A Custom Alloy?

[Tiberious]

There was something about the Alloy team that kinda intrigued me. I'm not sure whether it was that they were the latest in the line of 'enemy' characters from Smash, or that they added two new ones since the extreme downgrading in number found in Melee.

But I decided they needed a 5th member. Maybe it was because they were clearly influenced by the various Sentai (AKA Power Rangers) teams that this decision was made.

So, I scoured the cast for candidates. A second female was out; all the females in Brawl are human, and even Jigglypuff had representation in Green's moveset (Up and Side throws). Since a female character was out, so was the color pink.

I knew I needed a non-human character, and a color that was definitely male, and so my choices were limited. My chosen character had to be easily distinguishable from the rest, and fit in fairly easily.

In the end, I went with what you see below. I've gone so far as to give him an internal name, and a (work-in-progress) trophy description.

Keep in mind, though, that I attempted to emulate the Japanese school of thought when it comes to character design, and they're not quite as hung up on political correctness as we are over here.


So, I present to you, Black Alloy:


On the technical side, because of the original method I used to rip the Alloy models, in order to achieve a usable mesh, I literally had to reconstruct all four of them, UV mapping and all. Doing the work to re-create the original four gave me insights as to how the team created the models, and allowed me to apply those techniques and create my own.

I do have some texture issues to work out, and as can be seen, my texture painting skills aren't exactly the best there are just yet. But, this is also my first completely custom model, so these kinds of things aren't uncommon. With practice, I'm certain I'll be able to improve further.

Please be honest with your replies. If I can improve in aspects, tell me so. I want to get better, and knowing where my weaknesses are will allow me to focus on them.

[Shadowth117]

This idea is pretty cool and I certainly like the idea of having a fifth alloy. It just seems like it would make more sense than four for some reason. Probably partially because there's five on screen at a time anyway.

I'm gonna be honest, it looks really good. Personally I think it should have been another normal color rather than black since the others are colored. Going off of green being a secondary color among primaries, it probably be best to use purple or orange. Since you're going for a more masculine look though, orange may be better. That's just my thoughts on that.

As for the model itself, I think that there should be some highlights at least on the legs if not the feet since all of the other alloys have them on at least the legs. I noticed the more unrealistic alloys had them on the feet as well as the legs while the wireframed based variants had them on only their legs. Personally I think it would look best if it had highlights on its feet since the legs don't seem quite long enough in relation to the size of the foot to not have them.

The only other thing I can think of is maybe doing something different with the hands like the yellow alloy. They arms just look very similar to the red and blue alloys and while I noticed you used a diamond instead of a pyramid for the arms, I think you could maybe do something else too. Making the hands or part of the arms a little more unique would fix this. They certainly don't look bad as they are though.

[Tiberious]

Well, one thing you have to consider on a color choice is "What are the common Power Ranger colors?" Most often, there's Red, Yellow and Blue, but Green, Pink and Black are among the secondary choices many times.

You might have noticed that hints about that being their origin have been dropped, both on the website, and in the game itself.

If you haven't already noticed, he's based on DK's build and moveset. I wanted to emphasize that this one has great upper body strength and long reach, while downplaying the legs. Feet were made large and almost 'mitten-like' to further show relation to DK's unique lower extremities.

This also gives him a sort of 'rivalry' with Yellow, where they tend to try showing off to each other. This wouldn't have any type of gameplay influence, but just flavor text in a trophy description.

[E-Man]

Pretty impressive, Tiberious! I would have been OK with you just ripping some more Smash Bros. models, but when you emulated the style of an alloy fighter so well, I didn't know what else to say.

Although I question whether or not a fan made alloy fighter would even be accepted onto this web site, I'm dying to know if you have anymore custom models in the works!

[Shadowth117]

Well any custom that's related enough to the game and of decent quality can be put up. Now whether he chooses to submit it to the site or not is another story.

[E-Man]

Well, I can respect whether or not Tiberious chooses to submit the model to this web site; however, are you saying that fan characters are acceptable for submission as long as they are believable to be from that game series?

[Shadowth117]

Usually, no. It would really have to be especially good and not just something silly. While respectfully I'll call it a custom, this model for instance borrows many elements such as textures and design from the original source and so could be called an edit of sorts.

The point is, it would be very, very unlikely for me to upload a fan character normally.

[E-Man]

Got it! I'll keep that in mind in the future!

Of course, if I want to display renders of a fan character and want to include a download link to the files with no intention of having it actually submitted, would that be OK?

[Shadowth117]

That's completely fine, this part of the forum is pretty much made for critiquing and that kinda stuff for so there's no problem really. Just know that you may get some harsh criticism and be prepared for that.

[Crett]

You know, if you could find some sort of mdl0 converter for this and posted it on brawl vault, people might turn it into a character.
Not that I'd have any idea what the moveset would be.
Also this model is awesome.

[Tiberious]

You know, if you could find some sort of mdl0 converter for this and posted it on brawl vault, people might turn it into a character.
Not that I'd have any idea what the moveset would be.
Also this model is awesome.

I've said what his moveset would be.

Since the original four Alloys steal their attacks from other characters, this one would as well.

Red == Captain Falcon (same as Male Wireframe in Melee)
Blue == Zelda (Also the Female Wireframe)
Green == Kirby (with Jigglypuff's up and forward throws)
Yellow == Mario

Black would get Donkey Kong's basic attacks.

Further, the Alloys use these folders on the Wii disc:

zakoboy
zakogirl
zakoball
zakochild

This new one gets the folder zakobeast, as he's not a human character.

[[robo9]]

The problem is, it most likely wouldn't be able to be put in brawl, or atleast the model itself. There isn't a way to create working bones in brawl. So where as you could rig bones for animations, you most likely would be unable to have him walk, or have him grab characters/items or be thrown without the game freezing. But it seems that could be vertexed off of another character.

And the folder thing wouldn't work, as to my knowledge the folders have to use the correct folder names, such as zakochild or it won't load.

[Shadowth117]

Not yet Delysid, but this looks EXTREMELY promising and could change that completely as well as give us a very easy way to extract and modify models from Melee too. I'm fairly sure a workaround for the folder thing could be done as well since you can already add extra stages into the game that previously had no slots physically and ingame.

[[robo9]]

The one problem though is designing operational bones such as ThrownN and TransN, which either would freeze the game upon certain actions or cause him to walk in a loop.

[Shadowth117]

Not really, most of those bones that are high in the hierarchy are just placed at 0,0,0. Design wouldn't be a problem. I'm not sure what some of the stuff in Brawl Box or hexing that you'd have to do to get it working, but I can't imagine it'd be much seeing as they're just simple, normal bones once a model is converted to a regular format.