Darryl

Hi Steve, I don't seem to be able to download anything or post private messages any more (hence why I am posting here)... I think the permissions have got broken. Thanks, Darryl

I think it works best if all members just get access to everything on the site, past, present and future - even if they don't contribute to these target funds. That was the deal and the expectation when most people signed up. Obviously some stuff won't be useful for some members but that's always the case - most people will never ever use the majority of the models anyway. Obviously Steve can't work on everything at once though and needs to make a living off a fairly limited/niche customer base, so I think it's fair enough to ask for a little extra crowd funding to get things prioritised and done. I didn't contribute to the fund for the 2D stuff because I don't really need it - but as Steve says, most indie developers dabble in different engines and ideas from time to time. Who knows if I might need it in a year or two? It's always nice to have that option. For the UMA I really would find that useful so I contributed extra to the fund and I hope lots more people will contribute too, so we'll make that happen as well. I'd still like to see everyone else get access to this as well if they signed up for a membership deal too. That was the whole point of a membership after all. That seems like a good way to work it for now and the future. Those that want to support arteria's larger ideas and projects contribute a little to kickstart the project. If people don't want or need it, or simply don't want to shell out for it, then they don't have to. Either way they still have members access to everything if they decide they need it later on - but it's in people's best interests to contribute towards things they really need as if it doesn't make the target it doesn't get made at all. Also - whilst the UMA pack is only going to be useful for Unity users, I think that does account for the majority of people on here judging by posts people have made, and it will obviously also be able to go into the unity asset store and ride the wave of publicity UMA is getting right now, so I think it would probably get arteria a good number of new customers as well.

Steve, sounds awesome! What I would like to add though - for people that already bought membership but don't want to pay again I think they should get this anyway... I don't think it's good to do have membership for "access all areas" and then say "except this" or "except that". For things like this I think having a bounty is a good idea, so we get enough people to chip in to cover the work needed to make a reality - sort of like a mini kick starter... If not enough people contribute it doesn't happen, but if there's enough demand and financial support then it gets made - either way those people who are paid up members should still have access to the full site including the new content anyway. Just my 10 cents That said... I will definitely chip in for this right away and I hope everyone else reading this thread will do so!

Hi Steve, I've been looking into this a bit more and it does look like it's going to become a kind of go-to standard for Unity and have all the Unity community behind it, so probably does make most sense for most of us to move over. What they haven't got yet is the awesome set of clothes and armours that you have for the base male, so there must surely be a good market there. I'm definitely up for backing that with the $35 membership addon

I think UMA is probably going to be the way forward with Unity... there will probably be an ecosystem of clothing packs built around it in the long run. it may not be too tricky to resize the arteria armour meshes to fit it, it's still a human shape after all.

Hi Steve, Thanks for the reply. I want to start by apologising for going direct to the request without first saying again how great the models are in general - this is probably the best model resource on the web for people trying to make games on a budget. I think for the medieval/fantasy theme there are quite a lot of models you've made that do fit the theme. The main problem I have is that they work in slightly different ways. From a game coding perspective it would be great if all the models had the same skeleton, same animations, same equipping method etc. I would like to see a male that works as the female does, so you can make them naked and add clothes on top. Then things like the pirate could just be clothes packs and there could be male and female versions of it. That way we'd be able to just have one character controller script that works for all cases. I really like the sci-fi stuff, but for it to be usable I think it needs a few more kinds of clothing, props, ships, environments etc... I suppose what I am really trying to say is that rather than working on one sci-fi, one modern, one 70's, one zombie... etc. etc. I think it would work better to just focus on filling out a complete game-worth of models along one theme and then onto the next theme. Right now I feel like we have loads of great models for making a start on lots of different games, but not enough to really flesh out a full game in any one theme.

Hi Steve, I've been following your models for a year or two now, but so far I haven't been able to really use them in a game. The problem is that there aren't enough models that really fit together. We can't make a pirate game with just 1 pirate. Or a magic game with just 1 wizard. Or a war game with just 1 soldier. Or a space game with just two characters and a ship interior but no exteriors etc. etc. The medieval stuff is the closest we have so far to usable - with lots of buildings that could be used and a male and female base character. But even then, they are differently constructed so it's not really possible to let players choose to be male or female without having to code everything twice to handle different ways of equipping each model. Plus there are still some issues with weights and animations that could use attention. Would be really great I think if you could just kinda pick a theme and flesh it out so there's the complete set of all the different characters, buildings and items needed to make a full game rather than just doing one or two things for each theme. I think you'd sell more that way too... Medieval/fantasy would be my suggestion - just make a base male that works the same way as the female and make loads more clothes sets that are available for both and then make loads of buildings, props, trees etc. that fit with the fantasy theme.

I spent a long time converting all the packs to ogre although I'm using Esenthel now. I converted nearly the whole collection using command line tools to convert obj to mesh and ogre material files. I've found that the FBX files are the only ones that contain working/correct animations though and trying to get them to convert correctly is a real pain. My workflow has mostly been FBX > Fragmotion > Ogre XML > Ogre XML Converter > Mesh That seems to work. Some of the models I've had serious issues getting the FBX files to be correctly read though and sometimes the materials are messed up I don't have Unwrap3D so I don't know if it works any better but I didn't want to buy it just to test it... I can upload the models I've converted somewhere to save you time if you have an FTP Steve.