The New Era - The Matter at Hand by MrNiceGuy
Description
Now, after lots of work, and not to mention remapping, the second installment of The New Era is now complete! After the release of the first part, I started to wonder what would be the most useful for the creators of outfits and levels. The answer didn't take long to figure out: The hands. Let's face it: Most people have no idea which ones to use. They are available in different varieties, from the blocky TR4 hands, to the jointless 3D hands favoured by most lazy creators. Why lazy? The thing is, making hands require a lot more work than it may seem at first. Naturally, hands have their shape and proportions that need to be taken into account, but the most time-taking process would be the remapping. People hate to remap! It's boring, hard, and one mistake ruins it all. There are many ways to ease remapping, my favourites are noting down the numbers, or having an extra Strpix window to compare with, so I can check up at all times. However, not many people use these methods. They use an easier, cheaper way: they remove the joints. Simple and mostly fine, it's not hard to see why. But still, something is missing. A strong connection! We should use what we have (the TRLE engine is weak) and that's what The New Era is all about: Using what we have in the best possible way! So, I present for you The Matter at Hand! I've spent lots of time remaking the weapons to match the "high-poly" versions in the inventory, using the best hands available (my own :P). To keep the WAD as the resource WAD it is, I've only used the original textures, so you can make your own to give it a more personal look (nails are recommended!). The weapons should be ready to use with almost any outfit without having to change anything, and the Back to Basics outfit is included if you wish to start working with the WAD.
Objects
Object Type
Weapon
Its been a long time since I've reviewed anything so I apologise. I hope to get back to my usual posting and reviewing. Anyway here goes. Original: Its hard to rate this. As its just an update for the hand meshes but I don't think anyone has made one of these types of wads so I'll give it full marks. As its always nice to have wads like this. It really makes outfit creator's jobs so much easier. So thank you and well done. Quality: Its perfect! I couldn't find any bugs what so ever. (If I had I would have been schocked. I mean I might have had a heart attack!) It has no bugs and everything fits together perfectly. Great! Useable: I recommend, no, I order you to use this! This makes all the difference as hands are probably the most tedious part of outfit-creating. I hated making hand meshes because you had to remap everything and Lara uses so many hand-held items. With this on the TRLESE, I'm sure alot of future outfits will rise in meshes and quality. Woohoo! Custom Textures: There really isn't any new textures. They're basically from TRLE. Meshes: WOW!!! Those hands are so perfect! The fit so well around all the items and they look so realistic for such little amount of polygons. Its amazing how just placing your points in the correct places can make such a good shape. It must have taken alot of time and alot of patience remapping all those vertices and building all those hand/gun meshes. Well done! I have to say, tyhank you so much MR.NiceGuy, you've made every outfit-creator on this sites dream come true. Theres no excuse for odd looking hands on the SE now. Great job!
(21 Jan 2005 22:09)
Thank you so much for the review, Keith! You gave me the exact reaction I was hoping for! And, as you said, I hope this will be of use to further outfits! It WAS hard to give the hands a nice shape without overusing polygons, but I think I got it just right!
What, I haven't reveiwed this yet?!? *Faints* I should seriously slap myself with soggy chips for this! :p Original: Well as an update it's original. As far as meshes go, it's original. Textures are better and some are new, so fairly original there... I'll just skip to the part where I realise this is completly original. Quality: Simply put, Flawless (As always)! No glitches and nothing to downrate. Useable: This is highly useable as it can be used for both outfits and levels. It can work in classic TR or custom character based levels, too. Custom textures: By far it's quite an improvment. :) Mostly in the pistol, it's tons better than the ingame one used in TR4. Much like the inventory version. The main update is in meshes so I don't have as much to say here. I didn't rate this cause most of it is TR4 rather than custom. But everything that is custom is top notch. Custom meshes: The way the hands hold the weapons looks very realistic, even the hand holding the flare looks great! I thought that the regular hand (The one not holding any weapons) maybe has fingers on the slightly long side. Though, my own fingers are short so maybe that's what the usual person's hand looks like. I wouldn't know. :p But long is better than too short because on Lara too short would make her hand look chuby. Though that is only my opinion. The hand is well made, very realisticly shaped and a good size. Something I never really have added to my outfits are the weapons. If custom hands are used then the blocky TR4 hands can't be used. So then ya have to make the hands hold on to the weapons correctly, then importing back into stripx and retexture it. Ah yes, then the fun part, remaping. I'm afriad I never had the guts to make such ajustments, I've always left the guns alone. So I for one am very glad these have been made, as it is a pain to make all of the weapons as perfect as this. ;) Thank you for making them! :D [i]Edited by Trinity[/i]
(20 Feb 2005 04:24)
Woooooh!!! I got a review! Yeeeeaaah!! lol, sorry for that, but I never thought this would get another review! It was difficult to create the hands, but since mine are fairly long and overall very natural, I modelled them after mine. Heh, a guy's fingers on a female model... I'm hoping to see some more outfits using these hands, maybe even the ones in the Back to Basics outfit. These will work together no matter which ones you use for each weapon, as long as the outfit's hands are correctly remapped (see the Readme). That means you'll only have to remap two meshes instead of... quite a few, and these are the least confusing as well. :D