I started a map for Quake anniversary, but unfortunately Doom3 textures conversion to Quake is eating all my time: i.e it is more complex that I foreseen it at the beginning...
So I guess I will not be able to deliver something "big" this time, and maybe I will not be able to deliver something at all...
Shame on me...
I will try to do my best to map.. but I can't promise to be ready in time... 

I don't know if it is a coincidence but the skin on your ghoul-thing reminds me of those fetuses you see on pro-lifer billboards -- yeech! 

but those would make for some great skins. 

no comment 

I think I'll wait for the 100-year celebrations. 

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/2806/railgun9aw.jpg

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/2418/luger0ab.jpg

http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/56/grenadelauncher3um.jpg

http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/5228/kukri0oj.jpg

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/6445/doublebarrel32qi.jpg

photo names pretty self expanatory.

The basic premise of Symbiote is your character is a mercenary working for an undead kingpin (loud echoes of Zerst�rer here), and you are on the hunt for one of his rivals holed up in an abandoned and half sunken city of Venice. 

looks like you've really picked up modelling fast, some of these look really good. The railgun looks crazy, that's probably my favourite. They look pretty economical with the polygons too, but not overly blocky (it isn't 1996 after all). I'm looking forward to seeing these ingame with skins! 

Kinda hard to judge these without any textures on them though. =) 

difficult to see with just flat shaded 

I'll likely use Wings3d for the UV unwrapping; it gives you better control over grouping the poly layouts better than Blender does, IMHO. Modern unwrappers (like the LSMC unwrap that Blender uses) give very disturbing looking results. I don't know how pro modelers cope with UV layouts that look nothing like the basic model shapes.

Idealy, I would like a 3dpainter that has the same dodge and burn capabilaties of Photoshop and Gimp, and I would like it to be free :) Photoshop 6 was the last ap I bought with my own cash that wasn't bundled with the PC. 

It's not free, but I use Deep Paint 3D (by Right Hemisphere) for painting uv textures. What I do most of the time is just paint a quick sketch on the 3D model to get general idea going, then I finish it up in photoshop. Nice software anyways, and the tools try to be as similar as possible to photoshop (no burn/dodge though), and it has pressure sensitivity if you're using a wacom or other tablet. 

I've made some progress on the player model. Each pic represents a stage of development over a four hour period of work.

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/8016/player10eo.jpg

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/7036/player23vv.jpg

http://img281.imageshack.us/img281/4337/player30do.jpg 

I'll work on skinning the critters.

For the player model, I was emulating Sam Fischer of Splinter Cell, but I think the head profile looks more like Kevin Spacey. 

looks like a lot of work. I think it has some proportion issues though. To me it looks like the forearms are too long, the upper arms slightly too long. The chest area looks nice presuming its in some sort of armour. The head looks pretty good, is the neck a bit long though? Also maybe the upper back needs beefing up a bit. There's also something off about the legs, but i'm not much of an expert in this sort of thing.

Maybe you should get one of the awesome artist folk from here to help you out, Bal or someone. I bet they could tell you exactly what to do to make it look more natural. 

Forget the face, it looks better in Post #3039, screenshot #1.

Also, is he making fists or are his thumbs really longer than his fingers?

Some proportion work wouldn't hurt (ever pick up "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way?") :) 

to be worked up, like the back of the head; I haven't really touched it yet.

I haven't looked at The Marvel Way, but I do have book's on artistic anatomy, including Albinus's work. I've always thought that Marvel is the most consistent in terms of design of the comicbook houses.

My own work got too manneristic from my tat work, but consistant practice ought to take care of that. It was all of those dang Celtic Crosses :)

The hand looks horrible on the right side screen of the first pic, but the left side screen does show its proportion is okay.

The leg problem is the result of having a straight V for the inner thighs. I need to bevel that for the pubis, and then add extrusions on the calf to indicate the adductor group.

Thanks for the comments. I do appreciate them. If there is anything I miss, I do want to know about it.

Necros, I just saw your post. I'll add some wireframes later in the week. 

Nice start Headthump, I'm sure you already know what you're doing, but just in case, a couple things that might make your life easier when you get to animating: More edge loops around each hip, or you won't have enough density to fold that area properly (and give him a crotch =D). It's best to not have the thumb on the same edge loops as the fingers, if you check on a real hand, the thumb is really under the others. 3 or 5 edge loops are best around knees and elbows, depending on your target polycount, same as the hip, even if you don't have much detail to put there, you need the density for proper animation.
Oh and yeah, proportions are a bit strange, his legs look a bit short, have you drawn some sort of model sheet for this? 

I know what you mean about the legs. In certain positions, it looks like he is wearing parachute pants!

The base pic for the model is a Splinter Cell screen shot, and I see how the top down view from it has had a distorting effect on how I see the torso/leg ratio here. In my defense, my favorite painter is El Greco :) 

http://members.home.nl/gimli/Flat1.jpg 

I think he is almost ready to be skinned.

http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/6752/player56kb.jpg

I want to keep him at a low enough polygon level that I can still convert him to a standard mdl format. He is still pretty low on the poly numbers - the vital stats:

File Name: Player
Version: 6
Number of Vertices: 693
Number of Skin Vertices: 1
Number of Faces: 1392
Number of Frames: 1
Average Size of Triangles: 0 

but it looks like you'll need a few more polys around the armpits/shoulders for them to deform well. it looks like the shoulder is directly connected to the upper arm without any polys inbetween... it will deform badly that way. :S same with the waist area and legs. (and one edge for the knees?!) i'd cut down on polys on the face and use them in more important areas at the joints.

just my opinion anyway... (haha, i love this disclaimer! ;) ) 

well, i realise there's the one wireframe on the side there, but it's hard to tell from that. 

If anything, the chances are that the model is too detailed in places for quake to handle it well. My suggestion would be to compile it as it stands into mdl format, and see how well the detail is handled. The reason I'd be concerned is the way quake stores the location of vertices.

Basically, the x y and z coordinates of each vertex are given by a single byte, so there's a 256x256x256 grid for the points to snap to. This grid is scaled to the maximum extents of your model in all it's frames. This is why you get model wobble in quake, the rounding errors caused by this practice, and I worry that the detailed face and hands will suffer in quake format like this. So do a conversion and see how it looks. The advice people are giving about having enough triangles at the joints of the models is also important.

While we're on the subject, a few other thoughts about the accuracy of quake model format. The first is that the accuracy is a global thing, it depends on the extent of your model in all of it's frames. So if you want your model to look it's best, keep everything as central as possible. If the model is moving in a run/death animation, make sure it's kept centered on the origin. If you need to have a skin frame(although hopefully most people don't do this any more), make it smaller than the original model. If there's any way you can avoid an abnormally frame in a model, then the rest of the frames will be that much sharper.

You can also, if you have the time and patience, make multi-segment models, for instance a seperate head and body. Since the head will have it's own, much smaller extent, you can cram that much more detail on. Then again, probably not viable for a monster in-game, since there's no tags or weapon_follow to attach things with. It would be a good way to do some machinima stuff though.

A final tip: If you make a dummy frame in your model with vertices at 256 256 256 and -256 -256 -256 in quake units, your model will snap to the grid used for mapping. This would be handy if you wanted to make map models that fit seamlessly with geometry. 

you can avoid an abnormally frame in a model,
you can avoid an abnormally large frame in a model, 

I was planning to ask for some tips in the Help section on the MDL format. Thanks, Preach.

You are right about the shoulder/upper arm connection and also the knees, Necros. There is still room to slip in polys for deformation purposes, so I'll work on that asap (and also those ugly-ass ears).