I've just uploaded "BladesTwo" to the HeroMachine 3 Alpha. This should do it for the blades, let me know if I missed anything big. I do still plan on the naginata (the samurai blade at the end of a pole), but in polearms.
What would you like me to work on next? I'm thinking either Hair or Insignia but holler if you think something else ought to have priority.
jeff if yoru not annoyed by me yet can we have hair that only sticks out on oneside of the mask?
Could you please fix the skin patterns first? They’re a great idea, but they either fill the screen or appear as a huge patterned rectangle over the pose.
I’d like to see more insignia:
-Letters (in various fonts, especially a ‘swept-forward’ look)
-Numbers
-Roses and other flowers
-various types of insects
-animal heads
-a bat insignia (suitably altered so as not to offend DC, of course)
-outline of a hand
-that world outline symbol you used in the Shakti HM
Might want to make a Bisento over a typical naginata. More impressive visual appeal.
‘BladesTwo’ looks good! Lots of pieces to put into play. Imagine the Druid runes (last page, last item) ought be popular. Hope the updated maquahuitl gets more exposure.
A few of the items are begging for a way to be sized over 200%.
Potentially overlooked:
* Simple HM2 battleaxe — fancy ones are for special occasions
* HM2 Scimitar/Saber — Less aggressive than the current HM3 falchion
Choices for next up:
* Insignia
* Background, if only ‘standard’ starter ones
I agree with V that we need to see some backgrounds, need at least the ability to change the background color instead of a basic white background
My vote is for standard bacgrounds ( more or less the plain ones from 2.x ) and then some more hair …. lots and lots of hair.
PS: Any way to make a brake-apart hair style?
Thes look fantastic Jeff!!
Well since I never use backgrounds I will go for hair.
I would much rather create the character than worry about what colour is in the background, stick with creating more for the character!!
Well that’s my two pennies worth anyway!!
Scorp
hair man id love to see some beter hawks i mean the spikers are cool but id love a tri hawk
Definitely hair. The actual character’s more important than what’s behind them in my opinion.
As Neo would say, we need guns, lots of guns.
Hair
Did you miss anything big?… Well were talking personal preference here I’d like to see a few more Chinese style blades. Specifically:
9 Ring Sabre
Butterfly Swords
Tiger Head Hook Sword
Deer Antler Knives
Moon Sting Knives
Fire Wheel Blades
Whipping Sword
And if you want to go the extra mile:
Snake Tongue Sword
Snake Head Saw-Tooth Sword
Many of the above have multiple names depending on region dynasty etc. I think most people would like the exotic look Feel free to email me if you want some descriptions and or pictures etc.
Love the work so far by the way, glad you included the African swords (often overlooked.
@D: I haven’t heard of a skin pattern problem before (unless you mean the problem with patterns and the hands). What’s going on?
Also, I updated Blades (the first one) with a gradient pattern for the “photonic energy sword” like in HM2.5. Thanks to whoever pointed out that it was missing.
Let’s hope *this* shows up, as the site’s been giving me confusing trouble. And it would be really awesome if we could get more everyday hairstyles mixed in with the crazy ones, just for some variety. Like, go hogwild with flipping through one of those modern/historical hairstyle sites and drawing plain stuff. That mix and match hairstyle idea up there sounded pretty sweet actually, considering I end up having to go into a paint program and shoddily edit different bangs and sides onto characters quite often.
Sorry if this is off topic, but I’ve been a fan for a long time. I’m loving this newest iteration of Heromachine. The freedom is great. You’re doing a fantastic job.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the poses and even the heads are a lot beefier than before. Are we going to get options for slender men and women?
Jeff,
A little off topic but I noticed in both previous versions of HM a lack of bicep armor. When you get to tops or gloves could you add more armor that covers the top portion of the arm?
The plan with hair is to do something similar to the Blades, where a lot of the various styles will be broken into parts. So you’d have the whole thing together, then just the bangs, then just the back part, then just the hangy-down part, etc. I doubt it will be as consistent as it was with the blades where you could do that with almost every one, but where it makes sense that’s what I’ll do.
That should make it possible, with some layering, to get just the right hairstyle.
Having said that, and read through the recommendations above, I’m probably going to whip out the Background-Standard set, consisting almost totally of shapes and gradients. The reason’s simply — I’ve already got them all drawn in other mini-versions, so it’ll take only an hour or two to get them all ported in.
So I’ll knock that out real quick, then it’s on to hair, which seems like a more popular choice than insignia at this point.
i go for hair.
Jeff I am having problems deleting some of the items. It’s weird sometimes I am able to delete one of an item like the katana hilt but not another katana hilt.
Thanks for the report LoneWolf, I’ve seen a bit of oddness in that way too. I think maybe the code that keeps track of all the items has some holes in it, and sometimes an item gets “lost”. I’ll have to dive into it once I get the item sets fleshed out a bit more.
Update, I am able to manipulate a problem item using transform, but I cannot delete it or move it with the mouse. It doesn’t seem to respond to input from the item list.
I just found out a dead give away. When you click the item picture for a duplicate and you have the problem item still selected you will instead get an item from the Blades 1 list.
Ditto for LoneWolf6155 (post #21).
Trying to keep track of the how/when for QA reproducibility. Nothing solid so far. Suspect for aggravating the issue is how Item > Body components are used (that is, mixing & matching with MaleStandard and MaleMilitary esp. when doing so for limb breakdown components).
Another update this sometimes happens to items that were fine before and the Blades 1 set.
If you try to apply a skin pattern to your character, say, fire, you can’t see the pose because the pattern is covering it completely. Either that, or, as I mentioned earlier, it appears as a rectangle.
Choose patterns from the drop-down menu, then select a pattern, and you’ll see what I mean.
D, that’s what’s supposed to happen. The Pattern set in the dropdown is like any other item. You load the Pattern you want, click on the Mask button, then click on the item you want to have that pattern. It’s just like any other item you’d use to mask onto another one, allowing you to color it, scale it, make it transparent, rotate it, etc.
If you want the one-click-and-go patterns that can’t be colored or mess with and appear already masked onto the current item, use the Patterns tab in the Transform area.
Hey Jeff,
Just wanted to thank you for adding my blade requests. I am going to have endless hours of fun creating some awesome characters!
Also I love the same “break down parts” idea for hairstyles.
The vast customization in HM3 is incredible!
*Bows* Thank you, sensei. This grasshopper obviously has much to learn from the venerable master.
is it glitching for me or did you only add blades and blades 2 to the itemright?
I just had a glitch where Wings showed up under every category as a set though you couldn’t click on it except for the ones you were supposed to.
Also the other day i was messing around. I made a guy and added eyes, but i decided to change them. I had multiple on and first clicked another eye and it put it way to the left of the head. I then deleted that one and the first two i had. After that it would not let me put any eyes on the character. They would not appear in the window and the tool bar with the lock, the X and the layer things would not show up in the preview window under whichever i was clicking on.
@J: Blades are only on ItemRight for now. Use the ‘Flip Item’ tool to have an item for the left hand. It *is* an alpha release (aka, “not quite ready for prime time, but you keep bugging Jeff so he gave it to the voracious hordes”).
As for the glitch….seen that, too. It is a _bug_. Annoying & persistent how the drop down menus can on occasion remain quasi down, yet other drop down genres are accessible. Cannot reproduce it consistently. I do consider it a weirdness of _needing_ to select Genre the Sub-Genre, whereas HM2 did the sub-genre selection by default (usually the first item).
Yeah, the way I do the items is, I do one side and nail it completely down. Once it’s pretty much set in stone, I convert it to the other hand. Which consists of renaming all the main holder objects, then going in to each one and flipping it horizontally and then moving it into position. It’s tedious and boring and keeping changes consistent from one to the other is a big ol’ pain in the butt. So I’m going to try and get all the ItemRight stuff done first and then at the end go in and flip them all to add them to ItemLeft.
In the meantime, as Violodion says, you can use Flipping to get the items over to the other side.
The bug is irritating, and something I need to track down, yes.
OK, I know I’m a little late, but anyway…
Great job Jeff!
And thanks for that katana with a hamon, it’s awesome 🙂
It would be cool to have some twin hook swords
link: http://www.gungfu.com/pics-general/pics-swords/swords-chinese-swords-classic-a-twin-hook.jpg
or some of the items on this picture
link:http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/1/1c/Cad_Bane_cover.png
but it already looks good so far, I’m looking forward to see the finished heromachine