/vr/ - Retro Games

The clay model for the Baron Of Hell.

What Adrian Carmack would do is coat a posable wood art doll in clay, and then sculpt it. Putting it in front of a white screen and lighting it with a spotlight, they'd get shots of all eight directions with the video camera they were using, and that way get a very consistent graphic with a photorealistic kind of lighting.
But oops, the spotlight warms up the clay, and these shitty wood dolls have extremely limited range, so these ad-hoc claymation figures occasionally fell apart when they were using them, requiring repairs (which leads to a few subtle irregularities for some frames).

Overall, though the end results were good, this was really time consuming and bothersome, which is why they hire a professional for an alternative approach.

>>10230284
Because mapping for Duke (and Build in general) is sadly a LOT more difficult and fiddly, and as said, EDuke32 is the main advanced port for Duke, and not a very good one.

It can't be overstated just how easy and straightforward it is to map for Doom (especially since the advent of Doom Builder). While Duke has a lot of cool and advanced stuff, much of this is achieved by kludging it with an engine which "isn't 100% proper 3D" (ergo like Quake), so it's in this unfortunate twilight zone where people are less likely to work with it. There's isn't really that much you can do to make it easier, beyond maybe making programs like Mapster32 a bit more straightforward, which only helps a bit.

Perhaps this is something which AI could help solve some day, making it automate certain basic stuff and having features for guiding the user through setting certain things up and how to adjust them.

>>10230307
Debatable, as it has a weaker monster roster, but it's certainly a very excellent game which would deserve more attention and content, but it's not as easily done.

>>10230305
Models will save you a shitload of time and effort, and make it much easier to correct errors or do all new frames. I suggest working at a slightly rough detail scale and then refining the frames in post.

If you look at the Baron Of Hell claymation sculpture, you'll notice that the face is very flat and not too detailed, but this is intentional as very fine detail would not translate well at the resolution Adrian Carmack was working with.
Greg Punchatz did a great job with his latex models, but he didn't properly account for this, thus they required a certain amount of revision. This is why the Spidermind looks kind of noisy and crusty at parts, why the 'tiger stripes' and six nipples on the Mancubus are gone, and why the Revenant was like 60% repainted.

Adding to that, a mod which even purists enjoy is the Sprite Fixing Project.
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/62403-doom-2-minor-sprite-fixing-project-v20-release-updated-112822/
You can use this mod by putting it in the relevant autoload folders for GzDoom or Woof!, or by using a .wad managing software such as DoomLauncher.

What this does is fix a couple of stray or missing pixels on a couple of the sprites, as well as adjusts the alignment of the sprites, as iD Software didn't actually bother doing this very well to begin with. With alignments adjusted for the monsters, the animations actually look a LOT smoother (without going to such an extreme such as the monsters in the Smooth Doom mod, which look weird and janky in animation). Presumably Adrian Carmack was determined to do it this way from the get go, but then got lazy and just threw them in haphazardly without actually adjusting them.

Another thing it does is add the cut rotations for Doomguy, Zombies, Imps, and Pinkies, which were skipped before the original release to bring the filesize down. Now when you see these guys in action, they actually have proper left and rights instead of being mirrored on one side. Adds rotation frames to the secret Wolfenstein SS enemy when he shoots, too, for what that's worth.

The original Baron Of Hell graphic was also done from a physical sculpted clay model on a poseable wood doll (like you'd find in an art supply store). This gave a detailed appearance with good and natural shading, but the lamps used to light the model would warm up the clay as they went, and those dolls are awkward to pose as is, so he actually broke a few times, leading to a few spots which are inconsistent on a couple of frames after repairs. The spritefix mod retouches those little parts to address that, and does the same for the Hell Knight.

It's the original designs and graphics of Doom, just doing that last bit of polish which iD Software neglected to do when implementing them.

>>9283607
Not all of them.
>Player, Zombie & Baldy, Baron, Cyber
These are clay, specifically clay sculpted over poseable art store dolls. This was tedious as video capture needs strong lighting, and the spotlights would warm up and soften the clay, causing it to sometimes break when reposing, meaning they had to stop and do repairs a lot (this is why the Baron's hoof is off in a couple of frames).

>Caco
Drawn by hand, probably with Deluxe Paint II, knowing Adrian's love for it.

>Imp
Partially drawn by hand, but traces after the Player's/Zombie's legs for reference.

>Pinky
Initially drawn by hand, but then they revised the legs because they looked like shit, referencing a Jurassic Park dinosaur toy. Part of its back is lifted from the Baron.

>Revenant, Spidermind, Arachnotron, Mancubus, Arch-Vile
Because the whole clay thing was dildos, they hire a movie FX guy to build poseable models for them based on Adrian's sketches and designs. Gregor Punchatz sculpts the things out, makes molds of them, then casts latex skins in the molds to paint and place over poseable steel armatures.
Works very well, though there's some revising, Revenant doesn't read well at the resolution and his messy fleshy body is repainted manually, Archie's face doesn't really translate accurately at the given resolution but looks good anyway (Punchatz realizes in hindsight that he made the lower legs too short on the Archie and regrets that, but I think that contributes to its unnatural and uncanny appearance).
Black stripes on Mancubus is omitted, Spidermind's gun is too dinky so they erase it and draw a new one on him, Arachnotron is made from a manually retouched half-scaled Spidermind.

>Hellknight
Recolored Baron.

>Meatball
Made from Caco, Imp, Cyber, rocket explosion, unused 'Blob' monster, and beta Blursphere.

>Lost Soul
Made from medical anatomy skull.

>Hanging bodies in green clothes
Probably made from G.I Joes, considering toys being used for weapons and textures.

>>7410030
I think Punchatz could likely produce a good imitation. If you've seen the original Baron clay model, it has an almost flat and simple face, because it was made conscious of the fact that it would be scaled down as a low resolution sprite (well, high resolution for its day, but you know what I mean), and that really fine detail would likely be lost.
Looking at the Arch-Vile, he has a lot of detail to his face to make him look like a creepy angry alien kinda thing, but this is just not present in the final sprite, which looks a lot more like some kind of skeletal face without eyes (which I actually prefer).

It'd be neat to see his interpretation.

>>7234216
Monster design was largely a group effort ideas-wise, Bobby Prince did the music and sound, and would give an idea or two and provided some of his interpretation, Sandy Petersen is a huge Lovecraft nerd and pitched in a lot of his ideas, and then you've got Tom Hall, Shawn Green, and John Romero, all coming up with or altering/developing concepts here and there.
Adrian Carmack would do a huge chunk of the hard work on them though, sculpting and posing clay models (Zombies/Doomguy, Baron, Cyber), then him and Kevin Cloud would digitize them on a rotating stand and a video camera.

Some monsters were also drawn by hand, like the Imp and Cacodemon, which was time consuming, and as it turned out, sculpting clay onto those wooden pose dolls you can find in art-stores (which are somewhat rigid and limited), and then shining a bright spotlight on them to light them (warming up the clay), they would not seldom break between poses, see pic related, which necessitates frequently repairing them, causing visual inconsistencies if you're not meticulous. Because of this, they hired Gregor Punchatz, a movie special effects guy with a studio of his own, he'd sculpt monsters after Adrian's designs, then cast those to create moulds, which he'd use to create latex skins, then dressing those skins over poseable steel skeletons and painting on detail. You'll see those guys later (assuming you're playing for the first time).

These latex-steel models were very consistent and easy to pose, and also had a good Hollywood look to them, so that worked out very well, though Gregor may not have accounted quite for detail vs. resolution like Adrian did with his clay models (looking at how simple pic related's face is), so sometimes a lot of fine details disappeared at the comparatively low resolution, requiring a bit of tweaking in post to make up for that. Gregor's dad, Don Ivan Punchatz, was also a very accomplished poster/cover illustrator, and they hired him to paint Doom's cover.

>>6560558
It did though, it just took more time and had complications. Doomguy, zombies, baron, and cybie, they were all clay, and they were all finished.

Baron Of Clay.
As you can see, his face isn't very detailed, but that's fine, in fact since he was gonna be scaled down, this was important, to not make him look too distorted.

>>5188190
True. They were intended to be scaled down, especially the ones which were made from clay.
Looking at Mr. Bruiser here, you'll notice that his face is actually quite flat and undefined, probably because they were going to scale the graphics down and would work him out in post.

The latex models were somewhat more detailed (and more importantly, were easier to pose and didn't break when you did so, like the clay ones), though they ended up doing some substantial changes anyway. Spidermind had his tiny and dinky three-barreled gun replaced with a big six-barreled death machine, and the Revenant was almost completely redone in post, going from a fleshy thing with a skull, to a skeleton proper.

>>5139205
The really amazing part is that this is how the baron is done.
These wood dolls can't pose for shit, and the clay broke often when the pose was changed.
He's amazingly consistent and well done for how troublesome and crude the clay models were.