Arthur Player Model for Heretic II
by Gwynhala, 7/10/99
serotonin@earthlink.net

The Arthur player model is the first Heretic II player model generated partially from motion capture data, and the first player model to have different weapon geometry than Corvus / Kiera.

Custom software was used to analyze the animations of the Heretic II 'Corvus' player model and extract motion capture data from it. Part of the motion capture data was then used to delete the standard Durnwood Staff weapon (Mesh Node 8) and replace it with a sword making exactly the same motions. That's right, Arthur does not have a staff, he has a sword instead!

The sword uses the same texture mapping as the staff, so standard skins work. 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. In spining, the raw motion capture data caused the flat of the sword, rather than the edge, to face outward during the attack; the sword was manually rotated 45 degrees to correct this. In vault, since the sword doesn't normally extend below Arthur's wrist, the sword was manually flipped upside down for the vault move - the effect is that Arthur uses the point of the sword to push off his vault.

Installing Arthur
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Make a directory base\players\arthur. Copy all the files in this archive there. To play as Arthur, type "skin arthur/arthur" at the console, or select arthur/arthur from the multiplayer setup screen.

Of course, you can only use this model in single-player games, and if the server has a copy of the model, in multi-player games.

Stuff to Watch For
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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 Corvus model extensively, I do not fully understand the format and it is possible that something about Arthur 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 theoretically works for any part of the Corvus model (head, arms, etc).

Credits
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The Arthur skin is by Paladin (Paladin_ad@hotmail.com); it is very cool, it is available for download on various web sites, and I hope the author will forgive me for including here as the first skin for a new player model.

The Arthur player model is by Gwynhala (that's me). I hope you enjoy it!

Have Fun!
- Gwynhala

