<May 20, 2000>
================================================================

Model Name:		flic

Installation Directory:	baseq3\md3-flic.pk3

Model Author:		James B. Gatzmer, aka _Goatman_

Skin Author:		_Goatman_

Bot Author:		_Goatman_; see below

Address:		The_Goatman@usa.net

================================================================

Model description:
	Flic the ant from Disney's "A Bug's Life"

Additional Credits:
	id Software and Disney

Author(s) notes:
	This time I wanted to try something I hadn't seen done for quake 3.  I wanted to have a death sequence where the model's pieces separated and fell to the ground.  This meant creating the character's pieces as separate meshes.  Unfortunately, once those pieces have Character Studio's physique applied, you can't animate them separately in such a way to have the appendages break away from the biped system.  To compensate for this, I created multiple MAX files from the frame in which the character stands normal.  The first death is one MAX file, the second another MAX file, and the third plus the remaining animations are another MAX file.  I got myself the Collector's Edition DVD of "A Bug's Life" (which I highly recommend for all of its extra cool artsy stuff, even if you aren't a huge fan) and was able to grab a ton of great reference images and audio from the "additional footage" and "making of" chapters.

Development

Mesh stuff:
	I was able to capture some wonderful blueprint style character sketches of both a front and side view as well as several perspective views from the film to import into max and modify the basic meshes I created in Nendo.  He is ablosutely to scale, I swear.  Problems arose when I tried to export him.  No amount of rebuilding normals in Npherno's compiler would solve a flipped normal problem on the right arm and leg segments.  The problem seemed to arise because these segments were mirrored in MAX from the left segments respectively.  I tried a number of things, including flipping the normals in the modifier stack's edit mesh.  For some reason the solution was to apply a separate "normal" modifier to each of the six problem segments and flip AND unify the normals before exporting.  Unfortunately, I had to do this to each max file because Npherno would import the segments as they were exported and keeping the bad normals as they were.  One frame would be correct, and the next frame from the unmodified MAX export would be incorrect.  That fixed, I was able to rebuild all the normals on all segments and bring a tired smile to my face.

Skin stuff:
	Well, I cheated alot here.  I captured alot of views of Flic from the footage and used photoshop to copy, paste, rubber stamp, burn, dodge, mirror, and further force submission of what became the final textures.  80% of it is just heavily modified video captures, but hey...

Animation:
	Unlike JBravo, which I used a Steed biped file as a base, I did Flic's animation completely from scratch.  I found it's easiest to get biped on right away and make figure mode the stand frame.  Then copy that frame to all frames that start each group of animations.  This ensured that I always had a reasonable amount of consistency in each animation and I could save the figure mode as a bip file in case I screwed something up.

Summary:
	Overall, Flic turned out alot better than JBravo, and in alot less time.  Now that I am reasonably familiar with the tools, I hope to work on some new ideas.

Bot Notes:
	I took a look at the text files that compose a bot and decided I'd just modify an existing bot file to create this one.  Bitterman seems well rounded, moronic on easy settings and challenging on more difficult settings.  So I just edited the bitterman bot and repacked it as flic.

================================================================

Game Info

Skins:
	One default, a kind of blue-gray to differentiate it from the CTF blue.

Bot support:
	Yeah, it's just a modified Bitterman bot with new chat dialog.

New Sounds:
	Custom sounds are included... captured and edited from the DVD.

CTF Skins:
	One very red and one very blue skin.


Software used:
	Modeled in Nichimen's Nendo, tweaked and animated in 3D Studio MAX 3.1 with Character Studio, exported with pop n' fresh's MAX plugin, and recompiled in Npherno's MD3 Compiler.  Photoshop was used for the textures, and SoundForge for the audio.

Installation:
	Just put the md3-flic.pk3 file in your \baseq3 folder.  Don't unzip it to your baseq3 folder or you'll get a shader error in the console.

Thanks:
	Thanks to id software, pop n fresh for his exporter, Npherno for his compiler, Wrath's for his bounding box file, and the folks at www.polycount.com, for a wealth of great resources.  Oh, and whoever made the decision at Pixar/Disney to release "A Bug's Life" Collector's Edition DVD.  There really is a ton of great stuff on there.

Groove is in the heart.

================================================================

* Copyright / Permissions *
	QUAKE(R) and QUAKE III Arena(R) are registered trademarks of id Software, Inc.
	Flic the Ant and "A Bug's Life" are registered trademarks of Walt Disney Corporation, Conglomerate, Giant-Company, Inc. and Pixar Studios.
		"Disney.  We can take ABC off your petty little cable system at the push of a button, so don't screw with us."


This model may be freely distributed in any form, UNALTERED, which means, you can't remove/change the readme file, other files, or add your own stuff to it and pass it along.