Giant Centipede

[Konlii 53]

Okay Darmo, I know this thing is enormous, but I think detailed legs are important to the creep-factor of centipedes.  This is just a temporary texture, but I have made each color 2px square so that it will look like 1px if scaled in half.  Of course, if enormous tickles Bioxx's fancy, we can work with that, too.  Thoughts?

 

Animation note: watching videos of these guys walk, it looks like the only joint that visibly moves is the one connected to the body, so it shouldn't be necessary to animate each leg segment separately

 

Centipede.MCModel

[Darmo 303]

Good Lord Konlii, you don't shy away from going big do you?  I agree on legs being a big part of the creep factor, though I think it's more important if the legs are actually articulated.  If they're just a rigid structure, less so.  In general I am of the opinion that it's ok for more aggressive and 'fantasy' mobs to be more complicated.  I would think we'd want them to be impressive and scary.  I had planned to have this conversation when Bioxx asked for fantasy mobs, or giant insects.  If he wants to have it now, we may as well.

As for commentary, I probably would have tried to get by with 3 segments per leg at most.  And I don't know that the extra ridge boxes are all that worth it.  Assuming it's mainly for z-fighting issues, could you not have just tilted the body segments in their entirety that same amount, to avoid the issue?  Rather than adding barely-protruding tilted boxes?  I'd also probably consider swapping the antennae for large menacing mandibles.  Antennae just don't say 'I'm a-gonna poison and eat you!'

But my main concern is the animating of it on Bioxx's part (would it undulate, or just move in a stiff arrow-straight fashion?), and then the possible (probable?) movement and clipping issues.  I'm not sure how minecraft's hitboxes work, but I question if that entire length can be a hitbox, and if so, what happens when the centipede tries to turn in a narrow tunnel?  The model is like, 10 meters long.  You're going to at *least* have large portions of the body clipping out of the tunnel walls, unless the animation and collision detection is a lot better than I think it is. 

What if you could sort of have it rearing up in an S shape, to reduce the floor area it takes up to like, 1x3 meters max or something?  I think you could use most or all of that body length, but just have it be bunched up.  It's probably also be more threatening if taller.

Overall, it probably would have been better to have started with a more 'normal' proportioned insect.  But let's see what Bioxx says.

 

[Darmo 303]

Aaaand I just noticed I totally missed the part where you planned on scaling it down. My bad.  5 meters is still pretty large though. 

Did you try building the model at the intended scale?  I realize your leg tips are probably what governed the size choice - they are indeed pleasingly spindly in relation to the body - but my experience has been that making double size textures is kind of pain, if you want to modify it afterward...

[Konlii 53]

Go big or go home.  I'll try downgrading it from "enormous" to simply "huge" and drop some of the taper off of the legs to shorten them.  That was really unnecessary, after all.

[Konlii 53]

This one's half as long.  It can probably be scaled from "huge" down to merely "very large" if you so please.

 

Centipede.MCModel

[Darmo 303]

That's nice.  Pincers are a nice add!  I even like the color scheme better.  Final word isn't really up to me though, as I'm not the one animating it.  My fear is that it may look too wooden; I'm assuming it's not really possible to animate it bending in a dynamic way (that is, responding to turns and corners).  I imagine it can be animated to undulate like a snake, but I don't think that's really how they move.  Bioxx will have to weigh in on it. 

[Konlii 53]

The attached is looking like my final texture.  For animating, they don't undulate.  I think I would describe it as more of a shimmy.  

I think this is about as small as I can make the model before it starts losing enough definition to start looking cartoony instead of menacingly insectile.  We can still scale it down a bit and may just have to accept the fact that the entire body pivots around corners and the back half may clip the environment a bit.  I think the only way to make a centipede move naturally in Minecraft is to actually create each body segment as a separate entity and stick them together in-game, which is totally not worth the effort right now.

Of course, Bioxx has his hands full enough just getting TFC2 fully functional so it'll probably be a while before we see anything with complicated animations make it into the game.

[Bioxx 796]

Unless there is some decent system added for complex animations, there's just no way that I'd get around to even trying this.