Saturday, January 23, 2010

Global Liberation Army Rebel

Remember the days when we played Command & Conquer Generals or Zero Hour, we're thrown into an epic (during that era) conflict between China, USA and the global terror network GLA. But sadly the infantry of each faction looks more like colorful sticks than battle-hardened soldiers, thus sucking out much of your anticipation to scream FOR THE CAUSE mid-game.

GLA Rebel in C&C: Doesn't look like an oppressed soldier with AK-47 to me. Looks like green-black stick man carrying a gray box that kills other colorful stick men.


So here's a quick [BP] remodel of an infantry based on Global Liberation Army's Rebel unit. With slight changes.
And also during the process I finally learned how to do bloom effect. It is a glowing/hazy shader effect overused/overrated in post 2008 games such as Age of Empire III or Far Cry. I tried it on and voila!:

A solo Rebel posing without bloom effect.

The same snapshot with bloom effect on overdose. Looks pretty but ridiculous.

A group photo of Rebels without bloom effect.

The same snapshot with bloom on, this time with bloom setting on Low. It's good as it help give more depth of field to the environment. Take note how the furthest Rebel's AK-47 seems more blur than the Rebel kneeling in front.

The render time for the bloomed scenes is a murder. 8-10 seconds for 1 frame. I'm on the process of figuring out how to apply the shader without the lag. Also take note that this first variant (yup there will be at least 3-5 variants for Rebels, no more clone army) is a beta and will undergo severe cosmetic makeover. Hopefully there won't be anymore stretched jpeg textures. Feel free to comment. Oh and you can click on the snapshots to get a bigger view.

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