did get the robe version IG. For this I had to create a PLT out of the texture. For the test I was lazy and just added the whole texture to the cloth layer. My main goal was to test the rigging IG, so a simple PLT would do. Here is a screen of a dynamic NWN1-dwarf wearing Flints armor:
Well, there are no other separate body parts for Flint and the vanilla ones are not really fitting (IMO). But I wasn’t eager to port all the parts from the whole model over to body parts and create all the PLTs for them! So I came up with a more economic (well - lazy…) way: I ported the part based (skinmeshed robe) armor over to the whole body model. This way, I have the original Flint-look with the nicely textured armor! And since that aror is skinmeshed, it moves nicely with the rest of the model!
But what about the looks of the rest of the textures?
I assume, that, for reference, DLA used a drawing by Larry Elmore (DragonLance Adventures game source book p. 99):
and the cover painting of the paper module DL1 - Dragons of Despair by Clyde Caldwell:
(I still have both paper versions!
)
I also found a colored version of the Elmore drawing, but I could not make out the original (paper?) source:
I also found quiet a few pictures with flint having blue pants. But the DLA Flint armor texture gives a hint:
And that part is mapped to the pelvis part:
(Blender screen)
So I assume, that that the pants were supposed to be of a redly color.
As mentioned in the beginning: There are 2 Flint head versions: One with a helmet and one without. The one without the helmet is danglemeshed and designed as a body part. Another hint, that DLA was going to do a body part based approach for Flint.
So here are some screens of the result (whole body approach):
Flint IG - in front of his house (Solace tile set):
Flint IG - having a chat with Tass:
Flint IG without the helmet (here, the head is a part of the whole model, not a separate body part) - again having a chat with Tass:
As to the current textures on Flint: It is not the simple painted texture anymore, but they are still simple versions, so the model doesn’t look too dull. But they’re lacking a lot of detail and are far away from being called “final”. It’s the same “economic” approach that I used for the Tass textures.
