Sonja Player Model for Heretic II
by Gwynhala, 7/18/99
serotonin@earthlink.net

The Sonja player model is the first female Heretic II player model generated
partially from motion capture data. Custom software was used to analyze the
animations of the Heretic II 'Kiera' player model and extract motion capture
data from it, in the same way as was done with the recent 'Arthur' player
model.

Part of the motion capture data was used to delete Kiera's standard standard
Durnwood Staff weapon (Mesh Node 8) and replace it with a sword making exactly
the same motions. Instead of fighting with the staff, Sonja fights with a sword!

The blade of the sword uses the same part of the skin as the blade on Kiera's
staff, and the hilt of the sword uses the same part of the skin as the staff
itself. Due to this re-use of existing skin parts, all standard Kiera skins
also work on Sonja, and the sword automatically turns gold when flame blade
is in effect.

You must copy the regular, damage, and icon versions of any skin you want to
use into the base\players\sonja directory. For example, to use the Rage skin
you need rage.m8. ragedmg.m8, and rage_i.m8.

The sword attacks, blocks, powers-up, and hits exactly like the staff. Minor
tweaks were made by hand to two animations (spining and vault) to make the
motion look better (same tweaks as made to the Arthur model).

Installing Sonja
----------------

Unzip the archive into the folder where Heretic II is installed (for example,
C:\Program Files).
To play as Sonja, type "skin sonja/rage" at the console, or select sonja/rage
from the multiplayer setup screen.

Of course, you can only use this model in single-player games if you go to the
console and type 'allowillegalskins 1'. If the server has a copy of the Sonja
model and skins, you can also use Sonja in multi-player games.

Stuff to Watch For
------------------

I made this model by overwriting parts of the standard Corvus model with
machine-generated data. While I have studied the file format of the Kiera
model extensively, I do not fully understand the format and it is possible
that something about Sonja will not work right. I've noticed some triangles
missing from the sword when using software rendering, probably because I don't
fully understand some rule about the format / content of the GLCMDS section
of the player model.

The motion capture / part substitution technique used on Arthur and Sonja
theoretically works for any part of the Corvus model (head, arms, etc).

Credits
-------

The Rage skin and Sonja player model modifications are by Gwynhala
(serotonin@earthlink.net).

The original Kiera player model and sounds are by Raven Software, who wrote
Heretic II. They come on the Heretic II game CD, and are provided in this
archive only for convenience. Thanks for a great game, Raven!

Have Fun!
- Gwynhala

