Quake 3 Arena - Custom Valiant Skins

[cptfishstick]

Ever since I played Quake 3 for the first time back in 99, I have desperately wanted to create custom content for the game. I decided in an unusual stint of free time that I would sit down and do it. Only 12 years too late, right? So anyhow, What these are are custom skins for Quake 3 Arena player models. For those that aren't familiar with that, heres a quick rundown: Character models in 3d games are comprised of a mesh of 3-4 point flat shapes known as polygons. An image is applied to these polygons, sort of like wrapping paper. This image is known as the skin.

If you want to create custom characters for a video game you have 2 options. The difficult option is to create a whole character from scratch. This is complex, involves creation of new geometry, animation, and texturing. This allows artist to create the most original and interesting characters. The other method is far easier, and is known as skinning. This involves using a previous model, which has already been animated and set in the game, and just changing the texture that is on it. This is the quickest method, but is not ideal as it is limited by the constraints of the model.

Since I only had a few hours of free time to do this, I chose to do a re-skin, as opposed to creating a new model. This would mean a quicker turn around, but none of the existing models in Quake were 100% perfect for any valiant characters. Thankfully, however, a few were pretty close. I chose to reskin the "Ranger" model into X-O Manowar. His head was perfectly set for the skinning, and But the torso and legs were less accurate, but far closer than any other model. The problems with the model were the two pads on his thighs, which don't exist on the original character. The shoulder pads are too large, but not rediculous. Since the torso skin is mirrored, I couldn't put the X logo, since it would appear on both sides if i did. For the second skin, I chose to reskin "Bitterman" into Bloodshot. In this case the body was perfectly set for bloodshot, but the head was not, but I was able to make due with the texture anyhow. This one turned out far better than the first.

The result is the fruit of about 2-3 hours of tinkering. These are my first Skins ever for any video game. I hope you guys like them. Since they are built on top of, and include some of the original Quake 3 media, I can't legally distribute them, but I posted some pictures for you to see.














Thanks for looking, I haven't been to these forums in longer than I care to admit, but its good to be back!

[Phantom..]

Bloodshot s perfect.
I agree that the legs of xo are not perfect but it still looks amazing.
Good work

[magnusr]

Bloodshot s perfect.
I agree that the legs of xo are not perfect but it still looks amazing.
Good work

What Fletch said.

Had there been skins back when I played Quake, I would have loved to see these in the game.

/Magnus

[Daniel Jackson]

Good job with those.