sounds great, if space is your problem, i know of and use a program called ordinator to compress textures for skyrim and oblivion down to a dxt1 with almost no detail loss. its designed for bethesda games but SHOULD work fine for halo. still try to get rid of the off-colors and maybe see about using 1k with a little noise reduction. this had been bothering me for a while and i didn't wanna sound rude by insulting your texturing, i hope this helps.

I'm really curious how your Cortana and other Bipeds look like. Can you show us something?

About Cortana, I posted some pictures in this topic a while ago, so you can search in the previous pages. That, however, is an early version, that still needs some work. Same goes for Keyes. The Crewmen and the unarmored marines are still a WIP, but I can already say that I made a set of HD faces for them ;)
Edited by SOI_7 on Aug 25, 2013 at 10:20 AM

And you sir are just a SHINING example of a star forum member.
(Killer5000, Destroyer50, why didn't I realize that sooner.)

are u kids trying to get this thread locked. please grow up or go away. i'm waiting on a post from SOI about de-noising his textures and a few this i asked about in my last reply, don't ruin this thread.

UPDATE

I worked on the Flamethrower:









HOW IT IS MADE:

Since there aren't many Flamethrower variants in the Halo saga, I made a compromise between the only existing variants different from the H1 one: the H3 variant and the Halo Wars variant (http://www.halowars.com/images/unsc_stuff/flame_concept.jpg). Unluckily, someone will certainly say "It looks too much like the H3 one"). Well... that's partially true. The point is that the HW Flamethrower doesn't have the shark decal, and its fuel tank is separated from the body of the weapon (in fact the HW marines bring it on their back), things that I couldn't make for obvious reasons, and I couldn't find any characteristic part to add, since it is essentially made of tubes. Anyway, it came out decently -at least to me-

HOW IT WORKS:

This Flamethrower doesn't have to be reloaded: it just has a battery and overheats, like in H3. The firing and overheating sound are the H3 ones, while the flame particles are the one that you can find on Halomaps.org (Andrew_b's Revamped Flamethrower):





But the update doesn't finish here! I worked on other stuff in these days.
First of all, I made new shaders for the plasma grenade, and a custom explosion sound:



Then, since I realized that my new Sniper Rifle fires bullets with the same contrail of the Spartan Laser, I made a custom contrail in order to differentiate them:



I have also tweaked the Covenant Antenna available on Halomaps.org: I have fixed its deptleting effect, changed the plasma shaders and made a custom electricity effect (that you can't notice in the picture for obvious reasons), and added some lens flares:



And finally, I made an important addition on the CMT Brutes: thanks to a color_change function, now their shields switch from white to red, depending from the vitality:



I hope you like my new works! ^_^



Sorry, I totally forgot it. Well... this is really embarassing, but it was my fault. I didn't use the HD textures from Halo 3, but I converted Zteam's H3 textures to TIFF, without noticing that most of them were compressed xD Now I'm starting directly from the HD H3 rips.

P.S. I'd prefer you didn't argue here, because I don't want my topic to be locked. If you have some problems, discuss them elsewhere, but, please, no flame wars, and try to stay on topic...
Edited by SOI_7 on Aug 27, 2013 at 05:20 PM

The plasma grenades could use a darker, less saturated blue.

What about now:

Eh, not exactly less saturated but it IS darker.

This color looks good (to me). If you make it that color and make it a bit darker, I think the grenade will look better.

The flamethrower looks excellent. The only thing I can think of that might need changing is that the fuel tank could stand to be a bit larger. Flamethrowers guzzle the stuff.

I'm really happy for this. Anyway, I enlarged the fuel tank, and fixed also some UV and geometry errors (like the hidden inner part of the barrel):







Desaturated and darkened, I can still fix it if you want:



By the way, I have a question for Echo77: I have almost finished your weapon list, I have just to make the Plasma Rifle and the Beam Rifle, but in that list you wrote that the Plasma Rifle should resemble the pre-Xbox Covenant Sniper Rifle. Is this the one you mean?: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070226212831/halo/images/0/05/Halo_edge_3.jpg Because honestly that design looks kinda weird for a Plasma Rifle to me, and it could be better for the Beam Rifle IMO

this problem persists in every one of your tags, but you need to start tweaking the textures for use in the Halo engine. for example, your use of cubemaps contrasts greatly with halo's vanilla assets and, without the assistance of normals or lighting, the overall appearance makes everything you have look different than the material the objects they are made of. for example, your flame thrower as it stands is pure diffuse with a cubemap slapped on, which looks really poor in an engine designed around baked-in lighting. make the top of the textures brighter and the bottom darker, and give the cubemap overlay higher contrast. bake ambient occlusion maps and multiply those onto the diffuse to simulate bumps and ridges in the mesh. otherwise, the wanton use of cubemaps slapped on pure diffuse only serves to highlight the heavy texture compression and low-fidelity geometry.

"Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. The smell, ya know that gasoline smell.... smells like.... victory."

*stamps seal of approval on flamethrower*
---

Here's a video that shows the Pre-Xbox Covenant sniper rifle. It appears at around 1:23.

Might be cool, if you did something similar to CMT's early minigun; externally resembles the flamethrower, but has minigun guts.

Doesn't sound that funny...

EDIT: SOI, I think the grenades look better now. You can stop tweaking it if you want.
Edited by Dumb AI on Aug 29, 2013 at 12:25 AM

*Whew...* That's really a good news, I was afraid about the design I thought. Luckily, I already knew that deleted weapon, and I approve that design, so no problem. I have also some plans for a Brute variant.



Since there are already both the SMG and the Assault Rifle, another UNSC weapon with a high rate of fire would make you too overpowered. Anyhow, I have planned to put the H3 Machine Gun Turret (of course not detachable) as a counterpart of the Shade Turret, and I can guarantee that it will come in all of its glory ;)



Thanks for your suggestions, I'll try my best to make my textures look better, using the baking ambient occlusion method. By the way, I was using the same method that Zteam used for their H3 weapons set, with my textures.



Glad that you like it ;)

In reference to the handheld machinegun, you could always make something similar to the SAW. If not, your choice. Also, if you're using h3 weapon bases, I can show you how to convert normal maps into halo friendly detail maps

Sure, fire away! :)

Yus. o.o

Although personally, I'd much rather it be a SAW rather than the SAW seen in Halo 4 (the H4 SAW too strongly resembles a Nerg gun in my opinion). Something more akin to the M247 General Purpose Machine Gun from Halo 2 would be nice, or even something based on the MA5-series.

Here are a few concepts that might be helpful, if you decide to make an MG:
http://halo4nation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/saw.jpg
Edited by Echo77 on Aug 30, 2013 at 11:20 AM

A modded version of the H2 MG turret should do.

The SAW design is really a good idea, I always loved how the SAW looked, despite its obviously overpowered strength. As I wrote above, I'm afraid of adding 3 UNSC weapons with a high ROF, but since you talked about the H2 Machine Gun turret, you gave me an idea: what if the turret could be placeable, like CMT did with their Machine Gun turret (or the one in H2 Headlong)? The design can still resemble the SAW, and would be a good idea to differentiate it from the Warthog Machine Gun (since, in H3, the heavy Machine Gun Turret is basically a Warthog turret with a tripod)

That could work. o:

UPDATE:
I have just finished both the Plasma Rifle and the Brute Plasma Rifle:



HOW IT IS MADE:

The orginal idea was to make them similiar to the Pre-Xbox Covenant Sniper Rifle. Although, that model was very poor in terms of details, so I prefered making a compromise between the regular Plasma Rifle and it. This new Plasma Rifle has the longer, shark-like muzzle of the Covenant Sniper Rifle, but keeps the fins, the "teeth" (I don't know how to call those metallic parts in which there is the plasma stream) and the gauge. For performance reasons, it keeps the original size, though it is longer. The handle is the Reach one, while the gauge is a mix between the classic one and the Plasma Repeater one.







Here comes the interesting part: the differences between the regular and the Brute variant. As I wrote some posts ago, I wanted to make them recognizable, because I always hated the fact that the color is the only difference between the two versions. The Brute Plasma Rifle now, more than the red color, has a system of rails similiar to the Plasma Repeater (in which the electricity flows) that justifies the higher rate of fire, the firing sound is louder and the crosshair (though that HUD is just a placeholder) is different. And, finally, also the particles are different.



The list is almost finished: it remains just the Beam Rifle, and then I'll make the HW Grunt before the remaining weapons! :D

Definitely something you might want to change a bit over time.

i heard that if u do a comparison in the h2 models that the BPR is longer than the PR, i doubt it, but if u want to do more stuffs the back is supposedly a little bit longer on the brute variant.

T3hLag aptly named those "Teeth" as jaws, so I think both of you have a decent idea with that. In reference to the actual design, I feel like the fact that only the top of the rifle is sharp makes the weapon look somewhat unbalanced in design. a good way to counteract this would be to either make the bottom part of the front sharp as well, or you could add small "teeth" in the middle where the plasma inducers are, so it looks more like a shark-ish design, and it would make sense that the plasma is charged up in that cross-stream as well (especially in reference to the brute plasma rifle, since the firing area is further back).

On that note, for the brute plasma rifle, since it looks too similar to the plasma rifle, it may be better to change it slightly to fit the brute aesthetic in both design and colors (make the rifle far more blocky than smooth, perhaps make the color a more dull grey and a gold stream/plasma discharge [am I the only one that notices that almost all of the brute's projectiles have a really strong gold color?], and maybe add a sharp blade at the front of the bottom barrel and/or under the front side of the grip). I think something like this would make the difference between the two plasma rifle variants more than just aesthetics and a higher ROF (Because that blade would have added melee damage, and the brute version would be slightly more inaccurate).

Also, i'll PM you that thing with the normal maps as I promised

It definitely looks more alien than the regular PR. Also I'm glad I wasn't the only one to see a shark before I even read the description. This looks like a fun weapon to use. Also, do you plan on making completely custom animations for these weapons?

I like your idea. Now that I notice it, the Brute Plasma Rifle is the only Brute weapon without a bayonett/blade (even the Mauler has it, though in a weird position). I'll put the teeth in the regular Plasma Rifle and make the Brute variant more... "bruteish".

P.S. Thanks for the Detail map tips



Most of the time, I had to make custom animations for some of my weapons, due to their new functionality (for example, the Spiker). For the regular weapons, though, I preferred to keep existing animations (not the H1 one, of course), not because I'm lazy, but because I'm horrible at animating, and I'd prefer not ruin my weapons ç___ç

Add a plasma blade on the Brute variant.

I have edited them, and I got this:







I have added the "teeth" to the regular Plasma Rifle. For the Brute variant, as you can see, I have added a bayonet to the bottom part of the muzzle, sharpened the top part to get a more squared and primitive look, made the fins sharper and more aggressive, and toned the old glossy red to a darker, less saturated color. What do you think?

that bayonet looks like it was just slapped on, doesn't really look like it belongs. Is there any way you could make it look as if it's actually meant to be a part of the weapon? It's a cool concept, but it's a bit lacking.

These look so sick. Also I agree, the bayonet could look more attached to the gun. However with the animations you're using I don't know how much room you have before it would run into the left hand of the player.

I have added an attachment for the blade:



Better?

don't make the blade curve into the gun, make it curve parallel as the blades of other brute weapons are either bolted on to the exterior or built as part of the gun.
you can also make the snub have more of a point rather than looking blunt, and yet again the texture problems persist.
the filter on the BPR looks flimsy since the slits are thin and stick out far from the gun.
the placement of the prongs don't really make sense, and I would imagine the lights would be glowing red instead of teal.
remove the spikes on the bottom weapon, as holding it would be awkward(when attaching to leg or just holding it to your side, there's a high chance of impaling).
the way the bottom half is shaped is a tad off, as it curves downward from the back then immediately straightens out.
the heat meter could be tilted more towards the camera.
the detail of the heat meter could be toned down, as the texture filtering blends all the shapes together and ruins the appearance.

I would suggest that the blade goes past the nose of the gun so I can actually stab things.
I guess I can slice things as it is...